FohMD said:
If you"re going to try to refute 2 (good luck refuting 1), please provide the context and the quote (you can paraphrase it...I"m not a stickler on this point).
Sure. I"ll try on this one, although I am not sure if it will meet your requirements for who said what.
1> Ester the Tester and Abashi both stated that Cloth Caps dropping off the warders in Sleepers tomb was working as intended. Everyone knew that the cloth cap was a default loot drop when the loot table wasn"t finished. I guess if you look at it from a sinister point of view, it was working as intended if you take the fact that warders should be dropping cloth caps, since the loot table was not in.
2> When The Combine "exploited" the 4th warder, and a naked human graphic popped up when the sleeper awoke, then nothing happened and a couple zones crashed -- Brad McQuaid came on to say after the mass bannings that the reason for the Naked Human popping was a result of "re-doing" the artwork for Kerafyrm when the entire script was not finished, nor was the artwork to begin with. In the meantime, Z-Axis exploiting was used everywhere else without a hitch. Only when it called SOE to the floor on an unfinished expansion did it matter. (IE: The dain still being pulled through a wall down to the pit)
3> Vex Thal. They stated (Do not have names on this one) that the zone was in and functional. The key cock block on this was a key part in Maiden"s eye if I believe (May have been another zone - my memory is hazy on this one) which was fixed 6 months later miracously at the same time the loot table and graphic files for Vex Thal went in. Meanwhile, people unfortunately kept trying to camp for that key part which was not going to drop.
4> Plane of Mischief. Ester the Tester and Abashi both stated this zone was working as intended, and people have not figured out the mystery of the cards. Meanwhile, 4 months later, the loot table goes in and a new NPC appears in Rivervale to make the card quest combinations actually possible. As a result people spent 4 months trying to figure out something that didn"t exist.
5> Planes of Power: Already mentioned. But to go one step further, a person named "Tayl0r" who worked QA at the time on the Planes of Power expansion, who we all knew worked for SOE and was now a database monkey, stated on the Something Awful forums that Planes of Power and Plane of Time was fully finished on release and just had minor bugs. We all know that isn"t true.
6> Star Wars Galaxies: Jedi. 6 months later they were released as the major data files were patched in at the same time a Jedi was born. Meanwhile, many employees from Koster to Q3P0 stated time and time again that people were getting closer. Even though it wasn"t even in the game.
7> EQ2: Froglok quest. Stated many times that this quest was indeed live in the game, people asked SOE about it just to make sure, were told yes, and proceeded to waste 6 months trying to figure out a quest with no ending. Later it was patched in to the disgust of it"s fanbase.
8> Brad stating that the Fiery Avenger quest was in and working, no one had figured it out. Well, no one goes on to ever figure it out or even find the start of this quest, then later, epic weapon quests go in for every class including FA. When asked even years later if he can tell us what that quest entailed, it falls on deaf ears. Speculation here, but a good guess considering everything else that happened in EQ, that there never was a quest and he lied about it.
You may say these are "communication" errors. And if they were on small details of events I would agree with you that it could very well be the case. But these are major points in major expansions or releases, you cannot tell me that someone, somewhere, didn"t see what was being done/said and didn"t step in to stop it. Ester and Abashi were mouthpieces. They were funneled information from higher ups during this process anyway, and after one discussion with a very well known community manager, I was told that she was outright told to lie to deter players from causing uproars in the community forums because it was bad for sales.
To answer Zuuljin"s question: Yes. The lying is what does it for me. I hope you and everyone can understand that.
I understand pressures about getting a game out, and I understand that sometimes things aren"t going to be able to make it and no matter how hard the devs push, upper management doesn"t care and they force the release. But what seperates Blizzard from SOE in my eyes here is that Blizzard still came out with one of the most polished games in MMORPG history once you got passed the server problems and played the game, and if something wasn"t in, or a feature never made it in, they didn"t lie about it.
SOE did. Time and time again. So I guess if you can imagine a line in the sand drawn after releasing unfinished content, features, etc, and move it up a bit to when it comes to being held accountable, if you tell the truth you can move the line up more, and if you lie, draw the line right there.
