how low has the once top mmorpg makers fallen- the decline of SoE

hercules

i remember back in 2003 when there was nothing in NA/europe close to SoE.with over 500k in EQ and close to that in SWG along with other subs in games like planetside
innovation was certainly there.massive FPS battles achieved over 10 years ago and still only seen in planetside 2.a unique resource system in SWG never seen till today.the first true 3D mmorpg with a  playstyle still used today by many of the popular mmorpg ie WoW ,ESO.
fast forward to 2016 .a company heavily downsized  now called daybreak.most of its top developers and its founding CEO all gone.
Releasing expansions in terrible states ,poor and limited content with poorly written lores yet still charging premium price for it.cancelled mmorpgs.
Releasing landmark in a unfinished state after getting thousands to buy it as a builder for their now cancelled EQnext and charging for it on steam.
Money grabbing scheme by reopening "'classic progression ' server and making experience slow to stimulate as it was in 1999 yet happily selling experience pots.
While the arguement exist do not play it which i stopped due to the last mentioned .it does not hide how far and low this great company has fallen.
ok SoE is not the only company to fall on hard times from the popular mmorpg.turbine is not in great shape and neither is funcom.
But SoE was way on top and has probably fallen even further then the above 2 .does not help that turbine and funcom have not got to the low level of squeezing pennies from its customers.
maybe smedley wanted to leave to save his reputation going even more downhill with this practice .

Kumapon

My money is on Brad Mcquaid taking over Daybreak and then using the IP to create EverQuest: Pantheon!

The most kickass new gen MMO ever! It rocks!

Erinak1

I think the "old" SoE and Turbine together could have made a great game. Turbines presentation of lore and content is great but they lack in the imagination department when it comes gameplay mechanics. SoE liked to experiment with new ideas but the problem was they did it on a live server which meant that both EQ2 and SWG had quite a few half finished things, long abandoned for one reason or another. 

Hatefull

You are correct in your write up they started at the top...when there was little to no competition, then Blizz came in and pretty much wrecked.

For me, SOE/Daybreak went to hell when they released PS2 in the complete junk state it was in. They strayed too far away from Planetside, did not finish the game, and released absolute trash. Same can be said for EQ2, and anything else they failed at since then.

Smedly is a bad business man, Georgeson is also bad, they may have great vision when it comes to designing games (well Georgeson does, Smedley just sucks at everything) I felt like they never really listened to what their loyal player base wanted and instead did what they thought would make quick cash with no look at longevity. I also feel like, especially in Smedly's case, he alwasy feels as if he knows better than anyone what players want. Thus far he has been pretty far off base. Arrogance. I understand that they were both slave to big business, but had they the business sense they could have sold good ideas that would have brought in revenue based on longevity.

But in the end you are correct. Bad decisions, losing money, going away from tried and true systems, and over all hiring people with no business running games, SWG was so horribly managed it never stood a chance, just one example, were all factors in that particular company going away. I feel like once they fail to make money for their parent conglomeration, we will not hear about Daybreak again. Other than as a history lesson on how to not run a dev studio.

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Kyleran

DMKano said:

One thing players need to realize is the market where SOE was - which was San Diego just went to absolute shit over time as far as game companies go.

San Diego had a promising game developer market in the late 90s early 2000s. After that - over time many game studios just didn't make it in that area and with game devs leaving the area, it never turns out good for the remaining game companies as the pool of potential talent dwindles and the bad reputation of "bad area for game devs" - it's hard to get people to move there.

Look at San Diego today - the MMO game industry is pretty much dead in that city - that alone is a huge factor of downfall of SoE/Daybreak.  It's hard to run a great company when you can't hire any people in the area to work there.

One of the larger challenges the CU team has reported contributing to its delayed timeline is the inability to find or get people to move to Virgina where they are located. 

So talent availabilty is certainly a key contributor, but I think SOEs decline came largely from repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot over the years and pissing away all of their customer good will.

cheyane

Doing a post mortem of a company and seeing where  they made mistakes that lead to their downfall. All big companies has points where they could have gone the right way but chose the wrong way and that multiplied and in the end it lead to the company being sold and then cut down. People losing their jobs and we are left to moan and remember.

That Wells Fargo guy made off with millions even after sacking thousands. This is the part that upsets me more than anything. My husband is in banking he always says that if he had hindsight so many things would have gone better but he said some deals go forward no matter the risk involved because the choices were equally bad. 

I am not in their shoes and it is very easy to just blame greed which I suppose was a driving force but companies don't make bad decisions that lead to their demise solely on greed, some other considerations would have factored in. Also it is easy to criticize when you can see where their decisions went wrong but not so much when you're making them.

SpottyGekko

DMKano said:

One thing players need to realize is the market where SOE was - which was San Diego just went to absolute shit over time as far as game companies go.

San Diego had a promising game developer market in the late 90s early 2000s. After that - over time many game studios just didn't make it in that area and with game devs leaving the area, it never turns out good for the remaining game companies as the pool of potential talent dwindles and the bad reputation of "bad area for game devs" - it's hard to get people to move there.

Look at San Diego today - the MMO game industry is pretty much dead in that city - that alone is a huge factor of downfall of SoE/Daybreak.  It's hard to run a great company when you can't hire any people in the area to work there.

I'm sure being in a "bad location" could contribute to the difficulties faced by a developer, but if that studio is producing amazing concepts and wildly successful games, their location issues become an irritant, not a killer.

SOE's woes became apparent when they canned "The Agency". I believe that was the beginning of the end for them as a MMO development studio. They produced NOTHING original after that.

Zer0K

For me, it's a lot of bad decisions by SOE and Smed.    As you know a few of them.  The SWG NGE debacle, The choice to pump money into a pet 'Free Realms' project of Smed's, versus focusing on Vanguard:SOH (which they basically saved but did little to not enough to capitalize on its strengths and concept).  Then, just they whole way they approached EQNext, and the years of NOT MUCH specifically to EQN.  Then enter the sell off from SONY and SOE being acquired by Daybaked.....   
Though I think there were several decisions made that didn't help matters.
They should have focused on the few great titles they had and made them stronger, versus getting greedy and overextending their resources and having multiple games suffer due to it.

Gamer54321

Hey, OP, it is polite to explain first what the acronyms mean. THEN, you can toss those acronyms around.

Vrika

Of the big games that SOE has recently developed themselves:

-SOE failed to read the market and EQ2 lost to WoW
-The Agency was cancelled
-Free Realms was released only to be shut down some time later
-DC Universe Online and Planetside 2 were released, but neither of the games got any success. The best they have been able to do is ok.
-EQ3/EQ Next development turned into a massive clusterfuck and later was cancelled.

Their fall is an inevitable consequence of being unable to develop good and popular games. Especially when the third party games they've published haven't been that successful either. A large company can take some failures, but not if they don't get any successes in between.

hercules

Zer0K said:

For me, it's a lot of bad decisions by SOE and Smed.    As you know a few of them.  The SWG NGE debacle, The choice to pump money into a pet 'Free Realms' project of Smed's, versus focusing on Vanguard:SOH (which they basically saved but did little to not enough to capitalize on its strengths and concept).  Then, just they whole way they approached EQNext, and the years of NOT MUCH specifically to EQN.  Then enter the sell off from SONY and SOE being acquired by Daybaked.....   
Though I think there were several decisions made that didn't help matters.
They should have focused on the few great titles they had and made them stronger, versus getting greedy and overextending their resources and having multiple games suffer due to it.

totally agree on vanguard.they did not start the mess which was brad doing but when they bought it i was sure they got a good deal because everything was there for an amazing mmorpg they just needed to fix some issues and re advertize the gamer but for reasons unknown they waited few years and then fixed it by then was way too late.
sadly if you look at the developers still at daybreak its clear nothing  will be coming out of daybreak anytime soon  (even if they get the investment) without mass hiring.
RIP SoE

Theocritus

Looking at where DBG is today how much longer will they be in business? Im guessing they will just keep downsizing and downsizing until it is bare minimum if they arent there already....Tow years from now would it shock anyone if the whole company folds?

nariusseldon

The rise and fall of companies are not new. Plenty of examples from Kodak, Nokia, to SOE. Clearly the game industry is not immune. Remember Atari?

noncley

In the beginning, around 2003, SOE had three massive assets in its favour:

- It was owned by Sony which meant instant brand recognition and unlimited capital
- It owned the online rights to incredible IPs - Star Wars, the Matrix and Everquest
- It had extrardinary design and conceptual talent - from example, Raph Koster

And it just pissed them all away. Every single one. It should be taught as a 'How Not To' case in business schools. 

BruceYee

I had two friends who worked at SOE in the past. One was tech support for EQ2 and the other worked on servers for DCUO on launch day. Both of them say that when they worked there SOE was riding high/full of confidence like they were on top of the world so I think even they couldn't see what was coming down the line(WoW success) or what wasn't.

In the end I think it was just bad decisions that sunk the ship with the addition of cash shops in every game selling items that should be earned by playing rather than bought with real money. Landmark had a friggin' cash shop before the game was even working properly and all the promised features were added.

IMO Mr Smedley plays other games and wants to make his version like he did with H1Z1 after DayZ's success and now Hero's Song probably after playing some rogue-like on Steam.

Dear Mr Smed

    If you make a new game from an existing product please no more half a$$ery like with H1Z1 because I would really like to enjoy and support it for a very long time. Thanks #nohardfeelingsboutswg

Baratuk

The best we old Eq players can hope for is for Daybreak to keep F'in up and eventually start selling the IP rights to the games SOE had. And for some major company (It'd be awesome if blizzard bought it but they wont) would buy the rights to the EverQuest franchise in an effort to put out a new version of it.

Aelious

The beginning and end of the downsizing of formerly SoE lays at the feet of Sony for not wanting an online division as one of its four pillars. I'm not claiming they didn't make mistakes nor that Sony didn't have the right to make that call but there wasn't anything SoE/DGC could have done about it.

craftseeker

Zer0K said:

For me, it's a lot of bad decisions by SOE and Smed.    As you know a few of them.  The SWG NGE debacle, The choice to pump money into a pet 'Free Realms' project of Smed's, versus focusing on Vanguard:SOH (which they basically saved but did little to not enough to capitalize on its strengths and concept).  Then, just they whole way they approached EQNext, and the years of NOT MUCH specifically to EQN.  Then enter the sell off from SONY and SOE being acquired by Daybaked.....   
Though I think there were several decisions made that didn't help matters.
They should have focused on the few great titles they had and made them stronger, versus getting greedy and overextending their resources and having multiple games suffer due to it.

SOE were not acquired by 'Daybaked', they were acquired by Columbus Nova who then changed the name to Daybreak Games.

hercules

Aelious said:

The beginning and end of the downsizing of formerly SoE lays at the feet of Sony for not wanting an online division as one of its four pillars. I'm not claiming they didn't make mistakes nor that Sony didn't have the right to make that call but there wasn't anything SoE/DGC could have done about it.

actually after EQ success verrant was changed to SoE and did get good backing from sony as they thought they could keep minting money off this.it was only after it went into serious decline did sony hands off it.
we might never know who made the call on NGE (?soe?lucasarts or both) but i highly doubt it was a co operate decision from the top of sony.
EQ2 failure was certainly more clear cut as the developers were warned what needed to be done in beta and did not listen (at least not to the vast majoirty)
Planetside 2 ,its hard to tell who decided to make a mmofps of call of duty rather then the planetside model .
bottom line is sony hanged in there for years.as of 2006-2007 SoE was really declining already and planetside 2 did little to help matters.
H1Z1 might even be SoE biggest success since SWG launch.