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Contemplation: When and where did SOE and Square lose their "touch"?
elocke
Member UncommonPosts: 4,335
Just a thoughtful post, for contemplation. 2 of the biggest Game makers, and arguably 2 of the better "early" MMORPG developers are now in kneejerk reaction mode and struggling to put out quality games. For those not recognizing the company names, SOE created Everquest and Square created the Final Fantasy series of which FFXI is one of my all time favorite MMORPGs.
When, where, how and why did these 2 behemoths lose their "touch" on making great games?
Did World of Warcraft do it vicariously to them? Or was it a change in management, developers, or other company movements? Was it a loss of passion and a scramble for money? Was it just the times changing and they weren't able to make the transition?
I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks about these 2 former Titans of the industry. Lets try to keep the I hate SOE/Square posts to a minimum though and approach this from a constructive viewpoint, not a personal/emotional one.
For even further discussion, what can they do to get the "magic" back, if at all?
Comments
I like SOE game but SOE been doing it to themselves forever -- and before wow
Gates of Discord expansion was before WOW and had EQ players leaving the game in droves
-- worst expansion since DAOC Trials of Atlantis
EQ2 fan sites
SOE lost it in 2002 with the release of "Planes of Power" for EQ. It was the doom of EQ as we knew it and the start of the Theme Park "oh so fun" MMOs.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Dont know about the past Square, i respect their attempt to change FFXIV (its not the bad game many call it).
But for SOE i truly only know them in the same shape since i begun to play swg when it came out.
They seem to have never adopted a quality police, a leadership vision or direction, i mean SOE and Smedley have only had bad releases or mmos turning more worse since i know them...
I really think that SOE with Smedley has a guy that has a silver tongue but lacks any leadership qualification, which means the ability to put the right people to the right positions in a team and give them the right direction to make the visdion of ther often fundamentally great mmos come true and not panicking around then instead of focus, find out what works and what not and fix that damned stuff!
I gave them many chances - EQ was the best game for the short time i played it, the rest is like a fleabag of troubles:
SWG
EQ
EQ2 (granted that the english version may have had less trouble)
VG (when you take over a game you have to take responsibility too and not let it starve)
PotBS (really - the shipcombat is great! - i simply dont play games only for combat)
Account Management broken from non english sites
etc...
So i really think EQ was more or less a lucky occasion and SOE was allways out of touch and hasnt changed one inch!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
I dont think SOE and SE are doing any better or worse than the rest.
Mythic, Funcom, Cryptic, NCSoft et al have been producing games far below their own bar of expectatives. on the Single Player department BioWare confirms they arent the same BioWare of the KOTOR era...
Even Blizzard can be found guilty of losing their touch as of late, StarCraft 2 is far from stellar, Diablo 3 seems to be suffering from the same problem, 7 years tworking on a game and it looks like more of the (now) same old same old, barely no improvements...
WoW's latest expansion has made both players and developers realize that WoW is, in fact, dying...albeit slooooowly
Only ArenaNet seems to be outside this downward spiral of mediocrity...and let me stress "seems", time will tell...
IMHO we just passed a 5 years long bonanza where developers though they could release any half assed product and people would rush to buy it because it was an "em em oh".
Players voted with their wallets, and proved them how painfully wrong this line of thinking was.
Sadly it looks like developers, instead of mending their ways and working to produce quality products again, have put their sights on the F2P model, where they can keep releasing what amounts to be basically garbage, and people will flock to play it because, well, for many free garbage is good garbage...
989 and therefore Verant were Sony companies, but they were filled with people who wanted to push MMORPGs back when they were new. But that all became SOE a mmorpg making machine.
Something got lost in the machine and I think it was just lack of vision. I think even games like PotBS and DCUO which pushed some new ideas seemed to be played safe by the end.
Square TRIED something completely different; or so they thought. I think they over studied the market and miscalculated with FFXIV is all.
Don't let anyone fool you; that game was aweful in so many ways. I mean as great as the graphics were, there just wasn't anything unique to look at in their high-res world that was interesting. Can they fix it? Sure. Does it matter after flopping so damn hard? No. But if it stays B2P I'll give it another install in 6 more months or so to see what's up.
Why, because MMOs are trying to invent standards and push innovation and it really just confuses and alienates people.
EDIT TO ADD:
My whole tought is; when companies changed from being GAME companies to MMORPG companies they lose the magic.
I agree with comment about other companies
anyone remember Turbine and Asherons Call 2 ?
they release an expansion then announce 2 months later the game was being shutdown
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news300805ac2
EQ2 fan sites
The only experience I have with SOE was during my time in SWG, which was during the NGE period. In my opinion SOE's biggest problem is its unwillingness to listen to its customers.
I'll never forget the support that Badmrfrosty's epic 6 part series on the game play discussion forums elicited from the player base. Instead of implementing the type of content that he and the majority of the player base were calling for the higher ups at SOE in their infinite wisdom decided that adding Zombies, flying ewoks, chocolate fountains, a new Meatlump theme park and other garbage was what the SWG community really wanted.
Need anymore proof that SOE is still making this same mistake today? Did SOE listen to it's BETA testers when they said DC Universe wasn't ready for release, nope. Has SOE ever listened to it's Beta community for any of its games, my guess is probably not.
I feel that Square peaked with FFVI and FFVII and then have basically been going downhill from there. Especially after they merged with Enix.
FFVI was AMAZING. One of the best games ever made IMO, and FFVII was a great followup. However, every Final Fantasy after that hasn't been as good. And personally, I felt like FFXIII was a pretty bad game. I only played it for like 10 hours.
In the MMORPG arena, I enjoyed FFXI, but thought it was nothing spectacular. It DID introduce the auction house though, so that was pretty huge.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe Sony created EQ, but rather bought it from someone.
Sony has bad management as far as I can tell. You should never lie or misrepresent to your customer and they did that time and again, which is well documented.
Square as far as i can tell made great cg. There is a strong fan base from their console games, which I never really understood to be honest. Never played their first mmo and only the second during beta which probably shouldn't even count, but I would say neither developer ever lost their touch as they never had it to begin with.
EQ was develeoped by 989 Studios which was a subsidiary of Sony. Also, look at the same of the city "Qeynos" backwards and tell me Sony didn't make EQ
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Oh, I stand corrected then, thank you.
While that's true, I don't blame Enix for Square's getting suckier. Square's games have been getting more and more 'Squarelike', and have been ever since 7 (I would consider 7 to actually be when their shift started, but it was still a relatively good game)
8 and onwards almost feel like parodies of themselves, and increasingly moreso as time went on.
Though I first started realizing just how bad of a company Square can be when I bought their first game for the PS2. Ugh.
While I'm actually okay with some later Square games, I think they're merely good at best, not really great.
(Well, okay, I really like TWEWY, but that's probably my own personal problem.)
ya, what he said.
As a Pre-NGE SWG player, SOE lost it's touch when it didn't care if it lost all of it's current customers in favor of some mythical untapped playerbase they were going to get with the NGE. While I've tried other SOE games since then (EQ2 and Vanguard), the bad taste has never left.
Yes WoW raised the bar of quality alot and most companies couldnt keep up.
I think LotrO, Rift and maybe Aion are the only MMOs since then that come close to the over all quality of WoW.
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
But just as out of touch are many of the Pre-NGE SWG Players.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Can't argue with that! I also agree with you, FFVI was their best game. I think FFVII was great, but not as good as FFVI, and as you say, it just went downhill from there.
Where the plots to their games used to be interesting and emotionally involving, they are now fairly ridiculous. Also I think their more um..."eccentric" characters work better as sprites than they do as 3D models, see FFIX
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
SOE seems to have aken more of a "shotgun" tactic to releasing games - load up as many titles as they can think of, cram them all down the barrel, fire and then see which ones "stick". I never pictured them as having any type of real QA process to their games and ideas, just an occasionally lucky strike.
Square, on the other hand, had a good tactic to start with - they did what they knew how to do best. And then they started beating a dead horse by refusing to EVER give up the Final Fantasy franchise and let it die peacfully while it was still good.
As they say in the movie industry. If you make it for love of the product, and make a product you would love to use/see, it shows that the person/people who made it put alot of love and dedication into the product.
If you make it for hunger, everyone will see it's just a desperate grab for people's cash, and they will respond accordingly.
Everquest and FFXI both showed that they were not originally made for hunger, the developers put alot of thought into the games. Both eventually turned to hunger, as have most of the titles they released after their initial ones.
Bottom line, they need to hire dedicated writers who can relay a loved script and bible, who can hand it to a development team who in turn love the work they are doing. The producers need to recognize how to promote their teams and make careful decisions that instead of grabbing immediate cash rewards, builds a solid base.
I got to know the Final Fantasy series with FF7.
At the time, it felt amazing and had something unique that managed to touch me more than a lot of other games.
After that I played the former Final Fantasy games like FF6 and 5, Final Fantasy Tactics and kept playing each new game they launched.
I like how they kept introducing a completely new world with each game, not just rehash of the same world in sequel games. And they were magical, wondrous worlds unlike anything I experienced in other more western based games. They all had a blend of fantasy and science fiction or science fantasy that I thought worked great. It was easy to lose yourselves in those many worlds that Final Fantasy games offered, and it was easy to fall in love with those games and the magic that their worlds contained.
They felt unique and rich in worldbuilding and lore, with less generic fantasy to them than seen in other RPG games. I also played and liked Parasite Eve, another Square game. Personally, I don't agree with that every FF game was so much less after FF7, although FF7 was a masterpiece, games like FF10 and FF12 were still extraordinary and I liked how they tried to implement an 'mmorpg' kind of feel to FF12.
Maybe the biggest flaw was that the Square Enix teams didn't progress enough with the rest of the industry in gameplay mechanics. I mean, they're still great world builders, but their latest creations FF13 and FF14 seem to be lacking some of the magic that earlier FF games managed to create so right. As if they're out of touch with current reality of gaming.
A shame, I had great and lasting memories with playing Square's earlier games, but I guess everything changes continually, that's the way the whole world works
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Yeah I agree with what you're saying, and thinking back, I don't know if it was a "steady decline" since FFVI and VII, but I do think that was Square's peak. I also enjoyed Parasite Eve, and I loved Vagrant Story. I liked FFXII as well.
But yeah, FFXIII was TERRIBLE in my mind. They basically just gutted all of the town exploration and mini-games that made Final Fantasy great. It's just one massive dungeon crawl.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I think that the world design of FF games has always stayed pretty excellent...
... but the heavy reliance on increasingly elaborate cutscenes, and the choice of storylines seemed weaker to me. Visually impressive, but just felt more hollow to me. (Then again, I like Dragon Quest storylines, so I might be totally insane)
I actually haven't played Vagrant Story (Though I would like to), but some of Square's other side games are horrifyingly bad, by the way.
So very, very bad. Then again, I was exposed to worst than most people, due to my old hobby being import games. There's a reason why you'll see a lot of Square games you've never heard of in lists of Japanese games.
Oh... though they did have an MMO that I wanted to play so very much, but never made it to the US, and probably never would.
You were a member of a bike gang! You'd pimp out your bike, and your character's appearance Starting with a bicycle, of course, because motorcycles are too badass for noobs.
I feel very similarly on SOE.
Square did all their best stuff with FFVI and Chronotrigger. After that it turned into interactive anime. They've been rehashing the same boring story since they started, and they even manage to continue to use all the same character personalities. Their recent games lack... charm? I don't think they'll release another numbered Final Fantasy that I will buy.
SOE lost their passion for creating games shortly after they purchased Verant.
Soon after that they forced Brad McQuaid out and the EQ expansion release dates were ramped up and the content took a serious nose dive. The first "SOE" only expansion sent players to the freaking moon to play with cat people.
They did the same thing with Raph Koster and SWG and also with Planetside.
Around 2001/2002 SOE making games became secondary concern for SOE and making revenue streams and release dates become top priority.
To put it shortly, SOE died in its own success. EQ was so successful, but SOE never truely understood that its success came from the passion of the people who made it, not from cranking out as many expansions, micro transactions and /pizza as they could cram into a financial quarter.
That is why no single SOE game has ever sustained even half of the success that the original everquest had. I would be that EQ has single handedly outperformed every other SOE total combined.
SOE simpy has no passion left and that is why they turn out crap or ruin whatever they get involved in.