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bUm posted:Never gave them money in the first place because I used to work for SOE. Now that it is defunct, I feel comfortable outing myself. After spending part of my life there, I will defend SOE in one area only. SWG NGE. SOE got a lot of poo poo for this, and many of the complaints were fair; however, what SOE could never do (because of contractual issues) was defend itself. Now, keep in mind, the NGE happened before I started at SOE, so this information does not come from my involvement with any of it, but rather is what I was told by people who should have had accurate information... but maybe they just made poo poo up to cover their own rear end internally. In any case, I believed it when I was told this: Many of the NGE changes were dictated by LucasArts, some of which people at SOE disagreed with, under the threat of having their license pulled. The best proof of this I can give you is, knowing what I've told you, does it surprise you that the NGE and Revenge of the Sith on DVD launched on the same day? Hopefully, this information does not violate any non-disclosure agreement (even though I am fairly sure I never signed one that would cover this game, especially 5 years after the license was pulled, and is a company that no longer exists as such). ShadowMoo posted:I have something of an addictive personality and even when I have money, most I'd be willing to drop on items is maybe $20 a month. Something like $6000 can better be spent on a car, rent, or shittons of other real things Permabanned user, never mind, you're permabanned. For everyone else, there is something to this. There is a reason that MMO marketing research stays private. There is also a reason why the micro transaction model has exploded the gently caress out of the subscription model. Hint: it has to do with how MMO design works, and how people hitting their frequent rewards (I've almost leveled, almost reached the next tier, almost unlocked that extra skill point, almost got my whatever) actually convinces people to offer up, on average, a hell of a lot more money for in-game items, premium content, extra xp, etc. than the same people would have ever paid into a game via sub. Plus, there is the exciting marketing bonus of calling the MMO "A FTP game!" ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Sep 21, 2016 |
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Sep 21, 2016 19:38
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jabro posted:Lucas Arts and the NGE are pretty much common knowledge so I don't think you have to worry about a non-disclosure on the insider knowledge you gave us. That shows you how much I pay attention. I liked working for SOE, but at the same time I try to ignore that I did. I also haven't been playing mmos for awhile so I haven't had to listen to the SOE  for a long time. There is nothing like people making GBS threads on the work you did for years just because of the rest of SOE. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 22, 2016 |
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Sep 22, 2016 16:00
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Alexander DeLarge posted:Speaking as a Pre-CU Jedi player, I've never understood the hate that SOE got for the NGE considering that it was clear as day that other parties were heavily involved. I've always pictured LucasArts looking at the financial reports, skimming over at the list of popular MMORPGs at the time, saw World of Warcraft at the top and George saying "make it like that". Specifically, this is what I remember from the story told around SOE: LucasArts made the decision that they wanted to see gameplay changes based on a number of things. First and foremost was marketing research that was done relating the new movies to video games generally--questions about what type of games best fit Star Wars, etc.--and marketing research related to the DVD release of episodes I, II and III. The economic issues were secondary, but still there. They did want a greater market share, but nobody realistically thought that they were going to turn an already released title into something with a subscriber base like WoW. When LucasArts came to SOE asking for these changes--again second hand "inside" information--there was an internal meeting between the SWG design team in Austin and the company command in San Diego. During the meeting it was decided that SOE would tell LucasArts that they did not want to make all the NGE changes, and offered an alternative that including making Jedi a profession with simplified and clear steps to unlock, and making more twitch changes to things related to Jump to Lightspeed and Rage of the Wookies. LucasArts did not receive this counter offer well and their initial "request" for changes became a demand for changes. They added to this demand a threat to pull SOE's license for SWG, since SOE's license was set to expire at the end of 2004. So SOE did what they were told, and lots of people hated the NGE (though subs did increase slightly at the beginning); however, the community who (rightly) were upset about the NGE was very vocal and SOE could do nothing to defend themselves, other than try to toe their contractual line. "The NGE is a vast improvement! We swear!" *Unfortunately for SOE, this combined with a number of previous fiascoes (does anyone remember the EQ2 launch?) irreparably SOEs reputation. It was that reputation that, more or less, impacted people's impressions of SOE and their games--even good ones like Planetside and Planetside II--and helped to kill the company's profitability. So much so that Sony Music was happy to unload it in 2015. *Edit I am not being fair here. SOE did make a lot of bad business decisions and made some shittier games (especially for consoles) in the period after this, which just added to the general MMO community impression that the NGE helped create. SOE also ended up coming off as arrogant assholes because they had to defend the NGE and there was nothing they could do to address the SWG communities concerns. In the end I think this colored their future interactions with future communities. It's almost like once the reputation was in place, they totally gave up on doing anything to try and fix it as it seemed like an impossible task. That's my impression as someone who worked there for part of it. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Sep 22, 2016 |
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Sep 22, 2016 19:08
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biznatchio posted:Maybe my memory's bad here but I don't remember the EQ2 launch being a fiasco. I think it suffered more from WoW coming out a couple weeks later and redefining what an MMO was (and exposing how dated EQ2's design and execution were) than any launch-related technical failings. DeathSandwich does a good job of pointing out some of the problems with the EQ2 launch. I will add just two thoughts. I actually worked on EQ2 for a short time in the summer of 2007 and got to know some people on the initial launch team pretty well. They made no bones about blaming WoWs ascendancy on the fact that the EQ2 team was forced to cut corners to beat WoW to the market, because someone's business analysis suggested SOE would end up retaining the majority of the MMO market share by doing so. This was combined with a sort of dismissive attitude towards Blizzard because, of course, "any decision SOE makes is going to be better, just look at how many people play EQ." So they went with the same MMO formula that had worked so well (as DeathSandwhich points out) in 1999. My other thought reflects what has been beaten to death over the last 13 years. SOE made the decision to develop an engine--a not so good one at that--which required computers with far better hardware than the many EQ players owned. This meant most EQ players would have to have spent two grand (in 2004) on a new computer to even run the EQ2 client. Most EQ players were not in a position to do this, and the ones that were, often as not, did exactly what Deathsandwhich said... they stuck with a game that had 5 years of content. Then of course WoW launched two weeks later. Blizzard had ingeniously modernized MMO game play, which from a design perspective was a lot better than anything SOE was offerring, AND Blizzard's conscious choice to use stylized art in WoW meant that all those people currently playing EQ who wanted to try something new, but whose computers couldn't run EQ2, could play WoW. Mix all that poo poo together and SOE executives (including Smed) were left scratching their collective heads for 3 years wondering how Blizzard could have possibly beat SOE in the MMO market; Of course "why" this had happened was painfully obvious to anyone with just a bit of reflection. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Sep 23, 2016 |
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Sep 23, 2016 14:57
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lol if you posted:for like a month after eq2's launch the mob with the most PC kills every day was a crafting forge When I was working on EQ2 I remember someone winning the lottery jackpot on a server and the payout was 3x the value of everything on the market. CS literally shut down the entire server while the figures out wtf they were going to do. I have no idea what they did do, but I assume they figured it out. Another funny GM related story from my SOE days: I was on the design/QA side of things, but a really good friend of mine worked as a SWG GM (removed references to nepotism). He once brought an entire server down by accidentally setting his GM character size to infinite. This literally caused them to change the GM client and put constraints on the size command. ZombieLenin fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 20:39
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Alright, another CS fact... at SOE there was the turn over of at least one GM a week because of inappropriate use of the GM clients on games to "help" their personal characters or guild. I imagine that's the same with most MMOs. So at the time I worked at SOE I was playing EVE (played for 7 years) and the player base as complaining about GMs helping out their alliances, and CCP denied everything. Everyone who worked in the industry knew that this denial was 100% bullshit.
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Oct 7, 2016 15:07
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