Agreed. That stuff needs to stop. They may have the worst customer service but they're no BoA or BP.

Just on that note

Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence.

A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

This is just a whole other level of evil, game companies aren't even in the ballpark.

Never use that Worst Company line. Until EA starts taking your home, extorting and blackmailing you (No, the CM market is none of those) or killing the planet upon which you live, they are not the worst company in the world. Bad service does not trump deadly oil spills, so the hyperbole needs to be tempered. EA may be a mean game company, but they are not the Worst Company.

Political opinions are subjective and essentially irrelevant to this discussion. I would think more people are affected in a more immediate way by EA than by the situations you mentioned. SWTOR easily makes them one of the worst companies. If they actually were in charge of the banking system, the energy production and distribution system or any actual critical system, our whole country would have sunk by now. "Oh you need a keyfob to buy gas at the pump because the one time password isn't letting you access the pump-console. Just use your one time password at the pump to access your keyfob...."

"...oh your loan went through and you will be paying your mortgage very month but everytime you use your own key (your pw) to open the door a second lock will appear. When that second lock appears a key (OTP) will be mailed to you, so just go to the post office to get it. Ok, that key doesn't work and is often never even sent, so why not just use that second key (that never comes) to open the second lock in order to access a third lock (security key). See how easy that was?"

We would all be without shelter or gas AT ALL for long random periods of time.

Political opinions are subjective and essentially irrelevant to this discussion. I would think more people are affected in a more immediate way by EA than by the situations you mentioned. SWTOR easily makes them one of the worst companies. If they actually were in charge of the banking system, the energy production and distribution system or any actual critical system, our whole country would have sunk by now. "Oh you need a keyfob to buy gas at the pump because the one time password isn't letting you access the pump-console. Just use your one time password at the pump to access your keyfob...."

 

"...oh your loan went through and you will be paying your mortgage very month but everytime you use your own key (your pw) to open the door a second lock will appear. When that second lock appears a key (OTP) will be mailed to you, so just go to the post office to get it. Ok, that key doesn't work and is often never even sent, so why not just use that second key (that never comes) to open the second lock in order to access a third lock (security key). See how easy that was?"

 

We would all be without shelter or gas AT ALL for long random periods of time.

Oh I'm certain lots of people are affected by EA more often, but you should do well to remember that there are companies who would let your loved ones DIE to save a few pennies. So be very grateful that you just lose an hour of playing a video game. Because I guarantee, your life could be a crapton worse.

The short answer is the game was released 3-6 months too early.

Specifics:

The game at release and for 6 months after release lacked "polish"

-FPS slide show on many computer systems.

-Lack of basic features that should be standard in MMO created today, :

like PvE group finder

Cross server BG's

Ranked wz/arenas

Complete Operations/raids Not just 1 boss in Karagahs palace and ppl have to wait months for it to be finished, as well as EV to be introduced.

Ppl can say all they like about Oh but WOW did not have all that at release and that's right, but when i buy a car today I expect ABS, Air bags, Sat Nav, Stability control full electrics, blue tooth etc as standard features. I don't say, HEY 10 Years ago when "X" car was released it did not have any of that. U demand today's technology and standard, not yesterday's.

If a developer puts out a game in today's market it has to conform with today's standards not yesterday's standards.

Other major problems

- Lack of faction balance.

Some of the faction mirrors classes were badly imbalanced.

Mortar volley vs Death from above, Project vs Shock, Heat vs ammo. **** pl forget about snow vs grass in Civil war WZ. If the snow and grass was capped at exactly the same time then the Snow turret hit the PUB ship b4 the grass turret hit the Imp ship giving imps an advantage.

Then we had terrible class balance at the beginning which i think can be forgiven b/c its going to be inevitable in any other game but the problem was that BW went so crazy on the nerf stick that they killed classes entirely.

So too heavy handed on nerfs and buffs. BW did not learn from other mmos mistakes.

Class balance should be a gradual think, make small steps and fix things ina controled manner don't jsut rape classes and make then close to usless. OP/scoundral dps and Merc/Commando DPS and later Sage/Sorc (although they over buffed them with bubbles stun later)

To top it all off, the TERRIBLE RNG pvp centurion, champion and Battlemaster bags. These were an epic fail to the max.

All this in the first 3-6 months of live and BW lost close to 1 million subs.

The game should not have been released until patch 1.6 imo. It currently in fairly good state, but the problem is once you lose your subscribers a very small % actually return.

I had a guild of 40 active members at release and of those 40 only 4 of us still are subbed. I hear similar stories from other guilds and large guilds have vanished over time.

Now all MMO have a turn over of subs and users no doubt but you can not take arguably the biggest scifi/fantasy franchise in the world create a game get close to 2 mil subs from day 1 then lose most of them in a very quick amount of time. You obviously have done something wrong.

If it wasn't for the success of WoW, MMOs would have 1/10th as many features.

I'm... not so sure about that. Yes about more MMOs because they tried to jump on the bandwagon. No about features. When WoW released, the MMO market was already saturated in the east, with two epic games. In the west, either due to lack of marketing or general lack of interest in eastern products (I think both), the market was empty though. EQ had what, 1 million subs in it's best days. Maybe it's the culture and asian people just like playing with others better (considering the fact that in most their MMOs, party is required from level 10 to 99 for effective playing, I'd say yes).

Then, Warcraft came about, and managed to snare 10mil+ subs in a couple years - suddenly everyone is making games that are nothing more than wow clones (see: rift, swtor), each with some sort of gimmick that has little consequence (swtor: story, voice acting; rift: different skill trees, rifts).

I dare say that if wow didn't get the amount of subs it did, we'd have more variation in MMOs. Currently, we have a total of three (yes, just 3) MMOs that allow for heavy customization of characters. One is EVE (though not through character stats, but through ship loadouts), but EVE is primarily a PVP game, so let's leave it out for now. We all know sandboxes are superior anyway.

The next game is DDO (dungeons & dragons online, 6+ years old), which is based on 3.5 edition of D&D. It allows for everything D&D allows for. You can build a warforged wizard with 18 str and 12 int, splash some fighter/monk and you have a self-buffing, self-healing melee DPS with evasion. It's not as good DPS as a pure melee, and it's not as good at buffing as a pure arcane (buffs last less time), but it's good enough at both to hold it's own in a fight.

The last game is RO (ragnarok online, 11+ years old). It also has a 6-stat system, similar to d&d, but not based on it. You start with 1 in each stat, and put stats in as you level up. It also allows you to build anything. From 5-attacks-per-second, can't-hit-me agility attack speed+dodge knights, to tank rogues that you can't hit very often due to high dodge, to melee/agi wizards/clerics that deal melee and spell damage/heal at the same time.

And the best part is, all these builds, in both games, can work well.

Can you make a melee sorcerer in swtor that doesn't suck? Nope, you can't. And this is why WoW clones are bad. Because let's face it, we only have one stat that gives everything plus endurance, and the others do nothing whatsoever. With no stat distribution, we can't make a build to our liking. Can you imagine how awesome customization we'd have if:

1) Strength increases all melee damage from all melee attacks, increases knockback/knockdown resistance.

2) Willpower increases force damage and healing, increases resistance to CC effects, mental effects.

3) Cunning improves your dodge, alacrity, and crit chance/damage.

4) Aim increases ranged weapon damage, tech damage and healing, accuracy.

5) Endurance increases HP and damage reduction.

Then give us real skill trees, not trees full of stupid passives that increase something or another by 1-3%, and suddenly I can build a strength/cunning melee sorcerer. Or, I can build a melee operative, that hits like a truck with his vibro knife. Or I can build a ranged assassin with insane DPS, but almost no HP/defenses. I can build a willpower/endurance tank that can't get CC'd but lacks ranged or melee dps to hold aggro in pve (this would be awesome in huttball, for example). And so on.

Instead, since wow succeeded, we have had _zero_ new games that offer this kind of customization. We just get a class served and can do with it what the developer intended, then if we want to play the class more, but not the same two/three builds all the time, well... crap.

TL;DR: wow clones have cut back on "features", because wow is nothing but a badly designed MMO with little customization, and it's only being saved by it's sheer simplicity. There are literally hundreds of thousands of players, maybe even millions, who would love a new, modern MMO that allows proper character building. Instead we are stuck with DDO/RO for PVE and EVE/UO for PVP. Go figure.

Very true. But WoW also gave us what a lot of us don't want...the spoon fed linear game designed for the lowest common denominator.

I'm still not sure what attack you think occurred. Was I somehow mean to her? I may have gone off topic but quoting someone then responding with your own opinion on what that person thinks is exactly what we all do every day.

 

When someone posts their thoughts on here and someone responds telling them that their opinion is foolish garbage, is that somehow different? More on topic to the thread perhaps, but not a call out or attack apparently.

 

I told her my opinion, she asked me questions in return and I answered them. There was no "attack". I've already told her that if she wants to discuss it in private I'm open to it.

 

Besides, http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=653857 You unsubbed, not really sure why you're concerned about what happens here anymore.

 

We should return to topic now so this doesn't become any more derailed please.

Nice deflections.

1 - I'm not saying you're the only person who's ever attacked someone else on this forum. Just don't pretend you didn't attack her by saying she's lost credibility. That's a character attack.

2 - I was originally in this thread to discuss exactly the point of "Where did EA go Wrong?" and specifically mentioned that the failure on the Hero Engine is the main reason I unsubbed. I still have time to voice that matter. I'm not going into other threads spreading doom and gloom like some of the angry /quit trolls out there who have to poo-poo on everyone else who likes this game. A voice of someone who quits is valid to this thread.

3 - So if you don't want this thread to go off-topic, then stop the derailing by questioning other people's behaviors which has nothing to do with the OP's thread.

The reason why it was the best is because WoW, back then, held the standard that raiding is something that takes dedication and time. Then casuals who refused to group, refused to put the time in, and refused to get good enough to raid would complain, "Why am I paying for this game when I can't see all the content? *cry* I should be allowed to raid at my own leisure, solo-style playing for 30 mins a day. It's not fair."

 

Unfortunately, that soon became a large portion of the player-base and MMO's have never been the same.

That was EQ.

Never use that Worst Company line. Until EA starts taking your home, extorting and blackmailing you (No, the CM market is none of those) or killing the planet upon which you live, they are not the worst company in the world. Bad service does not trump deadly oil spills, so the hyperbole needs to be tempered. EA may be a mean game company, but they are not the Worst Company.

Well, we are off topic...but it needs to be said. And I have to agree with this.

Unfortunately, EA earning Worst Company on an internet polling/voting system invalidates the polling/voting system. It also invalidates the composite emotional and intellectual IQ of the internet gaming community as a whole. But then again.. this is not new news either.

When peoples lives are being ruined through predatory lending and banking practices in significant numbers in the world, yet the internet thinks it is notably less evil then a game company messing with their idea of what a game experience should be.... there is a genuine problem in internet society. And it's not a good kind of problem either.

I don't mean to be rude and don't take it as such, but your thread is purely subjective. You compare 2 games using your personal tastes.

For instance, just when you say that SWTOR isn't fun....? This is not a fact at all. You do not find it fun. If you find Rift funnier, good for you. I personaly have fun playing SWTOR.

I'm not saying that all that you said was ******** (you are kind of right about the F2P limitations), but again, you more or less listed what you personaly think of SWTOR versus what you think of Rift. This is not a factual comparison.

But hey, maybe I was wrong and that's not what you meant to do. But I thought the goal here was to objectively compare the games.

1. licensing someone else's IP instead using their own. There are probably a lot of things they wanted to do but couldn't because of that.

2. For all the efforts they put into it, the story wasn't very good. Most of it consists of some actor reading a few lines expository dialog in cut scenes, I for one felt disconnected from what was going on. Once I exit the phase, it's as if nothing I did happened.

3. putting too much effort into the story. Given how MMOs work, it's just going to have stories as engaging as KOTOR, for example. The team should've realized that and put effort into areas with better return.

I disagree, the core of the game was and is problem #1. It's too easy and too short to keep interest. Nothing has been done to change that. Changing it would not have been easy, granted. The game isn't a railroad, it's a subway tunnel.

Well, I was only speaking to the overall appeal of the game to the playerbase that should have been the target of this game...in that way the only improvements that really had to be made were the additions of features that casual gamers traditionally like, something the game lacked almost completely after launch.

It was not meant to suggest that the core game is not in need of improvements...only that with respect to casual appeal the core game was not an issue.

Never use that Worst Company line. Until EA starts taking your home, extorting and blackmailing you (No, the CM market is none of those) or killing the planet upon which you live, they are not the worst company in the world. Bad service does not trump deadly oil spills, so the hyperbole needs to be tempered. EA may be a mean game company, but they are not the Worst Company.

The worst company title came from a vote. And in that respect the company did earn that title from it's disgruntled customers.

That is what happens when you treat your customers like dirt. They make you pay for it. So in effect they directly earned the title based on how they treated their customers.

But no, objectively it can be said that they are not the worst company in the US. But they certainly earned that title none the less.

That was EQ.

Casuals in EQ ruined the MMO community?

MMO's are like the 80's...

People so want to relive the good ole days but things won't ever be that grand again.

There are just too many demographics online now days all screaming for different things... You have gold farmers and those types trying to exploit the game for all its worth, you have trends in the gaming industry to release early and patch later because profit margins get tougher and tougher, etc....

Just a different time now days... and its only going to continue to get worse.

But no, objectively it can be said that they are not the worst company in the US. But they certainly earned that title none the less.

I had thought that only Consumer Reports subscribers were allowed to vote, but I couldn't find anything that stated that explicitly. In fact I cannot find any means to create an account on the site. Either it's hidden or the poll is open to everybody. If it is limited to CR subs, then yeah, deserved as a Worst Customer Service award, otherwise, total garbage.

Where EA went wrong was trying to develop a AAA MMO as their first foray into the market. MMO's are heavily dependent on first class Customer Service, something that EA consistently fails hard at. The repeated attempts to push the line of what they can move into the CM just adds "Greed" on top of "Incompetent".

Where EA went wrong was trying to develop a AAA MMO as their first foray into the market. MMO's are heavily dependent on first class Customer Service, something that EA consistently fails hard at. The repeated attempts to push the line of what they can move into the CM just adds "Greed" on top of "Incompetent".

A few clarifying comments to what I quoted above:

1) This is not EAs first foray into MMOs... it's Bioware's. There IS a difference. EA is a large holding company that acquires and holds game companies.. including MMO game companies (read: Mythic).

2) EA did not win the vote for "worst company" on the basis of it's MMOs. MMOs are a very small part of EAs total business... less then 5% in fact on a revenue basis (which is what holding companies are all about). So the entire premise is misplaced in the context of a thread about "wrong" on the part of the game developer for a particular MMO (SWTOR) in an SWTOR forum.

3) And NOW.....for a bit of cheeky sarcasm --> I thought MMOs were heavily dependent on whiny cry baby customers who can never be satisfied or happy no matter what.....because frankly... who else plays MMOs really? Yeah...not every MMO player is a whiny cry baby who cannot be satisfied... but the irony here.. I'm more right then being simply sarcastic.

i agree with what mostly the OP has said. i dont think there can ever be a day/night cycle. something about the engine or whatever..

lack of social events is bad for an mmo. i like your example about invasion and players grouping up the defend the city. i doubt anything can happen like t hat in swtor. hard to pull of right mainly due to the fact that the entire game you play in "instances". even something as small as the fleet is instanced..

3) And NOW.....for a bit of cheeky sarcasm --> I thought MMOs were heavily dependent on whiny cry baby customers who can never be satisfied or happy no matter what.....because frankly... who else plays MMOs really? Yeah...not every MMO player is a whiny cry baby who cannot be satisfied... but the irony here.. I'm more right then being simply sarcastic.

I wish you WERE just being sarcastic here...

The worst company title came from a vote. And in that respect the company did earn that title from it's disgruntled customers.

 

That is what happens when you treat your customers like dirt. They make you pay for it. So in effect they directly earned the title based on how they treated their customers.

 

But no, objectively it can be said that they are not the worst company in the US. But they certainly earned that title none the less.

They earned that title by a a bunch of First World Problem having bunch of armchair activists, whose idea of "Worst Day Ever" is Tuesday Maintenance.

EA may treat you bad, but they are way kinder than other companies. Waiting an hour for a server to clear in SimCity is a far better fate that needing an experimental medical trial to save your life and being told "Sorry, but we're not paying. Have a great remaining week!"

A few clarifying comments to what I quoted above:

 

1) This is not EAs first foray into MMOs... it's Bioware's. There IS a difference. EA is a large holding company that acquires and holds game companies.. including MMO game companies (read: Mythic).

 

2) EA did not win the vote for "worst company" on the basis of it's MMOs. MMOs are a very small part of EAs total business... less then 5% in fact on a revenue basis (which is what holding companies are all about). So the entire premise is misplaced in the context of a thread about "wrong" on the part of the game developer for a particular MMO (SWTOR) in an SWTOR forum.

 

3) And NOW.....for a bit of cheeky sarcasm --> I thought MMOs were heavily dependent on whiny cry baby customers who can never be satisfied or happy no matter what.....because frankly... who else plays MMOs really? Yeah...not every MMO player is a whiny cry baby who cannot be satisfied... but the irony here.. I'm more right then being simply sarcastic.

Lol...I mostly agree, though perhaps I would not have worded number three that way hehe.

Yes, this is not EAs first MMO, yes they did not get the vote because of their MMOs but how they had been treating their customers over the year for many products and services....

...and yes. MMO players, generally speaking of course, are very picky and demanding. Especially now.

They earned that title by a a bunch of First World Problem having bunch of armchair activists, whose idea of "Worst Day Ever" is Tuesday Maintenance.

 

EA may treat you bad, but they are way kinder than other companies. Waiting an hour for a server to clear in SimCity is a far better fate that needing an experimental medical trial to save your life and being told "Sorry, but we're not paying. Have a great remaining week!"

That is a matter of opinion of course. I do agree that EA customers were rather hard on EA...but they wre hard for a reason....

Hired fake religious folks to protest Dante's Inferno

Used Childs Play to promote Battlefield Heroes DLC without permission

SecurROM scandal and dishonest public statements following the discovery

Banning players from online play and rendering all purchased games linked to that account unplayable

Banning a player for speaking out publicly against EA (ban was reversed when revealed)

Spyware scandal, public denials, homepage hijacks and advertising

Poor customer service and poor communication with customers

DLC provided on paid products that requires additional purchase

SimCity online DRM locking out paying customers from play (fixed as far as I can tell)

That is just a few of the dozens and dozens of missteps and bad judgement calls the company has made over the years. EA just doesn't seem to understand it's customers, what they will accept and what will enrage them.

Understand...I do not think EA is the worst company, nor do I think the rating was deserved. But they did earn it by treating their customers badly on many occasions.

This just proves that customers will, in the end, make you pay for your mistakes.

You missed my point completely. I was actually agreeing with you more than disagreeing and yet you STILL had to make some kind of point. Yeesh.

 

Like it or not, MMOs have a much wider audience now than what they did 10 years ago. Any bid budget game ( and All games are getting much more expensive to make) need to hit a wider "mainstream" audience in the gaming community. That doesn't mean its a mainstream product...like popular jeans or t-shirts.

 

Your OPINION is that the mainstreaming and dumbing down to hit a wider audience has hurt the genre in general. No...it has hurt it FOR YOU. You want something different. That's fine...and you can have that opinion.

 

But fact states that MMOs are big business now. They cost a lot but they also have the potential to make a lot of money for the company that produced it. Many, many more gamers are playing MMOs now. If the genre was actually worse then the population would decline but the facts do not support that assertion. Millions upon millions of gamers are playing some type of MMO. Facts would say the genre is much more successful than 10 years ago.

 

That doesn't mean its better in your eyes, but from a business perspective the genre is growing rapidly.

 

If you want a certain type of game you have many choices. Understand that this game will never, ever be a complicated MMO with tons of underlying systems and rules. That is not the audience. You can either accept that or you can pretend to hate it. Pick one.

Worldwide, MMO's may be far more successful now than they were, but in the Western world, they are pretty much at exactly the same point they were in the heyday of EQ. You have one or two games with a large percentage of the players, and the rest fighting over the scraps.

If you take out the Asian games, which are huge in their market, but non-entities in the West, the numbers are comparable to where they were 10 years ago.

The core of the game has nothing to do with the length. The core of the game is the underlying design and combat systems. Everything is built on that foundation.

 

Content equals length. Content is not the core of the gameplay. I agree, for some people the leveling process was too quick and there wasn't enough content at launch. Not for me...but for some people.

 

But make no mistake, content is not the core gameplay design. Content is...well content.

The core of the game has a lot to do with how long it is.

If the combat system were slower, more tactical, more RPG-like, the level progression would be slower. Adding a few seconds to each of the 82 billion mob fights one will experience in TOR, cumulatively would add many hours of gameplay to the game.

1) This is not EAs first foray into MMOs... it's Bioware's. There IS a difference. EA is a large holding company that acquires and holds game companies.. including MMO game companies (read: Mythic).

Weren't their other MMO(s?) inherited when they acquired the developer(s?) Regardless, what I meant was they threw a green team at a AAA MMO project with a hot franchise. 20/20 hindsight suggests they should have tackled something a bit less ambitious first.

2) EA did not win the vote for "worst company" on the basis of it's MMOs.

Didn't say they did EA has a long history of being customer hostile. Lord Artemis' post mentions several of their missteps.

Assume for a moment that voting is limited to subscribers of Consumer Reports (the Consumerist is CR's website). If that's true, the only fault with it is the name of the "contest". Instead it should be called "Worst Customer Service/Experience". On the whole BoA and Halliburton have excellent customer service.

3) ... Yeah...not every MMO player is a whiny cry baby who cannot be satisfied... but the irony here.. I'm more right then being simply sarcastic.

I see more opinions I agree with than not. Sure things can be worded better, but I also understand a lot of the frustration. Too many issues are not being addressed or even acknowledged in a timely manner. And that gets back to the core of "go Wrong?" and "Worst Company [Customer Service] in America"