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Why does everyone hate SOE?
Sindar_Ethir
Member Posts: 13
Was it just SWG? Cuz I gotta tell ya, VSOH looks sweet.
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No, it started with EQ 1. Like EA, they have no business being in the MMORPG field, but for much different reasons.
They're are several reasons why I don't like SOE:
1. PlanetSide- I logged into my account and bought the game for my account specifically through thier website... Couldn't log on for 3 days because I had to get my account for planetside activated and the system was bugged those 3 days.
They make you wait 2 minutes to exit if you don't hit alt-f4
Tried to cancel my subscription. Took an hour to find out were on thier site. After I was pretty confident that I canceled it. I was charged the next month (The month after any charges that I should have been charged). I check and it says I still have a subscription, and the jack ass complaint responder guy said nothing he can do since it hasn't been authorized by the system. He responded to my email a week later, and was extremely pessemistic and deragatory.
2. EQ2- I sat and waited 18 hours to play the trial on the game. Couldn't log on due to an authentication issue in there servers in which you had to register for thier forums and activate it for EQ2 "Since I already had a forum handle" After getting a free copy of the game I tried again and it worked only to be disappointed by how boring the game is.
I have a like/hate relationship with them. When the DoF expansion came out for EQ2 I got the preorder. I wanted the goodies. I logged into the test server the day before DoF went live and /claimed the goodies. They where lost on my worthless test character. I couldn't claim them with my main character on a real server.
Some might say this was my fault for claiming them and that I should of known. This is not the case though. When you look up your account information on their website it lists all the goodies you get. When you preordered EQ2 itself, you got some lame J-Boots and it says directly on the site that only one character will get them. It did not say that for the DoF items. I made sure to check before claiming them.
Is that the real reason that I hate them? Not at all. I hate them because when I got a hold of a GM to calmly describe to them the situation and that it was their fault for not listing things correctly and how easy it could be to reverse the /claim, they just "hung" up on me (all convo took place via tells and out of no where he just blocks me).
You don't just "hang" up on a customer. So f*ck them. Or at least that GM. His name started with an R.
Sadly, EQ2 is a pretty good game now after all their changes and I have a strong urge to play it. Planetside is pretty good too, I just suck to much to play it. Everything else they have under them is rubbish.
So to make a long post short: Hate them because of their CS, like them because EQ2 pretty good.
Your planetside example could be used for any game by countless people. I don't really think that you can single out SOE for that one as much as I would love to see them singled out.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
To answer your question:
1. Horrible customer service. SOE has a horrible customer service policy and getting any response at all which often isn't the solution can take 24-48 hours for an in-game petition. The GM's often don't bother to read your problem correctly and send you a pre-made response back that doesn't answer your question but gets you off their backs for another 24 hours hoping you will not bother to petition again.
2. They currently seem to lack any vision for their products. They launch a great game however once it is launched they have proven more then once now they are willing to change it up completely in the name of better revenue. SWG was changed dramatically twice to try to draw in a new crowd and EQ 2 has been slowly devolved since launched into a cross between EQ 1 and WoW.
3. Many consider them "greedy". Others would have to explain this one too you because I do not share that outlook.
4. They seem to be roping in any MMO title they can get their hands on now to increase the Station Pass and monopoize the market. This in the long run could really hurt the MMO market.
Also something to note that isn't a hot topic with them yet but I think will be soon. The Station Pass. While this may seem a great bargain for the user in the long run it enables SOE to put out more games at less quality. Knowing they are putting a title on the Station Pass means they can get away with some bad business and development practices and there is going to be alot less grumbling over by the playerbase. This has already begun to happen and I think will only get worse in time.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Most companies don't store Credit Card Info for the protection of its users personal info incase of a hack incident. Re-Occurring billing is advertised to be more convinient, but in reality the company doesn't want the individual to wait a week before resubbing; they want the money the second it runs out.
And alot do...
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
in swg soe deleted my character and my name wasn't avaible, two days after that, i saw a man with my name XD.
in eq2, a quest of desertion was bugged and i can't raise up the lvl of my character more than 18.
in planetside i've paid for expansion, and now my account tell me "your trial period have finished" when i was playing for 2 years...
(srry for my incorrect english)
Your planetside example could be used for any game by countless people. I don't really think that you can single out SOE for that one as much as I would love to see them singled out.
um, i've canceled uo, wow, coh, cov, etc, never had a problem. yet, when i cancel swg i get charged for three bloody months. and i keep calling, emailing and going to the site and cancelling.
oh i think you can lay this one straight on the idiots running soe.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I friend of mine wanted to switch from credit card to game card to pay for the game. He calls up and tried to do this only to be told that there is a charge to switch. How much? THe cost of the 30day card he just bought. No where on any of there sites do they list a charge for this.
When i cancelled Swg they attempted to charge my account for the next 2 months, even when it said on the website that my account was cancelled
I recieved a ban(3 day) on Swg for a complaint i reported over half my inventory disappearing. When i came back my inventory was restored, except that my lightsaber crystals were out of my saber, untuned at a time when there was a huge bug with tuning.
On eq2 i tried to log in one day and it says someone was already using the account. I had not given out my account to anyone. So i call there customer service, i immediately get a 14 day ban. A week later there is a bug post on the forums that alot of people were having this problem, but only the first people that reported this were banned. I immediately called back, demanded to speak to a supervisor and told him off. I cancelled the account(final straw with soe) and instructed my credit card company to not allow any charges and guess what? I got a call that they tried to charge me again, they are really some company.
IMO there are things to complain about with SOE, mostly concerning the complete change in direction of SWG, but you don’t seem to be hitting them and instead seem more interested in knocking SOE to help cover the cracks immerging in “your” game.
SOE started digging it's reputation into a hole with EQ1. They constantly patched the game and didn't announce nerfs or changes to the game. When they DID say anything it was always spin and players caught on to that fast.
EQ was a great game for many of us. I loved it... almost as much as I loved UO (in different ways) To this day I have not been more addicted to any MMO than EQ and UO. However:
Customer service was bad in EQ. Very bad. Not the guides, they were doing their best (I know, I was one) but the actual SOE customer service and, especially, the GM's. Not many people realized this on the boards but the "GM's" at SOE were paid a whopping $10 an hour (in San Diego, mind you) they were basically glorified help desk personnel. Not much help, not much intellect, and a whole LOT of attitude. They tended to piss off players then the Guides would have to come in behind them and calm things down. It was sad how many times when I ran Xegony that I had to reign my server GM in. In fact I wound up contacting SOE and having that particular individual fired because of all the customer angst she caused. My replacement GM, thankfully, had half a brain and things got better.
But my point is this: SOE's got a bad rep because they have horrible customer support. Getting a support rep to actually do anything about a problem is a very painful experience. That and they have a reputation for not really caring about their customers. That problem is only compounded by the fact that their development teams typically ignore their customer feedback as well... to the point that well documented bugs, even bugs where fixes are suggested, remain in the game for months, if not years, at a time. So players have little affection or tollerance for failure from the company because they don't "like" them to begin with.
Thus the hatred. SOE doesn't spawn any friendships with it's players the way Mythic or CCP or many other companies do so their players have a LOT less tollerance for mistakes. And the SWG fiasco has only made those matters worse. A LOT of people have played SWG over the years. Never more than 300k at once... but over the years LOTS of people have tried/played the game. SOE hasn't done themselves any favors with it either.
EQ2 is a very good game but because of their rep SOE is having a hard time getting people to even try it. That and they rushed it to release to 'beat WoW to market' and peeved off a lot of their players out of the gate. So EQ2 is suffering from a bad release rep even though it's now a better game than WoW is.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Haven't played SWG, looked at the forums once, decided not to buy. I had always heard good things abut the game, but they had just nerfed everyone or changed the combat or somehow alienated the entire playerbase so I didn't bother with it.
What I did notice, is that they were deleting all complaints as fast as they humanly could. This is not a good sign.
My low opinion of SOE comes from Planetside, when the server lags, I expect the server admin to deal with it, not lie and do nothing. The issues were isolated by the community, and it turns out had occoured before. SOE made no attempt to deal with it. 1 phone call to their ISP would have been enough. Instead they blamed all the end users. I don't pay money to hire that kind of staff.
They would rather ban the person posting the solution to their problems from posting in their forums than get off their fat arses and make 1 simple phonecall to fix the faults. Very poor.
They deliberately mislead their playerbase. As soon as subcriptions were low, they changed the server interface so that it no longer displays player populations. Underhand.
The developer always knows best. We are going to change your game. You can test the changes, but even if it turns out that after testing all of you (the people who pay for it, own it and play it) would prefer this game not be changed we will change it anyway. Egotistical.
Doughnuts. Expensive subscription fee's are wasted on sending thousands of doughnuts to Pennyarcade.
This companies attitude towards it's clients is pathetic.
I'm not going to tell you that other companies don't share some of or all of the same faults, but a fault is a fault. That other companies do things wrong also doesn't make anything right. There are companies I like less than SOE. And things SOE do that other companies could learn form (StationPass). Overall I don't think it is possible to get branded with a name quite that bad without seriously doing things to deserve it.