SOE's Next Step?

[kuldiin]

Originally Posted by jsspam

I would bet they take the Everquest license and fast forward a few thousand years and do some sort of magic/fantasy/sci-fi mashup type MMO.

Space Frogloks

[Jait]

It's a....frooooooooak...trap!

[Ravensign]

Everquest 40K

Magic-using, laser-wielding Mecharobot Necromancers with 20 ft tall skeleton pets

[Rorek]

Wasn't Nino pulled onto a special MMO side project around the time of the Sigil acquisition? If only he could enlighten us!

[Grave]

Originally Posted by UnchainedAcolyte

Though Smed has admitted it's not being worked on yet, if/when they decide to create an EQ3, that should be the core team for the project.

Along with an entirely new art team composed of humans with eyes.

[Ripe]

I would play Everquest 3. Now that they have done EQ2, I bet they could really combine the best parts of 1 and 2 and have a really solid base, and then expand off to do new things.

[Hateyou]

I have no faith in SOE pulling off a great MMO. They have such a history of botching everything they make. I don't understand why they are so inept, but they are.

Don't get me wrong they have some talented people, and some good leaders. I think they just have a few complete idiots making terrible decisions and completely fucking things up. I don't get how you can be in this industry for so long and be so clueless as to what makes a game people want to play.

[Rythonn]

Originally Posted by Hateyou

I have no faith in SOE pulling off a great MMO. They have such a history of botching everything they make. I don't understand why they are so inept, but they are.

Unlike the other MMO makers who continually produce outstanding MMOs amirite?

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by Rythonn

Unlike the other MMO makers who continually produce outstanding MMOs amirite?

To be fair I never said SOE is the only company like this. SOE just happens to be the topic at hand, and I'm answering the OP~

Personally I think the only great MMO coming out in the near future is Warhammer. That's only because I've played it, and came away with a good impression, this early in beta.

[mek]

Making a sequel to a successful MMO was the stupidest idea ever floated in the genre, and SOE paid for it. The whole point of an MMO is that you continually update it for a monthly fee; the whole point of a sequel is you abandon the original to improve upon it. They're completely contradictory, you only make an MMO sequel if you're willing to pull the plug on the original.

SOE would have made many millions if they'd actually made an EQ2 sequel; i.e. a new client/infrastructure for the same base game, heavily revamping to improve graphics/sound/gameplay; they could have cashed in on all their old content with a new audience. Instead they split their development time and now have two mediocre games with average subscriber bases, the crowning achievements of their mausoleum of zombie MMOs. At least they provided a lesson learned for the rest of the industry; WoW2 will never exist, in all likelihood a Starcraft MMO is being made instead.

The DC MMO will be their next big thing and a lot of us consider it SOE's chance to prove they've learned something.

[Hateyou]

Originally Posted by mek

The DC MMO will be their next big thing and a lot of us consider it SOE's chance to prove they've learned something.

I don't think a lot of people are considering the DC MMO as Sonys last chance. They have failed to deliver so many times on a consistent basis, I think most people gave up on them a long time ago.

You're the first person I've personally seen that is excited about it actually. That's not a personal dig, I just think your POV is the very small minority, not the majority.

[mek]

I didn't say I was excited about it, I'm speaking financially. The DC MMO is Sony's current big project. IMO it is a sort of reckoning, because they HAVE learned a lot of development lessons since EQ2's beginning, and this is their chance to implement them in a game that is actually successful; they have a strong team and a strong IP.

[Jait]

People expect a lot more from a "Fantasy" MMO these days than tossing Gods and Dragons at them with little to no reason behind it other than, "Hey, it's Fantasy!" or worse....because your predecessor did it. It illustrates a complete lack of talent and imagination when you take a stale idea and try to make it palatable again and again, and again.... And the utter lack of innovation annoys the fuck out of me. Not to mention the bandwagon approach of "Hey WoW did it, so should we!". If it makes a few people happy and costs you nothing, fine.

Hate You is dead on in his belief that Warhammer is the "next big thing", for exactly the reasons stated above. Setting brings in the playerbase. Whether or not they can polish it up and continue to give quality content after release...aye there's the rub. If you remove EQ2 from the mix, SOE has put out some of the biggest bombs in history. I'd love to say that World of Warcraft had a gigantic license/setting, and that's why they had all those original subs. But I can't. Those original subs in turn led all of their friends and co-workers into MMO's through Warcraft. But once WoW died down for them they didn't find anything new or better in other games. Setting definitely brings in the subs, but you can't keep them without quality behind it. I mean for fuck sake how do you ruin Star Wars EPIV? See Raph Koster for more details.

But none the less, Hate You's post is pretty spot on. He's right. There's definitely some quality *individuals* at SOE, but as a unit they're like a Special Olympics when the ice-cream is handed out. Here's a good example of the clusterfuck that is their hierarchy:

I levelled a 70 on a PvP server which was far, far, FAR harder than doing it on a blue server. PvP died out almost entirely after a year, no...entirely. The top end guilds went from 7 to only 1. And I have neither the time or wont to level/faction/claymore/languages/etc... again on a regular server after spending an entire year playing this character. So I had only one option, goto Station Exchange or join a guild that's an entire year behind normal progression. NP, station exchange it is. Unfortunately there's no trial for that server and no way of knowing just how massively retarded the lone uberguild on that server really was. Doesn't matter if you buy/sell items. Once you're there you lose anything that's not no-drop (including 65% of the house items/trophies I had attained) and all your coin and items are stripped. Everything else (the no-drop) is reduced to 1copper worth each. Again, no problem as long as I can raid with competent folks. Sadly that wasn't the case, and to make matters worse I encountered a CS clusterfuck. After I transferred I lost my surname for the third time since starting EQ2. No big deal, the first two times a Senior GM gave it back to me with no problem. So I petitioned again and sure enough third time is a charm and the dipshit said "No". I sent him emails from the senior GM (This wasn't ancient, the last time I had asked for it back was only 3 months prior). And the response was "Well, I'm in charge here and I say No." Tough luck kid, move along. Sure, you have screenshots and you forwarded mail from GM's more senior than me, but I have the power and I'm here to enforce it!

I admit, I was getting bored with the game. But these guys took a guy on the edge of a cliff and rather than offer a hand to pull me back, they just pushed as hard as they could. Because of that I'm not bitter in the slightest. I could've levelled up with Braens guild, or took control of the guild'O'Retards on my last pvp server. But I just wasn't motivated after seeing EQ2 really hit a zenith only to fall back into every old cliche they could imagine.




EQ3 really isn't a bad idea at this point. We're several years into EQ2 and even the most basic question, the premise if you will, hasn't been addressed. The sinew of any good MMO is community, and SOE has never learned how to foster it, and I doubt they ever will.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Hateyou

I don't think a lot of people are considering the DC MMO as Sonys last chance. They have failed to deliver so many times on a consistent basis, I think most people gave up on them a long time ago.

You're the first person I've personally seen that is excited about it actually. That's not a personal dig, I just think your POV is the very small minority, not the majority.

You must not read any COH threads on this board. Read a COH thread and you will see that there are some of us that are looking forward to the DC MMO (including myself). As to the viability of the genre, at one point COH had 250k subs, which isn't bad considering they had no IP. NcSoft recently reported that they had 151K subs (which still isn't bad) and this is probably due to the glaring design flaws and broken systems in that game, as well as the lack of endgame content three years after the game has been launched. No one knows how many potential subs are in this market, but SOE might be able to EQ2 numbers with this MMO.

To me, I am looking at it the DC MMO will be the litmus test for SOE going forward. We'll see.

P.S.: SOE should just drop the loser games it has. It should keep EQ1 and EQ2 and ditch the rest. We forget that they bought or took over failing games like MXO or Vanguard. I think that many of us look at the portfolio of SOE's products and attribute the sucky games to the entire Station Access pass. In business, there is a saying that some bad products bring down the value of the entire company brand (thus hurting the good products). Its like Dell, they make decent pc's, but I think the rest of their line up sucks. Having an ipod break down from them just a few months after it was bought, or having friends with laptops that have poor quality brings down the entire brand. The Dell brand is a no-no at my house based on how some of their products have done.

[mek]

Originally Posted by Jait

EQ3 really isn't a bad idea at this point. We're several years into EQ2 and even the most basic question, the premise if you will, hasn't been addressed. The sinew of any good MMO is community, and SOE has never learned how to foster it, and I doubt they ever will.

EQ3 is the worst idea possible at this point. If SOE sticks the Everquest brand on anything ever again, they're capping their subs at retention-from-previous-game levels. Nobody is interested in that IP anymore.

I agree that CoH is a success measured relatively; considering how little resources/development they clearly allot to that game, it holds a decent subscriber base and is definitely very profitable.