SOE - Do you trust them?

Marku

Im curious as to how many here trust or dont trust SOE. It'd be interesting to see and discuss. Theres no right or wrong answer. Just give us your view and respect everyone elses decision.

Imperatorian

Ofcourse I do. Why wouldn't I? I'm not playing any SOE games currently, but if a good MMORPG were to come out I'd not care wether it was made by SOE or not.

Marku

But in any previous SOE games you've been in. do you feel SOE have delivered what they've promised?

zoey121

Marku,

 Can you name a singal company mmorpg related  that did ? Deliver what they promised????

Marku

Dark Age Of Camelot / Mythic possibly? they tend to be good listeners when people cry out something's not right or could be better.

Imperatorian

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Originally posted by Marku
But in any previous SOE games you've been in. do you feel SOE have delivered what they've promised?

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Yes, except for maybe Star Wars Galaxies, where I basically felt like I was in beta and ANYTHING could happen the next update - good or bad. But still an enjoyable game.

Wakizashi

Long time SWG player here.  I do trust SOE now.  At first, I wasn't sure where they stood.  But now the agenda is clear.  All they are concerned with is milking players for all they can get.  Then they will dump you on the side of the road like an old newspaper.  So now, yes I trust them.  Trust them to be SOE.  They will never get my money again.

indi

While I understand that profit is a legit reason to program a game, it is just way too obvious that this is the ONLY intention of SOE. A game of SOE is being supported as long as there are enough paying subscribers (and not even then in most cases). In EQ2, for instance, you can pay for every single new zone they bring in, or what they call "expansion". Almost all other publishers program such a content for free. But not just that, Sony allows IG stuff to be sold for real money, not because the community wanted it that way, it's because Sony gets a percentage of the payed amount.

Marku

i remember when EQ2 was so hyped, everyone would say it would blow all the other mmorpgs away, Wahahaha :-P

gattm99

My opinion if SOE is they took a pretty good game, Everquest, and squeezed every penny they could get out of it to finance a few really bad games, SWG and EQ2.  When I say squeezed I mean they seem to release a new expansion for the game every 6 months and they were the first to jack subscription prices up. 

gattm99

My opinion if SOE is they took a pretty good game, Everquest, and squeezed every penny they could get out of it to finance a few really bad games, SWG and EQ2.  When I say squeezed I mean they seem to release a new expansion for the game every 6 months and they were the first to jack subscription prices up. 

Marku

very true. At the time i thought it was a risky move to make.

bhug

05.11.01

After soe purged half of it's EQ servers (few if any came back after the wow/eq2 exodus, so no need for +40 servers) they neglected to move over SIXTY of my characters (some created in 2000.)

When I petitioned about the lost characters I only got cut and paster responses that had NOTHING to do with the loss of my characters. I guess those india CS guys never actually played EQ and are only allowed to respond by script.

Emailing eqcs got a response, nothing we can do about it, live with it!!!!!!! emailing back for clarification was never responded to.
nolonger subscribed.

.'. no trust nor faith in soe.

Elnator

I don't trust any large corporation.

Period.

As far as Gaming companies:
Only Mythic has earned any sort of trust from me.

admriker444

When a company uses in-house public relations to communicate to the community, its pretty obvious you cant trust them.

All of their statements are prepared in advance. Any interview they allow is carfully conducted with in my estimate are preapproved questions (even with mmorpg.com). Cmon guys, have you ever seen an interview with SOE or Julio Torres where after they skillfully dodge a question or use it as a chance to mention some new feature they added there are never any follow-up questions. Or the one conducting the interview never says "hmm, you totally dodged that question"

Take a look at the recent interview done on this site. Notice below how Torres avoids answering the question...

MMORPG.COM - Some of our readers claim that the choice of Mustafar as a new planet for this expansion is simply an attempt to cash in on the upcoming dvd release of Episode III. How do you respond to this ?

Torres -

Mustafar was a natural choice for our next planet as it allowed for us to make fun and compelling content as well as gave us an opportunity to make some technological advances in the game, such as the new bursting lava flows and damage from environmental effects – a first for any of the Galaxies games and expansions. Mustafar is by far our most immersive environment yet. Additionally, with our introduction of the iconic Obi-Wan ghost, the fact that Mustafar was the location of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s “final” battle allowed us to tie these two great elements together while remaining consistent with Star Wars fiction and canon.

Notice how he completely avoided the question by steering the topic to some of the features of the expansion. This is classic PR 101 in work here folks. A nice way to take a negative question and turn it into some positive advertising for you.

Anyone who requires public relations people to communicate with their players simply cant be trusted. Their motives are based on limiting potential damages to reputation and never about being honest.

And taking a look back at their past history how could anyone trust SOE with their mishandling of SWG. For example the smugglers have been promised a revamp for years. And its not just one simple post that was soon forgotten about. Someone over there once posted a ridiculous post with in chronological order about the promised revamp. It went on for pages over a few years. Some were just updates on it being worked on. Others were asking for input on what features we as players would want. Then more of the same, followed by requesting more input. It was completely ridiculous.

Often times SOE finds itself in a tough situation about a promised feature. They allowed the players at a Fanfest In Europe to see a simulation of a capitol ship in action. Of course the players went nuts over this ! It was the main topic of the day for several months on forums (jtl). Every so often people would claim being bored but hanging on because capitol ships would be fun. SOE remained silent for months on the subject. Then finally after the idea is all but forgotten by most its casually brought up in a q&a with dev that "oh that was never something we were actually going to do, just some dev messing around on his laptop" kind of answer. I knew in my guild alone there were at least 30 flyboys that had only stuck around for that single reason. Talk about a slap in the face.

Now lets take a look at the CU, formerly known as a combat revamp. This was supposed to be about rewarding the veterans who put up with a buggy bad game. Heck, SOE even sent out e-mails to its former players (i got one that convinced me to come back) telling them that soon the revamp would bring balance to the game. We all know what happened of course. The CU was all about bringing in a new customer base and had nothing to do with fixing the current game. It was done at the last minute and made over in an attempt to dumb the game down for the console / WoW kiddies. This had nothing to do with its veteran players. The outrage was immense, so much that the PRESIDENT of SOE came on the forums and made a post begging for calm and yep making more promises that the CU would take time to work.

How ironic, we're asked to wait patiently for the devs to fix something that was supposed to fix something else. And later of course we're supposed to wait for the fixes to the fixes to even more fixes followed by some fixes to expansions to include more fixes to the fixes that never worked, etc.

So to answer your question, no I do not trust SOE and never will.

 

Elnator

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Originally posted by admriker444
When a company uses in-house public relations to communicate to the community, its pretty obvious you cant trust them.
All of their statements are prepared in advance. Any interview they allow is carfully conducted with in my estimate are preapproved questions (even with mmorpg.com). Cmon guys, have you ever seen an interview with SOE or Julio Torres where after they skillfully dodge a question or use it as a chance to mention some new feature they added there are never any follow-up questions. Or the one conducting the interview never says "hmm, you totally dodged that question"
Take a look at the recent interview done on this site. Notice below how Torres avoids answering the question...
MMORPG.COM - Some of our readers claim that the choice of Mustafar as a new planet for this expansion is simply an attempt to cash in on the upcoming dvd release of Episode III. How do you respond to this ?
Torres -
Mustafar was a natural choice for our next planet as it allowed for us to make fun and compelling content as well as gave us an opportunity to make some technological advances in the game, such as the new bursting lava flows and damage from environmental effects – a first for any of the Galaxies games and expansions. Mustafar is by far our most immersive environment yet. Additionally, with our introduction of the iconic Obi-Wan ghost, the fact that Mustafar was the location of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s “final” battle allowed us to tie these two great elements together while remaining consistent with Star Wars fiction and canon.
Notice how he completely avoided the question by steering the topic to some of the features of the expansion. This is classic PR 101 in work here folks. A nice way to take a negative question and turn it into some positive advertising for you.
Anyone who requires public relations people to communicate with their players simply cant be trusted. Their motives are based on limiting potential damages to reputation and never about being honest.
And taking a look back at their past history how could anyone trust SOE with their mishandling of SWG. For example the smugglers have been promised a revamp for years. And its not just one simple post that was soon forgotten about. Someone over there once posted a ridiculous post with in chronological order about the promised revamp. It went on for pages over a few years. Some were just updates on it being worked on. Others were asking for input on what features we as players would want. Then more of the same, followed by requesting more input. It was completely ridiculous.
Often times SOE finds itself in a tough situation about a promised feature. They allowed the players at a Fanfest In Europe to see a simulation of a capitol ship in action. Of course the players went nuts over this ! It was the main topic of the day for several months on forums (jtl). Every so often people would claim being bored but hanging on because capitol ships would be fun. SOE remained silent for months on the subject. Then finally after the idea is all but forgotten by most its casually brought up in a q&a with dev that "oh that was never something we were actually going to do, just some dev messing around on his laptop" kind of answer. I knew in my guild alone there were at least 30 flyboys that had only stuck around for that single reason. Talk about a slap in the face.
Now lets take a look at the CU, formerly known as a combat revamp. This was supposed to be about rewarding the veterans who put up with a buggy bad game. Heck, SOE even sent out e-mails to its former players (i got one that convinced me to come back) telling them that soon the revamp would bring balance to the game. We all know what happened of course. The CU was all about bringing in a new customer base and had nothing to do with fixing the current game. It was done at the last minute and made over in an attempt to dumb the game down for the console / WoW kiddies. This had nothing to do with its veteran players. The outrage was immense, so much that the PRESIDENT of SOE came on the forums and made a post begging for calm and yep making more promises that the CU would take time to work.
How ironic, we're asked to wait patiently for the devs to fix something that was supposed to fix something else. And later of course we're supposed to wait for the fixes to the fixes to even more fixes followed by some fixes to expansions to include more fixes to the fixes that never worked, etc.
So to answer your question, no I do not trust SOE and never will.

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Yes yes we know You hate SOE... can you PLEASE stop telling us in such PAINFUL detail how much you hate them?

A simple "No, I don't trust them" would have sufficed

swiftflow

Yes I trust SOE...I trust that they will make absoluetly horrendous decisions and then proceed to lie about it. It never fails.

Wakizashi

The dissenting opinion is also a valid opinion.  Let him speak I say.  The first thing I do when making a purchase of any kind is to only look for the negative opinions and reviews, especially games.  The positive reviews in my opinion tell you nothing that the people selling the game haven't already done. 

Marku

nice post admriker444 i tottaly agree. i only stuck around in SWG for becoming a jedi(sorry it was my dream that i could be a roleplaying jedi and form a guild for other rp jedi) and for this capital ship video we saw.

scaramoosh

SOE can't make a good game

They can host servers and have a good launchpad for downloads but not make mmorpgs!

 

Blizzard have done very well for their first mmorpg tbh, SOE cant even get it right with all this xp.

 

Reminds me of PM and Black and white 2

Rattrap

It Makes me Angry

Jorev

SOE has proven time and time again, they cannot be trusted.

Roin

I trust SOE... to do what's best for SOE. They care little to nothing about their customer base. Only the cash they can get from said customers. I give SOE credit though. They are one of the few game developers. That can repeatedly kick their fan base in the @$$. Yet those same customers will come back for more. (read: Won't cancel a subscription) Instead they'll just complain, bitch, and moan. All the while still filling SOE's pockets with more cash.

I didn't like the CU upgrade they did for EQ2. Did I stick around after that? Nope, sticking around just makes you foolish. Money is the only thing these game developers understand now.

Rufius

I dont' know what you guys aer on about but, that last thing that guy posted looked like it was done on windows NT an abandoned OS that MS stopped updating quite awhile ago.

nomadian

Of course I do, they just can't make games.

Nihilanth

well, i trust the EQ2 section of SOE. when it comes to EQ1, SWG.......not so much. SOE really seems to be working hard to make eq2 a totally awesome game.