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Sigil sells out to $oE
bhug
Member UncommonPosts: 944
06.05.05
MORE than 80% of the people here (Sigil forums) are absolutly furious with $oE's money grubbing and ABSOLUTE incompetence. That is the reason the majority left and vowed to NEVER again have anything to do with $oE.
Having $oE in the mixture is the touch of death for EVERYTHING they have run into the ground. OVER 2/3 of their subscribers have left because they destroyed SWG, retailed EQ2 more than three months before it was ready just to try and steal some people from WOW, routinely wipe their bbs reguarding condeming or pointing out problem post. AND to top it off to bring $oE into V:SoH, leaving those *diots in charge of TECHNICAL problems when game breaking EQ content has gone unfixed for +FOUR years, when they pharmed out CS to people that had NO idea what the game was about, responding in cut and pasted unrelated trash.
This can only mean M$ is fed up and is washing their hands of Saga, just like they did with Mythica and Turbine.
Run a poll here (Sigil site, btw, just shut down to avoid the complaints about this fiasco) bet over 90% are absolutely pissed with $oE.
I can not believe after working for them for five years you want anything to do with $oE again, amd leave such vital concerns in their incompetence.
$oE knows Saga means the END to EQ, EQ2 and SWG. GEEZ already over 70% of the swg & EQ2 people have left in disgust, and over 50% of the EQ players.
The ONLY thing keeping the VERY few remaining people there is the hyped progression server (The Combine,) that they have no idea how to implement (opens June 2006,) no idea about fixing the bugs and problems in old EQ content for the last five years since SoL retailed, (when $oE basically abandoned any pretence about fixing those old EQ problems blaming this that and the otherthing,) instead forcing incomplete expansions out every six month, bug ridden or not... just to dig more $ out of the pocket of it's subscribers. They destroy three low to middle content zones (CT, MM, Infected Paw) to supposedly benefit high levels but even those people refused to populate those zones, and instead of admit it was a mistake, they abandon those zones and refuse to revert the even moreso deserted zones back to their orriginal mid level content! Rather than deal with fixing the old EQ problems, they just buy into Vanguard: Saga of Heroes just so they can scrap actually fixing old EQ content and make good on the progression server.
They scam they needed more $ (subscription) to pay bills and bring more and better CS, then fire 1/3 the GMs and shift to a 'roving band' of troubleshooting GMs that could care less about various servers, over 70% of the Guides got forced out/quit because of the incompetence at the top.
There is NOTHING $oE did right after Mr. McQuaid got forced out, and now you are getting back in bed with those guys. I had NO idea Vanguard was in such trouble that you would put ANYTHING about it within $oE's $ grubbing control.
They even increased the all access pass subscription to try and make up for the 100s leaving DAILY. Just like they increased the EQ subscription April 2002. $oE absolutely does not care about quality product, they only want that $ to keep coming in. They keep "triming" away needless expenses, like toll-free phone, staff GM, updating servers, non-problematic backbone, troubleshooting code staff, CS that actually know something about the game... the list seems to go on forever; those guys were clearing +$50 MILLION a year and they refused to staff a toll free phone for those new to the game and having problems. You must recall the THOUSANDS of complaints, plea for help that $oE purged rather than address and deal with on their forums!
Even their own staff leave in large #s because they are fed up with quotas and basicly ignoring problems of their subscribers. Like the old core chat room, rather than deal with the new people discussing problems, and the lack of GM to keep things civil $oE just SILENCES the room. They only make changes after THOUSANDS leave, fed up with problems going unfixed and then seeing those complaints marked Resolved !!
THIS is a VERY sad day for the 80k in these forums that had high hopes V:SoH would be what $oE had neglected and was incapable to provide, and now the pariah we all know $oE to be is to be involved with Vanguard.
GEEZ how is this unlike how Red Eye spins off 989, then is merged back into SCEA ? For FOUR years we have a deal with MS, and now with just six months to go, MS abandons the project ??!!
btw, this means we will have to pay $25/mo all access to play Saga
edit:
Sigil's spin control by Gip's post
basically Sigil wants to stay in the coding-developing of games, and will leave to $oE the actual server and patch maintenence bandwidth concerns.
Comments
I think I missed something, because I didn't fully understood your post.
but did Sigil sell Vanguard:SOH to SOE?
Edit: I just read the bad news...it comes as a big dissapointment, I had high hopes for Vanguard: SOH, but I don't think I'll play Vanguard if SOE has anything to do with it. I might play one game on month, and a complete diffrent game the other month
Although I give SoE credit here, they pulled a nice one you have to admit, not only did they possible save their company if Vanguard is to be as big as the hype, as it might have killed EQ2, but they are turning a profit in the process, very well done SoE. Here is the same announcement but on the EQ2 forums btw.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
Im not all for Vanguard and its hype, but I currently play EQ2 so this is some good news for me, since ill be able to pay $25 to play both EQ2 and Vanguard.
"There's no star system Slave I can't reach, and there's no planet I can't find. There's nowhere in the Galaxy for you to run. Might as well give up now."
Boba Fett
http://www.sigilgames.com/sonypressrelease.html
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
dude .... $OE is turning into a SERIOUS MARKET BULLY with MMORPG's and i dont like it one bit .....
and i planned to make vanguard my new home .. but F*** THAT!!!! im cancelling my plans to buy it ( i was going to preorder ) and staying away from it like the plague!!!
Leave now. Everything SOE touches turns to mush.
Planetside was a great game, which they turned to shit with Core Combat and later BFR's.
SWG was great before they turned it into a WoW clone. FYI theres supposed to be 5-10 Jedis in the universe, not 250,000 Jedi.
EQ1 was such a pve snoozefest I can't bring myself to try EQ2. From boats that took forever, to meditating that took forever, to need to wait ages for a group before you can kill anything, to the expansions every 6 months trying to milk the playerbase for money.
Just forget playing any SOE games and you will be happy.
They are supposedly a video game company, but they have the soul of a bunch of mortgage bankers.
Smed and management should be running a banking company, not a gaming company.
Time and time again they have a proven ability to take any successful game, and drive it into the ground in pursuit of a profit.
Irony.
Im not all for Vanguard and its hype, but I currently play EQ2 so this is some good news for me, since ill be able to pay $25 to play both EQ2 and Vanguard.
ah, station pass 4twwww. I didnt think about it that way (although the news doesnt effect my opinion on vanguard at all)
i hope they throw it in with the station access pass, that would be sweet as hell
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
A conversation is ongoing in the Vanguard Forums. One of the members best summed up my thoughts:
It's like the battered wife syndrome. Some people will never learn and
keep coming back thinking it will get better and they will learn from
their past mistake.
Harsh but somewhat true. I remember attending a community IRC
Q/A session with one of the devs. Everyone chatted about the "vision"
and how Vanguard is the true sequel to EQ. Some SOE bashing took place,
it was before the SWG incidents, moreover what I got from most of the
fans was how Vanguard would remain untainted by SOE.
All this did was disorient some, okay - most of the fanbase.
I intend to keep that promise. SOE has lied, mis-lead, mis-informed and totally dis-respected its players for years. As a consumer, I will not support any company that has such low regard for it's customers.
I will be one of the players Sigil lost..
Though i understand Brad's post about them co producing it , i think way back to SWG when Ralph was first involved. As swg took off latter on he was promoted out of the picture and by then swg turned eventualy into a totaly different game.
So even if they are in the back door so to speak, what's to say, 6 - 9 months after release if Brad and his team get tired of the fourms, bugs managing day to day ongoings of the game, come up with a great vision for a new product, not wanting to take anything away from current project vanguard, quietly leave, and let soe have first option.....
As worn out as I am over Fantasy mmorpgs, I was looking forward to SoH until this. I simply will NOT give any of my money to anyone who sells out to SOE. In fact, I'm not spending any more money on SONY products (and I have very many I plan on replacing). I've been a huge Sony fanboi for several years, bought their products at every chance and with no questions asked and now I'm done. I'm simply tired of them. I'm seeing other companies learning how not to do things from them, and I'm willing to give'em a try...as long as they're not dealing with SOE.
Did you know that 76% of all approximates are made up?
On Topic:
I know SOE is probably one of the worst companies out there for the MMORPG market atm (There are worse... Morning anyone?). But giving up on a game due to heresay (MS pushing for release, etc...) you've been following in development, before you even try it is... stupid.
Do you really think SOE cares that a fraction of its prospective playerbase is threatening to not play? I doubt it. There's already been proof that the people that post on game forums are a very small percentage to the entire playerbase.
I'm not happy with SOE either. I had two Jedi, one got with all proffs mastered and one done through the village. But I'm not going to just upright refuse to even try the game i've been following for a year now, just because of this news. As people are saying, SOE is just handling marketing and such. I havn't found Blizzard's CS any better than SOE's was.
Cut off your nose despite your face.
---------------------------------------------
Tested: SWG, Sims, EVE, CoH, RO, Darkages, Neocron, AO, Lineage 2, ATITD 2, AC 2, WoW, MxO, LotRO, Armada Online, VsoH
Playing: WoW
Waiting for: StO
I guarantee 99% of the people on that forum and this one saying "I'm not even gonna try it because SOE is involved!" will infact go out and buy it.
And how do you sellout when the PREVIOUS company to be publishing was MICROSOFT.
But keep on crying. Soon you'll threaten to boycot video games all together since EA, Sony or Microsoft have a hand in nearly every game made, all three companies get the standard "I'm never buying a X product again!", then continue to have multi-million copy sales.
I'm not a hater or a fanboy of ANY game company, I'll try any game, and play what I find fun, I don't give a shit who's running it as long as I'm entertained. Give it a try, be less of a homer.
----------------I intend to keep that promise. SOE has lied, mis-lead, mis-informed and totally dis-respected its players for years. As a consumer, I will not support any company that has such low regard for it's customers---------------
You can insert ANY company name where SOE is, I've seen nearly identical message for CCP, Blizzard, Microsoft, EA, DICE, Square-Enix, NCSoft and many more.
So either every single game company on the planet has lied, mis-lead, mis-informed and totally disrespected it's players for years or there are ALOT and I mean ALOT of Drama queens. You make the call.
EDIT: OH and God forbid a BUSINESS look for invest opportunities to make more money. How dare they!
06.05.07
For those unwilling to again put ANY $ back into $oE's pocket, how about TWENTYFIVE MMO due to retail this year.
What this means to Sony:
Sony is hurting, over the last year it has about 3% operating profits (operating profits will tumble 48 % in the fiscal year to March 2007,) whereas competitor Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. , the maker of Panasonic brand products boosted its sales by 20 percent and saw its operating profit soar more than threefold.
At stake is not just pole position in the $25 billion video game industry, but dominance in the next generation of DVDs, the commercial viability of Sony's Cell microchips and possibly control over living-room electronics around the world. Sony is looking at a three way console (Sony poured $million$ into developing PS3) competition this November when it's ($400ish) PS3 retails against M$'s ($400ish) xbox360 and Nintindo's Wii.
Sony controls about two-thirds of the current-generation global game console market. Although the game unit accounted for less than 5 percent of the corporation's operating profit in the year ending March 31, the division's performance has sweeping effects on the Sony group.
Toshiba-M$ (the HD dvd guys) are poised directly against Sony (the Blue Ray dvd guys.) Obviously M$ was insisting Vanguard: Saga of Heroes MUST be portable to M$'s xbox360 (something the Sigil devs have posted will never happen) and respect DX10-Vista only OS (most people will stay with Wxp and DX9c.) Also M$ is pushing a FORCED verification of validity in OS (read no pirated Wxp) and Sigil may not have wanted to install M$/Sony type inspection root kits (the US congress has already passed legislation making it illegal to detect or remove root kits.) Now so far, there have been no Sigil Dev assurances Saga will not show up as playable through the PS3, and it is likely since $oE is doing the CD-dvd marketing it will retail in Blue Ray instead of HD dvd format, the client will be after all over 5GB. Notice a PC component Blue Ray dvd RW player may cost +$1000 while a PS3 including a Blue Ray player may retail $400.
edit:
=======================================================================
Notice THREE of the Top Sigil game designers have quit (? in protest)
* Lawrence "Myrlokar" Poe (EQGM-EQ designer, V:SoH Sr game designer untill March '06, mechanics, combat formulas, contest formulas, build the rulesets for the way spell effects scale throughout the levels, item point system, etc. Basically all the formulas and math on the design side of things In addition to designing the spell/ability tool and the item tool.) While devorced wife Amanda Tarr (formally Poe) promoted from AI/pathing coder to lead programmer. Leaked on the FoH forum.
* Steve "Akkirus" Burke (Sr designer Dec '05 quest team)
* John "Kendrick" Capozzi (champion for rogues, Sr designer June working on the Asian themed continent, Kojan.)
* Keith Parkinson rip Oct 2005.
"The core Vanguard developers belonging to this original vision dubbed in McQuaids Everquest era is fading before our eyes. The recent NDA beta leaks about Vanguards lackluster in engaging content certainly does not help Vanguards current on look and the recent influx of new associate designers with little to no experience have a lot too prove." Only two of the orrig devs are left.
=======================================================================
edit too good to pass up:
"There has never been a release by Sony Online Entertainment that has been incomplete," Smedley said .
I'd agree with most of this except
I highly doubt vanguard will be released in blue ray or soley in blue ray, i doubt blueray will be adopted on mass scale for at least another 2-3 years, And i doubt the release of V:SOH will be delayed that long ....this is of course assuming that blueray even hits in 2006, which might not happen to begin with.. samsung and sony seem to be constantly pushing back their debut products' release dates .. and the price of the blue ray players will be in a very high range, alienating most potential buyers for the first year or two .. not to mention it will be released as a DVD-like media player first .. not a PC storage medium ...
second the current market share sony has of the console systems is actually closer to 42% , microsoft 36% and nintendo 22%
the PROJECTED market share of the new wave of systems, is around 50.2% but this is HIGLY inflated by research organizations trying to pump up sony's validity as a market leader in the next wave of consoles, to offset or COMBAT the falling stock prices which started after information was leaked that currently the ps3 is at a manufacturing cost of 900$
negative press also is revolving around the fact that sony will have to cripple its cell chip ( where the original spec included a 9 core design recently replaced by a 7 SPE design much less powerful than the originally specified design, and rumours saying it to be re-constituted yet again as a chip even less powerfull than the current dual core designs which are being released in the PC market )
i would suspect the console market share of sony to be closer to the 45-46% mark, after the next wave of consoles hits ....even an 3-4% increase is probably a generous figure with all the anti-SOE rhetoric flying around these days ...and its possible they may even lose ground
I'm willing to give Sigil the benefit of the doubt and see how this plays. From everything Brad has stated regarding this all SOE is doing is providing packaging, marketting and *hardware* support. Sigil remains in control of the development, concept and QA for the game.
All SOE hate asside they are generally very good at marketting games. After all everyone claims SWG sucked and somehow SOE kept that going with over 250k subscribers for 3 years till LEC and SOE decided to roll NGE live. They managed to keep EQ1 going to this day and EQ2 is growing despite many people saying SOE is the kiss of death.
Since they won't have any control over what the GAME is like I'm not overly concerned. From what I understand from talking to some friends at Sigil MS didn't just want to change the 'live' date they also wanted to change some of the fundamental game design. Brad was like 'not with my game buddy' and moved to re-acquire the publishing rights by signing a deal with SOE that doesn't allow them any control over the IP at all. So now Sigil owns everything. SOE is just a contractor hired to do distribution and provide hardware and network support.
Sounds like a win-win to me. SOE gets to be associated with a solid game for a change and Sigil doesn't have to deal with the headache of building a network infrastructure or marketting team.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
I went from WOW to EQ2 and I would rate SOE way above Blizzard in how they treat their players, Devs communication etc.. If anything Blizzard are the real money grubbing bunch , releasing content for the extreme raiders and faction grind for everyone else to keep the $ubscriptions rolling in.
you must NOT have experience with SOE ...
This is going to be interesting. All the whiners out there who have sworn off SOE products but have been looking forward to Vanguard are in a bit of a pickle so it seems.
Will these whiners stick to their word, i think not, we will see many hypocrites emerge when Vanguard launches and all the SOE bashers will be the first to sign up and play.