Much of the hatred is not so much for what EA creates as for what EA destroys. Find a respected studio, buy it, bleed the life out of it, shut it down. Fans of the formerly respected studio tend not to like this.
Exactly this.
It's similar to a horse. EA buys a known and well-liked studio (a good horse), ride it hard until it collapses, and then put two in the head and look for their next horse.
Yes blame EA...don't you think as you say these "well-liked" studios if they were I don't know "well run" "financially stable" they wouldn't need to be bought but EA? So you think EA put a gun to their head and made them sell their company? Most of the complies that were "well-liked" and not "financially sound" would have died well before they did if EA didn't put money into them.
But I guess to the likes of you being "well-liked" is all that matters in the world of business right??? /facepalm
It's one thing if a company is on the verge of collapse and would go bankrupt if they don't get financial intervention. But those companies get picked up for peanuts, not for hundreds of millions of dollars.
One could, for example "blame" SOE for eventually shutting down Infantry or Vanguard, but that would ignore that apart from SOE intervention, the games would have shut down almost immediately--and in the case of Infantry, did actually shut down for about a month before SOE revived it. SOE gave those games many years more than they would otherwise had had.
But if Westwood was in such dire straits, why did EA pay more than $100 million for them? Why did they pay more than $100 million for Maxis? Why did EA pay more than $800 million for BioWare? When SOE acquired Harmless Games, I'm not sure if they paid a single dime for it (apart from possibly assuming debt); the price tag surely wasn't in the hundreds of millions.
I'm going to say that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is the worst MMO company of all time. They had a Ponzi scheme masquerading as an MMO. Not a released MMO, mind you; just a promised one with a Stargate license to try to make it seem more real than it was and get people to "invest" in it with a promise of huge returns. MGM eventually caught on and pulled the license. Malicious thievery is worse than mere ineptitude.
SOE shouldn't even be on the top 3 anymore, not with groups like Funcom, EA, or "insert any overseas p2w mmo here" running around.
if this was still 2007 sure, they probably be number 2 at best, but even at that time they were still making money, keeping a number of their games online, and began their ground work of creating new games for the future vs. other groups that either closed up shop or got bought out.
In a perfect mmorpg.com world, SOE shouldve been out of business a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNGGG time ago. unfortunately it didnt happen.
For the OP: your right, but now 2010-2014 SOE is dealing with listening to the right/wrong part of the community , go to the DCUO or planetside 2 forums to watch what happens when soe listens to the community. crap upon crap of people flexing their "elistism" muscle saying X group are a bunch of crybabies while Y group are a bunch of try-hards with no lives, pvp vs. pve, casual vs. hardcore. months on end of stats and graphs and videos and counter videos from fans againsts fans.
"listen to me, the other guy is a flippin idiot do this for me and it will save your already crap game that i spent 2 years of money on!"
and when SOE even picks a side and takes action based on the community (the tweets and live chat's speak for themselves), they are demonized, people threaten about leaving, and your occasional star wars fan that has NO business being in either game chimes in "omg its NGE all over again!". Its comedy gold seeing SOE devs spend more time on reddit putting out updates and talking to the community on this end a whole lot more than spending time on their own forums, only to see the core forum community whine some more about the Dev's giving more love to the reddit people than them.
Overall, SOE wont change for the community for good, the H1Z1 advertisment from smed is evidence of that, but they will adapt when it comes to making money, player studio and their in-house engine forgelight is proof of that.
Cant say the same about Funcom (AO, AOC, TSW), EA (Earth/Beyond, WAR, APB vanilla, SWTOR)
I'm going to say that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is the worst MMO company of all time. They had a Ponzi scheme masquerading as an MMO. Not a released MMO, mind you; just a promised one with a Stargate license to try to make it seem more real than it was and get people to "invest" in it with a promise of huge returns. MGM eventually caught on and pulled the license. Malicious thievery is worse than mere ineptitude.
Aye, and the guys who were making Dark and Light did exactly the same thing.
Dark and Light... I think if they came out today they would have made a nice pile of cash on early access and pre-release exclusives/sales. Back then, both players and media wrote it off as a disaster and quickly moved on. Today's crowd seems very different.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I'm going to say that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is the worst MMO company of all time. They had a Ponzi scheme masquerading as an MMO. Not a released MMO, mind you; just a promised one with a Stargate license to try to make it seem more real than it was and get people to "invest" in it with a promise of huge returns. MGM eventually caught on and pulled the license. Malicious thievery is worse than mere ineptitude.
Aye, and the guys who were making Dark and Light did exactly the same thing.
Dark and Light... I think if they came out today they would have made a nice pile of cash on early access and pre-release exclusives/sales. Back then, both players and media wrote it off as a disaster and quickly moved on. Today's crowd seems very different.
lol no doubt. Brad seems to be making a pretty good living on those people too.
To OP: I don't totally agree with you about your chosen list. I think that there have been worse companies than the ones you listed either because they released a virtually unplayable bit of vaporware all the while taking peoples' money or released something and did not follow through with supporting it. Scamming people out of money for a product that does not work or borderline not exist is far worse than pulling the plug on a game that has been out for a while and is not making any profit.
That does not mean that everything you listed in your post is wrong. I agree that certain business practices of certain companies leave something to really be desired and should be quite rightly decried by us players. Maybe the only way forward is for there to be some gamer group that actually oversees quality in games?
SOE shouldn't even be on the top 3 anymore, not with groups like Funcom, EA, or "insert any overseas p2w mmo here" running around.
if this was still 2007 sure, they probably be number 2 at best, but even at that time they were still making money, keeping a number of their games online, and began their ground work of creating new games for the future vs. other groups that either closed up shop or got bought out.
(snip)
SOE still deserve to be decried about what they did in the NGE because they managed to screw a lot of gamers over with that debacle. Let's not forget that an expac with features for classes slated to be removed from the game (like Bioengineer) was released just a couple weeks before the NGE hit. Players who bought the expac for those features got royally shafted. Even if that was not intentional on the part of SOE, it was at the very least incompetent. Who is to say they won't do something completely stupid like that again?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think SOE is the worst MMO company, but the SWG thing is definitely still, to this day, a black mark on their record.
SOE shouldn't even be on the top 3 anymore, not with groups like Funcom, EA, or "insert any overseas p2w mmo here" running around.
if this was still 2007 sure, they probably be number 2 at best, but even at that time they were still making money, keeping a number of their games online, and began their ground work of creating new games for the future vs. other groups that either closed up shop or got bought out.
(snip)
SOE still deserve to be decried about what they did in the NGE because they managed to screw a lot of gamers over with that debacle. Let's not forget that an expac with features for classes slated to be removed from the game (like Bioengineer) was released just a couple weeks before the NGE hit. Players who bought the expac for those features got royally shafted. Even if that was not intentional on the part of SOE, it was at the very least incompetent. Who is to say they won't do something completely stupid like that again?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think SOE is the worst MMO company, but the SWG thing is definitely still, to this day, a black mark on their record.
Why is it whenever someone says how bad SOE is everyone focuses on SWG:NGE?
SOE have continued to be incompetent since... completely unrelated to SWG.
Let's talk PotBS.
Now true - it wasn't a great design anyway... but that is nothing to do with SOE.
The stuff ups by SOE were entirely SOE's. In that game they were contracted by FLS to market and distribute via their Platform Publishing arm:
SOE messed everything up from day one - incompetent doesn't even begin to describe it.
They failed to market the game to the point that many retailers never even heard of it.
On the Platform Publishing website (which now doesn't appear to exist?) they continued to market Gods and Heroes even though that game had shut down - and failed to promote the game they were paid to promote (PotBS).
The pre release / pre order was a mess with many retailers unaware that the preorder boxes actually contained a music CD and a pre order key.
The pre release via GameStop was rife with theft and confusion. GameStop staff were stealing pre order keys and selling incomplete boxes to the public - something that was proven via this website and evidence provided to FLS. I do not know if any charges were ever followed up - but they should have been - theft and fraud.
They failed to produce the game and ship it by release day. Then they tried to lie about it, forgetting that MMO players are not just spotty faced kids now, many of us have experience in shipping, production, printing, marketing, accounting and law and know that there is always a 'paper trail' that can be followed up.
Tried to blame the California Bush Fires (2008) for the fact the game was not shipped correctly.
The Spanish release that FLS paid for and are "pretty sure" got done despite the fact that SOE could never produce a single unit (Spanish box) to prove it (or apparently any printing records, shipping dockets etc etc).
The launcher/patcher that failed to work to the point that FLS (their client!) had to step in and help them out with it.
The billing system that also fell over (repeatedly), again FLS, the client had to step in.
At one point a forum goer on the FLS site even helped write and reword a (damage control) press release since SOE were unable to do so properly. IIRC they used some of his wording in an official release?
There is probably more I have forgotten.
SOE may not be the worst company out there - but certainly in the running.
King of the MMO bait and switch, bugs and never delivered promises. Making an MMO that has great first episode/chapter but once you are in the main world the game changes dramatically and becomes a stupid quest grinder. To this date they ahve not delivered most of what was promised for AoC.
2. Zenimax
Take an incredibly successful IP and screw it up royally. Not only are they unable to re-create the essential Oblivion feeling they also fail at making a multiplayer game because the heavy Phasing makes it impossible to group and play together. This company makes an MMO that you need to play solo. Epic Failure.
3. CCP
Unable to focus and complete one thing before moving to the next. Tthis company has NEVER finished or completely fixed a single expansion to their one and only successful game EvE Online. They remind me of someone with ADHD. No Focus and worst mmo management ever.
I swear, everyone who hates on Cryptic rarely knows what they are talking about.
Destroy the Star Trek (MMO) franchise? They get stories and quests written by the writers of the shows. They get actors to lend their voices and likenesses in the game. The Star Trek (MMO) franchise has not been this strong in a long time, especially given the previous two series and two of the three latest movies (or all three of them dependong on who you ask).
And no, STO is not an example of "how not to do a f2p". Several of SOEs games and previously Allods Online is an example of how to not make a f2p (seriously, look at what GPotato did to Allods Online's cash shop and tell me STO had it that bad; I dare you).
Also, how do you expect an MMO with the Star Trek license to be "original"? It's Star Trek, a well established franchise! Either they be original and piss off the longtime fans of the license who were interested in the game because of said license, or they be unoriginal and faithful to the source material. It's one or the other.
Now I will not dsagree with you that Champions Online has seen better days, but Star Trek Online and Neverwinter Online are strong titles with large playerbases. Cryptic should not be on this list. Maybe an "honorable mentions" list, but not this list.
Hmm.. how do I answer this? With blind hatred and idle contempt? Choosing the developer that has made bad decisions regardless of all their attempts to do right? Choose that developer/publisher that shutdown "MY" game? Choose the developer/publisher that closed down games so that it can live on to make more?
Hmm.. how do I answer this? With blind hatred and idle contempt? Choosing the developer that has made bad decisions regardless of all their attempts to do right? Choose that developer/publisher that shutdown "MY" game? Choose the developer/publisher that closed down games so that it can live on to make more?
...
I don't know what you or anyone else expected when you clicked to view this post. How do you, on a purely "objective level" rate the worst MMO companies of all time?
Its not like I'm going to pour through a bunch of data sheets to see who lost the most money per capita or who had the worst customer services ratings, that would be a research paper, this is a damn forum post! Lol
I think I was more than fair in my opinions about each company and yes, I chose the companies that were most relevant to me, but being a seasoned MMO player I chose the companies I thought best represented the topic.
the only company I would have added to the list that other have stated is EA or possibly Sigil. I didn't include EA because they are not primarily an MMO company, and they are already known as vein a bad game company. And Sigil wasn't an overall bad company they just didn't deliver on the One game they took 6 years to make.
To me SOE screwing over an entire player base to implement detrimental changes to core gameplay and destroy their niche market presence for an attempt at someone else market makes you one of the worst companies ever.
Yeah, SOE certainly deserves the #1 spot. Smedley and Co. basically wrote the, "How not to Handle a P.R. Disaster" book for any business. It wasn't even so much the NGE itself, it was the way in which it was handled from start to finish.
Rather than implement changes slowly, SOE tried to ram all of them down players' collective throat at once. The problem was then multiplied by the fact that the NGE was only half-finished, and riddled with game-breaking bugs. They completely ignored the player base, as the OP stated, and pushed it from test to live over the vehement objections of the community.
After sh!t hit the fan when the NGE launched, SOE than had the audacity to say publicly that the changes were well-received by players, despite every game forum going crazy and Youtube videos popping up of players deleting their characters in protest. the icing on the cake was that players had to threaten Sony with a class-action lawsuit just to get a refund on The Trails of Obi-Wan expansion, which launched right before the NGE, with players given absolutely no warning that they were coming.
It's hard to even imagine, but SOE customer service has actually gotten worse since then.
Originally posted by zzax Blizzard. They destroyed whole genre and are the reason of 10 years long stagnation.
Nah .. they help grow the genre.
But they should be on the list .. because they scrapped Titan, and they probably are no longer committed to the genre (unless you count MOBA, and CCG, and ARPGs).
I swear, everyone who hates on Cryptic rarely knows what they are talking about.
Destroy the Star Trek (MMO) franchise?
I think the problem most Star Trek fans have with the game is not that it's bad per se (the production quality is quite decent), it's because it has nothing to do with "Space, the Final Frontier". Heavily instanced, no space travel per se, little exploration. That's no Star Trek, even if it can be a decent sci-fi MMORPG for some people.
Same thing goes for SW:TOR, not a bad game, some good stories, but the very linear and heaviliy zoned design is most likely not what Star Wars fans were expecting from a Star Wars MMORPG.
I could continue with Conan and a few others... some of which are already dead, like Warhammer.
But yeah, anyone putting SoE, Turbine, Blizzard, Cryptic, Mythic, Funcom, EA, NCSoft, Trion or any of the other major MMO editors I may have forgotten on the top of their "worst company ever" definitely don't have the start of a clue of what a really bad MMO company is. For instance, I have little love for Mythic (we destroy games should be their motto, along with introducing instanced/zoned PvP to the genre), but they definitely aren't the worse company ever, not even remotely close.
Dumb question but in star trek is there even anything left to see in the galaxy? We got Borgs in delta, humans in alpha and the cards in beta with the dominion in the gamma quadrant I believe...what is left?
Sony Hands down is, and has been pretty much since the start of mmos, the worst of the lot. I'm a big ps3 fan, and a big Everquest fan.. so it's not their games, or their products that is the problem, it's the company's attitude, they way they deal with (or rather don't deal with) customers, and general way of thinking they are god and the little guys (without whom they wouldn't be in buisness) are less then nothing.
Hmm.. how do I answer this? With blind hatred and idle contempt? Choosing the developer that has made bad decisions regardless of all their attempts to do right? Choose that developer/publisher that shutdown "MY" game? Choose the developer/publisher that closed down games so that it can live on to make more?
...
I don't know what you or anyone else expected when you clicked to view this post. How do you, on a purely "objective level" rate the worst MMO companies of all time?
Its not like I'm going to pour through a bunch of data sheets to see who lost the most money per capita or who had the worst customer services ratings, that would be a research paper, this is a damn forum post! Lol
I think I was more than fair in my opinions about each company and yes, I chose the companies that were most relevant to me, but being a seasoned MMO player I chose the companies I thought best represented the topic.
the only company I would have added to the list that other have stated is EA or possibly Sigil. I didn't include EA because they are not primarily an MMO company, and they are already known as vein a bad game company. And Sigil wasn't an overall bad company they just didn't deliver on the One game they took 6 years to make.
To me SOE screwing over an entire player base to implement detrimental changes to core gameplay and destroy their niche market presence for an attempt at someone else market makes you one of the worst companies ever.
SOE has also saved at least one title that would have died off way earlier than it did. That has to count for something. SOE still pays for what they did because people constantly remind others. Rightfully so. I bet Smedley still can't step outside in public without being reminded a dozen times an hour. Yet rarely do the people who like to remind others so strongly about the negatives mention the positives. Tell the people who loved Vanguard how evil SOE is. I bet they might disagree.
Comments
It's one thing if a company is on the verge of collapse and would go bankrupt if they don't get financial intervention. But those companies get picked up for peanuts, not for hundreds of millions of dollars.
One could, for example "blame" SOE for eventually shutting down Infantry or Vanguard, but that would ignore that apart from SOE intervention, the games would have shut down almost immediately--and in the case of Infantry, did actually shut down for about a month before SOE revived it. SOE gave those games many years more than they would otherwise had had.
But if Westwood was in such dire straits, why did EA pay more than $100 million for them? Why did they pay more than $100 million for Maxis? Why did EA pay more than $800 million for BioWare? When SOE acquired Harmless Games, I'm not sure if they paid a single dime for it (apart from possibly assuming debt); the price tag surely wasn't in the hundreds of millions.
I'm going to say that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is the worst MMO company of all time. They had a Ponzi scheme masquerading as an MMO. Not a released MMO, mind you; just a promised one with a Stargate license to try to make it seem more real than it was and get people to "invest" in it with a promise of huge returns. MGM eventually caught on and pulled the license. Malicious thievery is worse than mere ineptitude.
SOE shouldn't even be on the top 3 anymore, not with groups like Funcom, EA, or "insert any overseas p2w mmo here" running around.
if this was still 2007 sure, they probably be number 2 at best, but even at that time they were still making money, keeping a number of their games online, and began their ground work of creating new games for the future vs. other groups that either closed up shop or got bought out.
In a perfect mmorpg.com world, SOE shouldve been out of business a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNGGG time ago. unfortunately it didnt happen.
For the OP: your right, but now 2010-2014 SOE is dealing with listening to the right/wrong part of the community , go to the DCUO or planetside 2 forums to watch what happens when soe listens to the community. crap upon crap of people flexing their "elistism" muscle saying X group are a bunch of crybabies while Y group are a bunch of try-hards with no lives, pvp vs. pve, casual vs. hardcore. months on end of stats and graphs and videos and counter videos from fans againsts fans.
"listen to me, the other guy is a flippin idiot do this for me and it will save your already crap game that i spent 2 years of money on!"
and when SOE even picks a side and takes action based on the community (the tweets and live chat's speak for themselves), they are demonized, people threaten about leaving, and your occasional star wars fan that has NO business being in either game chimes in "omg its NGE all over again!". Its comedy gold seeing SOE devs spend more time on reddit putting out updates and talking to the community on this end a whole lot more than spending time on their own forums, only to see the core forum community whine some more about the Dev's giving more love to the reddit people than them.
Overall, SOE wont change for the community for good, the H1Z1 advertisment from smed is evidence of that, but they will adapt when it comes to making money, player studio and their in-house engine forgelight is proof of that.
Cant say the same about Funcom (AO, AOC, TSW), EA (Earth/Beyond, WAR, APB vanilla, SWTOR)
Dark and Light... I think if they came out today they would have made a nice pile of cash on early access and pre-release exclusives/sales. Back then, both players and media wrote it off as a disaster and quickly moved on. Today's crowd seems very different.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
lol no doubt. Brad seems to be making a pretty good living on those people too.
To OP: I don't totally agree with you about your chosen list. I think that there have been worse companies than the ones you listed either because they released a virtually unplayable bit of vaporware all the while taking peoples' money or released something and did not follow through with supporting it. Scamming people out of money for a product that does not work or borderline not exist is far worse than pulling the plug on a game that has been out for a while and is not making any profit.
That does not mean that everything you listed in your post is wrong. I agree that certain business practices of certain companies leave something to really be desired and should be quite rightly decried by us players. Maybe the only way forward is for there to be some gamer group that actually oversees quality in games?
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
SOE still deserve to be decried about what they did in the NGE because they managed to screw a lot of gamers over with that debacle. Let's not forget that an expac with features for classes slated to be removed from the game (like Bioengineer) was released just a couple weeks before the NGE hit. Players who bought the expac for those features got royally shafted. Even if that was not intentional on the part of SOE, it was at the very least incompetent. Who is to say they won't do something completely stupid like that again?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think SOE is the worst MMO company, but the SWG thing is definitely still, to this day, a black mark on their record.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Why is it whenever someone says how bad SOE is everyone focuses on SWG:NGE?
SOE have continued to be incompetent since... completely unrelated to SWG.
Let's talk PotBS.
Now true - it wasn't a great design anyway... but that is nothing to do with SOE.
The stuff ups by SOE were entirely SOE's. In that game they were contracted by FLS to market and distribute via their Platform Publishing arm:
http://www.gamespot.com/companies/sony-platform-publishing/
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/soe-to-stop-publishing-pirates-of-the-burning-sea/1100-6401750/
The ugly details are all here in the forums.
SOE messed everything up from day one - incompetent doesn't even begin to describe it.
They failed to market the game to the point that many retailers never even heard of it.
On the Platform Publishing website (which now doesn't appear to exist?) they continued to market Gods and Heroes even though that game had shut down - and failed to promote the game they were paid to promote (PotBS).
The pre release / pre order was a mess with many retailers unaware that the preorder boxes actually contained a music CD and a pre order key.
The pre release via GameStop was rife with theft and confusion. GameStop staff were stealing pre order keys and selling incomplete boxes to the public - something that was proven via this website and evidence provided to FLS. I do not know if any charges were ever followed up - but they should have been - theft and fraud.
They failed to produce the game and ship it by release day. Then they tried to lie about it, forgetting that MMO players are not just spotty faced kids now, many of us have experience in shipping, production, printing, marketing, accounting and law and know that there is always a 'paper trail' that can be followed up.
Tried to blame the California Bush Fires (2008) for the fact the game was not shipped correctly.
The Spanish release that FLS paid for and are "pretty sure" got done despite the fact that SOE could never produce a single unit (Spanish box) to prove it (or apparently any printing records, shipping dockets etc etc).
The launcher/patcher that failed to work to the point that FLS (their client!) had to step in and help them out with it.
The billing system that also fell over (repeatedly), again FLS, the client had to step in.
At one point a forum goer on the FLS site even helped write and reword a (damage control) press release since SOE were unable to do so properly. IIRC they used some of his wording in an official release?
There is probably more I have forgotten.
SOE may not be the worst company out there - but certainly in the running.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Funcom should be there...
1. Funcom
King of the MMO bait and switch, bugs and never delivered promises. Making an MMO that has great first episode/chapter but once you are in the main world the game changes dramatically and becomes a stupid quest grinder. To this date they ahve not delivered most of what was promised for AoC.
2. Zenimax
Take an incredibly successful IP and screw it up royally. Not only are they unable to re-create the essential Oblivion feeling they also fail at making a multiplayer game because the heavy Phasing makes it impossible to group and play together. This company makes an MMO that you need to play solo. Epic Failure.
3. CCP
Unable to focus and complete one thing before moving to the next. Tthis company has NEVER finished or completely fixed a single expansion to their one and only successful game EvE Online. They remind me of someone with ADHD. No Focus and worst mmo management ever.
I swear, everyone who hates on Cryptic rarely knows what they are talking about.
Destroy the Star Trek (MMO) franchise? They get stories and quests written by the writers of the shows. They get actors to lend their voices and likenesses in the game. The Star Trek (MMO) franchise has not been this strong in a long time, especially given the previous two series and two of the three latest movies (or all three of them dependong on who you ask).
And no, STO is not an example of "how not to do a f2p". Several of SOEs games and previously Allods Online is an example of how to not make a f2p (seriously, look at what GPotato did to Allods Online's cash shop and tell me STO had it that bad; I dare you).
Also, how do you expect an MMO with the Star Trek license to be "original"? It's Star Trek, a well established franchise! Either they be original and piss off the longtime fans of the license who were interested in the game because of said license, or they be unoriginal and faithful to the source material. It's one or the other.
Now I will not dsagree with you that Champions Online has seen better days, but Star Trek Online and Neverwinter Online are strong titles with large playerbases. Cryptic should not be on this list. Maybe an "honorable mentions" list, but not this list.
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
Hmm.. how do I answer this? With blind hatred and idle contempt? Choosing the developer that has made bad decisions regardless of all their attempts to do right? Choose that developer/publisher that shutdown "MY" game? Choose the developer/publisher that closed down games so that it can live on to make more?
...
I don't know what you or anyone else expected when you clicked to view this post. How do you, on a purely "objective level" rate the worst MMO companies of all time?
Its not like I'm going to pour through a bunch of data sheets to see who lost the most money per capita or who had the worst customer services ratings, that would be a research paper, this is a damn forum post! Lol
I think I was more than fair in my opinions about each company and yes, I chose the companies that were most relevant to me, but being a seasoned MMO player I chose the companies I thought best represented the topic.
the only company I would have added to the list that other have stated is EA or possibly Sigil. I didn't include EA because they are not primarily an MMO company, and they are already known as vein a bad game company. And Sigil wasn't an overall bad company they just didn't deliver on the One game they took 6 years to make.
To me SOE screwing over an entire player base to implement detrimental changes to core gameplay and destroy their niche market presence for an attempt at someone else market makes you one of the worst companies ever.
Yeah, SOE certainly deserves the #1 spot. Smedley and Co. basically wrote the, "How not to Handle a P.R. Disaster" book for any business. It wasn't even so much the NGE itself, it was the way in which it was handled from start to finish.
Rather than implement changes slowly, SOE tried to ram all of them down players' collective throat at once. The problem was then multiplied by the fact that the NGE was only half-finished, and riddled with game-breaking bugs. They completely ignored the player base, as the OP stated, and pushed it from test to live over the vehement objections of the community.
After sh!t hit the fan when the NGE launched, SOE than had the audacity to say publicly that the changes were well-received by players, despite every game forum going crazy and Youtube videos popping up of players deleting their characters in protest. the icing on the cake was that players had to threaten Sony with a class-action lawsuit just to get a refund on The Trails of Obi-Wan expansion, which launched right before the NGE, with players given absolutely no warning that they were coming.
It's hard to even imagine, but SOE customer service has actually gotten worse since then.
Nah .. they help grow the genre.
But they should be on the list .. because they scrapped Titan, and they probably are no longer committed to the genre (unless you count MOBA, and CCG, and ARPGs).
Dumb question but in star trek is there even anything left to see in the galaxy? We got Borgs in delta, humans in alpha and the cards in beta with the dominion in the gamma quadrant I believe...what is left?
SOE has also saved at least one title that would have died off way earlier than it did. That has to count for something. SOE still pays for what they did because people constantly remind others. Rightfully so. I bet Smedley still can't step outside in public without being reminded a dozen times an hour. Yet rarely do the people who like to remind others so strongly about the negatives mention the positives. Tell the people who loved Vanguard how evil SOE is. I bet they might disagree.
Top five, maybe. Top ten, ok. Number one. No way.