Go Go SoE!

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » May 8, 2006, 7:50 pm

I kind of laugh at all the hate/love for company X over company Y (insert SOE or Blizzard as you see fit) in this thread. A lot of us have differing tastes and find different things appealing in each of these games but none of them, nor the companies who create and market them are perfect. In some ways I would love to see some combinations of their abilities to create a better game but at the same time, its the competition that will breed innovation and improvement.

Miir likes to bring up SOE's network/infrastructure and he has a point. There were post-expansion and post patch fuckups a lot in EQ but they seemed to improve as the game got older. Blizzard's servers and infrastructure have been ass since release and they still haven't got it right: just ask people who play on the "terrible twenty" that were down for a couple days again last week.

Conversely Blizzard has been better at adding new content without an expansion pack every 4-6 months like SOE got into with EQ. I can't comment on EQ2 as I never felt an urge to try it. As far as patching bugs and class balance issues, I don't think one is any better than the other.

If McQuaid and the people at Sigil want to hop in bed with SOE, thats up to them. I'm not going to reject their product just because SOE is involved: to be honest with the network/server issues I'd be more reluctant to trust Blizzard. I'll see what the reviews are and what word of mouth says about it. I know who I trust in evaluating these things and who I don't.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » May 8, 2006, 10:51 pm

So what you're saying is that you'd buy a "Ford Pinto II" if you read a good review on it? Or smoke a new brand of cigarettes because the tobacco company told you they were safe, for real this time?

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » May 9, 2006, 1:42 am

uh oh now vanguard's ruined

(LOL)

masteen · Post by **masteen** » May 9, 2006, 8:50 am

As long as the GMs are Sigil employees, I have no problem. If SOE is supplying their extra special retards for the job, I will never play a second of this game.

I don't hate SOE, but I had enough unsatisfactory dealings with their underlings in EQ to make me stay away.

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » May 9, 2006, 11:17 am

Siji wrote:So what you're saying is that you'd buy a "Ford Pinto II" if you read a good review on it? Or smoke a new brand of cigarettes because the tobacco company told you they were safe, for real this time?

No. I said I'd make up my own mind based on the product and on the opinions of others I trust and respect.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » May 9, 2006, 3:46 pm

Maybe I just had a good experience with Blizzard but I didn't think the servers were too bad when I was playing a lot, which was up until about a year ago now. As they continued to grow I guess it got worse.

Perhaps it's just me but running a network for years I know there are going to be problems and no matter how much BCDR you have, things still go wrong.

Vanguard is very promising and as I said, I think the SOE collaboration is a good thing.

Marb

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 9, 2006, 4:26 pm

Who cares about Vanguard when the Wii is right around the corner!

miir · Post by **miir** » May 9, 2006, 4:59 pm

Marbus wrote:Maybe I just had a good experience with Blizzard but I didn't think the servers were too bad when I was playing a lot, which was up until about a year ago now. As they continued to grow I guess it got worse.

Perhaps it's just me but running a network for years I know there are going to be problems and no matter how much BCDR you have, things still go wrong.

Vanguard is very promising and as I said, I think the SOE collaboration is a good thing.

Marb

In the last 6 months of 2005 playing WoW on various servers I encountered:

Looting lag that on occasions lastes upwards of 30 seconds
Login queues in excess of 90 minutes
Regular world/zone crashes onging for 10-14 days
Kicks to login screens that resulted in me not being able to log back on to my character or server for the rest of that evening
Mail lag 60-90 seconds
Days of crippling lag making the game all but unplayable
Virtually useless auction houses due to lag
Eastern Kingdoms unplayable for days at a time due to extreme lag
Instance lag

In the last 6 months since I went back to EQ2 I have encountered:

Occasional chat lag of 1-2 seconds
Infrequent mail lag of 3-4 seconds (only to open mailbox)
Twice booted to login screen
One extended downtime (10 hours I think it was) due to server merge
The ability to log into the game and play whenever I felt like it

When your running an international, multi-million dollar operation like Vivendi/Blizzard, you can't use the excuse that 'things still go wrong'.

The network and infrastructure problems that Blizzard has been having for the past 18+ months is simply unacceptable for a MMOG. Even if Vanguard is a shitty game, you can rest assured that you'll be able to log on and play that shitty game whenever you damn well please.
The opposite of WoW where they have a good game... when you can actually play it.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » May 9, 2006, 7:16 pm

miir wrote: In the last 6 months of 2005 playing WoW on various servers I encountered:

Looting lag that on occasions lastes upwards of 30 seconds
Login queues in excess of 90 minutes
Regular world/zone crashes onging for 10-14 days
Kicks to login screens that resulted in me not being able to log back on to my character or server for the rest of that evening
Mail lag 60-90 seconds
Days of crippling lag making the game all but unplayable
Virtually useless auction houses due to lag
Eastern Kingdoms unplayable for days at a time due to extreme lag
Instance lag

This is all dependent on the server you are/were on. I have none of those issues (on Khadgar at least), but when I play on my girlfriend's server (Thunderlord) I get all of that plus chat lag which delays tells by up to 10 minutes. Khadgar was one of the servers that were completely moved around a month ago, and things have been much better. I have seen the world server go down once, and it was back up within a minute or two.

Dal-KoE · Post by **Dal-KoE** » May 10, 2006, 2:14 pm

hahahaah

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » May 10, 2006, 2:27 pm

funny cartoon : )

Midnyte_Ragebringer · Post by **Midnyte_Ragebringer** » May 10, 2006, 4:27 pm

haha, awesome cartoon.

This news, makes me think Vanguard might actually be worth a look now. After playing some early Beta, I found it very boring an unimaginative.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » May 11, 2006, 3:46 pm

Are you guys still yapping about this?

In other news:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vanguard ... id=6150119

E3 06: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes to use EMotion tech
Sigil Games Online's title using Mystic's EMotion FX real-time character animation technology on show at E3.

LOS ANGELES--Sigil Games Online has announced that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is on show at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo and will be utilizing animation technology from EMotion. The FX real-time character animation technology has allowed the game's designers to animate just one character and play back that same motion data on all characters.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a massively multiplayer game that will attempt to be the true successor to EverQuest and is set to be released this winter on the PC, and Sigil will be copublishing the game with Sony Online Entertainment. The characters in the game will share many of the same mesh assets and animations, while the EMotion technology offers distinct player-character models for thousands of characters.

But what does this mean?

Sartori · Post by **Sartori** » May 12, 2006, 6:56 am

miir wrote:The network and infrastructure problems that Blizzard has been having for the past 18+ months is simply unacceptable for a MMOG.

I kinda agree, but I would have to consider server load differences. I can only think of 2 other games that might even come close, and neither starts with an "E"...

miir wrote:Even if Vanguard is a shitty game, you can rest assured that you'll be able to log on and play that shitty game whenever you damn well please.

Flawless logic...

miir wrote:The opposite of WoW where they have a good game... when you can actually play it.

You make it sound like it's down 23 out of every 24 hours...

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » May 12, 2006, 7:57 am

Eh, EQ2 is down a shitload too, for a start it has nightly reboots because they can't write anything without massive memory leaks and bugs that clear up over reboots.

That said, at least EQ2 *tries* to do their reboots outside everyone's "prime time" rather than just North America...

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » May 12, 2006, 10:41 am

One thing I can say about all of these companies .. thier billing systems are beyond reproach and work perfectly.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » May 12, 2006, 10:51 am

Midnyte_Ragebringer wrote:haha, awesome cartoon.

This news, makes me think Vanguard might actually be worth a look now. After playing some early Beta, I found it very boring an unimaginative.

Why would this make you any more inclided to play it than before? It's still the same game being developed by the same people.

miir · Post by **miir** » May 12, 2006, 11:05 am

Zaelath wrote:Eh, EQ2 is down a shitload too, for a start it has nightly reboots because they can't write anything without massive memory leaks and bugs that clear up over reboots.

That said, at least EQ2 *tries* to do their reboots outside everyone's "prime time" rather than just North America...

It's been a long time since they've had scheduled daily downtimes. Even when they were doing them, they scheduled them around 8am EST.

You make it sound like it's down 23 out of every 24 hours

On some servers, if you didn't log on before prime time (8pm est), you'd have to endure 10-90 minute login queues. And god forbid you crash or get booted to the login screen.

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » May 12, 2006, 12:23 pm

unacceptable. yet you played for 6 months with these tragic networking issues plaguing you to your very core... yet hundreds of thousands of people have done the same thing for the 18+ months you mentioned..

thats actually called "acceptable"

miir · Post by **miir** » May 12, 2006, 12:57 pm

I switched servers twice.
I got sick of switching.

Shattered Hand was good, got my priest to 60.. then it got bad.
Moved to Scarlet Crusade when it was low pop... it got progressively worse... lag, high pop, login queues... Got my druid to 60 then I quit.

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » May 12, 2006, 1:27 pm

o.k.

well for me, if its a dry summer day in suburbia, I would rather wait in line to get a nice tall glass of lemonade rather than just walk into a barn to suck piss out of a horse's dick. I would even pay more for the lemonade if it came down to it, no joke. I'd even let the preschooler at the stand kick me in the nuts.. just because the lemonade really hits the spot for me, and also because i dislike horse dick. I think most people that play WoW and endure these trials of mankind understand that.

miir · Post by **miir** » May 12, 2006, 1:48 pm

Yea ok, we get it.. .you hate EQ2 eventhough you've probably never played it.

There's a difference between criticising a game for having real, tangible problems and criticising a game that you don't really like.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » May 12, 2006, 2:03 pm

cadalano wrote:o.k.

well for me, if its a dry summer day in suburbia, I would rather wait in line to get a nice tall glass of lemonade rather than just walk into a barn to suck piss out of a horse's dick. I would even pay more for the lemonade if it came down to it, no joke. I'd even let the preschooler at the stand kick me in the nuts.. just because the lemonade really hits the spot for me, and also because i dislike horse dick. I think most people that play WoW and endure these trials of mankind understand that.

What if it was the same quality lemonade out of said horse's dick?

Hey, I think I just described Vanguard! =)

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » May 12, 2006, 3:27 pm

horses dont piss lemonade man, they piss piss

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » May 12, 2006, 3:31 pm

cadalano wrote:horses dont piss lemonade man, they piss piss

Let's just store this in the "I just had to do it" file.

It's a quote from the movie Dodgeball for those that are concerned.

http://www.gotwavs.com/0058493028/MP3S/ ... essary.mp3