SOE hate

[Cheddar]

Seriously, are we fucking 13 years old and talking about Metallica making a motherfucking video? What in anyway makes you think this fucking site or schild has been or is being paid by SOE or any other company? I don't see SOE ad banners everywhere. You don't see Star Wars Galaxies Starter Kits sponosoring every page.

We get fuckall for writing on this site. Occasionally, someone will pay us for ad space. Otherwise, this is something Shockeye and Schild pay out of their pockets for.

Are you saying this because schild got a trip to Austin to see the NGE before it got released? I'd have done that. In a fucking heartbeat. It's not often you see someone stupid enough to pay the air fare of people who generally speaking talk more shit about them than homophobes talk about La Cages Aux Folles. This is somehow a bad thing? How is that selling out? Did he come back and say "SOE IS DA GREATEST BUY ALL THEIR STUFFZZZ LOLXZOR!"

I'll take the tag "SELL OUT" when I'm drawing a motherfucking check from someone AND not saying what I think about them. Before that, keep it in fucking high school.

I explained what I was talking about.  It was a snide comment I made in another thread.  I did not realize it would set all this off... shit you people keep chasing me back to Lurker status.  Or I chase myself to it... or something something.

Sorry.

[Signe]

I wish I hadn't used those words "sell out".  I didn't mean to imply anything about money.  It was just bad wording. 

Just to make one thing clear, however... I would sell you all up the river for a pack of cigarettes. 

I really would.

Except for PopTart.  I'd just make her smoke with me.  At gun point, if necessary.

[squirrel]

Squirrel, I'm skipping the rest of your post because this situation is considered unethical and worthy of debate in a way that Mourning and Horizons wasn't. Also, if this had happened with Ryzom or something no one would have given a shit and everyone would have lolled at the french...again. Like I said before, I'm tired of being irrational.

Oh and thanks, i thought only IGN and WoW boards insulted people with noobkins. Yer sure leet. or something.

Regrettably, I thought I was being original and cute because you share a name with a small woodland creature. I don't read IGN or the WoW boards. /sadf

Well, you're wiser than I, although i don't read IGN i do find myself on the WoW boards.

The point being from my perspective that i don't think SOE was evil in there attempt to make a better game. They screwed it up big-time in my opinion but whatever, that's their perogative. But the expansion issue is one that is not highlighted enough in these discussions. At some point you know there was a meeting where it was decided to release the expansion despite the fact that the NGE was looming, and unannounced, and would render 85% of the expansion irrelevant. That is unethical and in some industries illegal. To bring this to light and be angry about it is not irrational. To defend a firm with this kind of business practice, well, that defines irrational for me. YMMV obviously.

[Righ]

SOE needs to embrace a service organization model. If they're watching, perhaps this will help:

http://www.ouellette-online.com/ITservice.html

Think about the Disney corporation. If you take an unsatisfactory product back to the Disney store and for some reason start being Mr. Angry, the sales assistant won't look all flustered, look around the store for help, panic, stutter, and tell you he needs to get his manager. Even the lowly assistants are well trained and empowered. He'll be calming, and will say the right things, and offer replacements, refunds and support.

Almost without exception, the online games industry is not like this.

[schild]

To bring this to light and be angry about it is not irrational.

If even half of the online gamers knew how to be civilizard I'd agree.

To defend a firm with this kind of business practice, well, that defines irrational for me. YMMV obviously.

SOE and LA invested more money into a dying game and tried something new. It was spectacularly mismanaged at launch. I don't care about the ethical side of the situation and I'm not defending them for that. I defend solely based on the fact they put their balls right in front of the barrel when the collective finger was on the trigger. I'm not selling out or going soft, I'm just being reasonable. Even if it's unethical I'd like to see companies throwing money around wishy washy instead of turning the online gaming industry into an extension of plain jane EA console world.

[Cheddar]

But this sets the industry BACK.  It creates x amount of jaded customers, and shows that throwing money into a dying game is futile (regardless of the unique circumstances).  Investors in the future will be more nervous to save dying MMOGs, and this will be the example. 

[schild]

WoW created a buffer zone for fuckups. Seriously.

[Righ]

Even if it's unethical I'd like to see companies throwing money around wishy washy instead of turning the online gaming industry into an extension of plain jane EA console world.

If you still think I'm selling out, fine, but I'll be over here enjoying my console games (and Fate).

Heh. Heh heh. Yes, I'm grinning.

[Nyght]

Its not that complicated.  People paid in advance for multiple months and were not offered a refund or recourse to keep the existing game.

The entire argument hinges on whether or not the changed game is the same product.

If you believe that it is the same product, then no problem.

If it is in fact found to be a different product, then it can be classified as a bait and switch, which is actionable under consumer law in many states.

At the very least, it is easy to see how people that feel it is a different product find SOE actions unethical.

How bad the rest of the industry is or whether the game would been shut down or not have no bearing on this (especially in the case of a shutdowns because then they would be force by law to give refunds).

And yes Schild, you did say things about the game demo that were unusually positive for this site and it did influence a lot of people. I saw the effects reflected out in many other places. Many of those folks now find they are not in agreement with you. Life goes on. Welcome to hte hate.

[HaemishM]

I think we need to remember back to the days of Hurricane Katrina for the answer to this conundrum.

See, never blame on malice what plain old incompetence will explain.

The NGE shit, changing the game 2 weeks after an expansion? THAT'S SOE. I've been saying this shit for fucking years. YEARS. I got my cherry in this regard busted by SOE with EQ1. And you know what? I vowed then that I would never buy another one of their fucking products. I've stuck to it. They don't get my money. I even gave them the chance with the NGE, knowing what would probably happen (though thankfully, I didn't pay them any money for it).

And they still fucked it up. Like Blizzard, they have no idea how to run a service. They just plain do not have the knowledge, expertise or wherewithal to do so. Sorry, Blackguard, Smed, Raph. I'm sure you are all nice guys in person. But your company is the equivalent of the village fucking idiot. With pussing, oozing sores, masturbating furiously in the middle of the street while everyone with half a fucking brain tries hard not to look at you. And the SOE customers? You dumb motherfuckers are the helpful charity people, who come in and try to teach the retard not to piss his pants and jerk the chicken in public, thinking that somehow he will change.

HE WON'T, no matter how many accounts you pay for. Fuckheads.

I don't know if it starts with the Head Pigfucking Poobah Smedley or if it's somewhere in the layers of corporate-mandated middle management, or if it's a matter of incompetence at the lowest levels. But somewhere, something always gets missed, ignored or just plain thought irrelevant. Like, oh, not fucking the crafters directly in the pooper when you implement your FPS engine. Or doing something like actually TESTING THE FUCKING ENGINE before pushing it live. Come on, TWO WEEKS?

So in the land of incompetence, pigfucking isn't something malicious, it's just what they do. Guess what, customers? YOU ARE THE PIGGIE. OINK MOTHERFUCKING OINK. You enabled this shit for years, it's useless to complain about it now. SOE has had at least 4 years since I left EQ1 to realize how incompetently they manage player bases, but they haven't and they never will. I can't blame someone whose first MMOG was SWG, unless they hang around for 2 years, because MMOG players should know better.

Frankly, making fun of SOE is sometimes fun, but really, it's old hat. Better than me and anyone on here has tried and tried to "fix" the problem that is SOE and it ain't getting fixed. Once a pigfucker, always a pigfucker.

Blackguard, I feel for you. Being the community manager in any MMOG is a thankless, shitty, soul-crushing job. But being a CM for an SOE game? That's like being the boil inspector at a goddamn leper camp for syphilis sufferers. You're a sick man, and I like that about you.

Smed, how you doing? /wave You're a pigfucker. I give you the same challenge I do your old buddy McQuaid. Post on this board. See how people really feel about you in particular as the avatar of SOE. You really are the lemming in the crosshairs and if you would stop saying shit like you did in that Gamespy or Gamespot or some other fucking fellatio site the other day and come correct with stuff, you might not have insignificant pissants like myself making pigfucker avatars of you.

But all of this has been said before. This industry keeps on keeping on because WE STILL PAY FOR IT TO BE THIS WAY. No amount of piss and vinegar and insults I, or schild or Righ or Signe or Cheddar or squirrel or Lum or Joe or Poppinfresh or any of a host of others will mean fuckall other than hurting some individual human being's feelings until we stop buying what they are selling us, thus forcing them to make something we want.

[HaemishM]

And another thing.

If it wasn't SOE's game or the company SOE that schild has been talking about, NO ONE would have said a thing about sell out. SOE gets a massive metric fuckton of well-deserved (IMO) hate. But if it had been Mythic that had flown schild out to see a build of Warhammer Online, would anyone's panties be in a twist?

If it had been ME that had been flown to SOE, would I be called a sellout?

[schild]

And yes Schild, you did say things about the game demo that were unusually positive for this site and it did influence a lot of people. I saw the effects reflected out in many other places. Many of those folks now find they are not in agreement with you. Life goes on. Welcome to hte hate.

A few weeks ago, I decided to not play it for realz until colission was in. If my voice meant anything, half of these fuckers wouldn't have been playing WoW. LEMMINGS.

LEMMINGS

LEMMINGS

LEMMINGS



I didn't say the NGE was the cat's meow. I didn't actually say it was fun. I said it was more fun than what SWG was before (HI, LOW BAR) and I said people should support them because they tried to CHANGE. If people are mad at me because of that, fuck em. I don't want fair weather fans.

[Surlyboi]

And another thing.

If it wasn't SOE's game or the company SOE that schild has been talking about, NO ONE would have said a thing about sell out. SOE gets a massive metric fuckton of well-deserved (IMO) hate. But if it had been Mythic that had flown schild out to see a build of Warhammer Online, would anyone's panties be in a twist?

Only if he seemed to felate mythic as much as he's seemed to felate SOE for simply "trying something different". Trying something different for SOE is like Manson deciding he'll pick another Beatles song to write on the walls in other people's blood; it's a bullshit proposition from go. With all your SOE beef, you of all people should identify.
 

If it had been ME that had been flown to SOE, would I be called a sellout?

I wouldn't call you a sellout at all. Full of shit, perhaps. Deluded and cracked out, certainly. But then, I wouldn't call Schild a sellout either, just far too forgiving of the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

[d4rkj3di]

I was in the "Never going to play SWG again" camp until schild gave up the info in the NGE.  It did sound interesting, and I agreed that 15 dollars was worth it to check it out and to support SOE for taking a risk.  However, after 30 days I cancelled because I simply cannot justify rewarding incompetence.  Maybe in 6 months I'll toss another 15 dollars at it, but right now it's barely playable.  Then again, in 6 months, I could be involved in some new shiny, smacking the buttons to get the pellets.

[El Gallo]

SoE is not worth hating.  Really, hating SoE at this point is like hating the Washington Generals. 

SWG and EQ2 have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only person with any degree of talent and vision (however misguided) at that company was Brad McQuaid.  SoE had market position and two bites at the second generation apple, one of it with the first generation king's IP and the other with the most valuable IP in the gaming universe.  Nevertheless, they got thier asses utterly reamed, and rightfully so.  Because they can't make games for shit.  Every time anyone from SoE has opened their trap since then has done nothing but prove that they don't understand why they got assreamed and they don't have the talent to stop it even if they had the vision to do so, which they lack.

So, yeah.  They ripped off their customers by selling a SWG expansion while the NGE was already ready to go.  They fucking disgraced anybody who has ever played a role playing game when Smedley dropped to his knees, sucked Pat Robertson's cock and banned Mystere.  They've done all that and more.

But who cares?  Hating SoE is like hating the schoolyard bully from elementary school as a forty year old.  It's like hating Menudo.  It's like hating Glitchless.  SoE is simply irrelevant now. 

[Blackguard]

If it is in fact found to be a different product, then it can be classified as a bait and switch, which is actionable under consumer law in many states.

Rather than comment on something I'm not really capable or qualified to comment on (that is, Star Wars Galaxies in general, as I do not currently work on the project, nor have I in the past), I'll comment on what exactly scares the piss out of me every time I read the above statement (and believe me, I've seen variations of that statement for years now)...

Oh what a pickle this entire genre of gaming would be in if such a thing were to come to pass. It's not the implications that my company could be harmed from such a situation that scares me, it's the fact that if changing a game were actionable, massively multiplayer games would die out entirely. Think about it. We put these things out the door and update them constantly because the player-base demands it.

Changes would never be made if we could simply release a game and let it sit, surviving by the very nature of its existence. If we didn't change MMOGs after release, they would survive for a brief period of time before fizzling out and amount to massive wastes of development money (these things cost tens of millions of dollars these days, and don't start turning a profit for years after their release in most cases).

If a lawsuit of this nature were ever filed and fulfilled, development studios would put the kibosh on changing the games at all, would never make a new MMOG, and we would all (developers and players alike) have to watch a genre die out before it even hit puberty.

[Blackguard]

And on a lighter note, half my time reading this thread was spent staring at Righ's WoWPod avatar.

[Margalis]

If it is in fact found to be a different product, then it can be classified as a bait and switch, which is actionable under consumer law in many states.

You pay per month. If you subscribe to the NYT and it changes to a skin mag you cancel. Same deal here.

[Surlyboi]

I doubt the actionability of changing gameplay would doom MMOs. Not that it might not be taken to the extreme as everything else is in this great land of ours, but what happened with SWG was essentially a rip-it-up-and-start-again deal which didn't just change gameplay a little. It altered the game's core concepts. Should you guys be taken to court for that? Who knows? But it is a fairly one-sided renegotiation of the contract you had with your playerbase, regardless of your intentions to keep the game viable.

And I agree with you to a point, Margalis. I'd drop it if I was paying for it, but there are people out there who have a lot more riding on it than just a game. Comparing it to something like the NYT turning into a skin mag is a bit of a false comparison. It'd be more akin to the editors and columnists at the NYT being told after working there for two years that the paper was gonna go all T&A all the time and they could either write articles about the T&A or they could quit.

[squirrel]

If it is in fact found to be a different product, then it can be classified as a bait and switch, which is actionable under consumer law in many states.

You pay per month. If you subscribe to the NYT and it changes to a skin mag you cancel. Same deal here.

Really? So the expansion pack which promised fixes and additions to classes that didn't exist 14 days after it was released is somehow exempt because the main product is subscription model? I don't think so. Bad analogy there.

Note that i'm not saying what they did was illegal. Just incredibly fucking nasty.

A better analogy would be an ASP software provider. If i provided you with administration tools for your business as a service (think salesforce.com) and i released an expansion/upgrade that you paid for promising it fixed or improved features x,y,z - you can bet your ass i'm getting sued if i turn around and remove features x,y,z from the main product 2 weeks later.

[heck]

You can call me a sell out, but as I said above the reality is that I'm tired of fighting the hard fight.

And blaming players is an easy fight  :-D

[schild]

You can call me a sell out, but as I said above the reality is that I'm tired of fighting the hard fight.

And blaming players is an easy fight  :-D

I see what you're getting at and you're wrong. Blaming players is harder than blaming devs. I'm a player, you see, it's my money too. And I spend a lot of money on the gaming industry. I'd much rather blame the developers. But here's the problem - they are players also. What I need to do is get in touch with a company that makes really really really shitty games. I mean stuff like Aeon Flux and ask them if they wake up in the morning and dread going to work. Or if they know what they're making is shitty but they do it anyway and comprimise the whole integrity of the thing. At the end of the day, the people who set the low bar effect the industry more than the people who set the high bar. It's easier to reach a medium than succeed. The problem is that gamers buy the low bar stuff. Thus making it ok for those fuckers to keep cranking out crap. As Haemish said, we're enablers.

[Samwise]

there are people out there who have a lot more riding on it than just a game. Comparing it to something like the NYT turning into a skin mag is a bit of a false comparison. It'd be more akin to the editors and columnists at the NYT being told after working there for two years that the paper was gonna go all T&A all the time and they could either write articles about the T&A or they could quit.

The difference is that if you quit your job, your family goes hungry.  If you quit your MMOG, your family gets to see you again.

[Triforcer]

As a law student, based on watching my fellow risk-averse law students (christ, I just played poker for five hours with six other students, none of us were eliminated out or had more than +- 20% of our starting chips when we stopped), Blackguard is right about the consequences of a successful "you nerfed my class/sword/favorite zone" lawsuit.  No in-house counsel in their right mind would let their company even MAKE an MMO if these kinds of things even gained the slightest bit of traction. 

That being said, it doesn't mean that judges will see this as any different than any other consumer product...I'm writing my 3L thesis on future cyber/consumer law as it applies to MMOs and frankly I am as apprehensive as Blackguard.

[Margalis]

Really? So the expansion pack which promised fixes and additions to classes that didn't exist 14 days after it was released is somehow exempt because the main product is subscription model? I don't think so. Bad analogy there.

Note that i'm not saying what they did was illegal. Just incredibly fucking nasty.

Yes, it was nasty.

The expansion pack thing is interesting. In general the MMORPG pay model doesn't do a good job accounting for what the box sales and sub fees are for. Is the box fee just what you pay for the priveledge of then subscribing? It isn't really clear what you are paying for.

I do think people who bought expansions deserve that money back. I was under the impression that people could get refunds for the most recent expansion.

This is a hairy subject because live updates are at the heart of MMORPGS. People want and expect live updates. What about the people who complain when an overpowered class that they played is nerfed?

Comparing it to something like the NYT turning into a skin mag is a bit of a false comparison. It'd be more akin to the editors and columnists at the NYT being told after working there for two years that the paper was gonna go all T&A all the time and they could either write articles about the T&A or they could quit.

That sort of thing happens all the time. It's not nice but it's legal.

IMO MMORPGs need to make it VERY clear what you are getting: you pay for the priveledge to play. They own your characters, your items, everything in the game. They can change whatever they want at any time. Everything you "earn" in game belongs to them. It's a fantasy they control and you pay to take part in. If something changes dramatically, the most they owe you is that months sub fees pro-rated and any future pre-paid sub fees should you choose to cancel because of those changes.

Now how does that square with a box fee? I don't know. It doesn't really.

A lot of this just comes down to EULAs. Most EULAs now basically say the software doesn't have to do anything at all, it doesn't have to work, it can be malicious.


Edit: This is why I keep saying that games where they sell items for cash are a terrible idea. In that case the gamer can make the argument that they DO own that Sword of Ass Kicking and when you nerfed it you were destroying something you didn't own. That's a Pandora's Box waiting to be opened.

[Venkman]

This thread cracks me up. It's the microcosm of the whole problem. There are people who only want to talk about hating SOE for how they rolled this out, and those who become labelled as fanbois of SOE for trying to talk about what the actually NGE is (or for spouting the heresy that is the business side of things, or trying to understand the bigger picture, or any action that doesn't automatically, blindly, and Patriotically side with players of a game almost nobody here was playing because of the things that made the NGE required in the first place).

You know what I hate? I hate the fact that liking a game can ostracize a player. Yes, sometimes, it's a timing thing, like some poor schmuck who says he likes SWG two days after the NGE gets patched. Sucker.

I'm just glad this isn't really the case here as much as it was in the predecessors. More inclusions means more attention means better discussions with people who know stuff.

[Typhon]

If it had been ME that had been flown to SOE, would I be called a sellout?

Yes.  But that's because you don't let your excited show, so I would have assumed that you sold out.  I would have used the term "whore".

With schild, I kept my mouth shut because, well, schild gets excited about things (c.f. PSP).  I got the same feeling that Signe did, but I think the proper thing to accuse schild of is "being a slut".  I don't think he got paid/promised anything, I think Smed and Raph murmured sweet/smart nothings in his ear and next thing you know he's got his skirt over his head.  He came back to f13 with stars in his eyes, not understanding why we don't think Smed is dreamy.

That said, it's kinda tough to beat up on schild with a clear conscious when I agree that SOE is trying to do the right thing, i.e. trying to make the game what it should have been from the beginning - something like what we saw in the movies and not an Aunt Beru simulator.  Unfortunately, these changes ended up being very destructive to many playstyles.  People hate change.

Y'all put alot of time into this site, if you'd like to take it to a place that is less-hate/more-gush that's your call.  It's gonna be a tough balancing act cause your constituency might not be ready to move to a kinder, gentler f13. Get used to hearing 'sell out' from folks that would just like to continue bitching about anything and everything and not be bothered with the bigger picture.  People hate change.

As for SOE-hate, anyone that played EQ in the early years knows why SOE deserves to be hated.  Somethings can never be forgiven, never be forgotten.

[Akkori]

Well, what it boils down to for me is that I think the NGE is an entirely new game, only recognizable as the old by virtue of the graphical sprites in game. IMHO, if SOE had wanted to do things right, they would have taken most the server and loaded them with post or pre-CURB code, and loaded a couple others with the NGE Beta. Character copies to NGE servers would have been available so people could test the NGE beta for free. After a couple months of this, they could have re-launched the NGE on those same servers, consolidated CURB servers, and split thier focus. Yeah, I know it would never happen. Or, they could let someone else admisiter the CURB servers. Whatever.

Bottom line, I want to play a game that requires thought, strategic combat, reading, sorting out complicated quests, complex and deep crafting, strategic combat, and solid and generous tools for players to make their own content. SWG ver1 had about 3 and a half of those things. I am not some hack & slash player, and SWG didnt used to be a hack & slash (& loot) game.

[Numtini]

Legally you can make it as clear as you want that players don't own anything in the game and that it's all "fa la lalala live for today." However, I don't think you can build a business on it if you actually operate that way. Persistance and long term character development are the hooks that made people accept the subscription based model. There's a basic social contract there and they've betrayed that. It really doesn't matter how good or bad the NGE is. You can tell me "hey girl, smell the coffee, this is a business" but that's missing the point because if people internalize that feeling, it hurts the core subscription model.

Like Turbine with macroing, I don't think SOE begins to understand the damage they've done to their future potential with this. It will bleed to other games and SOE's reputation was already a major problem for them.

I'm still shocked that there isn't more fallout for LA over this and the other SWG disasters. SOE is pretty clue free on most things, but even they don't seem either stupid or malevolent enough to put out a box and announce major features are being eliminated from the game 24 hours later. It still smells like something that came from elsewhere. Then if the Christmas Special didn't stick to Lucas, nothing will.

[tkinnun0]

if changing a game were actionable, massively multiplayer games would die out entirely.

Utter, utter bollocks. I pay a monthly fee to my bank, but that doesn't mean they get to change my balance even if it would be better for their whole customer base.

What might happen is that MMOGs would be operated from countries where losing a customer's Sword of Power and not replacing it would be an inviable business model but would not bankrupt you outright. More likely, what would happen is that those kinds of risks would have been accounted for from the start. Like other businesses have had to do since forever.

This isn't rocket science. So you want to change to a new combat system and remove some classes. Fine, slap it on top of the old game, label the old game levels 1-20 and add /level20. So your old classes can solo Krayts. Fine, make some in-game lore that Krayt graveyard is on contaminated land and is not a graveyard at all, here's the REAL graveyard. Sure, your customers could be pissed, they might not like the way your their game is heading, but they wouldn't be able to sue you to bankruptcy.

[Malathor]

The ever less finished, ever more cockblocked EQ expansions.

The Legends (never see a live event on your normal server ever again!) server.

Oursourcing EQ's CS to whereverthefuckistan (cause they really really relate to American kids playing video games out there).

The whole ship it (SWG, PS) by X date whatever condition it's in, forever wrecking what should have been great games.

Diverting EQ2's dev resources to fucking station exchange (way to not get what achievement-oriented Diku MUDs are all about, LOL) when the were in the middle of losing the battle to WoW.

EQ2's nickle and diming their customers for every new content addition.

Billboards + gutted dev teams, instead of trying to put money into fixing broken games.

The new "Thottbot for $$$" they are putting into EQ2.

This lets keep NGE secret till the day after we release this expansion and keep promising them stuff that we know perfectly well will never be implemented so they won't have a clue it's coming.

All speak to a single, overriding problem with SOE. The guy at the top is more concerned about monetizing his customers than he is about providing a quality game experience. He could be the nicest guy in the world, whatever. Actions speak louder than words, and his actions have proven time and again that it's all about the $$$ as far as he is concerned. Even now all he can talk about is new revenue schemes, instead of new, and better  games. That is why SOE is failing. SOE had an effective monopoly, and Smed came to the conclusion that their players were sheep that could be squeezed as much as they pleased, but the players never forgot. Now SOE's name is shit, and even if they actually came out with a great game players know what would be coming down the pike once Smed got his claws on it, and would pick something different if they possibly could.

Either Smed needs to pull a grinch-like 180, or he needs to be replaced. SOE is doomed otherwise. That's why the SOE hate is helpful, constructive even. It's like the body's pain response. If we didnt feel pain, we wouldn't know if something was fucked up with us. If people don't hate SOE, they'll never understand that there is a problem that is killing them.

[Merusk]

There's so much stupid in this thread it pains me to read it.  Seriously, I wince at each and every argument on both sides.  I can't even make it through the second page.

SOE has several problems.  It'll take them a long while to fix any one of them.  I don't hate them anymore as much as I pity their situation these days.  I had a lot of hate for them when I was playing EQ, but that was about the devs more than the company. In fact, I'll make that point one.

1)  Stupid design decisions that simply turned what should be entertainment into a lifestyle.  I can't blame them for the initial design of EQ, and for its time it wasn't bad.  As time went on they even made it easier to 'level up' so you could get to the endgame.  However, it still took far, far longer than even a drawn-out RPG like FF, with far less interactive content.

   Then, after McQuaid left, they started adding-in cockblocks to the little content there was.  The Luclin key systems, the PoP flag garbage.  It was too much, and took too much time for far too little investment.  This was what made me hate SOE.  It wasn't that I was CHOOSING to spend x hours in the game, it was that I was being FORCED to.  There's a big difference between the two.. look I have 900+ hours in WoW since I installed X-fire, and I don't have any hate for Blizz yet.  Why? Because it's my choice, not a requirement so that I can do things with my friends/ guildmates.

2)  They've had shitty, shitty, SHITTY community relations for YEARS. They have a history of publicly putting their foot in their mouthstretching all the way back to Abashi in EQ.  Idiots at the customer service front end like Malice/Faarwolf, or nightmares like Milo's "Shut-up and pay for my Porche upgrades,"  or the way the "Mystere story" was handled have long and far-reaching effects. Most of those were YEARS ago and I still recall them and their poor handling.

  There's a rule in the service industry (purportedly supported by studies) that for each bad encounter a customer needs 7 good encounters to overcome the ill-will  from the bad one.  SOE has had a LOT of very bad very public customer encounters, but for the life of me I can't think of a good one.

3)  I read Righ's post and he's absolutely correct. SOE needs to embrace and learn from the service industries.  Thus far they have taken a commodity-based approach.  "Here's the product, see ya if there's a problem." 

4)  You have no face that the majority of your customers see.  So many SOE talking-heads will point out that the boards are only a small percentage of players when forums are in an uproar about one thing or another.  However, if you piss those people off they're not just grumbling about it on the boards.  They're doing it on other boards, in /guild chat, to all their friends and group-mates, in any global/ zone-wide channel.  This means the pissed-off people are the ones painting your corporate image.  Whoops, big problem there.

5)  SOE is perceived as designing games for profit rather than fun.  Blizzard is out to sell games the same as SOE, but they're largely viewed as wanting to sell fun games rather than make a quick buck. Why is that? Why aren't they reviled for just stealing other people's ideas and polishing them up?  Because they're great fun and have relatively few problems.  Two things that should be standard from ANY professional company, but are so lacking in the whole industry that it makes them Gods among Men.

6)  Someone needs to keep Smed from talking to the games press outside of prepared speeches.  Did Norio Ohga do public interviews?  Does Howard Stringer?  No, you have people that do that because their job is thinking up the ideas for other people to sell for the public.

  Smed's ideas and thoughts about the direction of games and how to generate revenue are great from a business standpoint, but they piss off the people who you should be using to help promote SOE because they're sold poorly. Micropayments, for example, could be a good thing.  Sell it as, "consume the content at your own pace, don't have to pay $30 for a whole expansion just $5 for the bits you want" Instead, because of a poor method of communicating and/or selling it's seen as, "just another fucking money-grab from those assholes at SOE" and used as fuel for the people in #3.

[Nyght]

Oh what a pickle this entire genre of gaming would be in if such a thing were to come to pass. It's not the implications that my company could be harmed from such a situation that scares me, it's the fact that if changing a game were actionable, massively multiplayer games would die out entirely. Think about it. We put these things out the door and update them constantly because the player-base demands it.

Changes would never be made if we could simply release a game and let it sit, surviving by the very nature of its existence. If we didn't change MMOGs after release, they would survive for a brief period of time before fizzling out and amount to massive wastes of development money (these things cost tens of millions of dollars these days, and don't start turning a profit for years after their release in most cases).

If a lawsuit of this nature were ever filed and fulfilled, development studios would put the kibosh on changing the games at all, would never make a new MMOG, and we would all (developers and players alike) have to watch a genre die out before it even hit puberty.

Well, lets not go to la la land here.

One individual is unlikely to file suit over even a year's subscription. The dollars are not near big enough.

If enough people did complain, a state agency would probably ask that consumers be allowed refunds for unused service time.

And finally, all that it takes to resolve this, is to allow cancellation to be effective immediately with a prorated refund for unused service. Yes, a bit of accounting overhead and some lost revenue that could be argued you weren't entitled to anyway.  Hardly the death of a genre.

Wanted to add: And proving that it is a different product would be no mean feat. But just because your likely to get away with something as a business, doesn't mean it's a good plan.

[Miasma]

I can understand the SOE hate, they lie and change their minds so often.  If they were merely incompetent then I wouldn't "hate" them, but they are devious and greedy as well.  I only played SWG for the first month but all of the fiascoes that the long time players have been posting makes me wonder why anyone stuck with it for so long.  EQ2 was good by comparison but even they did some really dirty things.  There was supposed to be a large quest to unlock the Froglock race on each server from day one, they claimed it was implemented and there for a long time.  People were working hard to try and figure it out, then they later announced that no, it wasn't actually even in the game yet.  Just outright lying.  They did the same thing in EQ1 a bunch of times.  You know, intentionally making encounters impossible to beat because the content after it wasn't done yet.  They aren't trustworthy.

As for greed, a certain amount of that I can understand, they are a company trying to make money after all.  I can swallow micropayments for adventure packs, the idea of paying a few dollars to play something that wouldn't be available if not for the money it brought in seems sensible.  But the /pizza command, the advertisements every time you boot up the game, the in your face way they try and get you to buy expansion packs, the little add ons they want you to buy to get access to websites, station exchange - it's just too much.  I knew when I went through the long install process for EQ2 with the background images touting Kingston memory I was going to have a problem.  They would make a lot more money if they put as much effort into improving their games as they do trying to cook up new revenue streams.

And I don't think the community relations people themselves suck, I think that the higher ups who tell them to say a,b and c one day then change their minds to x, y and z are the problem.  All the mods on their official boards seem good but they get fed shit and then have to try and clean it up after they are made to look liars.

[HaemishM]

God forbid there is EVER a class action lawsuit filed against any of the big MMOG developers that actually reaches court. If it does, this medium is going to be WoW v. 7.777 for the next 30 fucking years. Dear God, you don't ever want to hope for that shit to happen. There are so many goddamn things that could be totally fucked for MMOG's if some of this stuff was codified. And Blackguard is right, if it happens, you can kiss any indy MMOG's of any type good-fucking-bye, because they can barely afford the art assets for MMOG's, much less the legal woobie blankets that would be needed to fight off the kind of whiny player entitlement bullshit lawsuits that could erupt.

Virtual ownership of property. Virtual relationship effects, benefits and liabilities. Real-life effects from overdependence on the games. Recognition of virtual guilds as real life business/social/legal entities.

It's not going to be because ONE person files a lawsuit, it's going to be because A LOT of people get roped into thinking they are getting rich off a class-action dealie. One person is nothing to the kind of money being generated by MMOG's.

With schild, I kept my mouth shut because, well, schild gets excited about things (c.f. PSP).  I got the same feeling that Signe did, but I think the proper thing to accuse schild of is "being a slut". 

You just now got that? I think some of you haven't been paying attention.

The games industry is one great big frat party. Mostly they just hire hookers for the party, but they salivate over bagging the sluts like schild and me, because for some reason, we can convince people who would otherwise want to torch the frat party that maybe it's not so bad.

We are the pimps of the game industry. I feel so dirty.