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What if SOE decided to buyout WoW?
Johnark
Member Posts: 901
- When servers are offline, you could chat with a GM, live, and get up-to-date feedback on when servers are coming back up.
- Game maintanance would be done every day, at night, while everyone is sleeping, except for asians, who are awake during maintainance hours.
- When SOE would add new content to WoW, if they accidently broke something, they would fix it within at most a week, not over a month! And when I mean broken, I mean a game content that stops a player for playing when it originally was working fine.
- We would be seeing more content, game UI and more roleplaying add-ons rather than always fixing PVP unbalancing.
- They would only fix PVP balancing 2 years after WoW has been released and fix/add more fun stuff instead, rather than trying to balance it every month instead of making the game more enjoyable to play.
- They would allow us to respec our talents for a cheaper cost, rather than always doubling the respec cost everytime you wanna change your talent points, cause they know players change their gamestyle all the time and cannot remain with a static talent tree forever.
- They would always update us on any change, they would never Ninja-patch or Ninja-nerf anything in the game without mentioning it.
- I could chat with my buddies that left WoW for EQ2 anytime I want.
- I could order Pizza while raiding Molten Core!
- ... and best of all .... WE WOULD BE GETTING EXPANSIONS FASTER EVERY COUPLE MONTHS!
I've played EQ, SWG and EQ2. SOE is good for some things. They know how to manage a MMORPG from all these years of developing MMORPGs. Sure they suck at developing a game from scratch (I still hate EQ2, and it took 2 years for SWG to become "perfect") and they have the worst customer support ever. But they know how to manage a MMORPG!
Blizzard is the total opposite. They are amazing at developing games, making it stable, making it fun from the very beginning for all players. But when it comes to managing it? They are a complete joke. I feel that every update Blizzard releases makes the game worst. They break things in-game and don't fix it for over a month. SOE, every patch always added new stuff! They maybe broke stuff and made huge mistakes (Jedi hologrind! remember those crappy days?) but at least they fixed it. And if they didn't fix it right away, they mentioned they would. Blizzard leaves us clueless, they will just someday come out of nowhere and say: "Okay we're fixing it!", 2 weeks later it's fixed but they break something else.
ugh...
Anyways. That's why I just think SOE could truly make WoW a much better game. It's already a great game from the ground, but to actually make it better, Blizzard needs a kick in the @ss or someone with experience to help'em make it better.
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Stealth - Ambush - Hemorrhage - Sinister Strike x2 - Cold Blood - Eviscerate - Vanish - Preparation - Cold Blood - Ambush - ... you're dead! :P
Comments
Great post, and I agree to a large extent.
Blizzard's handling of WoW is heartbreakingly embarrassing. It's like watching a retard trying to unicycle on a tightrope. They just do not seem to have a clue what a good decision is, and their efforts at community relations don't even deserve describing.
That said though, I'm sure if SOE got their hands on WoW it'd quickly devolve from being a decent game that's handled by an incompetent company into a lousy game that's handled by an experienced company.
For those that dont think Blizz is doing too bad in community relations, I have a story for you; a rather sizeable portion of us (the players) have been asking for a PvP RP server since BEFORE launch. There were several threads of suggestions on just how such a server should be run. Guess what? They aren't their anymore! While they may be making such a server, they dont want fan input on how it should be set up. OH THANKS!
Um, in case you didnt notice...
World of Warcraft adds new dungeons, monsters, weapons and more every few weeks. It sounds like you actually want to PAY for an xpac like EQ2. We are practically getting an xpac added constantly with all of the incoming content.
Also, Blizzard's team is highly experienced since I can't recall a game of theirs selling less than 5 million copies since Starcraft was released (with the exception of WoW, which only sold 2 million copies to date which can be mostly explained by it's monthly fee)
The rest I don't know about since I dont use SOE's services. I've played Ultima Online, FFXI and WoW, so I don't really know anything else about SOE.
seeing your online time playing wow your a fanboy
see the reality. they are not adding what they said they would in time. Blizzard dont know how to handle a mmo. and they su** at it. i bought the game the seconds it got on shelves. the second day online was the most terrible experience HAHA. SOE just care more and got way more experience. i myself dont like much EQ or EQ 2. but for the service and experience. they are the best. and what did blizzard really add ? RAID DUNGEON, PVP, BATTLEGROUNDS and characther fix. for god sake, they need to add 30-55 quests and dungeon. and a LOT of em. since lvl 42 its boring to lvl. its will be 1 years soon. and if you look at everything they did......... its not much... bug bug bug bug bug bug bug. they didnt even fixed the mage arcane missile bug yet.!!!!!!!! slowmo.
kbye
i'm sorry i didnt want to butt in on this one, but i just have to after that comment. you make it sound like SOE ISN'T adding new stuff for free. that simply isn't true, they've added a LOT of stuff for free, inlcuding DOZENS of raid zones, new spells, new features, just a bunch of stuff. i'm not saying WoW hasnt (<- emphasized because i know if it isnt im gonna get flamed), im just saying you sure make it sound like EQ2 is making you pay for everything new. sure you have to pay for the adventure packs but the adventure packs are worth it, they add LOT, and i mean a LOT of content.
for a broad list of free things that have been added to EQ2, check out http://eq2players.station.sony.com/en/content.vm?page=TonsofContentAdded
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
I have played EQ, Star Wars Galaxies and now WoW. For some reason, I feel more entertained and engrossed in the gaming experience than the other 2 (maybe thats because I loved Warcraft 2 and love the universe, although the game does not follow all of it, supposedly...but then again, I really like Star Wars, so I don't know).
This is Blizzards first MMO, which does need to be acknowledged. Since launch, the new content being added has increased. They have listened to some of the complaints by users (although the 1.6 notes may not say it, but now what PVP items you can use is based on your highest all-time rank, something a lot of casual players have asked for). That said, there are some that they havent acknowledged, like live events (fine, theres Darkmoon Faire and the Elemental Invasion, but there could and should be more). The game has been out less than a year and they have improved it since launch, at least I feel that way.
Sure, if Blizzard had been in the MMO business as long as SOE, WoW could have been higher caliber in their conent and stream of updates. But, honestly, not all of SOEs games have been amazing from the start, such as SWG. At launch, the game felt more like a graphical chat room than a game. After about a month or so, I gave up. Now, two years after launch, I am hearing great things about the game, about how its a really good MMO now. So, you never know how the game will end up. The game could be radically expanded and improved by its 1 year anniversary, or like SWG, it may take roughly two years. The MMO universe is volatile and constantly changing.
However, if SOE did buyout WoW, I could play WoW, SWG, Planetside, MxO, Eq, Eq2 all for $21.99 and that would kick ass. Then they should bring City of Heroes and City of Villains in and I'd be happy...
If someone wants to trash an mmorpg and they have nothing to complain about they then resort to the old "poor customer service" line. Giving Blizzard a poor rating in the customer service area is a sign that they are doing great in every other area of the game. There's not a game out there that hasnt had "customer service" complaints.
I've played all the big games...EQ1,EQ2,DAoC,FFX1,WoW, Ultima Online etc... and the games I've had the most complaints about are SoE's games. I got into EQ2 back in November when it first released. After a couple of months of playing they came out with some patch that caused a video stutter on my screen. Looked like bad lag. Not only did the patch affect my computer but thousands of others as well. There were massive ammounts of complaints. Yet you know what SOE does about their mistake? They tell everyone that it's their computer that's the problem and not the patch's fault.
Nothing was done to fix what their patch screwed up. I had to cancel my account ,right after I had just bought another 3 month subscription, because the game was unplayable.
And everyone knows how SOE screwed up EQ1 when they took it over from Verant. Yeah I started playing EQ1 the first month it came out in 1999. It was nothing short of amazing. That is until SOE entered the picture late in the game and turned it into more of a business venture and less of a game.
SOE is a large corporation thats out there for one thing and thats to make money. Blizzard is run by gamers wanting to put out good games. It's insane to even speak about the both of them in the same thread. Yeah I know it sounds like I have it out for SOE but they've been giving me headaches for many years.
I agree SOE are the best at keeping the mmorpg up to date, stable and rich with content!
WOW could have been a good game if in SOE's hands, Blizzard atm don't develop content fast enough
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Don't click here...no2
I would have to disagree that SOE is better at game management than Blizzard, at least in my experiences with SWG.
When SWG launched, entire professions were completely worthless and broken. Commando didn't have any viable way to get XP, because most of their weapons and certifications were broken. Bio-Engineer really didn't have anything that worked. Chef could make foods, but the foods were nearly worthless. Droid Engineer droids had really no function other than a few extra storage places. Items like clothes never decayed so eventually tailors had next to no market. The only in-game content was the theme parks - all 3 of them. None of these things were fixed for several months after release, because the devs were focused on other things, such as player cites, mounts, vehicles, etc.
As for managing the game, SWG had the servers rebooted DAILY for the first year + of release. Creature handlers were given an early "combat rebalance" in December of 2003 - none of the other professions were "rebalanced" until a few months ago. Jedi had no way of attaining higher ranks at first because master professions required apprentice XP, and there was no way for jedi at that time to GET apprentice XP. The holocron grind virtually destroyed the game economy, as players bought up tons of resources for huge amounts to grind away, and would sell their crap at dirt cheap prices to recoup part of their losses.
As for content being added, excluding the 2 expansion packs, they've added DWB, the Warren, Geo Caves, Corvette and a few scattered quests like the hermit. Most of this content is exclusively for the most maxed combat templates.
As for customer service - SWG was flamed for being the worst for the first year to 18 months of its existence. They just recently finally got it straightened out.
Let's compare this to WoW. Currently - all classes work. Some might be more powerful than others in PvP or PvE, or have a couple of broken or useless skills, but everything is fully playable from level 1 to level 60. They do a 6 hour maintenance once a week versus a one hour maintenence 7 times a week. No class has been nerfed to the point of complete worthlessness, tho some whiners would say that isn't true. SWG has added 5 dungeons (that I'm remembering anyway) in 20 publishes. WoW has added Mauradon, Dire Maul, Molten Core, BWL. This is in addition to battlegrounds, the honor system and 2 new level 40-50 quest hubs in Searing Gorge and Hinterlands.
Am I a WoW fanboy? No - I realize it has some serious shortcomings as well. I'd love for them to get on a Turbine patch system where the patches are guaranteed monthly. I'd love for them to have amazing customer service, where tickets are handled properly in short amounts of time. I'd love for them to communicate better with the players, at least showing a knowledgable presence in the forums. I'd love for them to communicate what's coming up before hand, rather than having to see it in the patch notes. However, based on my experiences with SOE, I'm happy that Blizzard's at the reins and not SOE. Turbine, on the other hand I wouldn't object to
SOE customer support... dude... SWG has the worst and i mean worst CS in the industry, the dev team has changed, the GM teleport ppl into orbit(anyone remmeber that penny arcade comic?)
And to say the what the EQ2 dev team has launched for the most part is good thought out updates, its a joke. "oh, lets change the colour of that mob, add 50 levels on top of it and call it a raid" plus whomever did raids in eq2 knows what im talking about when i say the game has the worst raid content availble to a mmorpg at the momment, it has quantity, but no quality in it, fight 3-4 hours on a raid to get a freakin woden chest drop at the end? with crappy loot? not one rare or legendary item? its a joke. Eq2 endgame content was the main reason i left.
wow im the complete opposite. i LOVE the endgame content. maybe im just lucky but i have an absolute blast raiding and doing high end content in EQ2.
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
Im sorry but the title of this thread is nuts... Someone actually trying to say SOE does a better job on updating, fixing, adding new content to there games then Blizzard? LMFAO HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ill will point you in the direction of 2 games.. Only 2 for now... SWG and Planetside
Nuff said. If you have ever played those games you would know how much of a mess there were at times, both were decent but there had major problems in ALL areas.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
SOE has sucked considerable balls in the past which is why they have the rep they do. But the way they've handled Eq2 so far has been pretty damn good imo. You may not like the game but that doesn't mean they don't listen to the player base. Alot of the stuff we asked for has been added to the game. We wanted more solo content and we got it. We wanted offline selling and we got it. They've also added quite a bit of content for absolutlely free.
When judging Eq2 you have to look at the past and the present. I'm the first to admit they have sucked, but I feel in Eq2 at least, they are doing there best to turn over a new leaf.
wow im the complete opposite. i LOVE the endgame content. maybe im just lucky but i have an absolute blast raiding and doing high end content in EQ2.
Well, to each is own, if everyone agreed on everything the world would be a pretty bland place
But SOE still has a somewhat bad track record for handling the support and development for their games, remmenber eq1? after the luclin expansion the game went downhill. If you notice their trend, everyone of their mmorpg´s have had rushed out expansions for the sole purposes of milking cash out of their custommers, jump to light speed? just a space engine, zer0 decent content, rage of the wokies... arg, i dont even want to talkabout it, its a bugged piece of #$%&. Planetside... game was fun for a while, untill it got so messed up and inbalanced that it wasnt even funny. EQ2 has seen 2 adventure packs launched, one major expansion on the way, and what is the end result? they are trying to implement most if not all of the world of warcraft game mechanics, mail, brokers, pvp instancing, on a game that has little capibility to handle them, especialy the pvp, if anyone has played eq2, they have noticed how jerky and unresponsive their characters would feel at times, mainly it was an issue with lack of fluid movement, with character spells and abilities tailored to a more relaxed and paused playstyle, for those and so other reasons, i think pvp in eq2 will be a bust, just my own personal view here tho.
They stole brokers from WoW? I'm pretty sure brokers have been in Eq2 awhile. I also dispute that the adventure packs were implemented to try to be like WoW. What in the Splitpaw saga makes Eq2 more like WoW? What about the Bloodline Chronicles? It's just new zones. If anything I think the game is refreshingly unlike WoW.
As far as pvp goes, I'm not sure about the jerky movements you're talking about. Fluidity hasn't been much ofa problem for me. I feel that the classes would be unbalanced in direct pvp though which makes me interested to see how they are going to do it.
Have you seen the gnoll models for the bosses in the newest adventure pack? tell me that is not taking a direct aproach to wow´s art, as well as the mail system.
I agree that both adventure packs are the only decent quests added to the game, the regular update quests are best not even being mentioned, what kills eq2´s quest system in the end, is not the quality or the quantity of the quests, its the loot tables for the said quests, rewards are a joke, have you ever raided the endgame? after so many hours preparing and executing a raid, tell me you wouldnt scream in frustration when your first wooden chest drops...
As for lack of fluidity and jerkiness, its more of a personal thing of mine, i just never got used to the character models in eq2, what company advertises its game as a RP game, with taverns, apartments, chairs, beds, tables etc... and doesnt even permit the players to sit in a chair or lie down in a bed? the models are not capable of doing those actions, they were porly made.
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Don't click here...no2
100% agreed.
Wishing for SOE to take over? Be careful what you wish for. Thats like wishing for a toothacke , or a nasty STD
I played SWG daily for 18 months. Yes they added content frequently but they wouldnt fix the ongoing bugs. Then with the cu and ROTW SOE has become intent on just offering flash instead of correcting whats wrong with the game. Im not wanting to start a CU debate by that comment, just stating what I saw prior to quitting SWG.
Ive been playing WOW for 2 months and am realy getting into it. So far I havent seen anything bugged...at least nothing that was an issue for me. The only thing Im seeing atm I guess would be that Im getting tossed of the server kinda frequently....which has only been a minor inconvience. With WOW ut only takes a few seconds to get back into the server, whereas with SWG if you got bounced out it took several minutes to load in.
And eq copied it from UO, wich was the first modern graphic mmorpg, but the thing is, wow inovated with some of its concepts, easier access to content, fun and rewarding gamestyle, handcrafter world with no computer auto generated terrain, like eq2 seems to have, to be honest wow reminds me of UO up to a point.
Eq2 has been porly made from the start, i beta tested eq2, and i can truly say that most of the complaints from the testers during beta were never adressed, now, does that seem like good custommer support to you?
I agree for the most part but I would have to say we would also have ZONES! One of the main reasons why I left EQ. I had played EQ for over a year thinking it was the best game ever until the Beta of WOW. I played that till the end and went back to EQ to realize it was taking me 5 minutes to go to one zone. I spent 15 minutes just trying to get somewhere and after that, I cancelled my EQ account and waited for WOW to go live.
Necrotank
Okay I'm going to try to be nice here since this is the WoW forum:
Jpedro-
First we all know you're lying about being in EQ2 beta, so don't try that. Second, what about EQ2 was poorly made? Third let's compare patch notes between EQ2 and WoW and see which has added more FREE content shall we?
Most of you didn't even bother to read what the OP wrote. You saw SOE and immediately your panties got in a twist. So let me try this another way:
If SOE and Blizzard were both making a game, and I had to be my life on who would make the better (better meaning more fun higher quality) I'd bet it on Blilzzard. They know how to make a fun game.
If I had to bet my life on who would be better at managing a LARGE project: SOE without a doubt. When was the last time SWG servers went down unexpectedly (and they have ALWAYS done patches at night when most of North America was asleep)? If you can tell me that, when was the time before that? Doesn't happen all that often. SOE has the money and resources to pump out the content and keep their servers running. That is a fact. So it would be an awesome idea to have the games made by someone else then turned over.
SWG had a mail system before anyone had even heard about WoW, and Horizons had Brokers before WoW hit the drawing board, and they both stole ideas from Dungeons and Dragons, who got their ideeas from J.R.R. Tolkien, so lets not get into who stole what from whom.
I regret that people keep using "you are a liar" to justify their points of view, as i have no means of showing you that i beta tested eq2, i guess you all had the choice to call me a liar or to accept it, anyways, it was the choice you made.
Now regarding SWG, do you by chance know that the original developers of SWG have all left the current dev team for the game? did you play SWG at launch? Personaly i was somewhat excited that i ordered SWG a couple of weeks ago, i was playing EQ2 then and wanted to add a new game to my station access, if you bother to check the SWG boards here, you will find my original post somewhere buried there, after receiving the game last monday and playing it for a while on bria, i got the point on why the game sucks so much: first of all, i had a problem with the game working trough my rooter, after contacting custommer support i waited till now, no response, after asking someone with the helper tab ingame, they told me to #$%& off, finally someone told me that i had to change the duplex setting on my rooter, the game became much less jerky and didnt crash anymore, CS... yeah right.
Talking of patch notes, go take a look at the SWG forums and see how they like their crafters or entertainers in the game? the devs idea of buffing the entertainer profession, that most consider broken, is to had a few more flavor dances, some classes have been broken since launch it seems, and still have not been looked at, seems only bounty hunters and jedi get updates.
EQ2 content? look at what i said on my other posts, Endgame raiding is broken, no loot of note in the raids, character models that cant sit down on chairs or lie down in beds, one of the MAJOR conplaints since beta, from all of us Roleplayers, no bard instruments since beta, another major conplaint, healing classes completly unbalanced, talking bout mystics, fury, only templer or warden seems to be working as intended.
Servers crash, or offline and messed up more than is acceptable, with DAILY maintence during playing hours for europeans playing on U.S servers, remmenber that eq2 had no european servers at launch, only much later they were implemented, so most of us that had high level toons were screwed, including us on the only RP servers... wich are U.S, no european RP servers? its a joke.
Take every SOE mmorpg, including the recently bought matrix online, sum up all their active subscribers and compare it to wow, they will not even come close to half the population... 20-25000 for MXO, 200-300k for eq2, a few thousands for planet side, less than 200k for eqlive, add it up and see why SOE sucks and their games are falling behind the competition.