Originally posted by Betaguy Thats where these companies fail today, games may last for 15 years but gamers move on after 3-5 regardlesss of thier time invested... did a study on it.
You should probably study more, and start with EVE and how CCP has been able to keep the game fresh for all these years. The key is in designing the game to be able to handle major updates and upgrades, including to the engine itself.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by Rimmersman SOE have had ups and downs but they still hold the record for longest ruining full 3d mmo.
fixed it for you.
No one said they are perfect, i got over SWG years ago, it's old news and a long playing record for some. SOE will still be here long after the butt hurt are still crying in their soup.
Hate to break it to you, but SOE crapified several of their other games as well, albeit not quite as badly as SWG.
EQ2 being the main other one that comes to mind. (Smed made all kinds of promises about keeping some P2P servers separate, not allowing Station cash in those, and several other points, and went back on all).
Originally posted by GolbezTheLionSmed hypes all of SOEs new games in this way, I'll reserve my judgments til I see the product itself and how it plays.After the way they have dealt with PS2 I'm even more skeptical that they can create this amazing sandbox world. Ignoring player input and feedback, stepping away from the things that made PS1 great (and directly contributed to it's long lasting appeal), and then the final decision to rush the product out prematurely next month.Probably not a good idea to get too excited yet, or you just might end up a very disappointed individual.
Well, if I am going to be disappointed, at least I have the fun now. If I am sour now and right afterwards, what good does that?
I'm in agreement with the hype thing. Mr. Smedley says this will be the biggest game ever or that it's going to last 15 years and I know he's just blowing smoke.
At the same time, I think Smedley is right about the spike and drop in players for theme park games. It's just the nature of theme park games.
I don't know what this means for EQNext, other than it'll be cool to see a major developer building a sandbox. It could be garbage, but it will be really expensive garbage, instead of cheap garbage.
No matter if he sticks to what he says, that someone in his position SAYS it is worth a lot. The insight and pure themeparks are essentially and funamentally flawed, and not some forum hobo says it, but a MMO developer who is known, is worth alot in itself, if you ask me. It is THE singlemost important insight of the MMO decade.
He never said theme parks where flawed just that the market does not want to support them for the long run, but we have yet to see any real sandbox take off.
When put in perspective, UO and AC were huge for their time. So yes we have seen sandboxes take off and be successful relatively speaking.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Smed hypes all of SOEs new games in this way, I'll reserve my judgments til I see the product itself and how it plays.
After the way they have dealt with PS2 I'm even more skeptical that they can create this amazing sandbox world. Ignoring player input and feedback, stepping away from the things that made PS1 great (and directly contributed to it's long lasting appeal), and then the final decision to rush the product out prematurely next month.
Probably not a good idea to get too excited yet, or you just might end up a very disappointed individual.
The thing with this is, it is Everquest, and they totally scrapped the original direction, and completely reworking it.
Something they would not bother with other games. They would just try and fix them as they go along.
This is going to be SOE at its best, unlike PS2 or DCUO etc which are just extras in their line up
A healthy amount of skepticism is due here, but I don't think there is a case for auto-doom. It's a tall order, but at some point these people who make electronic worlds should be able to come up with something worthwhile.
Originally posted by ignore_me A healthy amount of skepticism is due here, but I don't think there is a case for auto-doom. It's a tall order, but at some point these people who make electronic worlds should be able to come up with something worthwhile.
Originally posted by Rimmersman SOE have had ups and downs but they still hold the record for longest ruining full 3d mmo.
fixed it for you.
No one said they are perfect, i got over SWG years ago, it's old news and a long playing record for some. SOE will still be here long after the butt hurt are still crying in their soup.
Hate to break it to you, but SOE crapified several of their other games as well, albeit not quite as badly as SWG.
EQ2 being the main other one that comes to mind. (Smed made all kinds of promises about keeping some P2P servers separate, not allowing Station cash in those, and several other points, and went back on all).
It is not what SOE did to SWG.
It is what SOE does to every game them "manage".
Lol, i played EQ for 6 years i don't need schooling on anything SOE have done. EQ2 i have played on and off since release, i don't care about cash shops, i pay my sub and log on, being bothered about seperate P2P servers and having no cash shop on them is down to opinion.
You don't like it then don't play lol or do you expect everyone to follow you, if Burntvet doesn't agree with something then everyone else should follow suit, don't make me laugh.
Again who care that you are butt hurt, get over it or move on. You claim SOE are this and that yet you are here talking about them. If i disliked SOE i wouldn't give them the time of day, is you obviously have to much time on your hands that you still want to talk about a dev team you claim to dislike lol.
Don't waste your time trying to convince me or anyone else, i couldn't care less what you think about SOE.
Roll on EQNexxt, until then ill play Vanguard and PS2.
Originally posted by Rimmersman SOE have had ups and downs but they still hold the record for longest ruining full 3d mmo.
fixed it for you.
No one said they are perfect, i got over SWG years ago, it's old news and a long playing record for some. SOE will still be here long after the butt hurt are still crying in their soup.
Hate to break it to you, but SOE crapified several of their other games as well, albeit not quite as badly as SWG.
EQ2 being the main other one that comes to mind. (Smed made all kinds of promises about keeping some P2P servers separate, not allowing Station cash in those, and several other points, and went back on all).
It is not what SOE did to SWG.
It is what SOE does to every game them "manage".
SOE had the help from LA with SWG.
Bioware have been pretty competent over the years, but in the end made a game less appealing than the NGE, and SWTOR is pretty much NGE 2.0, where SOE had nothing to do with it.
So in the end no game from any company will end up being good.
However from SOEs actions this year has been showing them in good light, they aborted the shut down for EQmac and ran it completely free, no cash shop or anything, and in the end listened to EU players about ProSieben and made it optional. They are definately turning things around.
The companies who have made mistakes in the past (SOE) are more likely to do better in the future, as people learn from them, than those who have always done good and had little to no complaints (Bioware)
SOE have always done good with the Everquest games, and the only real complaints about it is due to the "changes". If SOE has not learned from the past, then I would say that EQnext will be awesome at launch and it does good, posibly giving SOE an awesome reputation again. Blizzard then learns from SOEs success and makes a more polished bug free better MMO, which steals players from EQnext, and then SOE tries to change EQnext to get the players back, and everything falls apart again!
Basically SOE is "on the up" right now, and they have a lot to prove with this. If they go back on their word, and EQnext turns out to be another dud release, then SOEs reputation will remain bad forever. If they can not produce a decent EQ game, then there is not much hope of any other game they do being decent.
I believe that smed now knows that he cant compete with wow regardless if he comes out with a better product (rift is a better product than wow in my opinion, and so is Guild wars 2). Its like telling an apple drone that their phone isnt technically as good as others available.
they dont want to hear it, or listen to any reason for it. They are closed off to the possibility that something else might be superior.
which is why i believe hes moving to the sandbox region which is largely untapped. The problem for him of course is that while the untapped market of sandboxers is probabally 2-4 million or so, he has to come up with the right ruleset, especially pvp ruleset, to draw them all in. Thats why i think this time around eq will not be primarily hardcore pve. Thats wow territory.
I read this comment from Smed about the changes of EQ Next to a sandbox:
"Once we made that shift, everything else had to follow. And what we saw was RIFT. We saw the writing on the wall with SWTOR. We saw The Secret World. We saw all these games that we knew were in development and very high-quality, but we saw what was going to happen -- this big spike and then it goes down. That's the truth of what's been happening with MMOs. The fans need to realize that if you don't change the nature of what these games are, you're not going to change that core behavior. We want to make games that last more than 15 years. That's why we made the decision to change it."
He's not the only industry figure making noise over more longevity recently. The industry slowly comes to the conclusion that making themepark after themepark for the casual crowd (i.e. the mass market) is financially not viable. It costs a lot to produce the games (both time and money), it's a risky business - and in the end the games are a flash-in-the-pan that doesn't bring in enough revenue.
Sure, with a popular mass appeal themepark like SWTOR or GW2 you can sell 2 or 3 million boxes, but that's it - only a small number of consumers will do more business with you (either through subs or through the cash shop) for longer than a few months. And therefore he has to make games for the core crowd, the crowd that stays with a game for a year and even longer.
Ditch the mass appeal, don't aim for the game-hopping casual crowd and he might actually earn more money that way.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Originally posted by Rimmersman SOE have had ups and downs but they still hold the record for longest ruining full 3d mmo.
fixed it for you.
No one said they are perfect, i got over SWG years ago, it's old news and a long playing record for some. SOE will still be here long after the butt hurt are still crying in their soup.
Hate to break it to you, but SOE crapified several of their other games as well, albeit not quite as badly as SWG.
EQ2 being the main other one that comes to mind. (Smed made all kinds of promises about keeping some P2P servers separate, not allowing Station cash in those, and several other points, and went back on all).
It is not what SOE did to SWG.
It is what SOE does to every game them "manage".
Lol, i played EQ for 6 years i don't need schooling on anything SOE have done. EQ2 i have played on and off since release, i don't care about cash shops, i pay my sub and log on, being bothered about seperate P2P servers and having no cash shop on them is down to opinion.
You don't like it then don't play lol or do you expect everyone to follow you, if Burntvet doesn't agree with something then everyone else should follow suit, don't make me laugh.
Again who care that you are butt hurt, get over it or move on. You claim SOE are this and that yet you are here talking about them. If i disliked SOE i wouldn't give them the time of day, is you obviously have to much time on your hands that you still want to talk about a dev team you claim to dislike lol.
Don't waste your time trying to convince me or anyone else, i couldn't care less what you think about SOE.
Roll on EQNexxt, until then ill play Vanguard and PS2.
Yeah, because this is a forum about... MMOs, so people talk about MMOs and the people that make them. The good and especially the bad, because at official forums, anything negative is not geneally tolerated.
You seem to not care that a particular company has treated you badly on a number of occasions. That makes you the perfect customer for SOE. Others of us, do not forget as easily, it appears.
But a lot of other people may not have dealt with SOE deserve to know what they have done in the past, so they can recognize it if SOE does the same in the future.
People seem to get hung up on the "hatred" former players of SWG have, and that we are "not over SWG." Most of us are long over it, but it does not change what SOE did. Or mean that we should stop reminding people, especially because SOE did similar, although less severe things, in most of their other games.
And what they will likely do again, as it is the same people still running the show.
I think why people point out the "hate" people have for SoE it's because people can tell the difference between a reasonable argument and one that's not. There is an obvious and visible pattern.
You brought up F2P coming into all of EQ2. That's a valid point from a players standpoint but what were they to do? The populations of every server was lower than Freeport and only two even came close in populations. Merge servers? Open another EQ2X server?
There comes a point where you have to make responsible business decisions and that's what happened. What was the outcome? More people on servers other than Freeport. People complain all the time that the SoE model is too restrictive yet why is that? It wouldn't be to give subs a rightful experience would it? To prefer subs while still getting more players in the door.
What did players of the original servers lose by having F2P?
You brought up F2P coming into all of EQ2. That's a valid point from a players standpoint but what were they to do? The populations of every server was lower than Freeport and only two even came close in populations. Merge servers? Open another EQ2X server?
There comes a point where you have to make responsible business decisions and that's what happened. What was the outcome? More people on servers other than Freeport. People complain all the time that the SoE model is too restrictive yet why is that? It wouldn't be to give subs a rightful experience would it? To prefer subs while still getting more players in the door.
What did players of the original servers lose by having F2P?
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
If you get hyped over anything $medley says your just setting yourself up for disappointment.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
You brought up F2P coming into all of EQ2. That's a valid point from a players standpoint but what were they to do? The populations of every server was lower than Freeport and only two even came close in populations. Merge servers? Open another EQ2X server?
There comes a point where you have to make responsible business decisions and that's what happened. What was the outcome? More people on servers other than Freeport. People complain all the time that the SoE model is too restrictive yet why is that? It wouldn't be to give subs a rightful experience would it? To prefer subs while still getting more players in the door.
What did players of the original servers lose by having F2P?
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Edit: I looked and I can't find a quote from him that says EQ2 will never be free to play. What I do know is that before the transition to F2P they took a lot of the disliked "P2W" items from the SC store. Yeah, customer be damned right? If you want to claim Smed lied, which is your right to do, it would make sense to link those quotes. Other than that it just looks like SoERage.
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Worse community? Changes to the gameplay? Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Worse community?
Not in my experience
Changes to the gameplay?
Which ones that were caused by F2P?
Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
Who would not have been there otherwise, right? At least they were able to try?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
Still waiting for the quote that says it will never happen
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
That's their choice but because of the non-issue nature of the F2P switch, other that emotional, it would seem silly to me.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
I thought most of the Norrath vets were older people with their own reponsibilities and would understand when decision like this had to be made.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
I've done business with them on and off since '03 and I have never felt burned. Well I didn't play SWG though so maybe that's why.
If you really think that SoE or Smed himself doesn't care about the customers then you are right to not want anything to do with them. I don't think that because it just wouldn't make any sense especially since their new model across all games is based on keeping customers happy all the time. Eh, to each their own I guess.
I hope he's right and the game lasts for 15 years. But you never know with Smed. SOE seem to be making less shitty choices nowadays than a few years ago though.
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Worse community? Changes to the gameplay? Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
So basically like every other game publisher out there? Blizzard removed the talent tree from their games against everyone's will and people keep playing. I doubt that many people left and whoever did was replaced by the influx. Thats business man, you make decisions that will impact things like that.
Its funny how this forum for years has been clamoring for a sandbox type game and the guys announces that he is going to make one (with arguably the best IP in the industry) and all people have been doing it bitching. I for one won't get too hyped up but I am definately a little excited for something different. I only can applaud them for trying.
Once I see a triple A sandbox MMORPG released I will breathe a sigh of relief but for now, the MMORPG genre has hit a brick wall and is keep hitting its head against it. TERA, GW 2, Secret World, Rift etc are all good games but they are lousy MMORPGs.
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Worse community?
Not in my experience
Changes to the gameplay?
Which ones that were caused by F2P?
Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
Who would not have been there otherwise, right? At least they were able to try?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
Still waiting for the quote that says it will never happen
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
That's their choice but because of the non-issue nature of the F2P switch, other that emotional, it would seem silly to me.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
I thought most of the Norrath vets were older people with their own reponsibilities and would understand when decision like this had to be made.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
I've done business with them on and off since '03 and I have never felt burned. Well I didn't play SWG though so maybe that's why.
If you really think that SoE or Smed himself doesn't care about the customers then you are right to not want anything to do with them. I don't think that because it just wouldn't make any sense especially since their new model across all games is based on keeping customers happy all the time. Eh, to each their own I guess.
Does it even matter? You are simply trying to side step the fact that he lied and has done so on multiple occasions. He plainly stated one thing and then did the exact opposite. There was no misunderstanding, there was no bad interpretation, he flat out lied.
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Worse community?
Not in my experience
Changes to the gameplay?
Which ones that were caused by F2P?
Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
Who would not have been there otherwise, right? At least they were able to try?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
Still waiting for the quote that says it will never happen
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
That's their choice but because of the non-issue nature of the F2P switch, other that emotional, it would seem silly to me.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
I thought most of the Norrath vets were older people with their own reponsibilities and would understand when decision like this had to be made.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
I've done business with them on and off since '03 and I have never felt burned. Well I didn't play SWG though so maybe that's why.
If you really think that SoE or Smed himself doesn't care about the customers then you are right to not want anything to do with them. I don't think that because it just wouldn't make any sense especially since their new model across all games is based on keeping customers happy all the time. Eh, to each their own I guess.
This took me about 10 seconds to find on google.
There were later quotes from SOE talking about how they were only going to go on half the servers, find those yourself if you are interested enough:
Readers may recall our interview with John Smedley, where we talked about SOE's controversial decision to implement Station Cash into EQ and EQ2. During that interview, Smedley justified SOE's choice, but he only briefly touched on their goals with microtransaction payments.
Recently, Virtual Goods News had the opportunity to clarify SOE’s aspirations in another interview with John Smedley. Smedley notes that SOE has “been intrigued watching the Asian free-to-play model,” however, he also clearly states that they won’t be making EQ and EQ2 free to play as a result of introducing station cash.
As you all know, EQ2 is coming out with a F2P service called EQ2 Extended. It’s currently in Alpha and beta begins on August 17th. The Senior Producer of EQ2, Dave Georgeson, talked about the philosophy behind this “experiment” and spent a lot of time listening to players and getting their feedback. It’s clear that he is trying to breathe new life into EQ2 and I think that’s a good thing.
EQ2 Extended is basically an attempt to get more users into the EQ2 universe and really to raise brand awareness for Everquest in general. It’s not designed to replace EQ2 Live. According to Dave, EQ2 is their most important product in their stable of games. EQ2 Extended is going to run on separate servers and will release with only one PVE server. They would like to add a PVP server under the service but it won’t come out right out of the gate. Characters transfers off EQ2 Extended won’t be allowed because of “duplication exploits” and “EQ2 Live players don’t want to play with characters who bought their way to power.” Seemed reasonable to me.
All of that is now of course, irrelevant, because SOE went whole hog on F2P.
Comments
I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake.
You should probably study more, and start with EVE and how CCP has been able to keep the game fresh for all these years. The key is in designing the game to be able to handle major updates and upgrades, including to the engine itself.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Hate to break it to you, but SOE crapified several of their other games as well, albeit not quite as badly as SWG.
EQ2 being the main other one that comes to mind. (Smed made all kinds of promises about keeping some P2P servers separate, not allowing Station cash in those, and several other points, and went back on all).
It is not what SOE did to SWG.
It is what SOE does to every game them "manage".
When put in perspective, UO and AC were huge for their time. So yes we have seen sandboxes take off and be successful relatively speaking.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
The thing with this is, it is Everquest, and they totally scrapped the original direction, and completely reworking it.
Something they would not bother with other games. They would just try and fix them as they go along.
This is going to be SOE at its best, unlike PS2 or DCUO etc which are just extras in their line up
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Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
This. Rational. Concise.
Lol, i played EQ for 6 years i don't need schooling on anything SOE have done. EQ2 i have played on and off since release, i don't care about cash shops, i pay my sub and log on, being bothered about seperate P2P servers and having no cash shop on them is down to opinion.
You don't like it then don't play lol or do you expect everyone to follow you, if Burntvet doesn't agree with something then everyone else should follow suit, don't make me laugh.
Again who care that you are butt hurt, get over it or move on. You claim SOE are this and that yet you are here talking about them. If i disliked SOE i wouldn't give them the time of day, is you obviously have to much time on your hands that you still want to talk about a dev team you claim to dislike lol.
Don't waste your time trying to convince me or anyone else, i couldn't care less what you think about SOE.
Roll on EQNexxt, until then ill play Vanguard and PS2.
SOE had the help from LA with SWG.
Bioware have been pretty competent over the years, but in the end made a game less appealing than the NGE, and SWTOR is pretty much NGE 2.0, where SOE had nothing to do with it.
So in the end no game from any company will end up being good.
However from SOEs actions this year has been showing them in good light, they aborted the shut down for EQmac and ran it completely free, no cash shop or anything, and in the end listened to EU players about ProSieben and made it optional. They are definately turning things around.
The companies who have made mistakes in the past (SOE) are more likely to do better in the future, as people learn from them, than those who have always done good and had little to no complaints (Bioware)
SOE have always done good with the Everquest games, and the only real complaints about it is due to the "changes". If SOE has not learned from the past, then I would say that EQnext will be awesome at launch and it does good, posibly giving SOE an awesome reputation again. Blizzard then learns from SOEs success and makes a more polished bug free better MMO, which steals players from EQnext, and then SOE tries to change EQnext to get the players back, and everything falls apart again!
Basically SOE is "on the up" right now, and they have a lot to prove with this. If they go back on their word, and EQnext turns out to be another dud release, then SOEs reputation will remain bad forever. If they can not produce a decent EQ game, then there is not much hope of any other game they do being decent.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
I believe that smed now knows that he cant compete with wow regardless if he comes out with a better product (rift is a better product than wow in my opinion, and so is Guild wars 2). Its like telling an apple drone that their phone isnt technically as good as others available.
they dont want to hear it, or listen to any reason for it. They are closed off to the possibility that something else might be superior.
which is why i believe hes moving to the sandbox region which is largely untapped. The problem for him of course is that while the untapped market of sandboxers is probabally 2-4 million or so, he has to come up with the right ruleset, especially pvp ruleset, to draw them all in. Thats why i think this time around eq will not be primarily hardcore pve. Thats wow territory.
Err ... competing with WoW ? What ? Have you been living under a rock ? Are you an inverse timetraveler from 2005 ?
Nobody needs to compete with WoW anymore, its neither that good nor that popular anymore anyway.
He's not the only industry figure making noise over more longevity recently. The industry slowly comes to the conclusion that making themepark after themepark for the casual crowd (i.e. the mass market) is financially not viable. It costs a lot to produce the games (both time and money), it's a risky business - and in the end the games are a flash-in-the-pan that doesn't bring in enough revenue.
Sure, with a popular mass appeal themepark like SWTOR or GW2 you can sell 2 or 3 million boxes, but that's it - only a small number of consumers will do more business with you (either through subs or through the cash shop) for longer than a few months. And therefore he has to make games for the core crowd, the crowd that stays with a game for a year and even longer.
Ditch the mass appeal, don't aim for the game-hopping casual crowd and he might actually earn more money that way.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Yeah, because this is a forum about... MMOs, so people talk about MMOs and the people that make them. The good and especially the bad, because at official forums, anything negative is not geneally tolerated.
You seem to not care that a particular company has treated you badly on a number of occasions. That makes you the perfect customer for SOE. Others of us, do not forget as easily, it appears.
But a lot of other people may not have dealt with SOE deserve to know what they have done in the past, so they can recognize it if SOE does the same in the future.
People seem to get hung up on the "hatred" former players of SWG have, and that we are "not over SWG." Most of us are long over it, but it does not change what SOE did. Or mean that we should stop reminding people, especially because SOE did similar, although less severe things, in most of their other games.
And what they will likely do again, as it is the same people still running the show.
A Smed does not change his spots.
I think why people point out the "hate" people have for SoE it's because people can tell the difference between a reasonable argument and one that's not. There is an obvious and visible pattern.
You brought up F2P coming into all of EQ2. That's a valid point from a players standpoint but what were they to do? The populations of every server was lower than Freeport and only two even came close in populations. Merge servers? Open another EQ2X server?
There comes a point where you have to make responsible business decisions and that's what happened. What was the outcome? More people on servers other than Freeport. People complain all the time that the SoE model is too restrictive yet why is that? It wouldn't be to give subs a rightful experience would it? To prefer subs while still getting more players in the door.
What did players of the original servers lose by having F2P?
That's nice and all, but the big thing is: Smed and SOE did it explictly after they said they would not, and on every single server, not even exempting one, for the people that didn't want to be a part of that.
At a certain point, a company/person's word has to mean something. What would it have cost SOE to not do the stupid deal with EQ2 on one server? Not much.
But it would have given people a choice, and those people that didn't want it, would have been happy.
Instead, for the Nth time, SOE said in effect: "Customers be damned."
Why is it that every single thing like this is always at the expense of customers or the customer experience?
Different is one thing and not necessarily bad, but always making things worse/more restrictive/more expensive is quite another.
And that is what SOE has a long and documented history of: making things worse for a game, and for the players.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
You never answered the question though:
What did subscibers of those original servers lose by getting F2P?
It actually would cost more to have one server or a few as a different ruleset of the F2P ones. You can say "but he lied" as much as you want, though I'm tempted to look for the ecxact quote, but I really think the F2P EQ2 issue is a small one considering there is literally no difference for subscibers between now and back then.
Edit: I looked and I can't find a quote from him that says EQ2 will never be free to play. What I do know is that before the transition to F2P they took a lot of the disliked "P2W" items from the SC store. Yeah, customer be damned right? If you want to claim Smed lied, which is your right to do, it would make sense to link those quotes. Other than that it just looks like SoERage.
Worse community? Changes to the gameplay? Having to deal with restricted class/item/level players in regards to guilds or raids?
It doesn't really matter: a good number of people didn't want to deal with that, and the Smedbucks nonsense and Smed went back on what he said and did it anyway.
And there were a good number of people that quit over that, or the F2P conversion in general.
Again, just one of many instances where SOE heard the customer complaints beforehand, and then gave them the big "FU" anyway. After saying they wouldn't.
SOE is what it is, do business with them and you'll learn that, sooner or later.
If you really think that SoE or Smed himself doesn't care about the customers then you are right to not want anything to do with them. I don't think that because it just wouldn't make any sense especially since their new model across all games is based on keeping customers happy all the time. Eh, to each their own I guess.
So basically like every other game publisher out there? Blizzard removed the talent tree from their games against everyone's will and people keep playing. I doubt that many people left and whoever did was replaced by the influx. Thats business man, you make decisions that will impact things like that.
Its funny how this forum for years has been clamoring for a sandbox type game and the guys announces that he is going to make one (with arguably the best IP in the industry) and all people have been doing it bitching. I for one won't get too hyped up but I am definately a little excited for something different. I only can applaud them for trying.
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Does it even matter? You are simply trying to side step the fact that he lied and has done so on multiple occasions. He plainly stated one thing and then did the exact opposite. There was no misunderstanding, there was no bad interpretation, he flat out lied.
This took me about 10 seconds to find on google.
There were later quotes from SOE talking about how they were only going to go on half the servers, find those yourself if you are interested enough:
http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=16850
Feb 6th, 2009 at 9:01 PM
Readers may recall our interview with John Smedley, where we talked about SOE's controversial decision to implement Station Cash into EQ and EQ2. During that interview, Smedley justified SOE's choice, but he only briefly touched on their goals with microtransaction payments.
Recently, Virtual Goods News had the opportunity to clarify SOE’s aspirations in another interview with John Smedley. Smedley notes that SOE has “been intrigued watching the Asian free-to-play model,” however, he also clearly states that they won’t be making EQ and EQ2 free to play as a result of introducing station cash.
And even better:
(From another Smed interview write-up)
http://www.completeheal.com/?cat=5
EQ2 Extended
As you all know, EQ2 is coming out with a F2P service called EQ2 Extended. It’s currently in Alpha and beta begins on August 17th. The Senior Producer of EQ2, Dave Georgeson, talked about the philosophy behind this “experiment” and spent a lot of time listening to players and getting their feedback. It’s clear that he is trying to breathe new life into EQ2 and I think that’s a good thing.
EQ2 Extended is basically an attempt to get more users into the EQ2 universe and really to raise brand awareness for Everquest in general. It’s not designed to replace EQ2 Live. According to Dave, EQ2 is their most important product in their stable of games. EQ2 Extended is going to run on separate servers and will release with only one PVE server. They would like to add a PVP server under the service but it won’t come out right out of the gate. Characters transfers off EQ2 Extended won’t be allowed because of “duplication exploits” and “EQ2 Live players don’t want to play with characters who bought their way to power.” Seemed reasonable to me.
All of that is now of course, irrelevant, because SOE went whole hog on F2P.