Feldon From Jef Reahard at Massively:
Sony Online Entertainment has finally responded to the ProSiebenSat.1 brouhaha. Director of Global Community Relations Linda “Brasse” Carlson gave beleaguered fans a faint glimmer of hope with a forum post last night that basically said the controversial deal isn’t quite a done deal.
In a nutshell, SOE plans to divide its long-time gaming community by region, with European player accounts handed off to ProSiebenSat.1 and Alaplaya. The announcement sent shockwaves through the EverQuest II community, as many guilds and sub-communities feature players from both sides of the Atlantic.
The forced transfer of player accounts and personal information from SOE to Alaplaya also raised eyebrows, as some in the player community voiced concerns over security and convenience given that Alaplaya reserves the right to delete inactive accounts after 90 days and has published real names on past-due accounts (the company has since denied the latter).
SOE’s forums have been on fire over the past two days, with dozens of bans handed down by moderators (including one to noted community leader Morgan Feldon of EQ2Wire). Feldon’s fansite is the place to go for info about the ongoing fiasco, and it provides a wealth of opinion on why the proposed deal sucks for players as well as a collection of community reactions. Aside from Brasse’s post, SOE has been silent about the deal, which comes on the heels of the firm generating quite a bit of fan goodwill by reversing its decision to shelve the Mac version of EverQuest.
OK finally allowed back on the forums. This is what brasee had to say
”
Hey folks – I know it’s been a long few days. We fully appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken to provide your feedback.
As we’ve said before, we ARE listening, and we are in discussions with ProSieben. We will come back to you with information when it becomes available, but it will be some time yet.
Please keep in mind that this is not an overnight process and no games are transitioning to ProSieben immediately.
Thank you for bearing with us during this planning period”
Ok what I read its a done deal, were working out the kinks, that gave me no hope when I read planning period. If they wanted to they would give up on this but they said planning period, planning what?
Why does folks think this is not a done deal? I think the sale is done it is a matter of planning out the kinks of transer and what not. Just my 2 cents worth.
Personally, I think her comments are just an attempt to pour some oil on the water to calm the outrage they are dealing with. I could be wrong – I hope they are, but judging from past events over the years. I hope I’m wrong, but I wouldn’t bet the farm.
I haven’t thought that Massively actively promotes child abuse 😉
This is how it goes ..
1 – SOE has an idea but thinks the community wont like it.
2 – SOE comes up with an extreme version of the idea and announces it to the world.
3 – the player complaints fill the community sites
4 – SOE tells the players they are listening and nothing is set in stone
5 – SOE announces the original Idea claiming they listened to the players.
I made a video and uploaded it to youtube, it is simply a parody of this fiasco which will hopefully at least bring a chuckle to some.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkrojmg90sQ
I don’t object to it being linked on the official forums but I’m sure it will be quickly deleted.
@JesDyr
That is how it works everywhere in the world… that’s not just SoEs way of conduct 😉
Magnificient 😀
That’s the only word I could use for putting that cartoon up with this crooked deal.
I know Smedley and co don’t read the forums, but lets try to make it hard for him to ignore reality, next target is a certain planetside forum I believe 😉
@lempo Excellent!
@Cristamir
I don’t think they had any idea the outrage would be this bad. They likely thought that this was going to be like every other decision they’ve made where you have some people disagree and some agree and the usual threats to cancel accounts.
They are so used to that and the ability to bunker down during any anger that in this case the outrage and large number of cancelations most likely blindsided them like a semi truck hitting a poodle.
It is possible that this will stir so much anger and cost them so massively in reputation that they either back out of the deal or amend it enough that PSS1 might as well not be part of it.
I know i’m hopeing big, but i might as well. I don’t want my friends in europe to leave my server.
Lempo, that was absolutely hilarious!
Lempo,
That is epic.
Brilliant video Lempo
🙂
Thanks!
I travel during the week and spent at least 4 hours on that last night.
I think I managed to get shots it at all parties involved without making it too personal.
Although this is the least of their problems, ProSeiben (and co.) REALLY need to hire someone who can speak English correctly if they hope to come out of this in any way the winners. Every single announcement/post I have seen has some sort of grammatical error. They are only making themselves look less professional every time they open their (collective) mouth.
Please Sign this Petition
http://www.change.org/petitions/sony-online-entertainment-stop-the-prosieben-soe-partnership#
Wow lemp that was great
That deserves to go viral Lempo! excellent work!
LOL Hitler as a raid leader. Nice!
EQ2’sDay is fully against this whole Proseibansat thing and you can bet that we will be bringing it up on the show each week.
Lempo priceless
Got to hand it to you, Lempo, that was pretty awesome! Also, everybody go sign the petition!
The problem with MMO’s in general is that game developers seem to forget who their clients are. In any sort of business environment if you are considering a large scale deal which will effect an entire regions worth of clientele, it’s sort of common sense to talk to them about it before going through with it.
Oh and XD at the token black kid 😛
Thanks again for all the comments on the video, glad the time was well spent.
@Kwill as for going viral too small of a base that the captions would make sense or be funny to, but I did tweet it to a handful of MMO sites and players that were tweeting disdain for this deal.
I also tweeted it to schmuckely