Now this is an interesting story.
First off I have to say that Massively has really been impressing me lately. First they listened to the community and moved a ton of their Second Life stories to their own section, and generally reduced the SL clutter that was dominating the front page. While the land of flying penises surely has it’s place, it should not be every other story on an otherwise quality MMO site. And now, they post this story, which will no doubt upset a few high-ups over at SOE, possibly costing them future exclusives. Job well done guys, and keep it up. We have enough trash ‘news’ sites like IGN already giving us ‘exclusive’ fluff piece previews.
On to the story itself; for anyone who has been following MMOs since the UO/EQ1 days, news that SOE abuses their players should not come as a surprise to people. A quick Google search will bring up countless examples of shady dealings, yet for a bit it seemed that SOE was trying to turn its image around and actually respect the players that made them who they are today. I guess not…
While any corporation as big as Sony will have its skeletons, it’s borderline amazing that SOE has had as many scandals as they have had, especially in a market as dependent on its player community as the MMO space. Since the release of WoW, and the massive disappointment that was EQ2 at launch (and perhaps even now), SOE no longer holds the top spot in the MMO world, and as such can not afford to ignore the smaller, more vocal minority while catering to the massive ‘don’t care casual’ community like Blizzard does.
Now is the Massively piece the be-all-end-all of the story? Of course not, it’s only one side. But odds are good that’s the only side we will ever hear, as it is unlikely that SOE will even acknowledge the story, hoping instead that it will just fade away like so many previous PR disasters. Luckily for MMO fans, and unfortunately for SOE, Google makes that ‘fade away’ process rather difficult.
update: Very likely just a coincidence, but I do find it funny that of all days, today is the day that SOE announces a ‘Treasure Chest’ of information based on the official forums. From the announcment:
With so much information being posted in the EQII Official Forums at all times, it can be very hard to keep up with it and very easy to miss some real gems and opportunities to share. Have no fear though; the Treasure Chest is here to highlight interesting, unusual, and humorous posts, as well as opportunities to help your fellow player with a question or two!
Wonder if any of the ‘treasure’ will be how to get your duped character from test to live…
Hardcore Casual 
On the other hand, perhaps luckily for SOE, most people just don’t care.
You have to remember the scope of this problem — one person who was influential in that very community already disposed to be critical of SOE — EQ2Flames — was removed from the influencer program, likely because he wasn’t adequately filling the role of a Community Influencer, which is to say good things about SOE’s upcoming games. The vast majority of players have never had any problem whatsoever with the SOE community management team, and in fact likely have never heard of them.
Those of us who closely follow SOE at all are really a very small minority. And even though I do, I can’t claim that LFG’s travails affected me at all. The revelation that SOE devs were feeding strats to the presumptive #1 EQ2 guild is a little troubling, but even that didn’t affact me directly. The phrase “tempest in a teapot” was coined for this sort of thing.
Oh, and as far as I know, EQ2 is SOE’s most successful game. I doubt they feel it has been a disappointment :P
I meant disappointment in relation to the hype pre-release, and what happened with EQ2 and WoW. Remember pre-release most people expected EQ2 to be an unstoppable juggernaut, and many questioned Blizzard for release WoW so close to EQ2, predicting WoW would get massively overshadowed. Considering the dominant position EQ1 enjoyed, the transition to EQ2 is certainly viewed as a disappointment.
I would say the LFG story is somewhat big though, considering the size and importance of EQ2Flames. Will most players know about it, of course not. But I think this is bigger than most ‘look the devs are screwing us’ stories.
And remember that part of WoW success, in inversely EQ2’s rough start, was word of mouth advertising brought about by ‘early adopters’, most of which do not belong to the casual crowd. Pissing off the influencers in any community is never a positive thing.
Syn, your link up top is trying to point to your wordpress URL first with the correct link right after, resulting in a bad link.
You know, I’ve been playing SOE games for years, starting with EQ in ’99, and I’m pretty plugged into the blogosphere. But EQ2Flames is not one of the sites I frequent, I have to figure the vast vast majority of players have never even heard of it, never mind go there.
LFG pre-announced Scott Hartsman’s departure before he himself was ready to do so, and despite having been asked not to. He had to know they would be looking for a reason to kick him from the Influencer’s program from then on, and he apparently gave them one by not living up to his side of that bargain.
I have no sympathy for him, and like Tipa, I think this will be tempest in a teapot — those who already hated SOE will have that reinforced, those of us who have had only good interactions with the community managers will ignore it, and the masses won’t even notice.
I have no sympathy for him, and like Tipa, I think this will be tempest in a teapot — those who already hated SOE will have that reinforced, those of us who have had only good interactions with the community managers will ignore it, and the masses won’t even notice.
Totally agree.
Thanks for the kind words. I was shocked the higher-ups decided to move the SL content off the main page, it is a nice change. I also think our SL readers didn’t mind all that much as they will also be getting more SL coverage.
Do that many people care about this latest ordeal? There is plenty within the EQ2 community do to at least take notice. The threads on EQ2 Flames have received over 100k views each. Fark picked up on it, several other outlets, it all adds up overtime.
I hope Massively doesn’t receive any backlash over my decision to run that interview. I try to be fair, and I want SOE to respond and improve their communication channels. I had to post the interview in order to attempt to pry out some response. The players, and the Massively readers deserve the whole story, or in the very least at least a solid attempt, as ugly as it might be. I hope that if anything comes from this is that SOE takes notice and removes the political redtape inside their PR department that from what it sounds like to me it prevents SOE’s CM Team from responding.
Sure, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve published a Treasure Chest, but it’s not there to cover anything up, it’s to spotlight player posts… had you not seen the archives where this was a regular occurring feature?
/scratches his head
~Gnobrin!
Ah my mistake Gnobrin. I just say the post on MMOWTF, and the way it was phrased made it seem like something new.
The timing of it still seems a bit… odd to me. I mean this huge comminucation scandel breaks and on the same day SOE has community related post about thier own forums, forums directly attacked in the LFG issue.