Feldon After a hard-fought public relations battle, players in France, Germany, and other European countries were allowed to continue playing EverQuest II with their SOE/Station accounts. However that may be a Pyrrhic victory, as it has always been SOE’s intention to hand off support in these other languages to ProSiebenSat.1.
Today comes the announcement that the French, German, and Japanese EQ2 official forums are being shut down. Players needing support in French or German will need to reach out to other players, seek help on Wikis or other forums, or attempt to find help on the Pro7Sat.1 forums. As for Japan, I’m not aware of an official SOE partner there.
That these announcements are in English tells you all you really need to know:
Greetings,
Due to very low volume of usage we have made the decision to close down the International Forums. Please feel free to join us on the English language forums.
Respectfully,
Eric “Piestro” Cleaver
Here’s a Google Translation in German…
Grüße,
Aufgrund der sehr geringen Volumens der Nutzung haben wir die Entscheidung zur Schließung der International Forums gemacht. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, uns auf den englischsprachigen Foren beizutreten.
Hochachtungsvoll,
a Google Translation in French…
Salutations,
En raison de la très faible volume d’utilisation, nous avons pris la décision de fermer les tribunes internationales. N’hésitez pas à nous rejoindre sur les forums en langue anglaise s’il vous plaît.
Respectueusement,
and a Google Translation in Japanese…
挨拶、
使用量が非常に低い量のために、我々は国際的なフォーラムを閉鎖することを決定しました。英語フォーラムで私たちに参加すること自由に感じなさい。
丁重に
They could have at least made the effort to post the “PISS OFF” message in the proper language for the users of those forums.
No kidding.
And lol OUCH at the google German translation.
I’ll post what it really should have said tomorrow, its O’Dark 30 here in the land of bratwurst and beer and I need to get to bed.
I suppose this is a logical next step for a company determined to turn a global success into a US-only niche business.
Well coupled with the lay off story below this one you could see it as a simple cost cutting exercise.
……if not for the previous history of the ProSiebenSat deal.
How much does it cost to run a forum like the EQ2 official ones?
Nothing software-wise. It was just subforums.
It’s more a matter of having a staffer who understands French, German, and Japanese *reading* those subforums looking for any stuff that has to be moderated, inappropriate posts, etc. as well as translating all the announcements of Game Updates, etc. into those languages. This will probably cut out 15-20 hours per week of Community team staffing those 3 forums for what was < 100 readers.
I think the savings would be a little higher than that, after all you would be paying extra for language skills.Say the equivalent of two full time equivalents. Not an actual headcount reduction but the equivalent in headcount plus higher wages.
wow soe just being 100 percent win on this hump day
And this wasn’t just at EQ2… they did it at every official forum that had international sub-forums.
Of course. Wouldn’t make sense to close the German EQ2 forum and keep the German DCUO forum up – it’s the same person handling the forum.
So we can probably add Docbartus, Massigouel and Sacchan to the list. 🙁
I wouldn’t wait anyone to lose a job, though I did view the international forums and they are very lightly used. There’s some logic in doing it, though I don’t think it makes it less bittersweet…I enjoy our international customer base, I hate in principle for them to feel this as a slight.
Well, Massigouel is the representative for all the SoE games on the French side, not just for EQ2, so if they’re closing only the EQ2 board, his job shouldn’t be cancelled so it’s close to 0 gain (I didn’t check)
Of course, the only players posting on the french board are the guides, actual players usually read mostly the english boards.
Well, at least it’s now official that SoE does not care about french and german users and that localisation isn’t a point of interest for them either.
My guess is they couldn’t post the announcements in the right language as they’d just canned all the employees with the language skills …
Glad I moved to GW2. Mind you, it’s not exactly a bed of roses there now either…
and of course the shut them down immediately without any feedback thread anywhere, so I went to the Prosieben thread and asked if French players would get any kind of news posted anywhere.
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/eq2-prosiebensat-1-feedback-thread.536424/page-8#post-5962497