Feldon From EverQuest II’s new Community Manager Eric “Piestro” Cleaver who must surely be having a worse week than many of us:
Hey folks,
There is something I want to clear up. A lot of people are talking about how the EU servers and players are being “sold off”. And that’s very clearly how many people feel and we can respect that. When we’re discussing feelings that makes total sense. We get that it feels this way to many of you.
Unfortunately, as language sometimes does, this has sort of run away with itself. It has all sorts of implications that aren’t true, and these implications lead to misunderstanding. What this deal is is a Publishing deal. ProSieben is going to act as the European Publisher for a number of SOE products, promoting and administering those games in Europe. This will give things like more marketing in the areas that the deal covers, as well as potentially better native language support and similar. More marketing and more native language support are good things I think we can all agree.
Publishing deals are common, but doing a publishing deal on an already existing MMORPG is a bit harder. Things get complicated, as you can all see. But this won’t happen in a single day, we’ve got time to do this in a way that has the most positive and least negative impact on everyone as possible. We want to make sure if we do promise changes that things will all work out exactly as they say they will.
This involves people on several continents, speaking different native languages, crazy amounts of computer code, and a lot of business law. It’s not going to be quick. We obviously can’t talk too much about it, because we’re not quite there yet. All I can do on that score is quoting my boss (Brasse) who is paraphrasing her boss’ boss (Smed).
“we are working on a plan to keep our communities together with the ProSieben deal. Again, we thank you for your patience – we’ll provide more information as soon as it is available.”
In the meantime we’re gonna stay here listening, and I’ll do my best to communicate when we have something to say. Questions you folks have are great, I’ve jotted down a few more already this morning. Talking about your fears in concrete terms is also great. If you say “I’m concerned about how this will affect the future development of EQII” that’s a lot easier to provide an answer for than if you say “This is going to ruin the direction of the game”.
Respectfully,
-Piestro
So…Sony sold off a portion of the player base basically?
Honestly the more he posted the bigger the hole he was digging
It must be pretty obvious by now that this whole deal has been signed off at a much higher level than anyone who is tasked with dealing with the fallout. Probably over Smed’s head.
Not much point in shooting the messenger.
Yes, shoot the messenger. Skin the body. Pile it into a wagon. Set the wagon on fire. Roll burning wagon through front door of SOE/Sony’s headquarters. Maybe they will get the hint then.
@ Steve: something like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoYlCkHdNlU
LOL I like the top comment for that video, “Stephen Hawking tried overclocking and failed”. XD
Piestro, you smooth talking, corporate line holding, condescending, ass. We don’t care what you want to call it. I see nothing in your line of bs that says SoE DID NOT sell off the Euro markets, or that North American markets will have access to Euro servers. Coat it in chocolate with sprinkles, still tastes like crap.
Wanda – yeah something like that. Real attention getter.
AS A EQ PLAYER FOR 9 YEAR AM PISSED .. TO THE POINT SONY ARE TALKING BULL SHIT TO COVER IT UP THE SMELL WHAT COMING OFF THEM .. AS AND WHEN DO A A SWITCH AM 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000 MY ACCOUNTS AND I HOPE THE END OF EQ .