SOE Shoots Blanks in China... again.

[Signe]

EQ Go Home 
Ever Quest II, Gamania, Internet, MMORPG, Online Game, Sony
Posted by: Xin Xu on Mar 06 | 17:03
Editorial Summary

Sony Online Entertainment's massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) EverQuest II (EQ2) will end operations in China on March 30, reports Sina. EQ2 is operated by Taiwanese gaming company Gamania's mainland China subsidiary. The company stopped open beta testing account application on March 1. Gamania will begin moving all open beta accounts and in-game information on mainland China server groups to the game's server groups in North America. EQ2 began open beta testing in China on August 23. EQ2's predecessor EverQuest entered China in January 2003 and ended operation one year after.

Linky-La

[Hoax]

Needs more grind.

Rang Rang?

[Venkman]

Hey, at least we get the benefits of SOGA models to replace the dumpy ones that shipped originally :)

[Sky]

I mostly prefer the original models, actually. Then again, I hatey japanamation. To me it's crappy and slightly less crappy. At least the SOGA models were shooting for a design goal, I guess.

But...why are they moving Chinese beta players to the US production servers? That's crazy talk.

[Yegolev]

But...why are they moving Chinese beta players to the US production servers? That's crazy talk.

Can't lose that Exchange revenue.

I'd like the new models if they didn't load and unload in such a jarring manner.

[Soln]

[d4rkj3di]

But...why are they moving Chinese beta players to the US production servers? That's crazy talk.

E-I-E-I-O

I'm thinking that SOE wants to get the hell out of Asia altogether with subscription based games, and come back when they have the free-to-play/pay-for-content models up and running.  In countries where most games work off the hourly rate, free-to-play might have a large initial draw, and they will count on the retention.  They just need to remember to make the heads of all character models 2/3 of the entire body.

[WindupAtheist]

Between Blizzard and NCSoft, SOE has become irrelevant to the industry, and will remain irrelevant until they have something better to push than a bargain-pack of crappy Dikus that nobody plays.  As far as I can tell, the only product of interest in their roster is Planetside.

[Yegolev]

[Ironwood]

Is that Tianamen ?

[Azazel]

Between Blizzard and NCSoft, SOE has become irrelevant to the industry, and will remain irrelevant until they have something better to push than a bargain-pack of crappy Dikus that nobody plays.  As far as I can tell, the only product of interest in their roster is Planetside.

..which is unplayable if you live outside the US.

GO GO MMOG Twitch Gaming!

[5150]

Between Blizzard and NCSoft, SOE has become irrelevant to the industry, and will remain irrelevant until they have something better to push than a bargain-pack of crappy Dikus that nobody plays.  As far as I can tell, the only product of interest in their roster is Planetside.

..which is unplayable if you live outside the US.

GO GO MMOG Twitch Gaming!

Did you forget the Euro server? (genuine question)

[Azazel]

I actually didn't know that they set up a Euro PS server. I found PS to be a nice game in theory, but not worth playing for due to latency from here in Australia thoiugh. The lack of anyone to shoot at on, say 7:30pm Friday evening didn't help, either (instant action came back with "there are currently no hotspots". Then I unsubbed...

[eldaec]

European latency is fine on PS even if you play on a US server.

Can't speak for anywhere else ofc.

It does suffer from low population though at anything other than core hours.

I still remember launch week for PS when 200 people would fight for hours over a bridge *for absolutely no reason* since nothing stopped anyone just going around the damn thing. Ho hum.

[Trippy]

PlanetSide uses client side hit detection meaning if your client thinks you hit something you hit something -- it doesn't matter if the server knows the thing you were aiming at is actually 100 feet to the left of your reticle. So as long as your latency isn't so bad that things are skipping around on your screen your latency has no significant effect on your shooting. In addition, even if latency did have some effect, the weapons in the game have a built-in inaccuracy to them and rarely hit exactly dead center in your reticle so it wouldn't really matter if you had an extra 100 ms of latency going from Europe to say the West coast server unless perhaps you were sniping.

[El Gallo]

Wow, the market works again.  I'm well on my way to joining the American Enterprise Institute.

[Mesozoic]

...and SOE continues its impressive slide.

I was actually thinking of resubbing to PS now that I'm up to 1G RAM.  Part of me would rather just buy UT2K4 and frag without the fee, tho. 

[shiznitz]

But in UT2k4 you don't get to read all the dick waving spam from the CR5s trying to herd their cats to a given continent. That has to be worth something per month.

[5150]

But in UT2k4 you don't get to read all the dick waving spam from the CR5s trying to herd their cats to a given continent. That has to be worth something per month.

Someone doesnt seem to appreciate how difficult it is to herd the zerg (no I'm not CR5) christ I have difficulty getting my squad to do what they are told, and my squad is all RL friends I can use rusty farm impliments on if they piss me off :-D

[shiznitz]

I agree it is not easy to herd the zerg, but that doesn't mean it isn't amusing to watch 3 CR5s giving conflicting orders and then throwing a hissy fit at each other in the command channel.