A complete History of SOE's Lies

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 7:58 pm

Folks tend to have short memories and some werent around for all the lies. So here's a list of lies SOE has told us. Also please consider sticking this Smile

1. SWG wont launch until its ready - SOE repeatedly told us this game wont launch until its ready to go. This early on was to include space, JTL wasnt ever supposed to be an expansion. Lets also not forget key components not included at launch like player cities, vehicles, and jedi. As a beta player, I still remember the notice in beta forum that the game was going gold in 2 weeks. Everyone agreed it was a huge mistake but SOE ignored us.

2. Jedi - We all know that jedi was NEVER possible at launch. Yet SOE made post after post dangling that carrot and offering encouragement. They told us to get married, explore every world, build a home, etc. It made some think that jedi was some random amazing quest to be discovered. Soon though we learned the truth when SOE patched in several .tre files with obvious jedi implications 5 months after launch. Then the day after a patch several unlocked all at once.

3. Rebel Theme Park - Sorta ties into # 1 as it wasnt ready either. However SOE repeatedly lied about the theme park. If you recall, it was broken after Han's quests. Han tells us to seek out Lt. Lance on Dantooine, but there isnt any Lt. Lance anywhere. SOE tells us its working as intended despite nobody having found Lt. Lance after months and month of looking (my guild personally had several major expedition searches done over many weekends looking for him). Suddenly we learn the truth after a patch...Han now tells us to seek out Ackbar on Dantooine and the once empty abandoned rebel base now has several rebel nps in there. My guild who had followed the game for years in development was soooo pissed off they immediately disbanded and quit.

4. two part lie -

A. The Combat upgrade (curb) was top priority - Remember how SOE told us over and over again that the CURB was its number 1 focus. It would be first to get completed over the JTL expansion.

B. There were two separate teams working on JTL and the CURB.

We later learn both are lies. JTL gets pushed over the combat fixes AND we find out the CURB team has been merged with the JTL team. Whats really insulting is SOE goes on a PR campaign and tells the public that we players demanded JTL first. Another fat lie as every poll posted strongly stated we wanted the CURB first.

5. Combat Revamp - whatever you want to call it, this was meant as a reward for the vets who stayed around and played a broken game. Talk about a slap in the face when SOE announces the CU...a system as the devs told me at Celebration 3 was meant to "have a more broad appeal". This was SOE's 1st attempt at screwing over its current community for the wow crowd. All the promised fixes never happened. The armorsmith rep quit and was banned after he started a massive protest over changes they never asked for. In fact the CU brings in many more bugs than it fixes and never balanced anything.

6. The CU is here to stay - Smedley comes and makes his first post on swg forums asking for calm and patience. He states that in 6 months the cu will be working as intended so give them time to make things right. FAT LIE...during that time the NGE is either in design stages or already being worked on.

7. FRS - CU disables the end-game for jedi, our force ranking system. SOE tells us its being worked on. Later they state its al most done and just awaits final approval from LA. Of course we learn there wont ever be a FRS system and the nerfs we've been getting oover the past 6 months were done on purpose to weaken jedi into a regular class. For me personally, this is one of the more disgusting lies as it was obviously done to keep us jedi players paying.

8. Jabba Palace disappears - The last patch before the NGE garbage makes Jabba's palace completely disappear. SOE acts surprised and promises a fix is coming..another fat lie as we learn why after the nge hits. Jabba's palace was taken out to implement th new nge quests.

9. village breaks - Same patch breaks the village and the old man stops visiting people. SOE again lies to cover its tracks and tells us its being looked at. Of course it was just a cover for the nge.

10. Expansion - SOE presells an expansion with several promised features. One desired item is a creature handler necklace that will allow for the taming of higher lvl pets. Im not sure if that necklace was ever found but it didnt matter because 1 stinkin day after the nge launched Torres of LA announces the revamp of the game and removal of over 24 professions.

11. starter kit - SOE tells us the starter kit is an eroneous listing and will be removed. They deny the rumors of impending changes.

12. SOE tells us fixes will be faster. SOE says the whole reason behind the nge was to make balancing the game easier and would allow for faster publish fixes. In fact, it has slowed the game down to a crawl as publishes now seem to come every 4 months as opposed to almost monthly before the nge.

13. smuggler revamp - this one could have its own page on broken promises and lies.

14. Capitol ships - a dev at a fanfest shows the players capitol ships he has been working on. Later on SOE tells (months and months later) that it was just a dev fooling around with his laptop and this was never being considered. Of course SOE could have tol the players this months earlier rather than ignore the posts asking for more information. To flyboys, the capitol ship dream was their FRS system...ie end-game content they so very much wanted. It didnt hurt SOE to once again lie a little and let people keep paying while they waited for features that would never ever happen.

15. profession revamps - ranger comes to my mind foremost because my alt was a master ranger for years. It was painful to see rangers slowly dwindling in numbers as the profession remained broken forever. I still recall one of the camo kits (i think it was for Lok) required a type of meat to contruct, only problem was that meat didnt even exist ! And the final tease, SOE says ranger is the next revamp coming in the next publish...oops the next publish turned out to be the NGE.

Then there were the professions that got sorely needed revamps weeks before the nge hit. Why did SOE even bother to revamp squad leader if they were going to turn around and remove the profession entirely a few weeks later ? Maybe it was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

16. Broken quests - How many times did SOE tell us a fix was in the works and it either never came or it took a year to do. And even when they finally did fix something like the Hermit quests, they turn right around and re-break them weeks later. My personal pet peeve for broken quests was the ones at the gungan sacred place. It pissed me off that not only were the quests incomplete, one of the npc's chat bubble was blank ! How tough would it have been to code in some simple words ? These quests were broken in beta, remained busted through launch right up to the nge.

The NGE broke several old quests as well. When I tried the 21 day free trial I started the krayt skull quests, some of my favorites with a great storyline. I got to the last part where I needed to talk to Darklighter only to my surprise he has no chat option. The NGE is 1 year old and Im assuming this quest remains broken, pathetic.

17. 6 month promises - Smedley has repeatedly made the 6 month promise for fixes. His very 1st post following the CU debacle asked the players to give SOE 6 months to get things fully working. He then makes the same promise after the NGE launches, needing 6 more months. Ironically, the post after nge is almost identical to the cu one (asking for time to fix things) and yet somehow the gullible desperate players buy into it AGAIN. Later SOE promises major revamps to each profession each coming within a month or two o each other. Later after MONTHS of no publishes and silence (the swg forums were literally rioting), SOE announces yet ANOTHER series of profession revamps. Typically, the pathetic player base thanks SOE devs in posts for answering their concerns. A year into the NGE, it remains broken, unfinished, with no end in site.

18. Item Conversion - Recall that the players were very concerned over losing their gear with the coming CU. We were repeatedly told that everything would convert properly. If you had an exceptional weapon with amazing stats, it would convert to an equal type of weapon for the CU. They were full of crap though and not only did our exceptional weapons and armor NOT convert properly, in many cases we now couldnt even equip them anymore !!!

CA's and AA's didnt convert because SOE took out several stats like dizzy, knockdown, the poison and disease resists, etc. Players that spent years and millions of credits to collect were overnight ruined. The final insult in classic SOE fashion, SOE adds in melee def and ranged def clothing that tailors can craft. They didnt even bother to take into account the thousands of players who spent their credits by the millions to get these things as ca/aa drops. A +12 melee def tape would possibly sell for 15-20 million, 1 day after the cu and a player now can buy a shirt with +17 melee AND ranged defense !!! So much for really being concerned with ca/aa conversions.

RIS Armor - Not only did the conversion for this armor become crap, it also got very common. I and some friends of mine were the few around who had even had any ris armor. Before the revamps, RIS armor was something one could try and get as a trophy to their hard work and dedication. Plus it took real skill to get. You had to know where the components dropped. You had to know spawn rates. You had to know where to find the giant dune kimos. You had to find addon components like shards to boost the completed armor's stats. In essence, it was a lot of hard work for players that yet again was totally tossed out the door. My ris helmet once had offers of 15 million credits, suddenly its for sale on vendors for 15k bleh.

BE Tissues - nge takes out bio-engineers and their tissues that make chef foods better. Now something that was once extremely common is the rarest most sought after item by crafters. And since food is a consumable, eventually there will be no more bio tissues around.

The theme here of course is SOE didnt give a damn about how their revamps would hurt or help their CURRENT community. I seriously doubt based on the evidence that they even looked at the changes, much less tried to ensure the conversion wouldnt screw us.

19. pearl drops - sometime into the cu pearl drops got really messed up. At first, over a weekend flawless and premium pearls are dropping like crazy and not just off krayts. Soon SOE hotpatches a "fix" in to correct whatever they were trying to fix before and the pearls stop dropping. Now premiums and flawless dont drop anymore. SOE responds to player concerns by telling them its working as intended. Later they admit there "might" be a problem but there were other things more important to fix. SOE lies and promises its being looked into.

According to my source, the pearl drops were broken or gated on purpose. This was done to remove the elite power items so jedi could be better balanced for the nge. I hear sometime after the nge the premium pearls were added back in but flawless never came back.

20. Gating content - According to a source who wrote a letter to CBS newsbag, SOE purposely gates its content to finish it. In other words, SOE breaks something to hide the fact that it remains unfinished. Why would SOE do this ? Well according to this person, it was done to basically use player subscription fees to pay for the finished development of that content. This source reported that this was done repeatedly for EQ1 expansions. Devs would then lie on the forums claiming that a fix was being worked on when in fact it was busted on purpose.

This of course is outrageous but not unexpected by SOE. To take subscriber money and finish something that the money from the expansion was already supposed to have paid for is unforgivable. Smedley responded on some other site he posts on that this was a fabrication and SOE had (allow me to quote) never once released an unfinished product to the public LOL. This same person later admits the nge is unfinished...oh and the CU is unfinished...my oh my how the lies grow.

Feel free to add your own and i'll edit them in.

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 9:51 pm

You have an amazing memory. I seriously think I must have blocked most of those lies, but you talking about them brings back all the pain. Not YOUR fault, of course... it just makes me want SOE to crumble to dust someday even more.

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:06 pm

Pretty good summary...

You also might want to include more on the "give us 6 months" theme that Smed always repeats when they are in trouble. They asked for 6 months when the CU came out, for 6 months when the NGE came out, for 6 more months after the summits.

And also, note the summits. I went to one (Indianapolis). Virtually everything in the publish plan was a lie. We didn't get half the stuff promised, and the game is just as buggy as ever (if not more so) when bug fixes were supposed to be top priority.

You also should note the fact that the CURB system DID exist and was on TC to beta testers, which was an actual fix and rebalance of the ORIGINAL system, that was pulled and replaced with the raw CU.

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:07 pm

Please sticky this. Thumbs

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:09 pm

/stickied;
/center;
/m sticky;

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:44 pm

ooohhhh.........SOE must burn!!!!!! Evil or Very Mad

uggh how does a company that runs its business like they do continue doing business? It boggles my mind how shitty they treated us and how long most of us stayed around lingering on their empty promises and for the fact that it was SW. Nice recollection adamriker, that seems to be right on the dot.

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:46 pm

don't even get me started on the CU, which got changed to the CURB

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 11:52 pm

Does Ranger, and Entertainer Revamps count?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:32 am

Apache wrote: ‹ Select ›

Does Ranger, and Entertainer Revamps count?

I would say so. How many profession revamps were promised that they never delivered on, or simply eliminated the profession?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:37 am

How about...We are aware of that bug (insert 1-100 different bug names here) and are working on a salution. Can anyone say hero of tatooine bh quest. Or the invisible mobs. just to name a few that either were never fixed or took a amazingly long time to fix?

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:07 am

edited...added in the new ones.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:31 am

I dont remember, did they say they were going to start dropping pearls again at some point, or did they just blow us off? By that time I stopped hoping for any actual answers from the bastards...

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 1:41 am

ghettochilde wrote: ‹ Select ›

I dont remember, did they say they were going to start dropping pearls again at some point, or did they just blow us off? By that time I stopped hoping for any actual answers from the bastards...

ah that lie, forgot about it.

They took out flawless pearl drops because they were trying to power down jedi for the nge. They broke premium pearl drops in the hopes that players would move on to other professions. This is what I was told by my source.

They later added back in premium pearl drops, flawless dont drop anymore and th average nge player isnt even aware of them.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:37 am

I hope they're still lying while saying: "NGE is here to stay!"

Posts: 66 Great Posts: 0 Joined: 02 Nov 2006

http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=140564#M140564

Thunderheart
Dev
Posts: 14078
Registered: 07-02-2003

Reply 19 of 146

Viewed 8790 times

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Gravez wrote:
So which parts of this combat balance will be in Publish 8?

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Should be all of it.

Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager

I had a bunch of others where he blatantly lies or doesnt know WTF hes talking about, but alot got "mysteriously" deleted.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:23 am

admriker444 wrote: ‹ Select ›

13. smuggler revamp - this one could have its own page on broken promises and lies.

Actually, this one does have its own page on broken promises and lies. It's tangible proof and one of the best examples of the poor product management of the SWG team.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 10:32 am

Bloodgut wrote: ‹ Select ›

http://soe.lithium.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=140564#M140564

Thunderheart
Dev
Posts: 14078
Registered: 07-02-2003

Reply 19 of 146

Viewed 8790 times

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gravez wrote:
So which parts of this combat balance will be in Publish 8?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Should be all of it.

Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl
Community Relations Manager

I had a bunch of others where he blatantly lies or doesnt know WTF hes talking about, but alot got "mysteriously" deleted.

Yeah, he's a mess. He quite clearly doesn't play the game anymore, and hasn't for a long time now. I happened on a thread with some NGE'rs discussing a problem using more than one POB (multiplayer spaceship). There's a known workaround (I would have posted there to let the NGE newbs how to get around it, but I have no active accounts to do so). It's a resurfacing of an old bug, and any veteran JTL junky would know about it. TH of course had no clue.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:08 pm

admriker444

Do you mind if I use this information elsewhere.

This is pretty good.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:14 pm

Sithsense017 wrote: ‹ Select ›

admriker444

Do you mind if I use this information elsewhere.

This is pretty good.

I personally dont mind. Im not revealing anything as far as a source goes so I dont see any harm in it. Id love to see this on SOE's site in response to Helios' post about future revamps planned.

Just dont mention anything about bioware rumors and such.

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2006 5:19 pm

admriker444 wrote: ‹ Select ›

Sithsense017 wrote: ‹ Select ›

admriker444

Do you mind if I use this information elsewhere.

This is pretty good.

I personally dont mind. Im not revealing anything as far as a source goes so I dont see any harm in it. Id love to see this on SOE's site in response to Helios' post about future revamps planned.

Just dont mention anything about bioware rumors and such.

I would just love to see that as well. Unfortunately/fortunately I don't have a active account on the forums lol.

Obraik would you mind?