I don't really like John Smedly.  Not just because of what happened over the whole NGE/ToOW fiasco.  What makes me dislike him more is in one of the interview (I think last year??? unsure, saw the link through this site though...), he stated that "sandbox just doesn't work."  This statement shows how narrow-minded he is in designing MMO, and that he won't consider design other than the present dominant system (which almost all SOE games are - level/class system).

So he is speaking to other online game developers?  hmm... I don't like the sound of this....

sandbox does work and theres plenty of proof but i doubt it works very well with Lucas Arts lol.

Originally posted by salvaje

 

Why John Smedley is considered anything but a miserable failure is beyond me.  He and Brad (and it was mainly Brad) had their ONE hit, Everquest. 

 

What's funny about that statement is Brad failed miserably at game making with Vanguard, and it is SOE and John who had to rescue it and are improving it to release standards. So I think you may have it backwards there. From actions shown, I'd say John probably had more to do with EQ being a success than Brad.

Originally posted by Forcan

I don't really like John Smedly.  Not just because of what happened over the whole NGE/ToOW fiasco.  What makes me dislike him more is in one of the interview (I think last year??? unsure, saw the link through this site though...), he stated that "sandbox just doesn't work."  This statement shows how narrow-minded he is in designing MMO, and that he won't consider design other than the present dominant system (which almost all SOE games are - level/class system).

 

So he is speaking to other online game developers?  hmm... I don't like the sound of this....

Perhaps his speech will be called,......

" How to throw away  3 to 4 million dollars in  Subscriptions in one easy step "

or.....

" How to Lie Cheat and steal from your customers and get away with it " ( lol or not in his case ! )

anyone else got any funnys for probable John Smedley speech titles . 

Originally posted by Forcan

I don't really like John Smedly.  Not just because of what happened over the whole NGE/ToOW fiasco.  What makes me dislike him more is in one of the interview (I think last year??? unsure, saw the link through this site though...), he stated that "sandbox just doesn't work."  This statement shows how narrow-minded he is in designing MMO, and that he won't consider design other than the present dominant system (which almost all SOE games are - level/class system).

 

So he is speaking to other online game developers?  hmm... I don't like the sound of this....

Thats like allowing Helios to teach mmo developement to hopeful developer students...

Oops, too late, allready happened

In other news, John Smedley has been officialy uncovered by the MMO commnuity as the legitimate anti-christ. Thats right, in confirmed reports contained across star wars fansites acoss the nerdiverse, Smedley has indeed been named the son of satan.

When asked to comment, John confirmed that "all bad things ever in history are my fault, I did them all on purpose. I am especially proud  of war, famine and disease although my crowning glory is of course the NGE. That one was a hoot."

perhaps if they put lsd in the water fountains people will enjoy it.

Originally posted by summitus

 

Originally posted by Forcan

I don't really like John Smedly.  Not just because of what happened over the whole NGE/ToOW fiasco.  What makes me dislike him more is in one of the interview (I think last year??? unsure, saw the link through this site though...), he stated that "sandbox just doesn't work."  This statement shows how narrow-minded he is in designing MMO, and that he won't consider design other than the present dominant system (which almost all SOE games are - level/class system).

 

So he is speaking to other online game developers?  hmm... I don't like the sound of this....

Perhaps his speech will be called,......

 

" How to throw away  3 to 4 million dollars in  Subscriptions in one easy step "

or.....

" How to Lie Cheat and steal from your customers and get away with it " ( lol or not in his case ! )

anyone else got any funnys for probable John Smedley speech titles . 

One thing Smed is good at, it's sugar-coating a big mistake.  It has taken them this long to even start to admit any bad decisions or missteps in the NGE fiasco.  They blame Lucas Arts, they blame the testers, they blame the video game market in general and when that doesn't work they blame the subscribers... somehow this is what we asked for.

I know a lot of people don't like the guy for different reasons.  My issue with his is the attitude he has shown several times that the developers know better than us what we want from a game.

LOL, i get the e-mail alert and saw smeds name, so i was like, ill bet only the soe haters posted to this. looks like i was right. Do the SOE Haters look for any posts regarding Smedley to post things that have been said hundreds of times before? The fact is, Smedley makes SOE money, alot of money, and probably isnt goin anywhere. And ppl say that all SOE games are crap. funny, i just got a mmo magazine in the mail, and its readers choice awards rated EQ2 as the best fantasy mmo of 2007, as well as best MMO of 2007 and its expansion tied for first for best expansion of the year. Now are ur opinions based on ur hatred for Smedley, or did u actually play these SOE games?

Yea, u can blast me back for my opinions, but i am NOT an SOE hater. I enjoy some of their games. The 20 something posts before mine, think they are the voice for the mmo community. I guess whatever makes them happy.

coporatethief.ytmnd.com/ 

Worst President in the business bar none.  Pretty obvious how bad he is just by looking at SOE's games, the last major success was EQ1 and we all know how long that was ago.  

He is most famous for the SWG disaster.  Nothing like something like that anchoring down your resume.  I would not hire him as a GM, let alone a president.  I just can't believe the suits at Sony are that ignorant of the market to let him continue. 

To the ludicrous post about EQ2 being the best game of 2007, even Eve has a larger playerbase than EQ2, how in the world does that speak well for that game?  It is clear from that observation you have no clue what you are talking about.   

By the way, I don't dislike SOE at all, but it obvious to anyone that looks at what Smedley has done for SOE since EQ1.  Heck you could put a bunch of monkies in a room and they would end up doing better. 

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by salvaje

 

Why John Smedley is considered anything but a miserable failure is beyond me.  He and Brad (and it was mainly Brad) had their ONE hit, Everquest. 

 

What's funny about that statement is Brad failed miserably at game making with Vanguard, and it is SOE and John who had to rescue it and are improving it to release standards. So I think you may have it backwards there. From actions shown, I'd say John probably had more to do with EQ being a success than Brad.

After paying several million dollars for a game the Smed had no idea was in as bad of shape as it was, they had to try and fix it.  They are doing it in the same way they fixed EQ2, by making it more like WoW.  That pretty much sums up the Smed's entire business philosophy, 'Copy WoW'.

SOE currently has more games than they had four years ago, but they have a little over half the customers they had back then.  That isn't a success story, and losing that many customers would have meant the removal of the folks in charge of almost any company that wasn't part of the gaming industry or the film industry.

Originally posted by Obee

 

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by salvaje

 

Why John Smedley is considered anything but a miserable failure is beyond me.  He and Brad (and it was mainly Brad) had their ONE hit, Everquest. 

 

What's funny about that statement is Brad failed miserably at game making with Vanguard, and it is SOE and John who had to rescue it and are improving it to release standards. So I think you may have it backwards there. From actions shown, I'd say John probably had more to do with EQ being a success than Brad.

 

After paying several million dollars for a game the Smed had no idea was in as bad of shape as it was, they had to try and fix it.  They are doing it in the same way they fixed EQ2, by making it more like WoW.  That pretty much sums up the Smed's entire business philosophy, 'Copy WoW'.

SOE currently has more games than they had four years ago, but they have a little over half the customers they had back then.  That isn't a success story, and losing that many customers would have meant the removal of the folks in charge of almost any company that wasn't part of the gaming industry or the film industry.

 

I find this part of your reply false. Im not here to say John is niether a good or bad person, i just think what you reply'd to is false without factual proof. If you cant show it, i would suggest no commenting on a subject like that. If you do have proof, then show me, and i will retract my statement.

Originally posted by mackdawg19

Originally posted by Obee

 

Originally posted by Zorvan

Originally posted by salvaje

 

Why John Smedley is considered anything but a miserable failure is beyond me.  He and Brad (and it was mainly Brad) had their ONE hit, Everquest. 

 

What's funny about that statement is Brad failed miserably at game making with Vanguard, and it is SOE and John who had to rescue it and are improving it to release standards. So I think you may have it backwards there. From actions shown, I'd say John probably had more to do with EQ being a success than Brad.

 

After paying several million dollars for a game the Smed had no idea was in as bad of shape as it was, they had to try and fix it.  They are doing it in the same way they fixed EQ2, by making it more like WoW.  That pretty much sums up the Smed's entire business philosophy, 'Copy WoW'.

SOE currently has more games than they had four years ago, but they have a little over half the customers they had back then.  That isn't a success story, and losing that many customers would have meant the removal of the folks in charge of almost any company that wasn't part of the gaming industry or the film industry.

 

I find this part of your reply false. Im not here to say John is niether a good or bad person, i just think what you reply'd to is false without factual proof. If you cant show it, i would suggest no commenting on a subject like that. If you do have proof, then show me, and i will retract my statement.

 A couple months ago, the Smed did an interview with a website where it was said that EQ is still SOE's largest game with around 250K subscribers.  The only other game SOE has that has anything near a healthy population of players is EQ2.  Vanguard, SWG, Planetside, and MxO are all pretty much life support games.

The last press release where SOE gave any actual indication of how many customers they have was around four years ago when they claimed to have over 800K active subscribers.  Every press release since then has stated "hundreds of thousands" active subscribers.  SOE has lost a large number of subscribers in the past four years (they lost around 200K with SWG alone).  At the time of the 800K+ subscriber number, EQ was announced to have between 450K-500K subscribers.  EQ itself has lost 200-250K subscribers in the past four years.  Combined with SWG's numbers, SOE has lost 400K-450K subscribers, roughly half of their highest ever subscription numbers.  Between Vanguard, EQ2, and the Station Access Pass, SOE can probably add another 200-250K subscribers.  That would put them quite nicely in the 600K range of customers, which is a little more than half of what they used to have.

At any rate, in the past four years the company has two more games and fewer subscribers.  That means they have higher expenses and less revenue.  In almost any other industry, that would make the folks who have been making the decisions over the past four years very nervous about their future with the company.

Worthless speech will be made.

Smed harbors the real WMD's.  Weapons of MMO Destruction!

It doesn't say much about the ION event if they pick Smedley as the keynote speaker. Every game SOE has produced or managed or published since classic EQ has not lived up to expectations as far as profitability or popularity. Unless Smedley is speaking on how not to screw up a MMOG, then he has nothing to offer.

Originally posted by Forcan

So he is speaking to other online game developers?

No, i think the ION conference is mainly intended for Producers and the Corporate Business side of mmo gaming - NOT how to design and build good games.  

The GDC/IGDC and GamaSutra does that.  

ION (formerly OGDC) didn't spring up spontaneously like the GDC/IGDC did, from game designers and players getting together to share knowledge.  ION was started as a pure business venture, as a way to cash in on the MMOG "phenomenon".  So not too surprising they'd invite Smedley, someone who personifies their view of gaming.

Originally posted by Flummoxed

 

Originally posted by Forcan

So he is speaking to other online game developers?

No, i think the ION conference is mainly intended for Producers and the Corporate Business side of mmo gaming - NOT how to design and build good games.  

The GDC/IGDC and GamaSutra does that.  

ION (formerly OGDC) didn't spring up spontaneously like the GDC/IGDC did, from game designers and players getting together to share knowledge.  ION was started as a pure business venture, as a way to cash in on the MMOG "phenomenon".  So not too surprising they'd invite Smedley, someone who personifies their view of gaming.

 

That may be the case (since I have no knowledge about ION/OGDC), but I still don't think inviting Smedley is a good thing overall.

From the overview at http://www.ionconference.com/, it was stated that that the conference is for online game developers and business leaders.  So I take it that the conference will not only focus on the business side, but some development related issue (ingame economy, player psychology, etc..).  I know Smedley probably will be speaking on the business side, but it will be scary if other corporations pick up his method of business....

First, anyone who thinks SWG was any good at release or at any point after release instantly loses all credibility with me :).

Second, Smed is wiser than McQuaid. Smed might not design games, but he runs them ok. SOE just got run over by Blizzard/Vivendi is all that happened to keep subs down... as did everyone else.

Third, I'm interested to hear what he has to say, since he's speaking to his peers about the business side of things, and if there is one thing that is worrying me (especially with CodeMasters assuming control of Jumpgate Evolution), is the dreaded words: "Free To Play" and "Microtransactions".

Last I heard, Smed was thinking that switching to microtransactions is the way of the future (it makes more money off gullible idiots). Just like I don't gamble in vegas, I don't plan on buying piecemeal things in an online game I won't be playing in a year or two. 15 bucks a month covers my entertainment value just fine. Plunking down more just to keep afloat in those games? Not happening. Not to mention the dregs of society you allow in with "Free To Play".