Letter from SOE President

[Handa]

Mr. Smedley has written an extremely promising letter about the state of the mmorpg genre. Read it here http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/2708

[Bayle]

well as a business man he is likely to say anything, and after many flops in the gaming world, i am very skeptical if he can do any of those things he mentions, and if he could, would it be fun to play or another Final Fantasy movie/game? (10 or 11, i forget which was so scripted that you often fell asleep in the dialogues as you had to watch a cut scene...)

i see this too often when engineers have their way with a project after having so much success in the past they become jaded. i see success coming from putting the people that are going to work with it, or play it in this case on a board to work with the engineers, to put the human perspective in the making of, or working of...

now before i become blasted for smashing SOE, so long as any company never burns their bridge with me, ie charging my credit card for something i didntt ask for, or blatantly dumping on me, i will always reconsider a return to a game, or gaming company i have left. I STILL play Planetside, so its not a SOE thing. the problem i DO see with SOE, is they dont often even acknowledge the things that are flawed in their games, they too often just add more material which often adds a new set of problems with its release. some mistakes in coding in the past of EQLive were definatly bugs (KEI bug), but they added so much fun factor to the game, why even bother fixing something like that? ahh well, it basically boils down to this, if i cant have fun playing whatever game i am into at the moment, i wont play it. if i wanted a job or more stress, i would go back to work.lol.

[Twiz]

To me, his letter predicts the beginning of the end for "intelligent" MMORPGs. It's almost as if they feel now they have to spoon feed every bit of content, provide for super easy levelling, provide a roadmap to advance every second of the game, etc. It is as if they (and by they, I mean all the companies, not just SoE) don't want to acknowledge there are intelligent folks out here who want a game that challenges our intellect and makes us actually THINK!

Since he makes it pretty clear EQ2 will begin to fall into the redundancy of WoW, as much as I like EQ2, once it becomes a WoW clone, that will be it for me. If I want a game that is easy, linear, where my hand is held most of the way, I would already be playing something besides EQ2.

[Handa]

The reality of the mmorpg genre is that the expense of topping the last "great thing" absolutely demands a business model that best assures a financial success. I think Mr. Smedley is acknowleging that what improves the prospects of a game's success is to not ignore the "fun" factor. Appealing to the largest number of purchasing consumers only makes sense. A game that is so complex that only a small percentage of gamers will find it fun is not the surest road to profits and, consequentially, luring investors.

I think another example of this can be found in the war game genre. There are some amazingly complex war games currently in the market that require the gamer to accept the intellectual challange associated with such a game....War in the Pacific and Hearts of Iron II are examples. But the war game market segment has been shrinking for years now as gamers seek (and spend their money on) those game that entertain above all else (Sid Meier...you are my hero).

I think Mr. Smedley is stating that SOE is acknowledging this reality while still seeking to stay true to the dream of creating the "perfect" game. I wish him well and if SOE can pull it off, I'll buy it.