i wonder why no one higher up caught wind of this and said "hey you got it backwards, its not finished yet tell them that."
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Why didn"t those people find out the correct information though. I mean as much as Blizzard can be fuck ups, I can"t think of anything they outright lied about, only statements which were made and later retracted when found to be incorrect shortly after (see Eyonix comments about t3 in the expansion for example). They do have a trail of broken promises, but no blatant lies.
Asmadai
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I"ll believe it. That is exactly one of the speculated reasons some have come up with for all of the incompleteness of the EQ expansions. The people who told the "lies" to the public were really just PR people and didn"t have first hand knowledge of the completeness or lack thereof, and were just telling the people exactly what they wanted to hear.Gallenite said:
I currently work for a corporation, and tho it may not be as big as SoE (Washington Mutual Bank if you want to get specific) i"ve still seen MANY many things of this nature happen around here all the time. Thousands upon thousands of dollars wasted, all because someone told someone something that they didn"t have 100% knowledge on. It happens, and it"s very understandable for me. I can only imagine the kind of confusion that can breed when you have to deal with a public release date, and having to try to satisfy customers 24 hours a day.
No, it"s more like if you took your car to get the oil changed, and the guy gives you either the SoE Response, "Sure, we"ll get your oil changed in 15 minutes" as opposed to the Blizzard Response of "Hey, it"s going to take longer than expected -- I"ll need you to come back every Tuesday for the next 2 years while we slowly finish the work on your car. You might find yourself having nothing to do for a while, but, well, sorry - at least we didn"t lie to you."keflex said:
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I would understand that explanation a lot better if the key content in question didn"t get answered on for months at a time. Basically from what I am gathering from your post, and I am trying not to step on toes or make you upset when I say this:Gallenite said:
Are you trying to tell me that you never saw the postings in question with regards to Planes of Power and the Frogloks until you actually put the content in 6 and 7 months later respectively? If you did, why didn"t you correct it personally? If you didn"t, how could you not see it? And if not you, did anyone else who works there see what was posted? They had to have... Some of the examples I have given were some of the most talked about topics in the game in their times.
And when your engine breaks down because the mechanicsaidhe gave you an oil change instead of actually doing it, my guess is you"ll be just alittlemore pissed than if they"d been honest w/ you.Asmadai said:
The problem is, SOE didn"t have the finished content until months down the road either, just like Blizzard. Unlike Blizzard, however, they didn"t have the audacity to lie about it. That"s just adding insult to injury.
And if not delivering on promises and lying about it is equivalent to telling the truth, then I have to say your world is just a little bit fucked up.
As Smed confirmed, any of those instances which can be construed as "lying" were simply cases of PR people (not CEOs, not developers, etc.) saying either what they thought was true or what they hoped was true.
Were the communication lines at SoE not so great back then? Yes.
Did upper management purposefully lie to players? No.
Were the communication lines at SoE not so great back then? Yes.
Did upper management purposefully lie to players? No.
Show me a quote (or paraphrase it and give context so others can confirm/deny) of an SoE employee (even a lowly PR guy will do...but I doubt you can even come up with that)sayingthat Vex Thal was completely finished and fully itemized.keflex said:
They are PR people. The entire point of their professional existence is to act as a filter between the CEOs/Devs & the players. You honestly believe that the upper management had no idea what they were telling people?FohMD said:
Yes - like I and others (Brad, Smed, etc.) have said, communication lines weren"t that great back then.Kaxmax said:
But if you want to play the rhetorical question game:
Do you honestly believe it would make sense for upper management to lie to their customers when the company depends on repeat business?
Absolutely, if it kept people paying subscriptions. How many people quit because of said lies? Not many I"d wager, because despite it"s problems EQ was the one of the few games worth playing until WoW came out.FohMD said:
Asmadai
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Hell yeah I do. I"ve seen numerous similar occasions. Perhaps the players on the boards are all hassling the PR guys for a response on the status of a zone. That PR person tries to contact the guy responsible, but for some reason could not reach them/could not get a definitative response. The PR guy then makes an assumption, and tells the players something positive, not really having a clue what the real situation is.Kaxmax said:
Blame the guy who assumed different and then told the playerbase wrong. I highly doubt the guy responsible gave told the PR guy "Yeah about that zone, see it isn"t working, cause we aren"t really finished with it - lie to the players for us and tell them everythings fine." It just isn"t logical.
I agree with you 100%, with a decent sized company shit happens. However, if a PR guy gives false information to the players it"s the upper management"s responsibility to make sure that information is corrected.Asmadai said:
Asmadai
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Well I don"t know the solution delivery process of SoE, but I see them as having two possible options to fixing the problem after the misinformation had been said: They could either, A. Leave the players misinformed, and just haul ass on fixing/completing the project, or maybe B. Telling the players they were misinformed, admitting your PR staff is shit (and remember, in a corporation, a person"s actions (especially a PR person) reflect on the company as a whole), admitting the zone isn"t finished/broken, and so on, pissing on the credability of the company.Kaxmax said:
It really translates out to A. Pissing off the raiding crowd, not the majority of their playerbase mind you, or B. Admitting to everyone that mentioned above, thus severely damaging the companies reputation even more so than the prior option would. With giant corporations, and with a company like SoE who had all those numbers of subscribers, when it comes to down to pissing off a lesser crowd of people and ruining the companies reputation with them, or pissing off the greater crowd, admitting guilt and pretty much admitting to even the non raiders that the company messed up - the prior option will ALWAYS be the best choice. I mean sure, they are both shitty options, but the company will always tend to look out for the company first in the end. Always. Customers come and customers go.
I understand your point completely, and I see the business reasoning. Unfotunately I am not Joe Casual, and neither is the vast majority of this board. Option A affects me, hence why I prefer a company who flat out says "X isn"t finished, we"ll tell you when it is".
Then MMO-Companies need to lock down what ARE the approved channels for releasing information, make sure information is only released through those channels, and make sure that information is reviewed before it is released. Ignorance doesn"t absolve culpablity. If your product wasn"t a game you guys could have more problems than a just disgruntled fan-base... and as the market gains ground as a legitimate industry I wouldn"t be surprised to see the same kind of regulation applying more and more often.
It"s hard when one entity repeatedly makes such massive "mistakes" with releasing information. You know if it was a once per game type thing you might be able to reasonably sell it as a simple mistake, but when it happens consistantly and repeatedly over a bunch of games over a time span of nearly a decade without any visible effort to remedy the situation, it"s time to shit or get off the pot. Fix your information distribution system or accept responsiblity for the mistakes you have made in a very public and visible manner.
I hope this will do for now until I can get home...FohMD said:
smedley said:
Your naivete is astounding, but here"s another rhetorical question: Do you honestly believe that every company that has had something to gain by releasing a product early will always do what"s in the best interests of the customer?fohmd said:
Assuming Smed did actually say that (which I doubt - it"s far too concrete for any CEO), the word "incomplete" is open to interpretation. He could have simply meant it in the sense that SoE has always released products which met all their (i.e.: not yours) requirements for "completeness". Before you go off yelling at me, yes I know it isn"t exactly ideal that SoE"s idea of complete isn"t/wasn"t the same as ours BUT if its reasonable to suppose that players won"t reach a zone for 3 months, it seems reasonable to me to release the game "early" and finish the zone while players are busy in other parts of the expansion.keflex said:
There is certainly something to gain from releasing a product "early", that"s obvious. Your underlying assumption, however, is that releasing a product with unitemized/unpopulated zones is the same thing as lying. It isn"t unless you specifically state somewhere "Expansion contains fully itemized, fully populated zones x,y,z".
As is the word "is", I suppose.FohMD said:
Anyway...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/...n1335511.shtml
You mistake my argument for a product"s incompleteness to be tantamount to lying in my eyes; this is incorrect. An incomplete product doesn"t bother meas long as I know it"s incomplete.
Once again, my point isn"t that releasing a product incomplete is lying, it"s that releasing a product incomplete and lying about it being complete is lying.