Why You Should Reconsider SOE Games

Rob from Robsgamingnetwork and we need to have a discussion, gamer to gamer about purchasing titles from Sony Online Entertainment, and exactly what you are getting yourself into before buying. This newscast will appear as an article on my blog in the next week. You can visit it through a link in the video description box below.

I was part of an MMO known as Star Wars Galaxies for five years from 2003-2008. If you played Galaxies for that length of time, you will know what I am about to say and why. The game was a brilliant MMO in the Star Wars universe that occurred between episodes 4 and 5. The game had its issues, but it was a ton of fun to play. Then Sony began messing with the game around 2005. They released a revamped game called the combat upgrade without much player imput or testing. SOE customer service ignored their players who wrote tickets to complain; and if there was any dissidence on the forums players would be suspended or banned.

A lot of people remained in the game, including myself because I did not mind the upgrade. SOE was more interested in not updating the game and making minor, minor tweaks instead of fixing major bugs that plagued the new upgrade. Then, in late 2006 they decided that they fucked up so bad that they had to make the game a World of Warcraft clone in order to gain more players. They revamped the game yet again and unleashed an alpha test of their vision upon players, completely doing away with the old system, taking away the 32 profession system and customizeability and inserting nine classes that they felt were iconic. They took away some of my favorite professions, the most favorite of which was Creature Handler.

SOE did not respond to bug reports, they didn’t respond to customer tickets and they didn’t care that their product was in Alpha. Droves of people left the game as they watched their subscribers drop ship. Any normal company would try to address the issues. SOE had tons of games in its arsenal, so they chalked up Star Wars Galaxies as a “failure they wouldn’t repeat” and continued to ignore players concerns. I left in 2008 when I had had enough of the game. Most notorious, after the new game engine, which was the cookie cutter wow clone “enhancement”, SOE released an expansion for the game that took place on Mustafar, BUT plopped the revamped game on our laps two days after the expansion release- and people wanted their money back. Some got it back. Many didn’t- and resorted to the better business bureau.

This company took a multi-million dollar franchise, that had a few million subscribers and turned it into complete shit, not giving a rat’s ass about their customers and silencing any dissent when they saw it. This is a company that does not care about you, the player base or the game- and I highly suggest you contemplate and investigate the Star Wars Galaxies situation before you invest in any future SOE titles. I have a boycott on this company for life- unless they rebuild the MMO from the ground up and make it great again- which isn’t happening.