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EA asks for feedback!
Sir-Sven
Member Posts: 773
This is the most wonderful time of the year, *dah dah dah dah dah dah* ((singing)). Woohoo! I'm so glad that EA is having focus groups in San Fransisco! EA is asking former and current UO players what they like and dislike about UO, they will tell them their ideas about the next UO coming out, (I didn't know if they were talking about UO:X or a UO 2, but you can check it out in the news section.) and they will be able to tell them all they want, but they only have 90 minutes.
I think it's about time that the big game corps. started asking their customers what they want in games! But let's just hope what those gamers want- is what this gamer wants. 
What think you?
*If you have no idea what i'm talking about and want to learn more, search under ((Focus group in San Fran))
Comments
Im fairly sure they are talking about UXO..they wouldnt be allowed to speak about a hypothetical UO2 even if its being planned at this point..lets just hope they make a hardcore PvP server.. this dueling only crap makes me not want to play this game at all..
EA and feedback? These 2 things don't cope.
My answer: end yourself and bring back Origin and all tghe good quality software groups you killed.
Will bring back less mainstream and more quality software.
If i look at the last few EA titles UXO only can suck.
UO (wich i've never played but it has to be good from what i read) has been developed by Origin.
Now EA will press mioney out of this title with a streamlined Version with nice Graphics as they did with any other name they have.
I hope i am wrong of course.
I will check out UXO but i fear it will suck for me.
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
- MMORPG.COM Staff -
The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.
EA is asking the customers about what they've done with UO.... KIND OF LATE NOW A**HOLES, you already ruined UO and have developed UXO which looks like more of the same low gameplay garbage. I hope those EA reps take notes while they are berated for those 90 minutes.
Shelk
When it comes to MMOGs, EA couldn't find their collective arses with both hands and a map.
Guess you could say the same about everything they do..
Ran the Origin name into the ground..
Ran the Westwood name into the ground..
Sucked the creative life out of Maxis by milking the Sims for everything they could get.. (six [?] expansions, a total barf-fest of a MMOG, etc.)
I'm sure there are other examples..
Any-hoo.. EA needs far more feedback than they could ever get from 90-minute focus groups. They need feedback on how to maintain the good names of purchased design studios.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Better late than never, and it's very interesting that they're interested in having a discussion about it.
Those of you with such vehement words against EA need to try running a business sometime.
Wow, I was ALMOST beginning to expect better responses from you than that tired drivel, ianubisi. "Try running a business sometime"? LOL! Sure, let me pull half a billion dollars out of my hot buttered rectum and found an EA-sized company tomorrow.
Do you even think before you type?
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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Frequently, Negative71. I think pretty clearly about the various business pressures that are exacted upon a distribution company upon the profit margins of their business ventures. I think about the shareholders that demand profits from the Board of Directors. I think about the complex business cycles involved in funding, R&D, development, marketing, distribution, and support. I think about the very nature of the capitalist market, the laws of supply and demand, and the market forces exerted upon a product/service offering.
This isn't some kind of artist's community where people can get together to show off their creativity. This isn't a charity for needy gamers. This is a business, and business has to make hard decisions that don't necessarily reflect upon creative or charitable elements. When you have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, and riotous shareholders to appease, you make the decision that keeps your business profitable.
I read all the complaints people have about EA, or Sony, Microsoft or other gaming distributors/developers. The vast majority of them have absolutely no conception of the idea of business, and seem to live in some kind of fantasy world that excludes the profit-motive from the reason these games even make it to market. Plattitudes and ignorance.
You make the mistake of assuming that I give a rat's arse about "artist's communities" or whatever. Let's examine EA's track record regarding MMOGs as of late:
UO: Ran a very long time, (never played it, but knew a lot of people who did) but now they release some expansion for it and everyone who loved it hates it now.
MCO: Only major ("major" as in run by a large company like MS/EA/Sony, it had significant ad campaigns and the like, etc.) MMOG shut down recently.
E&B: Final nail in the coffin for Westwood's good name. I've long been a fan of Westwood stuff. Dune 2, C&C, C&C:RA, etc. It's very disappointing to see what they became under EA. More specifically with E&B, it's a game I WANT to like.. it's the first MMOG I played when I made the leap from MUDs to MMOGs.. it COULD be great.. but it just has this feeling of being on life-support now.
TSO: What a joke. Sure, the CONCEPT sounded like a license to print money: Take the most successful game ever, and make an online version. Sure to get TONS of "casual" gamers to play, right? WRONG. All it got were groups of people either intent on griefing other players, or people who felt a huge compulsion to spend all their time discussion their sexual perversions. TSO has been bleeding users badly almost since day 1, and I'm honestly surprised it hasn't been shut down yet. (the negative pub from the underage hooker on Alphaville should speed that up a bit, since Salon and others picked up on it)
Hmmm.. we can all sit around sipping double-tinkerbell-mocha-bubble-lattes and discussing the zen of the lime-green pixel in your artsy-fartsy community concept.. or we can examine what EA's actually done and comment accordingly.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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There most certainly are:
Motor City Online - folded after "not finding an audience," which translates to being poorly run. EA chased off all but the diehards and had to fold the tents last year.
Majestic - A "new" type of MMOG that used pagers, web sites, cell phones, etc. to fully immerse people into playing. A great concept that flopped in EA's hands/
Origin: Ultima Worlds Online - Although it is rumored that UXO is really what Origin was supposed to be, I have my doubts. The Origin project (named after the publisher that created the Ultima line...a company which EA bought, gutted, then destroyed) was unceremoniously canceled because...get this...it would compete with UO! UXO may be fantastic, but it also may be too little too late for a company whose biggest MMOG success to date has been The Sims Online.
However, I do think that asking for feedback is a step in the right direction. The question is: Is this an earnest attempt to make a six-year-old MMOG better or is it merely an empty gesture to placate some vocal subscribers and squeeze another six months out of an aged game model? I hope it is the former, but given EA's attitude toward PC titles and their track record, I'm afraid it is the latter.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. (written on the SW:G CD)
A: 73% E: 73% S: 40% K: 13%
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Old timer.
OSI release UO:Renaissance, the "hated" expansion. And you're quite wrong to say "everyone who loved it hates it now." UO:R surged UO's subscriber base and it stayed at a 250K plateau even with AC1, EQ, and AO on the market. The vocal players of UO that hated UO:R make a huge stink about it, but that game wasn't "ruined" by EA. Personally, I loved UO:R, though I agree with the argument that UO:R permanently changed the way UO worked (and in some cases, especially PKers, for the worse).
MCO . . . I really can't comment about it too much. Do you know why it was shut down? Was it losing money? Could that possibly be a good reason to shut it down?
From everything I've read about E&B, it just plain sucks. EA didn't develop the game. Does Westwood come to the public and decry EA's involvement in the failure of the game? From all that I've read, the game just lacks depth and interest...and it's been around for months now, more than enough time to develop depth and interest. I fail to see what EA had to do with this...please correct me if you think I'm wrong.
TSO. Here's the real kicker. It's just a failed concept, man. Maxis developed it, Maxis hyped it, Maxis brought it to market in the version they thought was ready to be played. I played it, and it was so paper thin it was silly. This is EA's doing? No. This is Maxis' doing.
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When you talk about Westwood and Maxis, you talk about two companies that excelled at making single-player or small multiplayer games. They came to a MMOG market and didn't net the same results. Guess what? EA published their single player games too, along with countless titles that are successful and well-loved by gamers. The developers couldn't deliver in the MMOG marketspace...either due to a failed concept, poor implementation, or simply a bad product. Don't feed me the lines that it's EA's fault...nobody has provided a single shred of evidence that I have seen yet that implicates EA as the cause of the problem. More often than not I simply hear the argument "since EA took over".
You know why companies typically take over other companies? Because the company "taken over" was failing to make a profit. OSI was going to go bankrupt...if they had, and EA hadn't bought OSI, UO would likely have been shut down. You can forecast that trend across countless companies...for Vivendi Universal, for Interplay, for Sierra, Microsoft, Sony, etc... Countless companies that brought games to the market because they came under the umbrella of a distributor who allowed the developer to focus on development and not carrying overhead for accounting, human resources, warehousing, marketing, sales, and other redundant deparmentments.
Show me a lick of evidence that EA (or any of these big distributors) had any direct involvement in the failure of a game and I'll give you due credit and nod approval for the malfeasance. But until then, this foolish speculation that lambastes the distributor sounds like childing whining.
I sympathize with how many pre-UO:R players feel. Their game was butchered. But I also see that UO saw subscriber rates increase and remain after UO:R was released. How do you relate those numbers to anything other than the UO:R release? So while UO:R may have made many unhappy, it appears to have made many more happy. Once again, however, EA had NOTHING to do with UO:R.
Never confuse forum rantings for "the majority". It has never been so. Go read any MMOG main or fansite forums...ANY of them. There are more people complaining about what's wrong than complimenting what's right. This has always been true and I feel that due to human nature it will probably always remain true.
Motor City Online - folded after "not finding an audience," which translates to being poorly run. EA chased off all but the diehards and had to fold the tents last year.
Majestic - A "new" type of MMOG that used pagers, web sites, cell phones, etc. to fully immerse people into playing. A great concept that flopped in EA's hands/
Origin: Ultima Worlds Online - Although it is rumored that UXO is really what Origin was supposed to be, I have my doubts. The Origin project (named after the publisher that created the Ultima line...a company which EA bought, gutted, then destroyed) was unceremoniously canceled because...get this...it would compete with UO! UXO may be fantastic, but it also may be too little too late for a company whose biggest MMOG success to date has been The Sims Online.
I did mention MCO in my message. Didn't mention Majestic, though.
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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-- Death to picture-sigs. --
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I'm suprised people cared about this topic so much. Thanks for clearing that up Admin! It makes me happy they are trying to "fix" or find out what they did wrong with the old UO. I guess it shows 'maturity' or whatever...
lol.. what i'm trying to say is- maybe they're getting better. that's good.