Anyone think SOE has a bad wrap? I can only base my opinion on their company from the games I've played.

Proud of:

Everquest- It lived up to its nickname "Evercrack", not sure if it was so popular because it was one of the first MMO's (Ultima was "ok" ).

Planetside- First successfull MMOFPS. Cult-gamers are keeping it alive even today (and a bunch of chinese players)


Not so proud of:

SWG- The changes made totally ruined this game. I wonder if this was due to SOE, or Lucas Arts? Changing games are okay, but revamping a playing-style that everyone is already comfortable with is another story.

I have my own SWG conspiracy theory: George Lucas played SWG, got pissed off after getting ganked a few times, than had the game revamped.

Okay , I loved SWG and The Matrix Online <<< cuz they're the games I played !

but they're all messed up now , and I hope that don't happen with The Agency cuz I'm building a lot of hops on that .

and since I like the concept of the game , I hope SOE knows how to handle that ..

I think maybe sometimes the mob (those vocal in the community) have too much influence on a games direction and kinda takes away from the originality the game intended to be like. If a company has an original idea, they should stick with it instead of letting the mob drive its direction. Don't get me wrong, listening to the community can be a good thing, but it can also be counter-productive. I guess finding that fine line can be pretty tough sometimes. Especially when money is involved.

Agreed. The unique and not-well-understood path is the only way to success. Look at Portal. Great example of a foreign idea thrown into a common concept of platform gaming. But to catch up with the good, the better, and the pretty darn sexy games these days, it does take some heavy commercialism and criticism acceptance to make it big. SOE is great, don't get me wrong, but I would completely agree with the mob influence. A shame so many games fall TOO soon into the hands of the gamers.

I love SOE games. I don't however like the way they act toward there own community.
It just always seems no matter how many times it's posted in a thread, They always do the opposite.
There customer support isn't great nether(ever tried calling them?) make you wait for hours and so on .

Don't get me wrong. Soe has some of the best games ever in the world that I've seen.
They just need to start listing to the people that pay for the game.

Taiko! wrote:
I think maybe sometimes the mob (those vocal in the community) have too much influence on a games direction and kinda takes away from the originality the game intended to be like. If a company has an original idea, they should stick with it instead of letting the mob drive its direction. Don't get me wrong, listening to the community can be a good thing, but it can also be counter-productive. I guess finding that fine line can be pretty tough sometimes. Especially when money is involved.

It was said in an interview with someone high up in SOE(forget who exactly) that not listening to the fans was what drove SWG into the ground, not the other way around. But on the other hand, I suppose they'd say just about anything to regain people's confidence for the many mistakes they seem to make.

Better to say something than nothing at all, such is the case with PlanetSide.