Some very heated posts have been written about the disappointment  players feel when either the game doesn't live up to their expectations or the developers change something.  Having been a loyal SOE customer for many years and have played all three Everquest titles plus Lords of Everquest, I have some knowledge on the subject.

First let me say this...SOE is made up of many talented and well meaning developers who work damn hard to bring us the games we play.  SOE was a division of Sony Entertainment of America, but now is a division of Sony Computer Entertainment which merges them with the Playstation unit of the company.  SOE itself was created firstly as an online casual games site called the "Station.com" and then Everquest became a huge hit.  Because SOE didn't want the Sony name associated with a huge MMO failure SOE funded Verant where Brad McQuaid was in charge of designing EQ.  Brad did the game design, John Smedley ran the administrative side of things.  With EQ a hit, SOE enveloped Verant like they planned.

A year or two after EQ launched they began plans for Everquest 2.  Brad left to build his dream game Vanguard with Microsoft, and the new producer of EQ began to change the direction of the game,

SWG was released with SOE and at that time Everquest was the biggest MMO on the market.

World of Warcraft launched at the same time as Everquest 2 and completely changed the thinking of Smed and MMO game developers about the achievable success of an MMO.  WoW envy became the downfall of all MMO's.

Everquest 2 being totally and completely different then EQ1 was met with distaste from most EQ1 players, and even though SOE through it's parent companies resources produced a hollywood polished amazing visual MMO, the MMO player community was changing, they wanted more solo, more casual, less death penalty.

Other problems with EQ2 was the engine.  Through total lack of foresight by SOE, they built the engine around an Intel chip which was never produced.  Additionally they coded things like shaders to be done through the CPU rather then the GPU.  Multi-core processors, SLI and other features weren't even conceived.  The game engine was built around a weak video card and a strong single core CPU which was never built.  Currently SOE is working on changing skeletal models, but other major engine changes won't probably ever happen.

SOE made EQ2 their flagship product and pumped some serious money into it at launch.  However like all other SOE games EQ2 was swept aside for the new SOE game. 

Matrix Online was purchased to gain the DC License, but Vanguard was purchased to save Brad's but.

Vanguard was not ruined by SOE, just kept from dying by SOE...Vanguard was obandoned by Microsoft when it was decided MS didn't want to make MMO's and Brad's team was failing to keep on schedule.  Additionally Brad and MS didn't see eye to eye on many things.  Like EQ where Brad broke new ground and expectations were low, Vanguard was hugely expensive, poorly managed and had massive expectation.  SOE will never put huge resources into it, it is a dead duck.

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So where does Everquest 2 stand now?  Their glorious producer has left SOE to pursue something else.  The original devs are re-tasked to premium projects like the Agency.  Smed spends more money on the free card game inside EQ2 then on the actual game. 

The engine is crap, it will never be fixed.  The game is at an all time high in popularity and SOE will not capitalize on it.  Despite it's huge surge in player growth there will be no new servers.  Despite people's pleas there will be no fixes on any grand scale.  Basically the game has been left to be flawed, and not advertised.  Expect to see retail boxes go away eventually. 

Smed doesn't care about it's library of games.  They will languish on the Station Pass while more and more of the business will be giving to third parties.  Eventually customer service will likely be third party.  Unlike Blizzard or Funcom or other MMO developers, SOE is now focused on PS3 platform gaming.  Sony wants to bring all it's departments to bear on winning the console war.  Expect to hear continually hype about PS3 and expect to hear more and more about casual gaming. 

SOE doesn't just ruin their games, they leave them out in the street to die.  Because SOE is actually beholden to Sony and it's greater goals.  Smed is a small time president in a much larger company, and it won't be Americans or British that Sony wants to capture, it's Asia. 

EQ2 is a good game, SOE is a bad MMO developer.  Blizzard knows how to make games AND support them.  Sadly SOE doesn't like gamers.

Welcome to the world of SOE, just sorry it took some many SOE games for you to realize it.

Personally I say let them go for the asian market where they wind up getting 25 percent of the revenue per player as they do in europe or north america.

I'll agree with you bout the focus being switched to the PS3 from SOE's viewpoint mainly becuse its the way forward for MMOs devs

Thank you for the post. It is well thought out and makes sense, it puts a different light on SOE with out all the "$OE SUX!" that you see in other posts.

While I agree with much of what you say on the part of SOE being crap......

..... Blizzard does not know how to make games. WoW sucks, horribly. If you want to kill boars, crabs, and giant owls all day with no storyline or direction at all.. go for it. I personally prefer character development and group play than farming, pvping, and more farming.

EQ2 rules.

Originally posted by Zenasa

While I agree with much of what you say on the part of SOE being crap......

..... Blizzard does not know how to make games. WoW sucks, horribly. If you want to kill boars, crabs, and giant owls all day with no storyline or direction at all.. go for it. I personally prefer character development and group play than farming, pvping, and more farming.

EQ2 rules.

Exactly!  Blizzard has no idea how to make video games, let alone hugely popular ones!  We all wanted desperately to believe that the Warcraft games would be some of the most successful games created thus far, but i think it's time to admit we are just fooling ourselves.  Blizzard doesn't know the first thing about making good games.  5 million-odd subscribers to WoW?  Thats obviously a myth.  A ploy by the Bush Administration to get us all to support his war in Iraq.  Blizzard makes horrible games.  They should definitely change products and start making parkas or something . . .

Hey! Look! At least someone sees it my way. What's your name pal I'll bake you a cake.

Go.. pvp or something? Rofl.

Originally posted by deucallion

 

Originally posted by Zenasa

While I agree with much of what you say on the part of SOE being crap......

..... Blizzard does not know how to make games. WoW sucks, horribly. If you want to kill boars, crabs, and giant owls all day with no storyline or direction at all.. go for it. I personally prefer character development and group play than farming, pvping, and more farming.

EQ2 rules.

 

Exactly!  Blizzard has no idea how to make video games, let alone hugely popular ones!  We all wanted desperately to believe that the Warcraft games would be some of the most successful games created thus far, but i think it's time to admit we are just fooling ourselves.  Blizzard doesn't know the first thing about making good games.  5 million-odd subscribers to WoW?  Thats obviously a myth.  A ploy by the Bush Administration to get us all to support his war in Iraq.  Blizzard makes horrible games.  They should definitely change products and start making parkas or something . . .

It got a chuckle from me 4 stars for this post

Originally posted by Zenasa

While I agree with much of what you say on the part of SOE being crap......

..... Blizzard does not know how to make games. WoW sucks, horribly. If you want to kill boars, crabs, and giant owls all day with no storyline or direction at all.. go for it. I personally prefer character development and group play than farming, pvping, and more farming.

EQ2 rules.

Me too. Totally agree. I hated Wow when I played it and didn't even last the free month.

I am not a fan of WoW, I think the graphics are sickening and the maturity of the playerbase...let's not start.

But the fact remains that Warcraft as a franchise has done very well!  Starcraft anf Diablo...you get the picture.  I think the only game that had a hope of really being a mature, hardcore MMO that would appeal to classic EQ players was Vanguard.  But Brad wanked it up really good.

As for SOE...they seem to continually crap all over everything they touch.  Perhaps this will change now that PS3 pit bosses are pulling Smed's leash.  The fact is pop-games like WoW and Warhammer will always be very successful.  And equally the polish and appropriate hoopla is put out there as well.  For whatever reason SOE doesn't think advertising their products is worth it.  Perhaps legal advised they not advertise because they will just end up pulling a bait and switch or NGE anyway.

For now I sadly report that for old school MMO gamers they best play offline single player games for now if they want quality games that don't dick you about.

I like to base all of my opinion of a game on its graphics
i mean wow's graphics are just so horrible it makes the storyline bad, it makes the battlegrounds bad, it makes the lore bad, it makes everything just bad
totally bad
i mean who wants to kill a hundred boars all day and owls and be stuck in teldrassil all day..
i mean they got quests and stuff to get me to 70 but I'd rather not do them lets just hate on the game
all those content updates and whatnot? they suck
i mean where's the storyline? has anyone here actually played warcraft 3? not i
i mean they make so much money how dare they put any of it into developing their game?!

I have to admit that I hate WOW. I mean I really hate WOW. I just could not get into the game. I however love Blizzard as a company. I do own most of Blizzard’s games, except WOW. If Blizzard were to work on a game with graphics that beat EQ2 or anything up and coming. They would secure the title OWNER OF ALL MMO SUBSCRIBERS.

In my opinion of WOW, WOW was built for lower end systems and casual players. If they can get the techno freaks (me) and hardcore players (me again), they would rule as the top dog for a very long time.

But I have quit all of SOE’s games. And yes you can have my 70+ plat and equipment, for the right price! J

Rajai, you fail. You're not funny, stop talking.

When I said Blizzard doesn't know how to make games, I meant they don't know how to make MMOs. Warcraft strategy and Diablo was good.. but wow? When I started playing Everquest I was sucked in by the amount of character some of the NPCs had, when I play WoW.. every single quest giver sounds the same.. and it's always something along the lines of "Farmer Ted needs 4 fish livers for his stew, go kill them and come back."

WoW is a grindfest to 70, then all you do is farm, raid, and pvp.. and that gets old quick. I have fun making new characters on EQ2.. on WoW I have to do the same carp over again. Kill 10 boars, come back.

Good graphics don't make game good. I don't play WoW anymore! But it is great game. It runs smoothly, nice animations, you can jump, fly, run and dive and the world is not totaly instanced. The class-system is little too dumbed down, theres no reason to craft and "the gear grind" (the only things I hate in WoW)

Tried EQ2 trial while ago and didn't like it.

OP, i can look back on some of your past posts and i can read comments from you that praise SOE, state EQ2 is the best etc etc.  So what i wanna know is why the sudden Jeckyl & Hyde routine.

How am i supposed to take you seriously when you say one thing one day and then another the next.

Originally posted by deucallion

 

Originally posted by Zenasa

While I agree with much of what you say on the part of SOE being crap......

..... Blizzard does not know how to make games. WoW sucks, horribly. If you want to kill boars, crabs, and giant owls all day with no storyline or direction at all.. go for it. I personally prefer character development and group play than farming, pvping, and more farming.

EQ2 rules.

 

Exactly!  Blizzard has no idea how to make video games, let alone hugely popular ones!  We all wanted desperately to believe that the Warcraft games would be some of the most successful games created thus far, but i think it's time to admit we are just fooling ourselves.  Blizzard doesn't know the first thing about making good games.  5 million-odd subscribers to WoW?  Thats obviously a myth.  A ploy by the Bush Administration to get us all to support his war in Iraq.  Blizzard makes horrible games.  They should definitely change products and start making parkas or something . . .

Great, now I have that 'it must have been a typo' song from the Truth ads stuck in my head.