SoE fail AGAIN!

[NeoReloaded]

So after looking forward to the release of Pirates of the Burning Sea for a couple of weeks now i arrive home from work looking forward to trying it out! Yeah right! Not only is it the SoE servers are not responding due to "high" traffic so no entering activation codes right now, the very few players able to still access the forums and ask what the hell is going on have been told by a mod in a random thread that even after activating your accounts you will need to input payment info! Theres not even a bloody announcement of this payment bit?! One day SoE you will get it right

 

[Bane]

Similar to magazine subscription offers that rely on the subscriber forgetting to cancel before trial ends.

I think previous SoE games have always required payment details to be entered during account creation, but can't remember for sure. Just remember to cancel as soon as it's been processed. As by the sounds of it you mightn't be able to log back in to the account server due to overload

 

[Dano]

I don't see the issue, it's a pay to play game, you'll need to give them payment details at some point, if you don't like it cancel before you're charged.


As for the server congestion, well most MMO's are like that at launch aren't they?

 

[dbmzk1]

I know a few people who are playing it fine with no problems. Not interested in it myself. Not sure why you are surprised though. Everyone who has bought the game is trying to get on at once so things will get busy. Most MMOs are the same at launch.

Don't know why you are moaning about entering payment details either. I mean, you have to pay anyway, so what's the big deal? This never used to happen, but with the increase in fraud they all do it now.

By the way, it's SOE, not SoE.

 

[Kohaashi]

Since they broke SWG, I'm not touching another SOE game again.
Not till they fix it anyway, which would be very hard to do as the community on Chimaera was top.

They have nothing to do with development in PotBS though right? Might be worth a try if this is true.

 

[dbmzk1]

Since they broke SWG, I'm not touching another SOE game again.
Not till they fix it anyway, which would be very hard to do as the community on Chimaera was top.

They have nothing to do with development in PotBS though right? Might be worth a try if this is true.

SOE did not break SWG directly though. They did what they were told to do by Lucas Arts. SWG was always run and maintained well before they were forced to start messing with it, as are their current other games such as EQ2 etc.

You are correct in that they have nothing what so ever to do with the development of PotBS though. They use what is called SOE Platform Publishing and it is like any other game publisher only tailor made for MMOs. Believe it or not they know what they are doing and it's one of the best services of its kind.

This quote from the company behind PotBS sums it up quite well, from the Q&A about the partnership with SOE.

I hate SOE and I will never play your game.
That’s okay. I’m sure there will be people who play our game and then hate it anyway. We can’t make everyone happy but I can make you this promise: if Pirates isn’t good, if you don’t like how the game is designed, or how the servers are operated, or how we interact with our community, it’ll be our fault, not SOE’s. We own the game and the buck stops here.

Pretty down to earth company

 

[Zefan]

Not till they fix it anyway, which would be very hard to do as the community on Chimaera was top.

Don't get me started

<3 Chimaera.

 

[Dano]

SOE did not break SWG directly though. They did what they were told to do by Lucas Arts.

I didn't think anybody but me knew that as it always seems to be conviently forgetton in the mass SOE hate hysteria.

 

[SCM]

Don't get me started

<3 Chimaera.

Sighs those were the days

 

[.:MBK:.]

I didn't think anybody but me knew that as it always seems to be conviently forgetton in the mass SOE hate hysteria.

indeed most have jumped on the SOE hatemobile forgeting the large amount of "help" provided by LAs Julio Torres and co

 

[Sleepery]

*gasp* having to input payment details when registering for an mmo! The horror!

I should probably try to fit the word FAIL in here somewhere too, it seems to be the done thing

 

[Datamonkey]

Playing fine here,

and actually loving it at the moment, during beta i was compairing it too much to wow and if you do that you will soon hate the game. Play it for what it is Sea Dogs online and you will love it

 

[scorza]

SOE did not break SWG directly though. They did what they were told to do by Lucas Arts. SWG was always run and maintained well before they were forced to start messing with it, as are their current other games such as EQ2 etc.

Why were they forced to change it? Because they screwed it up right from the start. They turned what should have been a decent space-combat MMO set in the greatest sci-fi universe into a tradeskill borefest.

 

[Ade74]

Why were they forced to change it? Because they screwed it up right from the start. They turned what should have been a decent space-combat MMO set in the greatest sci-fi universe into a tradeskill borefest.

Right from the start they let it be known that Lucas Arts was telling them how the game had to be. After WoW came out Lucas Arts changed how they wanted the game to be.

 

[scorza]

Right from the start they let it be known that Lucas Arts was telling them how the game had to be. After WoW came out Lucas Arts changed how they wanted the game to be.

I'm sure LucasArts had a lot of input into the development of SWG, but lets not kid ourselves that it was anything other than one man's vision of how MMORPG's (the RP is important here) should work. That man is Raph Koster (now working on Metaplace!).

I'm not saying there isn't a place for SWG, lots of people swear that it's a great game, but let's be honest here - the actual game itself never appealed to anything other than a small niche market. It should never have been given an association with such a respected IP as Star Wars.

 

[Redman]

Enjoy the first 20 or so levels. Unless things have drastically changed from the beta I was in, it's all downhill from there!

 

[iviv]

Suprised nobody has mentioned Planetside here either >_>

Sony started off with an awsome game. A unique game, an actual MMOFPS. Not just 32 or 64 people maps, 400 man fights over a continent.
Started off well, but slowly SoE have been pushing away their playerbase. AS I understand it, there is nobody uniquely working on Planetside now. The official website hasn't been updated since the launch of the game. There is a map that shows how the battles have moved over the past 24 hours, so you can see how your side is doing. It shows a continent that was destroyed in an event a couple of years ago.
Plus, none of the original dev team are still working on it, and the game's code was left mostly undocumented. While recently the new devs who have been helping on PS have been doing very well, injecting some actual new content into the game, they are stuck with a buggy engine thta they have no idea how to fix because they don't know what the code does, it would take ages for them to document it all.
Then there was the expansion. A rushed last-minute job that was pushed out of the door. While I personally like the BFRs, mane people didn't, and they lost so many players over that, and they haven't recovered to the pre-Core Combat days, its a shame. They had an amazing game, and ruined it.

 

[VaderDSL]

Suprised nobody has mentioned Planetside here either >_>

Sony started off with an awsome game. A unique game, an actual MMOFPS. Not just 32 or 64 people maps, 400 man fights over a continent.
Started off well, but slowly SoE have been pushing away their playerbase. AS I understand it, there is nobody uniquely working on Planetside now. The official website hasn't been updated since the launch of the game. There is a map that shows how the battles have moved over the past 24 hours, so you can see how your side is doing. It shows a continent that was destroyed in an event a couple of years ago.
Plus, none of the original dev team are still working on it, and the game's code was left mostly undocumented. While recently the new devs who have been helping on PS have been doing very well, injecting some actual new content into the game, they are stuck with a buggy engine thta they have no idea how to fix because they don't know what the code does, it would take ages for them to document it all.
Then there was the expansion. A rushed last-minute job that was pushed out of the door. While I personally like the BFRs, mane people didn't, and they lost so many players over that, and they haven't recovered to the pre-Core Combat days, its a shame. They had an amazing game, and ruined it.

agreed!! they should have never done core combat, bfrs and maybe expanded weapons/vehicles and added new and caried bases.

what they tried with the LLU was understandable, but there should have been a bigger emphasis on taking the big zergs and splitting up forces and having fighting spread out around the bases, I am not sure if I am remembering wrong but it seemed that 90% of fights were in and around a base, and the only times fighting outside of a base and tower was when a bridge was being defended.

it is still one of my favorite games to date, and the day Planetside 2 goes beta (if there's ever a PS2) ill be signing up .

One thing that killed the fun for me was the vehicle physics, before they messed with them the vehicles were a handful to drive, there was skill involved in say driving a deliverer over bumpy terrain without rolling it and killing your squad, when they changed the vehicle phyics it was soooo boring to be a driver. The vehicles all handled the same, they were flat, and felt like lumps of granite driving around the place. That affected me more than any other change.

Core combat was weird, in Beta everyone was down there, it was sniper and stealther heaven, picking people off from the zip lines or hiding stealthed waiting for a knifing opportunity.

But SOE did a good number in killing it it was the only MMOFPS, it was harder to make it fail than to make it work, but SOE by right managed to stuff it up.

If only CCP could have developed it, never know in the future you may have a space based tactical MMO spanning thousands of virtual solar systems, which you can drill down into system wide tactics, and drill down to a fleet view and go down further to control a ship of your own, combined with the ground combat that Planetside was like.

If only!

 

[dbmzk1]

I didn't think anybody but me knew that as it always seems to be conviently forgetton in the mass SOE hate hysteria.

Someone else knows! I thought I was the only one too! It really annoys me when people lay into a company when they base their assault on a flawed view, almost like they are jumping on the bandwagon without actually knowing where it came from. It is especially worse in this case as SOE has provided me with many hours (or months, if you add the hours up!) of great entertainment!

An interesting note to some of those people. Quite a few people at SOE lost their jobs because of what happened to SWG. Not because SOE wanted to cut staff or because of some other money saving scheme. But because they either left or refused to do what they were asked and were fired. Some might remember the old community manager, Tiggs. She was the most public member of staff who lost their job because of it.

Why were they forced to change it? Because they screwed it up right from the start. They turned what should have been a decent space-combat MMO set in the greatest sci-fi universe into a tradeskill borefest.

They screwed it up right from the start? Strange that, as it wasn't even developed by SOE at the start. Also, right from the start, Lucas Arts were in control and still are. It is not really down to SOE and never has been. Tradeskill borefest? Just one of the best player driven ecconomies ever made combined with some of the best PvP to have existed. Borefest? Right ok.

They were forced to change it because Lucas Arts had a panic attack. Other games were doing better so they got greedy and wanted more. It's as simple as that.

I'm sure LucasArts had a lot of input into the development of SWG, but lets not kid ourselves that it was anything other than one man's vision of how MMORPG's (the RP is important here) should work. That man is Raph Koster (now working on Metaplace!).

I'm not saying there isn't a place for SWG, lots of people swear that it's a great game, but let's be honest here - the actual game itself never appealed to anything other than a small niche market. It should never have been given an association with such a respected IP as Star Wars.

Lets not kid ourselves. Lucas Arts told the developers exactly what they wanted. Also, 300,000 subscribers is not a niche market, in the MMO market that is huge. In fact it is the 8th most popular MMO ever made, if I have counted right. SWG was a Lucas Arts cash cow - they knew the Star Wars brand would make them lots of money. And it worked. Koster just happened to be one of the people that was employed to make it.

Interesting PlanetSide post...

While they have messed PlanetSide up big style imo, it is not because they are pushing anyone away or that they are evil, as some people seem to believe. They did it all for the right reasons, if that makes sense.

To put it simply, PlanetSide failed financially from the get go. It was nowhere near as popular as they thought it would be. The powers that be decided that they couldn't justify continuing development of the game as a full project and so most of the team was either transferred elsewhere or otherwise moved on. Quite a few quit, leaving SOE with a game that they didn't fully understand.

They did Core Combat to try and entice more people to the game, as it didn't really have a great deal of variety and subscribers were falling off due to the lack of updates brought on by the fact that it took them forever to learn how the game was built. It worked for a time and subscribers went up - a lot of people actually like it! I'm one of the ones that don't, but oh well.

Without CC then PS probably wouldn't be around today. The small team that was left were tasked with doing the best they could do and that is what they came up with. To be fair I think they have done a fantastic job considering what little they had to work with in terms of the game code, a tiny team and lack of funding. I've not looked into PS for a while, but I believe they only have less than 10 people who work on it on a part time basis. Its dying again though. This time probably for good.


Wow, long post! lol

 

[Sleepery]

They did Core Combat to try and entice more people to the game, as it didn't really have a great deal of variety and subscribers were falling off due to the lack of updates brought on by the fact that it took them forever to learn how the game was built. It worked for a time and subscribers went up - a lot of people actually like it! I'm one of the ones that don't, but oh well.

Without CC then PS probably wouldn't be around today.

I HATED core combat. Not the extra vehicles and weapons, but having to go down into those damn caverns. And when the caverns emptied out they started putting in stuff to force you down there, it was incredibly annoying. Practically my whole clan deserted the game after the initial implementation of BFRs went live, it just wasn't fun in anything other than another BFR. And if you wanted one of those, you had to spend you life in the caverns earning points towards it. If you wanted the CC weapons you had to get modules from the caverns. If there had been toilets in the game they would have removed them all except for the ones in the caverns

A great pity - the mess they made of it has scared any other developer from trying something similar. Closest I've seen is the RvR combat in dark age of camelot (although with far fewer lasers, obviously ). Hopefully Warhammer will bring back some of the massive battles that made PS so jaw dropping.