I Personally I think it is smart consumer sense to avoid problematic companies until they make efforts to show they have made changes to correct their problems.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality". There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
I'm surprised by the amount of people saying who the developer is doesn't matter. Of course it matters.
If you bought a car and it turned out to be very reliable and last a long time, wouldn't you first consider that company for your next car? I would and do. And if you buy a car and it constantly has problems and costs a lot of money to keep running, wouldn't you avoid that car company in the future?
Same for TVs, PCs, Appliances, mattresses, airlines, etc etc etc. So why in the gaming world would it suddenly be normaly to not judge a product by it's company. Just like every other market that exists, a video game company is likely to produce the same level of product time and time again. So when you start noticing that SOE puts out crap, or EA puts out crap, you quickly learn to not waste your money on crap.
Unless of course you don't use your brain and just keep saying "Well maybe next time it will be good, oh guess not, maybe next time, or next time........" That makes far less sense then not buying from a company who puts out crap.
But hey who is to argue when the country that many of us post from had an economy collapse from people and companies doing stupid things repeatedly, and then the government bailed them all out so they could do stupid things again. Can't expect people to use their head and learn that when a company screws up to be done with it and move on to a different one.
What you are saying is true in some sense but not true in others. Let's take a trip down mmo memory lane. Wolfpack studios build a game calling it Shadowbane. They host alpha and beta sessions to iron out the game and it is extremely well received by it's niche. However, unknown to everyone but UBI and Wolfpack, the production/hosting company is lurking in the background getting ready to pounce. 2 weeks before release, UBI steps all over the game and basically breaks it, opening it up to hacks glitches, unplayable situations, etc etc. Is Wolfpack at fault here? Well, I guess you could not say they have no fault, but in order to finish the product, they needed the money and UBI was offering. The contract behind that backing could have been handled better but I think UBI used the lure to get their hands on another good game so they could ruin it. Unfortunately, due to what UBI pulled off, Wolfpack games does not exist anymore. No other company, to date, has built a game with the world altering ability for the players that shadowbane had. Some of the core members of Wolfpack are now in a company called Stray Bullet games but they keep making promises about this and that and the other but have yet to produce anything new. I am guessing this core members group was part of the reason that UBI was able to rape Wolfpack with the contract for Shadowbane.
To the other side of the fence. Sony, sony sony sony, Online, online online online, Entertainment, entertainment entertainment entertainment!!!!! I don't think there is are very many people that can say good things about this companies P.C. gaming. Playstation seems to do well but I hate consoles due to the fact that interaction is limited via controller. Let's face it, 105 keys and a 5 button mouse beat ABCXYZ, left 1 and 2. right 1 and 2, and a trigger with gimp joystick controls. Their P.C. gaming market however is infamous for taking a good game with some flaws and tweaking it till it completely sucks. Points a finger at Brad McQuaid, aka lead designer of Everquest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. That anyone thought Sigil games was a stand alone entity was really doubtful. That McQuaid managed to completely destroy two games and be removed from the projects by Sony due to his one-sided tweaking to make certain character classes the god of the game should be proof of that. That even after he was gone, Sony continued to make bad decisions about character tweaking in the games and while on the sides lines was destroying the Star Wars legacy along with a couple of other small companies games says that what McQuaid was doing was coming from Sony but due to massive catcalling from the audience, they felt the need to publicly make a statement counter hiding the fact that they desired to screw it up in the first place. Yes this is a company I would never buy a game from again.
I Personally I think it is smart consumer sense to avoid problematic companies until they make efforts to show they have made changes to correct their problems.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality". There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
I Personally I think it is smart consumer sense to avoid problematic companies until they make efforts to show they have made changes to correct their problems.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality". There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
Bren
Where did you shoot down my arguement ? I am not seeing it. LOL
I read the rest of what you said, Car companies hire different people all the time, that doesn;t mean they come to your house and start ripping out engines from your car now does it? They may change dev teams, but the people calling the shots remain the same. It is the business ethics that are in question here. When devs don;t belive in what their publishers are doing they LEAVE, just as what Arena Net did to Blizzard. Now you are mistaken about Nsoft calling the shots for Nsoft west, two entirely different entities. I didn;t contact Nsoft for customer service on Guild wars, I contacted Arena Net.
As you c an plainly see on their site, there is No mention of Nsoft at all.
Now, again you are incorrect when saying that avoiding games that are produced by companies with a continuous bad track record that spans over a period of years of bad service is " avoiding good games for no reason". For example, when you play SOE games, you must always use SOE customer service, and billing dept. You will still be using the same company and dealing with the same policies if you play any of their games. You cannot just go around them and contact and pay for the games directly through the dev teams that are creating the individual games. In that case it would be perfectly rational to avoid all SOE games until they change their polices dramatically.
You have lowered your expectations for customer service, if you think people are in the wrong genre if they want quality service. I strongly disagree that people regardless of what they are paying for should just " accept" this is what they are going to get, rather than expecting companies regardless of their industry to uphold their contracts, treat their consumers with respect and respond in a friendly ,appropriate, and timely manner. To expect them to be knowledgable about their products and at least attmept to solve the problems people have with their products is " standard", anything less than that is substandard, and unacceptable.
I Personally I think it is smart consumer sense to avoid problematic companies until they make efforts to show they have made changes to correct their problems.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
I don't have to spend money to try a product. That is what free trials are for and companies with bad histories need to make better use of them.
Software is a real product. Just because it is an entertainment product doesn't change the value of the currency spent to obtain it. It is no less a product than a car or coffee maker in any sense.
All companies change employees. The odds of your car or coffee maker being made by the same identical team is just as likely as it is the mmo.
None of that changes the history of a companies products. Most companies have a certain level of quality you can expect from them that doesn't change very much unless there are big changes in the company. Corporate culture so to speak.
I agree with you that boycotting isn't the solution to most cases and isn't my only solution. However at some point it is just easier to walk away from a company than give any more faith that something good MIGHT happen. IF they release something and reviews are outstanding across the board, then maybe I will try it. I don't need to rush out and buy something at release to evaluate it myself. If companies with bad histories want my subscription dollars, they can release a fee trial and they will eventually.
Never is much of an extreme, but ignoring the past is equally as extreme. There comes a time when a company has to live by the merits of its efforts. Blindly giving money to a company that continually repeats the same mistakes over and over again is rewarding bad business.
Companies should work to earn customers revenue. Calling someone stupid for making a decision based on the all the available information is just plain nonsense. In fact it is that type of mentality that has lead us to the creation of threads like this. People continue to reward companies with money for rushing piles of garbage to the market. If you chose to ignore the information at hand and spend your money blindly then that is fine, but it doesn't make your smart in comparison to someone who is more cautious and educated with their money.
I would boycott games by the Burmese junta made with child labor, but seriously, I can't see myself getting so emotionally burnt by a gaming company to vow never to play any game from them again, no matter how good it was.
I've seen too many sad examples of people making tons of alts to flame a game because of a perceived betrayal by the company behind it.
If it's just from a customer service standpoint, both Blizzard and SOE are tied for the worst IMO.
SOE I hardly ever got a chance to speak to a GM. When I did they usually would blow me off basically saying sorry can't help ya. One time when my character was stuck in EQ2, I actually had to talk the GM into getting me unstuck. That is ... absurd.
Blizzard customer service is also rather poor. You would think with all the revenue they take it they could hire a CS staff to man the servers and handle issues. It almost seems like they are understaffed, which doesn't make sense. When I'd logoff the email I got from a GM was always the same cut/paste reply they give everyone regardless of what the issue is. On the rare times I actually spoke to someone ingame half the time they seemed not to care and other times seemed like they didn't understand. One actually told me that if I didn't want enemy players killing my escort npcs, I shouldn't have rolled on a pvp server. After several stunned seconds I replied "uh Windrunner isn't a pvp server".
Perhaps Mythic, but I'm not going to say I will never buy a game they devolped again. Pretty pleased they havn't got their hands on Warhammer 40K as WAR was a huge disappointment that could of been really cool based on it's IP.
No other company have really let me down (apart from PC World, I will never shop there again). Even SOE isn't too bad but I do think they could up the quality before releasing a game as nothing after Everquest has been AAA.
I Personally I think it is smart consumer sense to avoid problematic companies until they make efforts to show they have made changes to correct their problems.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality". There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
Bren
Where did you shoot down my arguement ? I am not seeing it. LOL
I read the rest of what you said, Car companies hire different people all the time, that doesn;t mean they come to your house and start ripping out engines from your car now does it? They may change dev teams, but the people calling the shots remain the same. It is the business ethics that are in question here. When devs don;t belive in what their publishers are doing they LEAVE, just as what Arena Net did to Blizzard. Now you are mistaken about Nsoft calling the shots for Nsoft west, two entirely different entities. I didn;t contact Nsoft for customer service on Guild wars, I contacted Arena Net.
As you c an plainly see on their site, there is No mention of Nsoft at all.
Now, again you are incorrect when saying that avoiding games that are produced by companies with a continuous bad track record that spans over a period of years of bad service is " avoiding good games for no reason". For example, when you play SOE games, you must always use SOE customer service, and billing dept. You will still be using the same company and dealing with the same policies if you play any of their games. You cannot just go around them and contact and pay for the games directly through the dev teams that are creating the individual games. In that case it would be perfectly rational to avoid all SOE games until they change their polices dramatically.
You have lowered your expectations for customer service, if you think people are in the wrong genre if they want quality service. I strongly disagree that people regardless of what they are paying for should just " accept" this is what they are going to get, rather than expecting companies regardless of their industry to uphold their contracts, treat their consumers with respect and respond in a friendly ,appropriate, and timely manner. To expect them to be knowledgable about their products and at least attmept to solve the problems people have with their products is " standard", anything less than that is substandard, and unacceptable.
First, read the edit I put on the post you keep quoting as I clarified a few things about buying and subscribing to any game by any company. From your post I think you missed that part. Also you seem to be singling out SOE a lot so I think I know where you're coming from and if that is the case I'd have to say that I at least partially agree with you as they do seem to be the exception to the rule so to speak... But if SOE came out with a really good MMO tomorrow I would be playing it in a heartbeat regardless of their past track record. Why you ask? Because the game I would be playing would be the MMO... Not the SOE customer service game... Not the SOE billing department game... It would be the game itself. (BTW I played EQ for well over 4 years and never had any issues that weren't handled adequately by SOE's customer service. As for SWG... The game sucked balls in my opinion from day one so I didn't get involved past Beta... I do feel for those that got CU'd and NGE'd however but I don't base my future buying decisions on it.)
Now the reason why I said I thought you missed my edit is because I did say that going into a game blindly(pre-ordering) or paying for more than a month at a time to any MMO is even stupider than basing your game buying decisions on the company instead of the game. Any game should be at least tried first or at the very least have some good reviews out before you lay any money on the table for it. But even then you are basing your purchase on the game itself and not on the company that made it. Games should be judged on their own merits and not on any other reasons.
You just keep avoiding games that come from companies that you think have wronged you in the past. Meanwhile I'll be playing some of those same games and having a blast doing so because I didn't go into the game with some preconceived notion that the game was going to suck just because it came from company X. Whether or not you play means absolutely nothing to me and won't stop me from enjoying the games. I'm not trying to be rude here... just honest.
Why must people be stupid, because they don't throw caution to the wind like you do.
There is no need to run out and buy every mmo that releases. Anyone can do a little research to see if it is decent or not and past performances can often show a trend of problems that certain companies seem to repeat. A free trial, some great reviews, trends after a few weeks/months then maybe it is worth trying if it doesn't sound like a train wreck. There is nothing wrong with not buying something, because of past bad experiences. Many would call the smart shopping.
When I burned my hand on a hot stove I learned to be cautious around them. I didn't ignore my past experience and run around touching every stove just in case I found one that I would enjoy touching. It is a stupid analogy, but I think you get the point.
If you want to reward companies with money just to try something out don't let anyone stop you. It is your money to spend or waste as you see fit. Calling others stupid for making informed decisions is just ignorant.
There are plenty of ways to tell a game is good or sucks without wasting money and there has been a lot of wasted money on mmos for to many years now.
Company-wise, I won't buy any more SOE games. Box store-wise, I won't buy games from the nearest Gamestop. Terrible experiences related to that store, so I drive an extra 10-15 minutes (depending on which direction) and go to other Gamestops.
I must say though, Gamestop is REALLY trimming down its PC games selection in all the stores I've been to recently. I suppose I may just start ordering games from newegg or something...
Why must people be stupid, because they don't throw caution to the wind like you do. There is no need to run out and buy every mmo that releases. Anyone can do a little research to see if it is decent or not and past performances can often show a trend of problems that certain companies seem to repeat. A free trial, some great reviews, trends after a few weeks/months then maybe it is worth trying if it doesn't sound like a train wreck. There is nothing wrong with not buying something, because of past bad experiences. Many would call the smart shopping.
When I burned my hand on a hot stove I learned to be cautious around them. I didn't ignore my past experience and run around touching every stove just in case I found one that I would enjoy touching. It is a stupid analogy, but I think you get the point.
If you want to reward companies with money just to try something out don't let anyone stop you. It is your money to spend or waste as you see fit. Calling others stupid for making informed decisions is just ignorant.
There are plenty of ways to tell a game is good or sucks without wasting money and there has been a lot of wasted money on mmos for to many years now.
What part of "Try the game or at least wait until there are some good reviews" (which I've said twice now BTW) is so hard to understand? You are basically parroting back at me what I've already said... twice. This is good and is smart shopping. Basing your buying decision entirely on the company that makes the game is what is stupid. Never pre-order a game... even if you've tried it in Beta as it could change for release. Never pay for more than a 1 month subscription at a time as you never know what changes the next month will bring. If you do either of these things regardless of what company made the game you are just setting yourself up to be burned. These are smart buying practices regardless of the game company. Also if you practice these 2 simple steps you'll never get burned as if the game sucks... don't buy it. Also if the game your playing changes dramatically on you (NGE) just stop playing and paying as you've only paid for 1 month max anyways(The company owes you nothing for this as you played the game all the months you already paid for. Also it's their game to screw up.). Both of these practices are based on the game itself and not at all on the company the makes the game.
People that think they are hurting Sony or EA for instance with their little 'Boycotts' are living in a fantasy land. I'm absolutely positive however that you give these guys something to laugh about at their weekly board meetings while they are sitting around counting their weekly profits.
I judge games on their own merits and not because of the developer they may come from. If I like a game I will play it. Judging games based on their developers is pure stupidity. I really don't care if game X was developed by a company that screwed up game Y. As long as game X is fun to play that is all that matters. If they find a way to screw up game X in the future than I will stop playing it and move on to something else. What I won't do is go on to a forum and whine and cry every chance I get that the company is evil because they screwed up game X. It's just a game after all and there are plenty more to play. Getting all worked up over a company because they screwed up their game is a complete waste of time and is stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
"What I won't do is go on to a forum and whine and cry every chance I get that the company is evil because they screwed up game X."
Instead, you go on to a forum and whine and cry about people posting in a thread specifically based around the question "Who won't you buy from" just to call everyone stupid since they don't see things your way.
Anger much?
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
We both are saying similar things, but I am not parroting what you think you are saying. Calling people stupid is way overboard, especially when you chose to wear blinders. On top of that you keep linking boycott with a something else. Avoiding a company that has continually put out shit games, or even decent games and then screwed them up due to lack of quality leadership isn't a boycott. There comes a point when it is just smarter to walk away until that company proves they have turned things around. Then maybe they are worth looking at again.
Yes that is based on the company who made the game and if you look close you will see that there are trends. If that is what the company has a track record of doing and nothing has changed with the people running the company then odds are pretty good the same thing will happen again. Those companies need to give solid reasons to come back and give them a chance again. Putting out something that looks decent is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't change much if that wasn't the problem to begin with. There are plenty of games that had rock star potential at first, but were ruined long after they released.
You can call that a boycott if you like, but I find it irrational to expect change where change is most likely not to occur as can be seen by a clear pattern of actions from a company. Spending money and far more importantly time on a game based on some blind hope that a company has somehow turned around is foolish if you ask me. Honestly I have better things to do than waste time./money and blindly hope something has changed. I do hope things change and I can find a product worth become a customer of them once again, but I don't hold my expect it.
As for EA and SOE laughing, ok. I don't see either company doing that well with their current mmos, but if you think losing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of subscribers is what makes developers laugh at people not giving them money anymore.. well I guess that shows how much differently we see the world.
I've never actually been burnt by bad experiences with companies while playing games thank heavens, so at this point in time, I do not see the need to boycott a company. With the exception of IGG though... for some reason, I can never log into my account there; they always log me out a few seconds after I manage to log in, so I've given up on them.
I notice that when it comes to F2P and P2P games, I tend to react differently. When it comes to F2P games, I would tend to be more adventurous, and I'd try every game that I manage to come across, even if I've had a less than sterling experience with the company involved. I don't tend to spend money on F2P games anyway, so the burning is less painful when I do get burnt.
However, when it comes to P2P games, I tend to be more cautious, since after all, because money is being spent, the burning would tend to hit harder. Hence, I would look through reviews and the company's past games and people's experiences with them, before I would think of getting the game. Moreover, if I have had an extremely good experience with a previous game, more likely than not I would just rush out and buy the sequal without doing any prior research, because I already do have a lot of faith in the company *eyes Arenanet*
I will always be glad to try a new game from any developer, no matter what their history (I had a bad experience with SOE back in the day when I was playing Planetside, but I let go of that grudge, life's too short to spend it living in the past).
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
I have had good and bad experiences with every major publisher/developer. If I were to write off an entire company because of one bad experience, like so many people claim to do here, I wouldn't be playing -any- games right now - hell, I wouldn't be buying -anything- anymore. I'm also starting to get a little tired of the overly predictable SOE blame bandwagon - same goes with the EA haters. Just get over the fact that mistakes were made. Instead, there seems to be this prevailing attitude that these companies are "out to get ya" like the boogeyman or something and steal your money. Ridiculous.
Im like you I've had good times and bad times with companies so meh w/e I usually look at the game and see. Some of you guys by your list won't be playing anything lol ever again These boards really do not represent fan of mmorpg players but really it lumps all the poeple who are angry and unhappy with mmorpgs that wanna bitch and gripe about something they took personal 1-5 years ago.... Just think about it if you still pissed and bitching about NGE you should let it go lol it was a loooong time ago and it was a video game lol seriously let it go!!!!! So with that in mind and keeping in the spirit of the boards of haters and personally abused by game companies theme....
I will never buy a game from the people who made WWII online....its been so long ago I forgot who made it and they may be either out of business or hell the people that made it may be dead but by god they ain't ever going to get my 50 bucks again!!!!
(seriously though WWII online only game I felt like I was robbed of my money from because it was like all over websites and a big ass display at EB games and I coudln't even play it for some weeks and when I did it was divided up into small servers of 500 it may have changed but it was not what it was advertised as not even close)
Comments
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality".
There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
What you are saying is true in some sense but not true in others. Let's take a trip down mmo memory lane. Wolfpack studios build a game calling it Shadowbane. They host alpha and beta sessions to iron out the game and it is extremely well received by it's niche. However, unknown to everyone but UBI and Wolfpack, the production/hosting company is lurking in the background getting ready to pounce. 2 weeks before release, UBI steps all over the game and basically breaks it, opening it up to hacks glitches, unplayable situations, etc etc. Is Wolfpack at fault here? Well, I guess you could not say they have no fault, but in order to finish the product, they needed the money and UBI was offering. The contract behind that backing could have been handled better but I think UBI used the lure to get their hands on another good game so they could ruin it. Unfortunately, due to what UBI pulled off, Wolfpack games does not exist anymore. No other company, to date, has built a game with the world altering ability for the players that shadowbane had. Some of the core members of Wolfpack are now in a company called Stray Bullet games but they keep making promises about this and that and the other but have yet to produce anything new. I am guessing this core members group was part of the reason that UBI was able to rape Wolfpack with the contract for Shadowbane.
To the other side of the fence. Sony, sony sony sony, Online, online online online, Entertainment, entertainment entertainment entertainment!!!!! I don't think there is are very many people that can say good things about this companies P.C. gaming. Playstation seems to do well but I hate consoles due to the fact that interaction is limited via controller. Let's face it, 105 keys and a 5 button mouse beat ABCXYZ, left 1 and 2. right 1 and 2, and a trigger with gimp joystick controls. Their P.C. gaming market however is infamous for taking a good game with some flaws and tweaking it till it completely sucks. Points a finger at Brad McQuaid, aka lead designer of Everquest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. That anyone thought Sigil games was a stand alone entity was really doubtful. That McQuaid managed to completely destroy two games and be removed from the projects by Sony due to his one-sided tweaking to make certain character classes the god of the game should be proof of that. That even after he was gone, Sony continued to make bad decisions about character tweaking in the games and while on the sides lines was destroying the Star Wars legacy along with a couple of other small companies games says that what McQuaid was doing was coming from Sony but due to massive catcalling from the audience, they felt the need to publicly make a statement counter hiding the fact that they desired to screw it up in the first place. Yes this is a company I would never buy a game from again.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality".
There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Funcom. Not one but two horrible launches. You'd think that they'd learn after the first one.
Sony Online Entertainment.
I don't think I need to give reasons, I'm sure you can all guess why...
Playing: EVE Online
Played (retired): Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Age of Conan.
Awaiting: Star Wars: The Old Republic, The Secret World.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality".
There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
Bren
Where did you shoot down my arguement ? I am not seeing it. LOL
I read the rest of what you said, Car companies hire different people all the time, that doesn;t mean they come to your house and start ripping out engines from your car now does it? They may change dev teams, but the people calling the shots remain the same. It is the business ethics that are in question here. When devs don;t belive in what their publishers are doing they LEAVE, just as what Arena Net did to Blizzard. Now you are mistaken about Nsoft calling the shots for Nsoft west, two entirely different entities. I didn;t contact Nsoft for customer service on Guild wars, I contacted Arena Net.
www.guildwars.com/support/contactinfo/
As you c an plainly see on their site, there is No mention of Nsoft at all.
Now, again you are incorrect when saying that avoiding games that are produced by companies with a continuous bad track record that spans over a period of years of bad service is " avoiding good games for no reason". For example, when you play SOE games, you must always use SOE customer service, and billing dept. You will still be using the same company and dealing with the same policies if you play any of their games. You cannot just go around them and contact and pay for the games directly through the dev teams that are creating the individual games. In that case it would be perfectly rational to avoid all SOE games until they change their polices dramatically.
You have lowered your expectations for customer service, if you think people are in the wrong genre if they want quality service. I strongly disagree that people regardless of what they are paying for should just " accept" this is what they are going to get, rather than expecting companies regardless of their industry to uphold their contracts, treat their consumers with respect and respond in a friendly ,appropriate, and timely manner. To expect them to be knowledgable about their products and at least attmept to solve the problems people have with their products is " standard", anything less than that is substandard, and unacceptable.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
I agree with you that boycotting isn't the solution to most cases and isn't my only solution. However at some point it is just easier to walk away from a company than give any more faith that something good MIGHT happen. IF they release something and reviews are outstanding across the board, then maybe I will try it. I don't need to rush out and buy something at release to evaluate it myself. If companies with bad histories want my subscription dollars, they can release a fee trial and they will eventually.
Never is much of an extreme, but ignoring the past is equally as extreme. There comes a time when a company has to live by the merits of its efforts. Blindly giving money to a company that continually repeats the same mistakes over and over again is rewarding bad business.
Companies should work to earn customers revenue. Calling someone stupid for making a decision based on the all the available information is just plain nonsense. In fact it is that type of mentality that has lead us to the creation of threads like this. People continue to reward companies with money for rushing piles of garbage to the market. If you chose to ignore the information at hand and spend your money blindly then that is fine, but it doesn't make your smart in comparison to someone who is more cautious and educated with their money.
I would boycott games by the Burmese junta made with child labor, but seriously, I can't see myself getting so emotionally burnt by a gaming company to vow never to play any game from them again, no matter how good it was.
I've seen too many sad examples of people making tons of alts to flame a game because of a perceived betrayal by the company behind it.
"nerf rock, paper is working as intended."
- Scissors.
Head Chop
$OE ( Sony Online Enterainment) The Epitome Of Evil and Greed In This World , Every Knows The History Already Enuf Said...
Star Vault
That guy with the eyepatch that sold me video games in the dark alley in the bad part of town.
If it's just from a customer service standpoint, both Blizzard and SOE are tied for the worst IMO.
SOE I hardly ever got a chance to speak to a GM. When I did they usually would blow me off basically saying sorry can't help ya. One time when my character was stuck in EQ2, I actually had to talk the GM into getting me unstuck. That is ... absurd.
Blizzard customer service is also rather poor. You would think with all the revenue they take it they could hire a CS staff to man the servers and handle issues. It almost seems like they are understaffed, which doesn't make sense. When I'd logoff the email I got from a GM was always the same cut/paste reply they give everyone regardless of what the issue is. On the rare times I actually spoke to someone ingame half the time they seemed not to care and other times seemed like they didn't understand. One actually told me that if I didn't want enemy players killing my escort npcs, I shouldn't have rolled on a pvp server. After several stunned seconds I replied "uh Windrunner isn't a pvp server".
$OE
I truly hope Funcom reads this thread so they can realize how they can never make another MMO ever again.
Perhaps Mythic, but I'm not going to say I will never buy a game they devolped again. Pretty pleased they havn't got their hands on Warhammer 40K as WAR was a huge disappointment that could of been really cool based on it's IP.
No other company have really let me down (apart from PC World, I will never shop there again). Even SOE isn't too bad but I do think they could up the quality before releasing a game as nothing after Everquest has been AAA.
Blizzard, Funcom.
But if you never buy another product from them you will never know if they made that effort now will you. Your other arguments are mute since a real world product has little to do with software. Game companies change dev teams like most people change their underwear. The chances of the same exact same dev team making two different games are slim to none. This would be like that coffee maker company or the car maker replacing half of their production staff in between each coffee pot or car. The comparison really doesn't hold up.
As for the customer service part of it I have yet to see a MMO company that didn't have shitty customer service. Even Blizzard and Turbine have loads of problems in this department and they are considered by most to be the best. If you want good customer service you have the wrong hobby as it's hard to come by with any of these companies. Every single major MMO company has already been mentioned in this thread alone. You rule all of those out and who are you going to buy your games from? Like I said... stupidity at it's finest.
Bren
Okay, you have been spending too much time in your " virtual reality".
There is only ONE World, it is the REAL world.
You pay real money for goods and services. You pay real money for their software, and real money for their service. Software is a real product that you buy from them.
It is like this, you buy a car then they come and take the engine out of the car you have already paid for, while your still paying them $15 a month for the upkeep, and put in a crappy engine that doesn;t work as good as the first., It is THE same as when you buy a game then they change it after you purchased it and then you are still paying them for the service to do so.
We " the consumers" spend thousands of dollars on their games only to have them break them time and time again.
As for Customer service, you have lowered your expectations rather than realized there are companies that offer excellent customer service. For example, When I contacted Guild wars customer service because their program was corrupted by problem on my old computer, not only did they put me through to a tech that talked me through step by step to get the program functioning again, they helped fix my computer. The program had become stuck, couldn;t access it or uninstall it, and they talked me through it and got it working. This took some time, and they didn;t even charge me a monthy fee for it..
Rather than accept poo on a platter, people should make their voices heard and demand companies provide the services we are paying for otherwise they will just continue to serve you poo. Why bother giving the players anything better when they appear all to be content with poo? LOL
I found an iron on for you to put on your T- shirt:
You are 'cherry picking' one sentence out of my post and ignoring the rest of that paragraph in which I already shot down 90% of your argument. Also the company your talking about with GW is NCSoft and it's already been mentioned a dozen times in this thread as a company to avoid. Your post is just solidifying my argument that judging a game by it's company is pretty stupid so I guess I should thank you.
I haven't lowered my standards at all. I actually have pretty high expectations for the games that I play. I just don't let a bunch of forum banter or even a bad experience or two with the company that made the game interfere with my judging of the game itself. If the game is fun and I like it I'll play it. I couldn't give a rats ass who made it as I don't judge the game based on that. I judge each game I play on it's own merits and that is all. Having a grudge against a game company is just plain stupid as all it's going to accomplish 99% of the time is you avoiding some really great games for no real reason.
Bren
Where did you shoot down my arguement ? I am not seeing it. LOL
I read the rest of what you said, Car companies hire different people all the time, that doesn;t mean they come to your house and start ripping out engines from your car now does it? They may change dev teams, but the people calling the shots remain the same. It is the business ethics that are in question here. When devs don;t belive in what their publishers are doing they LEAVE, just as what Arena Net did to Blizzard. Now you are mistaken about Nsoft calling the shots for Nsoft west, two entirely different entities. I didn;t contact Nsoft for customer service on Guild wars, I contacted Arena Net.
www.guildwars.com/support/contactinfo/
As you c an plainly see on their site, there is No mention of Nsoft at all.
Now, again you are incorrect when saying that avoiding games that are produced by companies with a continuous bad track record that spans over a period of years of bad service is " avoiding good games for no reason". For example, when you play SOE games, you must always use SOE customer service, and billing dept. You will still be using the same company and dealing with the same policies if you play any of their games. You cannot just go around them and contact and pay for the games directly through the dev teams that are creating the individual games. In that case it would be perfectly rational to avoid all SOE games until they change their polices dramatically.
You have lowered your expectations for customer service, if you think people are in the wrong genre if they want quality service. I strongly disagree that people regardless of what they are paying for should just " accept" this is what they are going to get, rather than expecting companies regardless of their industry to uphold their contracts, treat their consumers with respect and respond in a friendly ,appropriate, and timely manner. To expect them to be knowledgable about their products and at least attmept to solve the problems people have with their products is " standard", anything less than that is substandard, and unacceptable.
First, read the edit I put on the post you keep quoting as I clarified a few things about buying and subscribing to any game by any company. From your post I think you missed that part. Also you seem to be singling out SOE a lot so I think I know where you're coming from and if that is the case I'd have to say that I at least partially agree with you as they do seem to be the exception to the rule so to speak... But if SOE came out with a really good MMO tomorrow I would be playing it in a heartbeat regardless of their past track record. Why you ask? Because the game I would be playing would be the MMO... Not the SOE customer service game... Not the SOE billing department game... It would be the game itself. (BTW I played EQ for well over 4 years and never had any issues that weren't handled adequately by SOE's customer service. As for SWG... The game sucked balls in my opinion from day one so I didn't get involved past Beta... I do feel for those that got CU'd and NGE'd however but I don't base my future buying decisions on it.)
Now the reason why I said I thought you missed my edit is because I did say that going into a game blindly(pre-ordering) or paying for more than a month at a time to any MMO is even stupider than basing your game buying decisions on the company instead of the game. Any game should be at least tried first or at the very least have some good reviews out before you lay any money on the table for it. But even then you are basing your purchase on the game itself and not on the company that made it. Games should be judged on their own merits and not on any other reasons.
You just keep avoiding games that come from companies that you think have wronged you in the past. Meanwhile I'll be playing some of those same games and having a blast doing so because I didn't go into the game with some preconceived notion that the game was going to suck just because it came from company X. Whether or not you play means absolutely nothing to me and won't stop me from enjoying the games. I'm not trying to be rude here... just honest.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Why must people be stupid, because they don't throw caution to the wind like you do.
There is no need to run out and buy every mmo that releases. Anyone can do a little research to see if it is decent or not and past performances can often show a trend of problems that certain companies seem to repeat. A free trial, some great reviews, trends after a few weeks/months then maybe it is worth trying if it doesn't sound like a train wreck. There is nothing wrong with not buying something, because of past bad experiences. Many would call the smart shopping.
When I burned my hand on a hot stove I learned to be cautious around them. I didn't ignore my past experience and run around touching every stove just in case I found one that I would enjoy touching. It is a stupid analogy, but I think you get the point.
If you want to reward companies with money just to try something out don't let anyone stop you. It is your money to spend or waste as you see fit. Calling others stupid for making informed decisions is just ignorant.
There are plenty of ways to tell a game is good or sucks without wasting money and there has been a lot of wasted money on mmos for to many years now.
Company-wise, I won't buy any more SOE games. Box store-wise, I won't buy games from the nearest Gamestop. Terrible experiences related to that store, so I drive an extra 10-15 minutes (depending on which direction) and go to other Gamestops.
I must say though, Gamestop is REALLY trimming down its PC games selection in all the stores I've been to recently. I suppose I may just start ordering games from newegg or something...
What part of "Try the game or at least wait until there are some good reviews" (which I've said twice now BTW) is so hard to understand? You are basically parroting back at me what I've already said... twice. This is good and is smart shopping. Basing your buying decision entirely on the company that makes the game is what is stupid. Never pre-order a game... even if you've tried it in Beta as it could change for release. Never pay for more than a 1 month subscription at a time as you never know what changes the next month will bring. If you do either of these things regardless of what company made the game you are just setting yourself up to be burned. These are smart buying practices regardless of the game company. Also if you practice these 2 simple steps you'll never get burned as if the game sucks... don't buy it. Also if the game your playing changes dramatically on you (NGE) just stop playing and paying as you've only paid for 1 month max anyways(The company owes you nothing for this as you played the game all the months you already paid for. Also it's their game to screw up.). Both of these practices are based on the game itself and not at all on the company the makes the game.
People that think they are hurting Sony or EA for instance with their little 'Boycotts' are living in a fantasy land. I'm absolutely positive however that you give these guys something to laugh about at their weekly board meetings while they are sitting around counting their weekly profits.
Bren
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"What I won't do is go on to a forum and whine and cry every chance I get that the company is evil because they screwed up game X."
Instead, you go on to a forum and whine and cry about people posting in a thread specifically based around the question "Who won't you buy from" just to call everyone stupid since they don't see things your way.
Anger much?
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Bren,
We both are saying similar things, but I am not parroting what you think you are saying. Calling people stupid is way overboard, especially when you chose to wear blinders. On top of that you keep linking boycott with a something else. Avoiding a company that has continually put out shit games, or even decent games and then screwed them up due to lack of quality leadership isn't a boycott. There comes a point when it is just smarter to walk away until that company proves they have turned things around. Then maybe they are worth looking at again.
Yes that is based on the company who made the game and if you look close you will see that there are trends. If that is what the company has a track record of doing and nothing has changed with the people running the company then odds are pretty good the same thing will happen again. Those companies need to give solid reasons to come back and give them a chance again. Putting out something that looks decent is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't change much if that wasn't the problem to begin with. There are plenty of games that had rock star potential at first, but were ruined long after they released.
You can call that a boycott if you like, but I find it irrational to expect change where change is most likely not to occur as can be seen by a clear pattern of actions from a company. Spending money and far more importantly time on a game based on some blind hope that a company has somehow turned around is foolish if you ask me. Honestly I have better things to do than waste time./money and blindly hope something has changed. I do hope things change and I can find a product worth become a customer of them once again, but I don't hold my expect it.
As for EA and SOE laughing, ok. I don't see either company doing that well with their current mmos, but if you think losing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of subscribers is what makes developers laugh at people not giving them money anymore.. well I guess that shows how much differently we see the world.
I've never actually been burnt by bad experiences with companies while playing games thank heavens, so at this point in time, I do not see the need to boycott a company. With the exception of IGG though... for some reason, I can never log into my account there; they always log me out a few seconds after I manage to log in, so I've given up on them.
I notice that when it comes to F2P and P2P games, I tend to react differently. When it comes to F2P games, I would tend to be more adventurous, and I'd try every game that I manage to come across, even if I've had a less than sterling experience with the company involved. I don't tend to spend money on F2P games anyway, so the burning is less painful when I do get burnt.
However, when it comes to P2P games, I tend to be more cautious, since after all, because money is being spent, the burning would tend to hit harder. Hence, I would look through reviews and the company's past games and people's experiences with them, before I would think of getting the game. Moreover, if I have had an extremely good experience with a previous game, more likely than not I would just rush out and buy the sequal without doing any prior research, because I already do have a lot of faith in the company *eyes Arenanet*
Main characters:
Jinn Gone Quiet (Guild Wars)
Princess Pudding (Guild Wars)
None.
I will always be glad to try a new game from any developer, no matter what their history (I had a bad experience with SOE back in the day when I was playing Planetside, but I let go of that grudge, life's too short to spend it living in the past).
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
Im like you I've had good times and bad times with companies so meh w/e I usually look at the game and see. Some of you guys by your list won't be playing anything lol ever again
These boards really do not represent fan of mmorpg players but really it lumps all the poeple who are angry and unhappy with mmorpgs that wanna bitch and gripe about something they took personal 1-5 years ago.... Just think about it if you still pissed and bitching about NGE you should let it go lol it was a loooong time ago and it was a video game lol seriously let it go!!!!! So with that in mind and keeping in the spirit of the boards of haters and personally abused by game companies theme....
I will never buy a game from the people who made WWII online....its been so long ago I forgot who made it and they may be either out of business or hell the people that made it may be dead but by god they ain't ever going to get my 50 bucks again!!!!
(seriously though WWII online only game I felt like I was robbed of my money from because it was like all over websites and a big ass display at EB games and I coudln't even play it for some weeks and when I did it was divided up into small servers of 500 it may have changed but it was not what it was advertised as not even close)