SOE Marketing Dept. Largest Roadblock to EQ2 Marketing?
EQ2Wire has been trying to get some answers about the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Pre-Order for the past 2 1/2 weeks.
We contacted the SOE PR department with a detailed list of questions. We received an e-mail which quoted the Press Release but which did not answer any of our submitted questions.
We sent an e-mail to SOE President John Smedley on November 19th with those same concerns and additional questions. At present, we have received no response to this e-mail.
Where do we Stand?
Going into December 2009, just where do American, North American (Canada, Mexico), and International customers stand with regards to the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate expansion Pre-Order?
The answer: Left out in the cold.
Amazon.com
BestBuy.com
GameStop.com
Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of where we stand right now:
- Amazon.com is listing a Release Date of February 16, 2010 and will not ship until February 15. With standard shipping, Amazon.com is estimating an arrival date of February 22-24, 2010.
- Amazon.com refuses to ship the expansion outside of the U.S.
- BestBuy.com is listing a Release Date of February 17, 2010 and will not ship until February 16. With standard shipping, BestBuy.com is estimating an arrival date as late as February 23, 2010.
- BestBuy.com doesn’t even have box art for the expansion yet.
- GameStop.com is listing a Release Date of February 16, 2010 and will not ship until February 15. With standard shipping, GameStop.com is estimating an arrival date of February 22-24, 2010.
- GameStop.com is inexplicably limiting the number of EverQuest II: Collector’s Edition sets to 2 per household.
If you want to know where you can pre-order EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate Collector’s Edition (whether you live in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, or Asia) and receive it on February 16th, 2010, without spending $100~140, the answer is NOWHERE. If you want to buy 3 copies of the Collector’s Edition, then none of those 3 retailers will be able to help you, no matter how much money you offer.
Make no mistake folks, the Release Date, Street Date, Ship Dates, pricing, and regional shipping authorization are all determined by the SOE Marketing Department. Their complete failure to manage this situation and have an International Distributor selected before announcing this Pre-Order is a farce.
There has still been no explanation for why the game is not available from BestBuy.CA (serving Canada), Amazon.co.UK, Amazon.DE, Amazon.FR, etc.
So far, all polite, constructive attempts to contact SOE Marketing have failed. They are the division of SOE which seems the most insulated from the public (no Facebook or Twitter pages, rarely post on the SOE Forums), and yet seem to be the division that most needs to hear the public’s feedback.
At this point, it seems the biggest roadblock to customers being able to buy EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate in a timely fashion, are the SOE Marketing Dept.
Tags: marketing
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Comments (21)
Thaleia
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Seriously are we sure they even have a Marketing Dept? A circus monkey could of done a better job.
Epic fail imo.
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jmet
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This should be of no surprise really, how a company that is backed by the giant Sony and at worst having the second best MMO on the market can fail so horribly in the marketing department is beyond me.
I live near the biggest city in my state, yet good luck finding a copy of the latest expansion in any of the small or big chains after a launch.
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Green Armadillo
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You might get the impression that they’re trying to make online pre-orders as difficult as possible to force as many players as possible to go pre-order at a physical store that will have their physical boxes on the street date. Which, coincidentally, is precisely their stated goal with this promotion.
The truth is that A) basically no one who wasn’t about to ragequit anyway will cancel their EQ2 subscription over this and B) some Gamestop manager in East Podunk might see half a dozen pre-orders and decide to purchase a dozen TSF boxes and display them in his store for the next few years. By contrast, you could make the expansion exclusively available nowhere else besides Amazon and it would still fall off of the best-seller charts in a week.
They’ve reached the conclusion that the added retail shelf display space is going to get them more additional revenue than they’re going to lose by delaying some minority of EQ2 players’ expansion boxes by a few days. I wouldn’t bet any of my money on their math being wrong on that front.
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Roldor
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Excellent post Feldon! Keep up the hard work mate, you are doing a fabulous job for all subscribers especially those international ones.
I have found living in Australia that with every role of the dice SOE have treated Aussie subscribers as second rate citizens. Buying a boxed copy of EverQuest 2 has been impossible in this country since the release of Kunark. About 12 months ago I contacted SOE asking to purchase four boxed copies of EQ2 so as I could get my friends involved. After a couple of uninterested replies I was advised to go to ebay. It is absurd that SOE had no interest in selling me their product or taking on four new subscribers, the business philosophy at SOE is deeply flawed. Add to this the downtime debacle that for a long time saw scheduled downtime consistently falling in Aussie prime time, a subscription fee that that has been as much as 40% more than what US customers are charged and station cash values costing almost 50% more than US customers (this is with exchange rates accounted for). When challenged over subscription fees SOE plain out lied that the discrepancy was due to a local tax and when pressed they were unable to name, itemise or in anyway account for this tax.
– Roldy
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Orc Brains
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Thanks for continuing to highlight this and push for an answer. SoE’s attitude to their subscribers is outrageous – they should be called on it.
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Lessing
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That’s ridiculous bullshit. Do I need to go to the official forums to e-rage there?
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Lemilla
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So all this ends up doing is delaying the expansion by a week for everyone, not just those who go for Digital Download.
It will be a quiet week for those who do spend the 100-140$ to get it on time.
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Feldon
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I sent a list of questions and essentially the Press Release was quoted back to me.
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Charn
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Hey . . . for those of us that went to Fan Faire, we are getting a FREE copy of the download version (well, we DID have to pay for Fan Faire, air fare, hotel room, etc., etc.) and it will be available at the early release date . . . so, can I expect to see more of you at Fan Faire next year if this is Sony’s “new and improved” release strategy? If so, see you there! . . . Hey, maybe THAT is their ultimate goal . . . getting more people to Vegas? I guess those SOE folk just love a good party . . . (-;
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Grugg
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Well, last week was Thanksgiving week…
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Sukie
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Grugg.. and what about the other week and a half? I would suggest they’re not willing to talk about it because they know this is turning into a giantic f*ck up. Nice work alienating your international customer base SOE!
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Jason
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When did SOE decide that upping the cost of an expansion to 69.99 was a good idea in an economy like this and when subscriptions are falling ? 10 levels a couple new zones, more sprawl so no one ever sees another player and they think this is a good way to progress ? Wow (no pun intended) I can market better than this.
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Gareth
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I just have a thought here, since SOE are run by Sony Games now and not Sony pictures then have they merged their marketing departments?
It seems though in the UK that SOE’s problems predate the merge though, I do hope they can sort this out, no game can be successful if you have to drive to the warehouse to buy a copy.
And just a note to Roldor, the exchange rate thing always does seem brutal, WoW has the best one I’ve seen though, a cosmetic pet costs $10 in the US and £10 in the UK, that’s ~65% increase for the UK, magic. They really need to stop thinking in Dollars and start charging fair prices if they want to keep their customers loyal.
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Gnova
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There is no issue with international customers buying the digital DL release, so the fanfaire point is not relevant.
They just need to stop giving different rewards to digital copy and physical copy purchases. Problem solved for foreign customers.
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EddieZee
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Gnova, I agree with rewarding both copy purchases the same item (or offer both but give us a choice).
But having to wait an additional week after release to be able to download the digital release of the expansion for us international customers who are unable to even buy a boxed version no matter how much we’d like to (I have searched over half the country in order to find a boxed version of TSO, to no avail.. and I don’t expect this time to be any different) is no issue? I disagree.
Everybody pays the same subscription fee so should be able to get hold of the expansion and start playing it on the same day as well.
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Gnova
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Where is the “extra week to be able to download the digital release” coming from?
I’m a non US customer and I was playing TSO the minute the servers went live. I would expect the same thing to be the case this time for those that didn’t go to fanfaire.
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The EQ2 Wire » Sentinel’s Fate Situation Improves
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[…] our exposé on the lack of options for anyone outside the continental United States to order the EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate […]
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EddieZee
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@Gnova
From : http://www.everquest2.com/buyNow.vm
EQII Sentinel’s Fate Commercial Release Scheduled for February 16, 2010
EQII Sentinel’s Fate Station Store Digital Download (Available for purchase February 23, 2010)
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EddieZee
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Yup, TSO was available for non-US/download right from release. No clue why this seems to not be the case for the newest expansion. I was rather surprised (and not in a good way) when I saw the different release dates for the boxed and download version!
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asherlayi
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LOL .. tragic that it would probably be less hassle to buy drugs/guns/a fake passport/insert-illegal-item-here than a retail copy of the EQ2 expansion in the UK by (either) release date.
maybe its SOE’s skewed idea of reverse psychology .. the harder an item is to get hold of the more ppl will want it …? :s
/sigh
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Akula
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the joke is that the next World of Warcraft expansion – due on 25th June 2010 is up for pre-order at a whole load of sites !
perhaps its time for me to give up on Everquest, perhaps even gaming complete and stop getting frustrated at the numbskulls that couldn’t arrange a pizz-up in a brewery … they are damn hopeless, and SOE DESPERATELY needs a complete re-hiring.
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