A returnee's rant. Didja miss me?
Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 4:49 pm
A bit of history...
A lot of thought went into my picking SoR as my first MMORPG.
I had passed on Ultima Online,Everquest,and all the first generation games
because I wanted the new technology to have a chance to "work the kinks out".
I was looking for a smaller game with a smaller population,to better my chances of being able to stand out
or make a name for myself. As opposed to the corporate megoliths like EQ and WoW.
I wanted a game that would be the only game I played and Neverax talked a good game as to storyline, new content, and features.
I started playing SoR in the beta days
.
Hopped right in at release and survived the Patch One debacle. {claps hand to eye to stop facial tics}
For those who weren't there...before Patch One you could actually solo a bit and gain XP alone.
In hindsight I now realize that was the beginning of the end for me even though I stuck it out for months afterward.
Forced grouping led to uncountable hours of me sitting around waiting for enough people to come online so something could actually be accomplished.
My choices for solo activity were now two. 1. Dig,dig,dig. 2. Build up some nice lvl 250 Death Penalty trying to kill something to work my 1 hand mace skill up alone. Eh not fun...
Hit my first 250 skill within a month or two and soon after that got my second and third 250.
Started looking around for new content,and finding none or reports of any coming down the pipe.
I soon lost interest.
Or to state it more truthfully, I lost faith in Neverax, their ability to improve and adapt,
and the future of the game.
The important bit there is "the future of the game".
A few things happened in rapid succession that planted the seeds of doubt.
The dissolution of the North American server was one.
This sent me a strong message that money was tight at Neverax and SoR was headed for "regional game status".
They snubbed the Asian gamer market from release, and now they seemed to be thumbing their noses at the North Americans as well.
Another was I started noticing some posters on the forums were racking up numbers like 1,200 posts by so and so user.
People were actually spending as much or more time complaining about the game as playing it!
My friends list was shrinking as people quit entirely or became casual 3-4 hours on weekends types. (You know who you are!)
The addition of the bandit chiefs and their cute lil outfits bought me headlong into my first experiances with spawn camping and kill stealing.
Demoralization set in.
The straw that broke that camel's back came in an unexpected form... choice!
Another game came out that while not a true MMORPG, was made by designers who's work I was pretty interested in seeing how it turned out.
That game was Guild Wars. I'm not here to try and convert anyone, but peep at the Game Updates section on their website and do a little time-line
in your head as compared to the ones for SoR.
Even taking into account that Neverax is a much smaller company, this will show you that a game CAN be fixed and tweeked in a timely fashion.
Now I return to SoR to find things really haven't changed at all, in fact the contrasts and problems are now in much sharper focus.
It's a matter of focus and vision. Which brings me to another sore point.
SoR has been, from it's inception, waaaaay too much vision and massively short on focus.
Consider this...How much time, effort and resources were wasted on the ATS and the Ryzom Ring thingie?
Wasn't there some kinda Ryzom short story thing at one time?
Bah, more unfocused rubbish.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few too.
Keep in mind all the promises made even before Patch One...outposts, ranged balancing, PvP balancing, the Raid engine, ingame economy.
Oh yeah how's the weather in the Prime roots lately? (nudge,nudge).
I did a little searching for info and what happened to rites/the Encyclopedia? I remember some pretty big numbers being thrown around by the devs at the time...
For everything that they said they were planning to fix they came up with a whole new set of ideas/efforts/projects,leaving the original game to stagnate.
I'll say that again...For everything that they said they were planning to fix they came up with a whole new set of ideas/efforts/projects,leaving the original game to stagnate.
OOOO ! Shiny!! These folks are what ya could call easily distracted...
Things like that are why I grew sick of defending Neverax on the "smaller game company" point. Yes, I realize I sorta did it again a few lines above. Heh.
Somewhat out of order but still very important is the leveling curve the game started with.
This is the one point that can never really be fixed (too late now),
getting to 250 was way to easy.
I had dreams of being one of the few high lvl crafters of a single item which were dashed in fairly short order.
Within a very few months of release,
every guild of any size had multiple high lvl crafters for any item.
Ok maybe not staves...but you git the idea.
Of course this is now kinda possible because some of them are leaving the game,
but I don't really see that as a positive thing...
So here we have a game with simply amazing potential brought down with bad design,failure to admit to and rectify mistakes, forced grouping and now forced PvP,
total lack of priorities{Oooo! Shiny!!}, a leveling curve that makes us all clones,a quite possibly autistic marketing department(if there even is one),a loyal but rapidly becoming
dissolutioned player base (I've been reading the forums), and I'm very afraid...no future.
If ya made it this far, thanks for reading. I realize the above seems very angry and bleak, but I spent a lot of time and money (2 accts pretty much since release) supporting this company,
and feel I got very little of substance or use out of my investment.
Not to mention the ever present thought that it will probably all be for nothing when their investors twig to some of the ways they seem determined to fail.
I say thanks in advance for any comments or critisims ye post to this, but realize it is basically a manifesto, and I refuse to turn it into a forum version of a chat session that so oftens plagues these boards.
Which is how ya git peeps with 1,200 posts...Sheesh! Git a room why dontcha?
A lot of thought went into my picking SoR as my first MMORPG.
I had passed on Ultima Online,Everquest,and all the first generation games
because I wanted the new technology to have a chance to "work the kinks out".
I was looking for a smaller game with a smaller population,to better my chances of being able to stand out
or make a name for myself. As opposed to the corporate megoliths like EQ and WoW.
I wanted a game that would be the only game I played and Neverax talked a good game as to storyline, new content, and features.
I started playing SoR in the beta days
.
Hopped right in at release and survived the Patch One debacle. {claps hand to eye to stop facial tics}
For those who weren't there...before Patch One you could actually solo a bit and gain XP alone.
In hindsight I now realize that was the beginning of the end for me even though I stuck it out for months afterward.
Forced grouping led to uncountable hours of me sitting around waiting for enough people to come online so something could actually be accomplished.
My choices for solo activity were now two. 1. Dig,dig,dig. 2. Build up some nice lvl 250 Death Penalty trying to kill something to work my 1 hand mace skill up alone. Eh not fun...
Hit my first 250 skill within a month or two and soon after that got my second and third 250.
Started looking around for new content,and finding none or reports of any coming down the pipe.
I soon lost interest.
Or to state it more truthfully, I lost faith in Neverax, their ability to improve and adapt,
and the future of the game.
The important bit there is "the future of the game".
A few things happened in rapid succession that planted the seeds of doubt.
The dissolution of the North American server was one.
This sent me a strong message that money was tight at Neverax and SoR was headed for "regional game status".
They snubbed the Asian gamer market from release, and now they seemed to be thumbing their noses at the North Americans as well.
Another was I started noticing some posters on the forums were racking up numbers like 1,200 posts by so and so user.
People were actually spending as much or more time complaining about the game as playing it!
My friends list was shrinking as people quit entirely or became casual 3-4 hours on weekends types. (You know who you are!)
The addition of the bandit chiefs and their cute lil outfits bought me headlong into my first experiances with spawn camping and kill stealing.
Demoralization set in.
The straw that broke that camel's back came in an unexpected form... choice!
Another game came out that while not a true MMORPG, was made by designers who's work I was pretty interested in seeing how it turned out.
That game was Guild Wars. I'm not here to try and convert anyone, but peep at the Game Updates section on their website and do a little time-line
in your head as compared to the ones for SoR.
Even taking into account that Neverax is a much smaller company, this will show you that a game CAN be fixed and tweeked in a timely fashion.
Now I return to SoR to find things really haven't changed at all, in fact the contrasts and problems are now in much sharper focus.
It's a matter of focus and vision. Which brings me to another sore point.
SoR has been, from it's inception, waaaaay too much vision and massively short on focus.
Consider this...How much time, effort and resources were wasted on the ATS and the Ryzom Ring thingie?
Wasn't there some kinda Ryzom short story thing at one time?
Bah, more unfocused rubbish.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few too.
Keep in mind all the promises made even before Patch One...outposts, ranged balancing, PvP balancing, the Raid engine, ingame economy.
Oh yeah how's the weather in the Prime roots lately? (nudge,nudge).
I did a little searching for info and what happened to rites/the Encyclopedia? I remember some pretty big numbers being thrown around by the devs at the time...
For everything that they said they were planning to fix they came up with a whole new set of ideas/efforts/projects,leaving the original game to stagnate.
I'll say that again...For everything that they said they were planning to fix they came up with a whole new set of ideas/efforts/projects,leaving the original game to stagnate.
OOOO ! Shiny!! These folks are what ya could call easily distracted...
Things like that are why I grew sick of defending Neverax on the "smaller game company" point. Yes, I realize I sorta did it again a few lines above. Heh.
Somewhat out of order but still very important is the leveling curve the game started with.
This is the one point that can never really be fixed (too late now),
getting to 250 was way to easy.
I had dreams of being one of the few high lvl crafters of a single item which were dashed in fairly short order.
Within a very few months of release,
every guild of any size had multiple high lvl crafters for any item.
Ok maybe not staves...but you git the idea.
Of course this is now kinda possible because some of them are leaving the game,
but I don't really see that as a positive thing...
So here we have a game with simply amazing potential brought down with bad design,failure to admit to and rectify mistakes, forced grouping and now forced PvP,
total lack of priorities{Oooo! Shiny!!}, a leveling curve that makes us all clones,a quite possibly autistic marketing department(if there even is one),a loyal but rapidly becoming
dissolutioned player base (I've been reading the forums), and I'm very afraid...no future.
If ya made it this far, thanks for reading. I realize the above seems very angry and bleak, but I spent a lot of time and money (2 accts pretty much since release) supporting this company,
and feel I got very little of substance or use out of my investment.
Not to mention the ever present thought that it will probably all be for nothing when their investors twig to some of the ways they seem determined to fail.
I say thanks in advance for any comments or critisims ye post to this, but realize it is basically a manifesto, and I refuse to turn it into a forum version of a chat session that so oftens plagues these boards.
Which is how ya git peeps with 1,200 posts...Sheesh! Git a room why dontcha?
)