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Why does everyone hate SOE?
yourmom12192
Member Posts: 221
I just wanted to know why everyone hates SOE. I always see posts about how much SOE is screwing up this and that. Can some people plz give me comments on why it gets criticized so much?
For example i always hear about how good a game could be if SOE didnt work on it. like MxO or SWG...
Thank you 
Cheers
Comments
well, people hate SOE for a couple reasons. historically they have crappy CS support and had a "holier than thou" attitude toward things. a lot of people also hate the fact that they offer up great ideas and concepts, and then don't deliver on them (most historically SWG to most people).
i play everquest 2 and i personally don't have any problems with SOE in that department (sure theres the occasional minor thing i dont like, but thats to be expected). however, i know a lot of people who play SWG right now who are NOT happy about the recent NGE.
Schutzbar - Human Warrior - Windrunner Alliance - World of Warcraft
Nihilanth - Kerra Paladin - Blackburrow - EverQuest II
XBL Gamertag - Eagle15GT
Nihilanth pretty much covered it.
With their reputation, it surprises me that people still purchase and play SOE games.
SOE is much like any other MMORPG company out there (Mythic, Blizzard, etc.) - eventually they tend to forget who they are trying to entertain.
SoE and for that matter the Sony corporation as a whole are only interested in profit margins and not the needs or desires of the customers. You only need to look at Sony products, the PS2 or Sony Hi-Fi's that have laser assemblies designed to fail after so many hours of use etc.
As for SoE in particular just take a look at some of the decisions they make and the amount of contact they have with the customers. The guys at the top must have been trained on Mars for all the clue they have. Imagine a soldier using a grenade by throwing the pin and keeping hold of the business end, SoE Excell at it and nobody higher up the corporate ladder appears to notice.
What a job, five and six figure salaries & screw up as often as you like.
double post.
I have a bad attitude about SOE but it's not because of their customer support. In fact I never had any problem with their CS. But then again I never needed any CS help from them so I'm not a good person to evaluate their CS preformance.
My problem with them started when I was playing EQ 1. I hated what they did to my first MMORPG. In all fairness the game was already spiralling down into the ---it's all about raiding--- mentallity anyway and that was my biggest gripe so I suppose I shouldn't blame SOE for that. But they continued the trend and they screwed up the game in other ways as well.
And then there was the blatant milking of customers with constant expansions. They cranked out expansions without really giving a damn what it would do to the game. They just wanted that extra influx of cash. Understand that I'm not complaining about the idea of expansions. It's just that SOE pushed out crappy expansions as fast as they could without thinking things through.
Anyway, since then they've done nothing to impress me and have only reinforced my opinion of them as the carrion feeders of the MMORPG world. They've been feeding off the dying carcass of EQ for a long time now. And now with SWG. SOE puts garbage out there and desperate, hopefull people pay money for it and SOE laughs while they rake it in. If that doesn't eventually backfire on them then the gamers of the world deserve the crap they get.
Well everyone hates someone I hate SOE and all of sony really. Did that help?
I kept seeing all these posts about SoE and had no clue what it was. I kept looking for a game with those initials and couldn't find one. Well, Sony once screwed me out of a rebate on a product I bought so I haven't bought a Sony product since. Now I feel even more justified after reading these posts.
SOE makes some good games. Or else they wouldn't be around. I think people just like to complain.
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It all seems so stupid
It makes me want to give up
But why should I give up
When it all seems so stupid
In fairness to SOE, Matrix Online was going downhill long before they bought it. Now that they have it, they haven't really done anything productive with it.
As for SWG...well, at least to me, it always seemed like SOE was in constant battle with Lucas Arts (or maybe internally amongst themselves) on "how the game should be", meanwhile the playerbase is submitting bugs and putting forth pretty good ideas/feedback most of which is completely ignored. Also, they've done some very very shady things to thier playbase (like allowing people to pre-order the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion without telling them that a major major game change was just around the corner. SOE wound up offering refunds to disgruntled players because they caught to much hell and the response to the game changes were anything bu positive. That's just one example.).
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Played: Age of Conan, DDO, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, DaOC, MxO, EQ2, and so on...
Wish List: Jumpgate Evolution, Star Wars: TOR, Star Trek
It almost seems like soe starts off with game designers who creat a fantasic idea. then once the game is mostly in play they turn it over to research who tells the money people things like " if we add ( insert grinding/time sink) then we can increase the time people will play the game. And only once they're finished adding their time sinks the game is finished development.
After a game hits the market and the accounts start to go down they again turn the game over to research and ask them how can we keep these people.
SWG, EQ 1 and 2 all had great game ideas at the start. It's the grinding/time sinks and the moronic changes they make after that seem to add for no other reason then it's cheaper then content, that ruin their games and piss people off.
a lot of what you said is true.
honestly, how many people actually thought an mmo based on one of the best-selling and most loved franchises, Star Wars, was going to turn into such a big pile of crap? hm...i wonder if sony had a hand in the star wars prequels too, since they pretty much turned out to be crap too. how as a company thats out to make money, do you let that slip through your fingers? if it was me, i would be bending over backwards for the fans, just to keep them happy and to keep the money rolling in.
The problem with SOE is that they will sacrifice their current communities in hopes of gaining more subscriptions. This creates a huge amount of distrust and rightfully so.
Also, lets not forget this little diddy their corporate offices pulled this year.
I started with EQ and it was one of the coolest expiriences I've ever had. It didn't even concern me who made the game, I just loved it for what it was. Then when the 3rd expansion came out, alot of the world was empty and just sad. I still didn't care who made the game but I wasn't having fun with it anymore and decided to quit.
Then the anticipation for SWG was in my blood. I started using the forums and found a guild way before (about 1 year) the game was released. This is when I started hearing the complains about SOE. I don't remember what they were about but I didn't care at this point, I was very excited about SWG.
I was fortunate enough to be accepted into SWG beta test about 6 months before release. This was the coolest thing ever (first beta game) and I dove right in and started my character. Everything was so cool, it was like a dream come true. I was playing this Star Wars mmorpg before it was released, I felt special. I took the beta testing seriously and reported every bug I came across for the first 2 weeks. I was still overwhelmed by the graphics and atmosphere of being in the Star Wars universe.....but this would end shortly.
After about a month of playing I realized that there was something different about this game. This was not the same as EQ. I was more addicted to EQ. I used to think about EQ during the day and dream about it at night. SWG was not always on my mind. I actually took some time off here and there...days at a time. In my mind, the game was far from being finished so I eventually decided not to play to much until the game was released and I could play with my guild and start a fresh character. Before I knew it, they released the launch date and it was only 2 weeks away. I started playing again and didn't see much difference between then and before, the game was no where near finished...I thought to myself "What the hell are they thinking?"
I started getting the hint of why there were so many SOE haters out there but I still didn't care too much. I played SWG for another 6 months before I quit because of so many bugs were still in the game and some classes just didnt make sense, and of course all the nerfs they made. I was done with this game, even though I had some fun with it.
I moved on to a new excitment....EQ2 was a year away! Again, same old thing. Got on the forums and started hyping up EQ2 with all of the other people like myself. I was now a little skeptical of what SOE does. They made such a graphically beautiful game like SWG but it wasn't as good as EQ. What the hell.
So EQ2 came and as soon as I stepped onto the world I was like WTF. I could already tell this game wasn't going to be what I expected. I dragged alot of my friends into it and they got so hooked they kept me in the game for a long time (till last month.) But I knew I didn't like it as much as they did. They didn't know any othe rmmorpgs so this was there cherry popper and I didn't want to kill thier fun by telling them that EQ2 sucks. Granted, I had some fun in EQ2 but it was not the same as EQ1's fun. This game also was released before it should have been.
Now I know what SOE is all about......money. No surprise. But wtf, that's all they care about. They do have alot fo great ideas...and you have to pay extra for each idea they have. They release downloadble content but it costs 8 bucks for each dungeon you want to download. Noiw they've just release the first expansion pack that probably costs another 50 bucks.
I now have become an SOE hater. They made me salivate for years over games that turned out to be crap. I will never buy another one of thier games unless it is a proven winner.
Original everquest, yup good game. EQ2, bad game at release but was getting better until it had it's own CU which nerfed most classes, lots of players gone elsewhere & now just an average game. Planetcide, good luck finding more than just a few people online which says how good it is.
I played SWG at launch and was there through the CU, left because of it. To be fair I tried the 10 day trial to try out the NGE and in the 2nd fight I was stuck in combat mode, a bug 1st reported to the devs in 2003.
If SoE sold cars they would send you for a test drive with a wheel missing and try to cover it up with bullshit.
I wont shop at wal-mart and I don't buy SOE games anymore. My company use to buy all kinds of things from wal-mart but because I wont go in there and they don't care where the stuff comes from we now have new accounts at other places.
My friends don't buy SOE games because I refuse to, so when we pick a new game to move to it's never an SOE game. The now 10 or so people who no longer buy games because of me may not have a very big inpact now, but word of mouth and other people doing the same will eventualy will. I of course don't mean I alone will bring that company down :P I mean there are a lot of people out there who feel the same, and the numbers seem to be growing not shrinking.
Just because a company doesn't fail over night from screwing people around doesn't mean it will never happen.
I dont hate SOE. Sure it made some stupid decisions ( selling virtual items for RL cash was the biggest one IMO ) but I aint gonna boycott ALL of their products just because of that.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I think realistically if SoE released a fantastic game most people would drop their dislike in a second. The problem is SoE have not (1) done that yet and (2) as far as I have heard their next game is centrally focused around rl cash. Which yeah ok considering there was 100,000 traded in that other game, it is a route that if they were guaranteed success would go. But its not really a mmorpg, and certainly not appealling to me.
Why does everyone hate SOE? The answer is, "because the 'cool' kids are doing it." Half the complaints I read about them sound like they're overblown statements that someone else said about them.
Edit: Fixed spelling error.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
9 times out of 10, when you hear someone bitching about SOE, they are complaining about SWG. So, it's not so much people hating SOE, its them hating the DEV team behind SWG.
To say SOE sucks as a whole is a bit extreme. They make crappy MMOs just like everyone else.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
One of the main gripes is money, $OE are well known for money grabbing.
Okay they are a Corporation and here to make money but its the way they achieve this, examples like the Exchange have done a world of damage amongst users.
In the MMORP community there are still many companies that love their products (Blizzard/Sigil) and do stuff for the love of, $OE can be argued do everything for cash, period.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve