Age of Conan

SOE is worse, hands down, compared to Funcom.  I rail Funcom relentlessly for their current failure with AoC, but SOE has them beat, easily.

SOE has EQ2, which nobody really complains about and has seen plenty of expansions.  Currently, it's their best title, IMO.

What makes SOE so horrid is what they did with Star Wars Galaxies.

* Drastically changed the core game in favor of a mind-numbing, drool inducing, simpleton form of gameplay compared to the original system.  I can go on, and on, and on, and on about this alone.

* False promises of actions to be taken... fixes, content, etc.  Never really happened and strung out the players for months who waited for it.

* Absolutely horrible handling of their PAYING CUSTOMERS.  This is where SOE beats ANY other team without breaking a sweat.  Not counting the blatant insulting of their own customers on interviews / articles, either.  Some of this was due to the new success of WoW at the time.  SOE & LA wanted a piece of WoW's pie, and were willing to change SWG to do it.

They **knew** the changes they would bring would drive away many of their current players.  But they did it anyways, even after the news of these incoming changes were finally released and were met with widespread protest.  What SOE and Lucasarts wanted was for us to be replaced by some magical, far more numerous crowd of rabid fans that would rush in to replace us with the simpler form of gameplay.

So, they put in the NGE.

So, the majority of us left.

And, as of August 2008, we have never been replaced.

.... Funcom so far is handling AoC like bumbling, incompetent buffons.  Their PR is poor, IMO.  But they haven't gone out of their way to blatantly insult and totally trash their own players.

Once Funcom gets on that road, then maybe they can ask SOE  if they can become their Padawan.  Or Cabin Boy.

I like AO, AoC, EQ and EQ2 so neither is bad in my books.  I vote Turbine for closing AC2

If this had been asked 2 years ago, I would have voted SoE. Now I vote FC. What has made me change my mind?

Though SoE used to be the lowest of the low in my book, they have vastly improved recently, in particular with regards to their accessibility to European players, their customer support, and the fact that they now provide digital downloads for their products. They're also good at giving out free promotions to products you suscribed to in the past to come back and see changes. I also like the fact that they have the all access pass which really helps if you want to play more than one of their games at a time. They've also been a lot more honest with their PR than they used to be. To me, these improvements are what makes them better than FC. Though I haven't played AoC, I used to play AO and quit partly due to FC's antics with that game. They forced their players to buy expansions to fix problems in the game that were in at its inception. These were things ranging from nano lines for professions that were supposed to have been in from the beginning, fixing some of the flaws inherent in some of the professions, adding items to professions that lacked them in the classic version of the game, etc. I also think that FC is responsible one of the most expensive expansions for the amount of content released to date: Notum Wars. Even at the time, I thought that $19 was steep for what you got out of it. The sad thing is, it also sounds like what used to be a great company for ingame support has gone down the toilet. It seems like FC is getting worse, not better. SoE are improving, FC is not... it's clear to me which is the winner here of a worse MMO company

SOE takes the cake since they took an exisisting player base and totally alienated them.  They took a functioning game with I think a fair player base and replaced with a new game on thier dime, with out full disclosure that I am aware of.  They lied to the point where refunds were forced for thier last expansion.

AoC is still young (release date wise) and Funcom does have a chance to make things right but doubt they will from what I have read.  It appears they have taken SOE's customer service and development techniques and applied them here.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Rebn77

 

Vanguard on the other hand is a great example of SoE turning around a "failed" MMO.

 

Turned VG around?  SOE cut funding before the game hit completion, because they knew if Vanguard launched well it would pillage EQ/EQ2 subs.  Personally I think that was their plan all along.  Vanguard was a major threat to their subscriber base.

Also this turnaround you speak of consists of SOE cutting the staff from 104 to low 20/high teens.  Keep in mind that it is still the same people programming the game as when Sigil owned the company.  It isn't like SOE cutting the staff by roughly 80% somehow fixed the game or that they somehow replaced everyone with their own people.  All it did was slow down the inevitable progress the game would make. 

 

Vanguard was already a decent game with lots of potential underneath all the those bugs. 

 

I must admit my opinion of Funcom has taken a 180 over the last few months though, but they still have lots of catching up to surpass SOE.

 

 

Also SWG was worse than Conan when it launched and EQ2 wasn't far behind those either. 

 

 

www.f13.net/index.php

Ex-Sigil:  ... When the merger happened SOE embraced us, and spent a LOT of money on us right away. It felt really good.

...

f13.net: Do you know why they were willing to do that? Surely they saw the lack of... product within the project at that time.

Ex-Sigil: I don't know that they did really. They got the same show that MS did to some degree. I'll say this about Brad.. he's one hell of a salesman.

...

f13.net: SOE knew Brad's game though. Smedley has been around through McQuaid Part 1 & 2 now.

Ex-Sigil: I know.. and I can't explain that part.

f13.net: Surely people around the office knew part of the history. What was the rumor mill like at this time?

Ex-Sigil: Some people were confused. Why would SOE buy a game that's a direct competitor to EQ2? There was always talk, but people who were working on the game continued to put their souls into it in hopes that we could somehow get it all together in the end.

...

f13.net: What happened in the short time between E3 2006 and Beta?

Ex-Sigil: The dev staff knew the game wasn't ready. Brad set the beta start I think and was completely clueless as to the actual state of the game... not listening to anyone telling him it wasn't ready

f13.net: How hands off was he by this time?

Ex-Sigil: He was playing a lot right through about Beta 2 but then he vanished.

f13.net: As in, just outright disappeared?

Ex-Sigil: Yep.

...

Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.

f13.net: What.

Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.

f13.net: What? How? This is an MMOG.

Ex-Sigil: Vanguard had one internal tester for probably 95% of the design cycle.

...

f13.net: How much did Microsoft sink into Vanguard?

Ex-Sigil: We always heard numbers like 30 million.

f13.net: And how much did SOE pay Microsoft for it?

Ex-Sigil: I doubt they paid much.

...

f13.net: Who set the release date?

Ex-Sigil: The release date was set as a result of SOE not wanting to fund the project any deeper without SOME revenue coming in...

--------------------------------------

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard:_Saga_of_Heroes

Development history

Sigil's original Vanguard team was composed of many EverQuest developers, including designer Brad McQuaid. Development began in early 2002 and a publishing deal with Microsoft was announced in April 2002. The game's title was announced on March 16, 2004, exactly five years after EverQuest was released. Sigil displayed the game's first screenshots in April 2004 and announced that Vanguard would use the Unreal engine 2.0 in May 2004.

In May 2006 Sigil reacquired the marketing rights to Vanguard from Microsoft and announced that Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) would become the co-publishers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Sigil maintained full control of development, funding, intellectual property rights, and in-game customer service (GM and Guide programs). Although SOE was responsible chiefly for marketing, publication, distribution, subscription services and maintenance of game servers, some of the SOE's game designers and artists did participate directly in the Vanguard's development</ref>[1]</ref>.

Beta Testing for the game began in-house in August 2005 and continued until January 23, 2007. Preorders were opened on January 26, and the game officially launched worldwide on January 30 to lukewarm reviews and widespread criticism.

On May 15, 2007, four months after the game's release, Sony Online Entertainment announced they had acquired all assets of Sigil and retained much of the Vanguard development team to work for Sony and to continue developing Vanguard.

---------------------------------

Thats the story about SOEs "backstabbing" of Vanguard. Doesnt look to me like some evil masterplan of doom to kill Sigil.

I still play SOE games occassionally.  I will NEVER purchase anything from FunCON again.  That pretty much sums up my vote.

ea-games has them both beat.

Funcom is by far worst, hands down.