Star Wars Mailbag: The Sequel

Former Star Wars Galaxies Players Are Still Crying Foul

(CBS) 
If you think what they did to SWG was bad, you should see what they do to their other games.

Let me give you a few examples of their business ethics. Handed down from John Smedley.

In EverQuest 2, there is a world event quest that would introduce the froglok playable race to EverQuest 2. Players had to figure out the quest to unlock the race. Well, people started trying to figure out how to go about doing the quest, and working on it. They looked everywhere for clues, used months of play time. When they asked SOE if the quest existed at launch, an SOE community manager stated that the quest was in.

Six months later, SOE added the actual quest. People were in an uproar. SOE basically used a quest that didn't exist to keep players paying a subscription to figure out something that never even existed in the game. Imagine spending 10-12 hours a week for 6 months, and in the end, what you were trying to figure out wasn't even possible, and the reason why SOE didn't say anything was because it lengthened your subscription time.

It doesn't stop there. When SOE took full control over EverQuest, they would release expansions 60% complete and not tell the customer. People would go out and purchase expansions for EverQuest (More content) at $29.99. 6 months later, using subscription revenue, SOE would actually finish the 40% of the content of the expansion that consumers already paid for. For example, the Planes of Power expansion. It retailed for $29.99. The last parts of the game were called Plane of Earth, Plane of Fire, Plane of Air, Plane of Water, and the final reward zone, called Plane of Time. These 5 zones accounted for 40% of the Planes of Power expansion.

Those zones were not complete when people bought the product. Instead, SOE introduced artifical bugs to make sure players could not progress into the next areas. Once they completed the area that consumers already paid for, they would "fix" the bug, and let people advance. It took 8 months worth of subscription revenue from players to finish the development of the final 5 areas in Planes of Power.

I know this because I used to be a member of the Guide program. The volunteer customer service department for SOE at the time. We were given explocit instructions that if we zoned into those areas, we would be kicked from the guide program. Well, I zoned into those areas the day of retail release. And what I saw was amazing. I saw 5 completely barren areas, with strange "developer boxes" everywhere, without a good majority of the environment even done for the zones themselves. I know first hand that the zones were not completed.

This type of business ethic continues at SOE because of their CEO, John Smedley. Little does the public know, that Star Wars Galaxies was scrapped in 2002 and redeveloped in 14 months from the ground up. In a meeting, they asked how they could get away with releasing such an unfinished product. John Smedley stated that people will buy it because it has a Star Wars name on it - and then laughed as they said they would complete the retail product (which consumers have already paid $49.99 for) with approximately 2 years of subscription revenue.

Subscription revenue that was supposed to be going to improvements, additions, and access to the game itself, was being used to finish a game which a consumer already paid for. This happened with every EverQuest expansion after Velious, EverQuest 2, and Star Wars Galaxies.

I would love to see a real write up on this. Please contact me if you have any questions. How a class action lawsuit has not been filed yet is amazing to me. Imagine purchasing a car, and it is delivered without it's engine, and sent to you over 6 months in small pieces if you pay $14.99 a month for 6 months.