we are all beta testers for SOEFollow

Im sorry, but i just cant beleive that

That is terrible.

Imagine if video card makers sold a geforce 6600 then purposefully released a geforce 6600GT a few months later to milk consumers of their money. That would be horrific.

Or what if they made a movie called Lord of the Rings and ended it hinting at a sequel when there was actually no sequel planned at all. They would wait to see if the movie was succesful before making a sequel. That would be dishonest.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Just what part can't you believe? The PoP stuff is definately all true. The planes were NOT finished. I read all of Furor's rants at the time. I really think its been the standard MO for Sony since they took over. Vaporware is very profitable if you can get people to pay for it.

Eight pages of that article? Sheesh, he must have a real axe to grind with Sony.

I get around issues like these by staying a step or two behind the cutting-edge, end-game. By the time I get to the content, it's been finished.

Doesnt surprise me much. McQuaids "vision" was trampled to death when Sony took over. Its all about the cash and thats it. Why else would SoE put in MMs where you can get ridiculous exp for zero risk? The game has gone koo-koo from where it originally was.

My guess is SoE wants everyone to be lvl 70 with max AAs so they can add nothing but max level content AND they know that all thats left are hardcore EQ devotees to which they must pay homage in order to stay afloat. I see it as a boat with tons of holes in it and rather than patch the holes they just pump out the water. Eventually there will be too much water and the boat will slowly sink.

When Vanguard comes out, EQ will wither and die- the hardcore EQ players miss the "vision", the challenge that separates them from the run of the mill casual MMO player. They yearn for something new, fresh and challenging. The question is, can McQuaid and CO deliver? I think they will.

Actually, EQ has already started to die, or at least the game I enjoyed. In an effort to keep up with the main competition, WoW, Everquest has already started "dumbing itself down", or making itself easier.
There was a huge uproar over the rollbacks, and all sorts of people threatened to quit. Sony threw us a bone, and gave us a weekend of "double xp". In some players opinions, that wasn't enough, but the majority where appeased.
SOE has continually screwed players time and time again, but what it really boils down to, is that it really doesn't matter. The ones that play, are pretty much here till the game does officially die. We will play regardless of what SOE does, until the end. Or for me, until I stop enjoying the interaction with other players.

First off, I don't condone the release of unfinished products. Even though the industry trend is to hit the release date and worry about patching later, I don't think it is right. I am purchasing what I believe is a complete product. It should stand alone as such. Being a realist, I understand that 100% of all aspects of the product cannot be tested under normal beta testing. Testing an item with 500 people, then releasing it to the general population with 500,000 people will always turn-up something undesireable.

With that said, how much of the unfinished content really affected the population? Until Fire, Water, Earth and Air were ready, how many players were actually ready for that content? What about Time?

I know the guild that I was with was the 4th on the Nameless to break into Time. At that time, every server had three or four guilds at the same point. It took us four to six months just to kill the EP bosses. So the unfinished content really didn't affect that many people. I would be willing to say that the unfinished content affected less than 1% of the players (maybe one guild per server). Remember, my guild was 4th on the server and it took six months to get to that point and by then the encounters were fixed.

Assuming the 1% is an accurate number, from a business standpoint, if you can satisfy 99% of your customers, I would think that is a pretty good percentage. The bad thing for Sony was that the 1% affected was the vocal minority. Most of the other 99% had heard that the content wasn't finished from the vocal minority.

Now back to the PoP example, if I remember correctly, Fire, Earth, Water and Air were completed zones, but the final encounters were really messed up. So to say that 40% of the PoP expansion was incomplete is a bit of a stretch. Time on the other hand was not ready.

edit: typos

Edited, Fri Feb 3 11:39:53 2006 by Wayen

Oooh! Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!

I won't make predictions on whether or not EQ will "die" but I do plan on giving Vanguard a spin. If it fulfils what I miss from EQ, I don't think there will be any looking back.

I have played for 9 months now. I have seen about10% of the planes 10% of Vel about 5% of OOW, 1% of DON and maybe 5% of DOD. There is so much content that unless you have a guild as a guide to this game. it will take 3 years to see it all or more and that is if I stick to one toon.
Big susprize that big business is acting like big business. I really enjoy the people and the interaction. But if someone does bring a class action I would take a clicky snare item and a Pacify that worked up to lv 75 as a settlement.

Not to chose sides in the "This guy is lying/truthful" debate but PoP, like all expansions, patched the day it went live. The retail CDs never have the "complete" data on them and only a fool would expect them to.

Again, I'm not saying the if the zones were finished or not, but the fact that the CDs weren't "finished" doesn't mean much.

Deceased Equine.

Yes.

What do you do when bored at work?