curious about SOE

Rekindle · February 2006

SOE has lots of innovative ideas designed to capture your dollar. They like to release expansions for their games on a semi regular basis. They haven't really left the radar in the last few months with their station exchange ideas, their combat updates to EQ2, their changes to SWG, the alleged assertions made by the CBS Mailbag guy around business practices. Over the years I've had a great deal of respect for Everquest and the discman, but I'm curious what others think about SOE.

Love them or hate them:

What do you think of SOE?

SONOFAGUNN · February 2006

SOE IS THE.....DEVIL!!!!!!

Leasa · February 2006

Sony

Online

Exploitation

Dresan · February 2006

You know i try not to reply to SOE/SWG topic because i have never played any of their games but was a new thread asking how the "vocal majority" of people here feel about them necessary. You should take a peek under Star wars galaxies forums for your answer. Enough to say there is a some people here feel a little bit of hostility towards them

admriker444 · February 2006

SOE is the most dishonest mmo developer out there. For goodness sake they hire and use Public Relations officials to "communicate" with their player base.

And what they've done with SWG recently with this NGE (New Game Enhancement) crosses the line. The one rule we all rely on with mmorpgs is they the core of the game stays the same. Why else would a player want to invest time and money in a mmorpg if the developer will toss out your work every 6 months ?

People who dont play SWG may not fully realize what SOE did to us. Therefore lets make an analogy to World of Warcraft since many play that.

You play a lvl 60 Warlock in WoW. You have spent everyday since launch playing and building your toon to great power and wealth. You have all Epic Gear, the best possible on the server. You even managed to get extremely lucky and loot an Orange Staff, the best around. You've also built up quite a nice business selling cloth armor as a 300 Tailor.

WoW announces an expansion with new quests and items. You decide to buy the expansion for the game because one of the promised features of this expansion is a new warlock pet from a quest in that expansion (in other words, the only way to get that pet is to buy the expansion)

2 days after the expansion is released you are shocked to read on the forums a MAJOR revamp is coming. And whats worse is its going live in 2 weeks. What it involves...

1.) Warlock will no longer exist. Devs were having a terrible time balancing so many different classes and talents so they decided to combine all cloth wearers into one lump now to be called Casters. Talents are now gone so everyone will be the same.

2.) Crafting changes - From now on it will be very easy to loot blue and purple items. The drops will be superior to any player made goods so crafters are now pointless.

3.) Changing combat to a FPS with no auto targeting. This in essence means your epic gear is worthless. Now all that matters is who can click faster and is better at aiming with their mouses. It wont matter if your wand is the highest DPS wand possible if you cant hit your target. Also there is no collision detection so mobs can shoot you through walls, hills, trees, etc and they never miss.

4.) Since the expansion is pretty much pointless now that your warlock doesnt even exist anymore, we'll offer a limited refund to a select few who bought between certain dates. We will make sure to make this process difficult so you get discouraged and not bother with it. This of course is being done to avoid any nasty lawsuits from screwing over our players.

5.) After all these changes go into effect, we'll announce a letter from the Publisher will be coming to talk about the changes coming to enhance your gameplay. Then we'll remain silent on this issue for 3 months while continuing to promise this letter is coming. We will do this to string along our players for as long as possible so we can squeeze a few more months of subcriptions out of them. Then we'll announce the game is being shut down and blame the players for this.

This is pretty much what SOE has done to the players and will do soon (the coming cancellation announcement). Not to mention the lies and total mismanagement of a once great game. And why was this done....all in the name of GREED. SOE wasnt happy with 200k+ players so they revamped the game and now have less than 40k players (and falling)

BlueCoyote · February 2006

SOE ruined my favorite online game: Star Wars Galaxies. That was a game I could count on to entertain me, and now I and thousands of others have been cast off into the dark.

druarc · February 2006

In some ways I'm glad SOE did what they did, I just wish it wasn't to SWG though.

Why? Well someone had to try it soon or later and if it wasn't one of the big name brand MMO makers then it probably wouldn't have registered on the radar as much.

So what? Well this means you'd have to be pretty stupid to do it to any other MMO, unless of course you like bad press and losing 70-80% or your user base.

Rekindle · February 2006

Originally posted by admriker444

People who dont play SWG may not fully realize what SOE did to us. Therefore lets make an analogy to World of Warcraft since many play that.

Man, I read your post and I must say (having never played SWG), I didn't fully grasp the extent of changes to your game. Thats simply amazing.....thanks for the comparison.

jamiegilhen · February 2006

I've got nothing against the company but I honestly don't see how they could be considered innovative. They stick to the formula that works and produce the same games over and over again. That's how they want to do things... fine... but you won't catch me with a station subscription.

JawD · February 2006

Whoa.. I do actually have a 60 Warlock in WoW, also a Tailor for that matter. I wasn't aware at all to what happened with SWG ( I actually beta tested that as had been thinking of trying it again) but your comparison made it clear. Thats truely shocking.

Agricola1 · February 2006

I hope that some evil Voodoo priest in Hiati played SWG and went into a furious rage after the NGE. I would support and black magic used on Smedley and would like to suggest you start by giving him a violently spastic Colon!

Chieftan · February 2006

The business side and the shortchanging/nickel and diming of players is one thing, but to me it's how dead wrong SOE was about MMO players that sticks with me.

Before WoW went into beta and started generating alot of word of mouth, SOE thought they knew the MMO market. They really thought Everquest's formula was the end all be all of MMO gaming.

They were so wrong. They never realized how much potential EQ had because they stuck to Brad's grinding, punishing, no-fun vision.

I don't think they ever realized how many "casual"(I prefer to use the word "normal") gamers felt alienated by Everquest's endgame design. In EQ the endgame became the whole game, and if you didn't participate you mostly got table scraps. If you weren't a raider you could buy an expansion and never see half the zones you paid for. Sure normal players would get some exp zones to play around in but the really neat stuff was for raiders only. It got sickening after awhile.

Alot of the high level quests and AA skills took a ridiculous amount of grinding that most normal people would lose interest in before they even scratched the surface.

Oh and according to SOE/Brad, overwhelmingly most MMO players do not enjoy PVP. It just doesn't work in MMOs, which is why they didn't even bother putting it into EQ2's original release. Oops.

Motorhead · February 2006

Originally posted by admriker444

5.) After all these changes go into effect, we'll announce a letter from the Publisher will be coming to talk about the changes coming to enhance your gameplay. Then we'll remain silent on this issue for 3 months while continuing to promise this letter is coming. We will do this to string along our players for as long as possible so we can squeeze a few more months of subcriptions out of them. Then we'll announce the game is being shut down and blame the players for this.
This is pretty much what SOE has done to the players and will do soon (the coming cancellation announcement). Not to mention the lies and total mismanagement of a once great game. And why was this done....all in the name of GREED. SOE wasnt happy with 200k+ players so they revamped the game and now have less than 40k players (and falling)

You totally had me until those two lines. SOE cancelling SWG is pure speculation.

I personally believe that the 'February Letter' will be SOE announcing a MMO that has no monthly fee.

OSYYRUS · February 2006

Originally posted by admriker444

SOE is the most dishonest mmo developer out there. For goodness sake they hire and use Public Relations officials to "communicate" with their player base.
And what they've done with SWG recently with this NGE (New Game Enhancement) crosses the line. The one rule we all rely on with mmorpgs is they the core of the game stays the same. Why else would a player want to invest time and money in a mmorpg if the developer will toss out your work every 6 months ?
People who dont play SWG may not fully realize what SOE did to us. Therefore lets make an analogy to World of Warcraft since many play that.
You play a lvl 60 Warlock in WoW. You have spent everyday since launch playing and building your toon to great power and wealth. You have all Epic Gear, the best possible on the server. You even managed to get extremely lucky and loot an Orange Staff, the best around. You've also built up quite a nice business selling cloth armor as a 300 Tailor.
WoW announces an expansion with new quests and items. You decide to buy the expansion for the game because one of the promised features of this expansion is a new warlock pet from a quest in that expansion (in other words, the only way to get that pet is to buy the expansion)
2 days after the expansion is released you are shocked to read on the forums a MAJOR revamp is coming. And whats worse is its going live in 2 weeks. What it involves...
1.) Warlock will no longer exist. Devs were having a terrible time balancing so many different classes and talents so they decided to combine all cloth wearers into one lump now to be called Casters. Talents are now gone so everyone will be the same.
2.) Crafting changes - From now on it will be very easy to loot blue and purple items. The drops will be superior to any player made goods so crafters are now pointless.
3.) Changing combat to a FPS with no auto targeting. This in essence means your epic gear is worthless. Now all that matters is who can click faster and is better at aiming with their mouses. It wont matter if your wand is the highest DPS wand possible if you cant hit your target. Also there is no collision detection so mobs can shoot you through walls, hills, trees, etc and they never miss.
4.) Since the expansion is pretty much pointless now that your warlock doesnt even exist anymore, we'll offer a limited refund to a select few who bought between certain dates. We will make sure to make this process difficult so you get discouraged and not bother with it. This of course is being done to avoid any nasty lawsuits from screwing over our players.
5.) After all these changes go into effect, we'll announce a letter from the Publisher will be coming to talk about the changes coming to enhance your gameplay. Then we'll remain silent on this issue for 3 months while continuing to promise this letter is coming. We will do this to string along our players for as long as possible so we can squeeze a few more months of subcriptions out of them. Then we'll announce the game is being shut down and blame the players for this.
This is pretty much what SOE has done to the players and will do soon (the coming cancellation announcement). Not to mention the lies and total mismanagement of a once great game. And why was this done....all in the name of GREED. SOE wasnt happy with 200k+ players so they revamped the game and now have less than 40k players (and falling)

You forgot:

6.) We're going to completely redo all character attributes so that they don't even resemble the ones you are used to playing with. This also means that 80% of your gear will not be usable, so the skill tapes you bought yesterday for 2 million credits are absolutely worthless. We thought about converting items into the new system, and then said, nah screw it. We will also not be releasing any info into how our new attribute system actually works, because too many people figured out the old system and caught us in out mistakes, so this time around we're just going to throw out arbitrary numbers with no explanation so no one will be able to tell if the combat system is actually bugged or not.

admriker444 · February 2006

Originally posted by Motorhead

Originally posted by admriker444

5.) After all these changes go into effect, we'll announce a letter from the Publisher will be coming to talk about the changes coming to enhance your gameplay. Then we'll remain silent on this issue for 3 months while continuing to promise this letter is coming. We will do this to string along our players for as long as possible so we can squeeze a few more months of subcriptions out of them. Then we'll announce the game is being shut down and blame the players for this.
This is pretty much what SOE has done to the players and will do soon (the coming cancellation announcement). Not to mention the lies and total mismanagement of a once great game. And why was this done....all in the name of GREED. SOE wasnt happy with 200k+ players so they revamped the game and now have less than 40k players (and falling)

You totally had me until those two lines. SOE cancelling SWG is pure speculation.

I personally believe that the 'February Letter' will be SOE announcing a MMO that has no monthly fee.

I could see SOE making SWG free with minimal support except for one issue. The license is so dang expensive. One SOE dev posted on his blog that it costs 10 million a year for SOE to keep the rights to this game.

With about 40k players left, they arent even making enough to pay for the license. Let alone the devs salaries, server maintenance, energy, building costs, etc

Takkun88 · February 2006

SOE KICKS ASS

spookytooth · February 2006

I give SOE a vote of no-confidence.

I've never liked how they run their games, how they make their games, how they treat their customers etc.
They are supposed to be (and should be by now) experts in mmorpgs. When it comes to what makes a good game and what makes players happy, their understandnig is poor at best.

Now I feel sorry for DC comics being saddeld with these knuckelheads. Batman deserves better.

seabass2003 · February 2006

I keep seeing these SOE threads but WTF about LucasArts. They were in this too. Until the people complaining about SOE start complaining about LA then no one will listen to you.

DuraheLL · February 2006

DOWN WITH THEM!

What happened to SWG is the BIGGEST joke in the MMORPG history!

This should be even larger than it is, this is so terrible that SOE and company should be sued to a bum level.

Their treatment to the customers is beyond unacceptable, I will join a terror force against them if one is to be formed. Ty.

Viper_One · February 2006

I have followed SOE since 2000 with the original EQ. I have since played Planetside, EQII, and SWG (Planetside, EQII, and SWG since the 1st day of each of their launches.)

For those of you who have followed and watched SOE during this entire period with me, than you knew SWG was doomed to its fate.

They have screwed every game they have produced. In every single product they have consistantly ignored bugs and put more 'enhancements' crap on top of the game... and created more bugs.

I could go on and on... but it's been hashed and hashed and this would simply be the 1 billionth broken record post.

So to make it short: SOE makes me sick to my stomach. I have nothing left for them but contempt and derision. (not sure about spelling, but oh fricken well)

-RATFather

deggilator · February 2006

Much as I like EQ2 as a game, and for my personal taste it is the best MMORPG out there, I really despise SOE for their policies. Sometimes, SOE products feel like a big social experiment on how much crap a customer can take before cancelling his subscription.

At least, I hope that by the failure of SWG:NGE they'll realise that altering fundamental gameplay features completely is a really bad move. Though the crafting changes in EQ2 might be a sign that they didn't learn their lesson.

Senden · February 2006

Originally posted by admriker444

SOE is the most dishonest mmo developer out there. For goodness sake they hire and use Public Relations officials to "communicate" with their player base.
And what they've done with SWG recently with this NGE (New Game Enhancement) crosses the line. The one rule we all rely on with mmorpgs is they the core of the game stays the same. Why else would a player want to invest time and money in a mmorpg if the developer will toss out your work every 6 months ?
People who dont play SWG may not fully realize what SOE did to us. Therefore lets make an analogy to World of Warcraft since many play that.
You play a lvl 60 Warlock in WoW. You have spent everyday since launch playing and building your toon to great power and wealth. You have all Epic Gear, the best possible on the server. You even managed to get extremely lucky and loot an Orange Staff, the best around. You've also built up quite a nice business selling cloth armor as a 300 Tailor.
WoW announces an expansion with new quests and items. You decide to buy the expansion for the game because one of the promised features of this expansion is a new warlock pet from a quest in that expansion (in other words, the only way to get that pet is to buy the expansion)
2 days after the expansion is released you are shocked to read on the forums a MAJOR revamp is coming. And whats worse is its going live in 2 weeks. What it involves...
1.) Warlock will no longer exist. Devs were having a terrible time balancing so many different classes and talents so they decided to combine all cloth wearers into one lump now to be called Casters. Talents are now gone so everyone will be the same.
2.) Crafting changes - From now on it will be very easy to loot blue and purple items. The drops will be superior to any player made goods so crafters are now pointless.
3.) Changing combat to a FPS with no auto targeting. This in essence means your epic gear is worthless. Now all that matters is who can click faster and is better at aiming with their mouses. It wont matter if your wand is the highest DPS wand possible if you cant hit your target. Also there is no collision detection so mobs can shoot you through walls, hills, trees, etc and they never miss.
4.) Since the expansion is pretty much pointless now that your warlock doesnt even exist anymore, we'll offer a limited refund to a select few who bought between certain dates. We will make sure to make this process difficult so you get discouraged and not bother with it. This of course is being done to avoid any nasty lawsuits from screwing over our players.
5.) After all these changes go into effect, we'll announce a letter from the Publisher will be coming to talk about the changes coming to enhance your gameplay. Then we'll remain silent on this issue for 3 months while continuing to promise this letter is coming. We will do this to string along our players for as long as possible so we can squeeze a few more months of subcriptions out of them. Then we'll announce the game is being shut down and blame the players for this.
This is pretty much what SOE has done to the players and will do soon (the coming cancellation announcement). Not to mention the lies and total mismanagement of a once great game. And why was this done....all in the name of GREED. SOE wasnt happy with 200k+ players so they revamped the game and now have less than 40k players (and falling)

This describes $OE's actions perfectly and puts it in a form that blizz peeps can understand. This is EXACTLY what happend, make your own decisions if you think this makes them a good or a bad company.

For me they are a terrible company and it shows that their upper management are clueless idiotic chumps who know nothing about the genre whatsoever. They are going downhill really and as it stands, it's only a matter of time before EQ2 takes the same route. They keep releasing loads of live updates which dope their base up real good while slowly converting the game into one which would appeal to the WoW crowd.

$OE are greedy little ***s and have shown that they don't mind screwing over their loyal fanbase, in exchange of potentially bringing in more people. It also doesn't look like Smedley (almost rhymes with devil) will ever get the sack which he clearly deserves, along with all the other idiots who gave the green light on the NGE.

Signe · February 2006

I suppose if I had still been playing SWG when they buggered it up, I'd probably be angry and have a stronger opinion. Truth is, I don't respect they way they conduct business and I think they've treated their customers in a shabby manner. I just find it hard to attribute emotional words like "hate" and "love" to companies that are in the business of making a profit. That's their only agenda and we, the potential customer, are the method in which they acheive that goal. It's all very impersonal on their side.

As far as SWG is concerned, I wouldn't be surprised to see the game dropped completely. LA seems be pretty possessive about the Star Wars name (well, to be fair, what else do they have?) and wouldn't be surprised if they had a caveat in their contract with SOE concerning bringing that name into disrepute. Who knows?

SOE has some good ideas. The Station Access is a great idea. If you play more than one of their games, it's a bargain. NCSoft should do that... they have enough games to make it work. I do play a bit of EQ2 now and then, but, unfortunately, there is no other game of theirs I'm interested in. I don't care for the changes to SWG (and yes, I did actually log in and check them out), I don't play EQ in any of it's forms anymore, I beta tested The Matrix Online and it's absolutely awful and I have no interest in Planetside at all.

Maybe it's worth admiring them for their business acumen, but in light of the shoddy way they treated their SWG subscribers and the fact that I found that whole Trials of Obi Wan expansion to be handled dishonestly, it's hard to even give them props for that.

Hashman · February 2006

Hey SoE are innovative they are making DC Comics online! (confirmed)

http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/061705_warnerbros.html

http://eladhari.blogspot.com/2005/10/live-blogging-fr-agc-keynote-by.html

It will be playable on PsP, Playstation and PC! (wild rumour)

http://www.gamergod.com/article.php?article_id=3538

It will be free to download, and you would only be able to download it, but to get anywhere in the game you got to pay.(speculation) This will take Project Entropia's model and twist it the SoE way. It's supposed to be so casual player friendly that just loading the game grants you 30 levels. (gossip)

Anyone want to email SoE and tell them City of Heroes and Villians is also a superhero game, sheesh.

admriker444 · February 2006

Originally posted by Hashman

Hey SoE are innovative they are making DC Comics online! (confirmed)
http://www.sonyonline.com/corp/press_releases/061705_warnerbros.html
http://eladhari.blogspot.com/2005/10/live-blogging-fr-agc-keynote-by.html
It will be playable on PsP, Playstation and PC! (wild rumour)
http://www.gamergod.com/article.php?article_id=3538
It will be free to download, and you would only be able to download it, but to get anywhere in the game you got to pay.(speculation) This will take Project Entropia's model and twist it the SoE way. It's supposed to be so casual player friendly that just loading the game grants you 30 levels. (gossip)
Anyone want to email SoE and tell them City of Heroes and Villians is also a superhero game, sheesh.

Another sleazy idea from a sleazy company. This makes me sick.

Who wants to bet in this new mmorpg loot drops for good items become almost impossible to find ? SOE will make the loot tables so low everyone will almost be forced to buy that weapon from them.

Pretty soon SOE will have in-game ads promoting their own products. "Bike too slow ? Need more speed ? Stop by SOE store in Coronet and pick up the all new slime bike, only $12.95"

Time and effort will no longer matter in mmorpgs if this succeeds. Now any jackas who signs up can buy all his gear and content and be my equal in minutes. Just another example of catering to the fast food / instant oatmeal / drive through / 24/7 / free delivery / generation Y kiddies.

I snuck into those Focus Group studies conducted by SOE before they invented the NGE. Here's what I heard...

"Waah, I dont have time to spend earning my jedi knight. Why should someone else be stronger than me just because he spent 1 year playing 3 hours a night ? I cant play that much so it isnt fair to me. I quit but will come back if you just give it to me.

"And waah I dont wanna spend 2 months collecting resources to make nice weapons...thats too complicated. I want to compete and sell superior weapons even though i just started 2 weeks ago."

Exploring is too hard, please add it to my datapad. Waah, waiting on shuttles is boring and takes too long and people try and talk to me. I want instant travel so I can go blow stuff up."

"Cantinas are dumb, there isnt anything to blow up in there."

"What does GCW mean anyway, is it stuff for me to blow up ?"

Jodokai · February 2006

While I agree that SOE does some pretty crappy things, what I find absolutely hysterical, is that when other companies do the same thing everyone glosses over it. Let's look at what other companies have done and compare them to SOE shall we:

SOE add /pizza to EQ2 and is consdiered dispicable. It is blatent advertising that doesn't belong in an MMO. Sure you can't see or wouldn't know it was there if we never type the command but still.

In City of Villians made by NCSoft, every time you zone you see ads for Nvida and Intel, not a word is said, and these ads you CANNOT avoid. It isn't avoidable like the /pizza command.

In Starcraft made by Blizzard, Blizzard sold everyone's registration information to 3rd party marketing firm when it said right on the forum they wouldn't do it. No one seems to remember this.

Turbine releases an Expansion for AC2 with the promise of more expansions. Then after 4 months after people buy this expansion, annouce the closure of AC2. No one even notices.

And the one that has me doubled over laughing when I think about it:

SOE comes out with Station Exchange, and is considered by most, the worst company ever. They are saying it's okay to sell virtual items for real money as long as SOE gets some of the profit. Truely horrid in mosts eyes.

CCP The makers of EVE Online allow people to spend real life money on Time Cards and sell them to other players for ingame money (ISK). That's right, you spend 20 or 30 dollars to CCP and they let you sell that time to others for ingame money, which is pretty much EXACTLY what SOE is doing, just not as orginized, AND THEY GET VOTED BEST COMPANY IN MMORPG.COM CONTEST.

If you don't see the hypocracy in that, you just ain't lookin' hard enough.

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curious about SOE

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