Flamewar 2008 Underway With SOE
By 
Hib in
Everquest, SOE, features on
March 12th, 2008
Sony Online Entertainment has what they call “the Influencer Program” with Everquest II, designed to give people outside the company a bit of an “inside track” to the devs to better allow them to understand the wants and concerns of their playerbase.
Great idea at first blush.
However, it’s now turning around to bite them on their corporate behind, thanks to EQ2Flames.com. The forum has long been a member of the Influencer program, but no longer is, according to a message posted by LFG, the person that runs EQ2Flames:
It has always been the goal of our Influencers Program to embrace people who represent a diverse range of opinions about SOE and our games. The expectation we have for each Influencer is that they will provide open and honest feedback that we can consider or act on as a company. It is understandable that decisions made by SOE will not always be to the liking of every Influencer, and that constructive feedback from participants will enable us to better relate with our communities over the long term.
Your passion and enthusiasm for EverQuest II have always been appreciated, but your own activities in the last few months have led us to the conclusion that it is time for your participation in this program to end. You have been all but silent through the many channels of communication provided by the Influencers program; eliminating any benefit that your voice might bring to our attention in the service of the community.
At the very same time you have actively encouraged many ‘sensational’ issues to come to the attention of your community at EQ2Flames, even when those issues lacked merit. Additionally, you have abused your personal access to members of our development teams, with no regard to the harm it might cause them in the process.
For these reasons, we are ending your participation in our Influencers program. We appreciate the feedback you have given us when you chose to do so; but it is time for this relationship to end.
Please remember that any private information you were exposed to as a member of the Influencers Program is still protected by the non-disclosure agreement you signed when first joining the program.
Craig Dalrymple
Senior Community Relations Manager
Sony Online Entertainment
As you can imagine, a forum called EQ2Flames wasn’t going to under-react to this…and they didn’t, including posting in-game names of devs (along with their real-world names and contact info), accusations of in-game cheating (similiar to the Eve Online scandal last year) with help given to a top guild by a dev, and an unconfirmed accusation of trading real-world sexual favors for in-game items.
No, really.
Here’s a random selection of comments on the EQ2Flames forums so far:
From Snark: I want the community manager to formally apologize for their reaction.
From LFG: This site is now FFA against SOE.
Let them know the meaning of dissatisfied customers.
And the inevitable from SageGaspar: If you can dig it, let’s fill this thread up with cancellations and tell them why… since they no longer even have a multiple choice feedback form.
No official response from SOE yet, but stay tuned…this is going to be interesting, and potentially a nightmare for SOE.
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March 13th, 2008 at 8:52 am
As a current subscriber to SWG (I know it’s not EQ2, but still, SOE) and seeing the forums for a few weeks, really, SOE is big ole pile. The devs can’t even understand the game code enough to change it the way the players and senators (senators = influencers, I believe) want it. The only time the post on the forums is to say thanks to a compliment or a slight clarification to a small thread with maybe 3 replies total.
This news does not surprise me one bit, it makes me sick (that they shit all over their fucking customers like this), and I guess all I can really say is SOE needs to get their shit together.
March 14th, 2008 at 6:49 am
@bonedead
Once a poster called badmisterfrosty wrote quality feedback in a number of “reports”. Look them up. Basically everyone agreed and lauded it including the community rep. But it did totally nothing. Not even little minor things were changed. So I wonder what feedback actually changes something in SOE land when even such feedback is turned down?
March 18th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Most recently there has been other scandles relating to moving test guilds over to the live servers. Sony has done nothing to either put out the flames or reach out to rebuild trust between the players and them. It’s almost like that they could give a crap. They need to get back in touch with their playerbase. Their current community team is the worse that I’ve even seen in a game.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Okay I am an EQ2 Player, and I am from the same server this scandal started from. In all honestly if you are a game developer you should be playing on the test server to test the content that is upcoming. These developers should not be in Live servers providing full strats to their guild members as this is by no means fair to the consumers that pay their monthly fee to “learn” the new content these developers created to only be debunked and made fun of my the guild that is being handfed these strats. I hope NPU has all of the developers removed from their rosters, and actually have to create a REAL strategy on their own… Something tells me that they would not be able to strat their way out of a paper bag without their coveted developer notes on how to mow a zone.
The residents on GUK pretty much knew this was the case for quite sometime, but no one had any proof of it so we all remained silent. Now that the truth has come to light this is great to now have out in the open, and I hope that SoE has the common knowledge of when to cut their ties with their employees that violated their agreements and essentially ban their accounts from the game.