You don’t have to be an evil company to make people distrust you. Being stupid, ignorance or greedy are good candidates too. I don’t think SOE are evil.

If it generally was just as simple as to create one good CSR incident to get back peoples trust, companies would not need much of marketing departments anymore. It’s gullible at best.

Originally posted by MumboJumbo

Here's where I'm looking at it. These big publishers/in-house dev companies - I'm more and more inclined to stay away from any/all these peeps (except fifa)

Even AreneNet which is imo seemingly a cool company and excellent in it's interactions with it's community of players - is owned by it's pay-masters at NCSoft.

The problem is these big publishers are in it at the "strategy level" of investment/stock price/assets and capital - so all their decisions are about making this big entity bigger fish than other similar entities eg EA buying up companies to add into a spreadsheet that value somewhere eg IP.

=

I'm less and less interested in spending my leisure time interacting in that corporate cycle. Sure someone has to stump up the cash to invest in mmorpg development, but you look at the corporate culture of SOE and co. and their decisions in the past - it's always been about the big numbers: "How can we make more money out of this, before the next big release?" in the other big genre?

The more mmorpgs target specific niches with specific gameplay - the better imo.

*queasy* 

The "big publishers" are the only ones that can afford government sanctions.  Especially USA sanctions.  Which have gotten worse of late.

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by Fangrim
SOE are the best gaming company out there,best MMORPG's and best customer service.Never had a problem at all and in VG I get a GM contacting me in game sometimes within 5 minutes of sending my ticket,quite simply the best I have ever experienced.Also I have my best MMO memories from playing EQ2 .

When did you start playing VG?  I was there from closed beta until about 6-9 months after release.  SOE basically let it rot for a long time.  I will agree though that I haven't had issues with CS.

I played from release the first time for around 4-6 months but my pc was pretty bad and struggled to run the game,especially when chunking.I went back a few weeks before F2P conversion and stayed for 5-6 months.

Which is longer than any of these 'New' MMO's.To me they are all rubbish.

I want a game I can play for years and the only one I ever found was EQ2.Don't get me wrong I could of probably stuck with VG for years too but I find it hard joining a game when its already been released for years.I have this feeling of beeing too far behind.I guess this is why they make these super easy games now so that people don't get that feeling and can catch up to players that have been there for years in a week or 2.

SOE is a corporation and what the head of Customer Service department is doing doesn't mean anything. It just means maybe the CS department deserves a good bonus. SOE's problem is the fact that their policy (the big guys, the board.. the CEO) they tend to mutate the games they publish/purchase to just grab some cash and not care about them much.

Examples:

EverQuest (post Verant Studio, SoL and PoP expansions destorying the focus of the game)

SWG (the NGE disaster)

Vanguard (they purchased the game from Sigil to park it, at one point it had one dedicated employee to update it. No expansions whatsoever)

PoxNora (they purchased it from Octopi and ruined it in many ways, they kept releasing "Legendaries" to grab as much cash as possible)

MTG Tactics (horrible product with ridiculous money grab online shop)

This being said doesn't mean we can't give SOE the benefit of the doubt. We can, everyone deserves a 10th chance. But I won't hold my breath, I'll be extremely skeptical and won't believe what Smed says until after careful observation. I'm not paying them any penny without knowing for sure they deserve it.

Originally posted by LauraFrost

 

SOE is a corporation and what the head of Customer Service department is doing doesn't mean anything. It just means maybe the CS department deserves a good bonus. SOE's problem is the fact that their policy (the big guys, the board.. the CEO) they tend to mutate the games they publish/purchase to just grab some cash and not care about them much.

 

Examples:

EverQuest (post Verant Studio, SoL and PoP expansions destorying the focus of the game)

SWG (the NGE disaster)

Vanguard (they purchased the game from Sigil to park it, at one point it had one dedicated employee to update it. No expansions whatsoever)

PoxNora (they purchased it from Octopi and ruined it in many ways, they kept releasing "Legendaries" to grab as much cash as possible)

MTG Tactics (horrible product with ridiculous money grab online shop)

 

This being said doesn't mean we can't give SOE the benefit of the doubt. We can, everyone deserves a 10th chance. But I won't hold my breath, I'll be extremely skeptical and won't believe what Smed says until after careful observation. I'm not paying them any penny without knowing for sure they deserve it.

 

Seems you have lots of knowledge about their game failures,I guess you have spent lots of money already and know of these things first hand.See you in EQ Next!

I played EQ for a long time and had a great time.  I played EQ2 for a long time and had a great time.  Played SWG up until the CU, had a pretty good time.  I reopened my ancient EQ account from years ago, and yes I too forgot my original account name and password and secret question.  I asked them over the phone to give me the information so I could play EQ again, and they did.  It took all of about 30 seconds.

I am looking forward to EQ Next and so are you.

Originally posted by LauraFrost

 

SOE is a corporation and what the head of Customer Service department is doing doesn't mean anything. It just means maybe the CS department deserves a good bonus. SOE's problem is the fact that their policy (the big guys, the board.. the CEO) they tend to mutate the games they publish/purchase to just grab some cash and not care about them much.

 

Examples:

EverQuest (post Verant Studio, SoL and PoP expansions destorying the focus of the game)

SWG (the NGE disaster)

Vanguard (they purchased the game from Sigil to park it, at one point it had one dedicated employee to update it. No expansions whatsoever)

PoxNora (they purchased it from Octopi and ruined it in many ways, they kept releasing "Legendaries" to grab as much cash as possible)

MTG Tactics (horrible product with ridiculous money grab online shop)

 

This being said doesn't mean we can't give SOE the benefit of the doubt. We can, everyone deserves a 10th chance. But I won't hold my breath, I'll be extremely skeptical and won't believe what Smed says until after careful observation. I'm not paying them any penny without knowing for sure they deserve it.

 

What you have described is well... business. Despite your dislike for them, they have (generally) done what is needed to make their games profitable, and sustainable. I am not going to say that everything they have done was good (SWG debacle for example), but I will say that they mistakes that they made casued them to lose money (not gain it). They didnt  get anyting over on anyone. Everquest is one of the longest running commercial MMORPGs. It hasnt lasted as long as it has without a lot of effort, from a lot of people. This alone is a testament to the quality of SOE as a publisher.

Having said all of this... SOE is now in the F2P market. In this market 90+% of all the players will NEVER pay anything. They are going to have to do a great job convincing a small amount of players to part with their money. This is a highly competative field, and one where service is a GREAT sales point. You should feel fully justified playing all of their F2P games, and NEVER paying a cent.

Originally posted by Superman0

 

What you have described is well... business. Despite your dislike for them, they have (generally) done what is needed to make their games profitable, and sustainable. I am not going to say that everything they have done was good (SWG debacle for example), but I will say that they mistakes that they made casued them to lose money (not gain it). They didnt  get anyting over on anyone. Everquest is one of the longest running commercial MMORPGs. It hasnt lasted as long as it has without a lot of effort, from a lot of people. This alone is a testament to the quality of SOE as a publisher.

 

Having said all of this... SOE is now in the F2P market. In this market 90+% of all the players will NEVER pay anything. They are going to have to do a great job convincing a small amount of players to part with their money. This is a highly competative field, and one where service is a GREAT sales point. You should feel fully justified playing all of their F2P games, and NEVER paying a cent.

 

I call it bad business because most of these attempts actually is counter-productive. A good business is to make a quality product that would keep your clients/customers happy and keep coming. Most of these updates/policies doomed their products.

The only reason why Elder Scroll franchise/IP is so big is because Bethesda nourished it and took care of it and stick to its roots and philosophy. EverQuest IP, for instnace, could have been much bigger than what it is now if SOE would have done the same.

I dont think "evil" is the right word but they have been clueless at times, and even lying straight out to the players a few times.

But I never had any problems with SOEs support, they always acted fast and fixed the few problems I have reported to them (same goes for my guildies). Restoring lost items and so on.

Originally posted by Burntvet
SOE does not have to be "evil" for me to never do any business with them again. Ever. They just have to be a dishonest company, which they have shown themselves to be, time and again.

I gave soe another shot with DCU but I should have stuck to my guns and not done business with them again after the nge debacle.  I don't think they are evil, but any company that openly lies to its customers and commits out and out fraud on those same customers deserves all the scorn people have heaped onto them.  Its the same as just because Lance Armstrong raised money for cancer doesn't mean we should forgive or forget all the lies he told and all the lives he destroyed protecting those lies.