Commentary: A Look Back at SOE Live 2014 and Another Rant About Marketing

It seems like every year, I sit down to write a post-mortem on SOE Live, and every year I get about halfway through it, realize I’ve probably said too much, or what I say will be interpreted as an attack on SOE, and so I give up. I’ve rewritten and almost deleted this a dozen times in the last two weeks, but at this point, I feel like I should post SOMETHING.

Leaving Las Vegas

So the panels are long since done, the computers have been neatly packed away, the last goodbyes have been said, and I’m once again faced with the mixed emotions one feels at the end of a weeklong whirlwind trip to the West Coast. This was undoubtedly and unquestionably my best SOE Live. Perhaps seven times was the charm?

Each year as I chatter with taxi drivers, endure the TSA security theater, and make my way to the plane that will whisk me away from the glitz of Las Vegas, my mind turns to what I saw, what I experienced, old friendships renewed, and the facts and figures presented to us by the various game teams.

The Odd Couple

I have an odd relationship with Sony Online Entertainment. On one hand, I write a tell-all blog that celebrates SOE’s successes, but doesn’t shy from their stumbles. I also co-run the EQ2U Players site which is used by thousands of players each day and which has fielded some 1 billion lookups so far this year. The former has led to much gnashing of teeth within SOE’s walls, while the latter has earned me personal praise from the EQ2 team (who use the site every day) to Dave Georgeson and John Smedley who have personally e-mailed to thank us for the site.

This year, I accepted an invitation from Kander to make a stop in San Diego prior to the usual Las Vegas adventure that is SOE Live. I had an incredible time visiting San Diego and it just confirmed to me that there are truly awesome people at SOE and specifically on the EQ2 team. If they could, they’d work night and day without sleep to implement every good idea suggested by players, and they sometimes do. I firmly believe that we have the best team working on EQ2 we’ve ever had. If only we had more of them!

Although SOE is woe to talk about employment practices, possibly for liability reasons, I have never shied away from this. Why? Is it to kick dirt in people’s faces? Is it to lure ad clicks? Of course not. It’s because players have long memories. The current EQ2 team still gets dinged for dumb ideas rammed through under less competent management 6 years ago and I don’t feel that’s fair!

Maybe that makes me protective of the current EQ2 team. Some people claim I am white knighting them. I don’t know how someone covers a game for 7 years without developing some friendships on the team, and I value mine enough that I no longer simply click Publish on any little thought that pops into my head. I ask myself if an article is really necessary, and if it will accomplish anything.

Should SOE Support Fansites?

The official policy of Marketing is: any fansite for an SOE game has one point of contact — the Community Manager for their respective game. Yet none of the most popular, successful fansites for SOE games limits themselves in this way. EQ2U and EQ2Wire have greatly benefitted from the friendships we’ve established on the EQ2 team, and direct interactions with the producers, designers, and developers. The same can be said of fansites of every other SOE game. Your best bet as a fansite is to make friends on the game team and establish a repore.

I’ve been shocked at the backlash over the Landmark Insider program. For Landmark, SOE has opened the door to supporting fansites with a few game codes per month. This is something that ANY established Landmark fansite can sign up for. We haven’t had anything like this in EQ2 since Kiara left, and it’s something I would kill to see again. We are down to less than 10 fansites total for EQ2. We’re a dying breed. I had an argument with someone the other day about whether SOE should support fansites and he was adamantly against it. “Fansites come and go” he said and it’s not SOE’s job to help them.

In the early years of EQ2Wire, I didn’t know anyone at SOE. I just posted my editorials, criticisms and commentaries in a vacuum. There were times when I was dead wrong. There were times when I posted an unnecessary rant just minutes before someone from the EQ2 team owned up to the issue and announced a resolution. I do not miss the days before I could e-mail, PM, or otherwise ask someone if they were aware of an issue and whether I should keep a tighter grip on my horses before running off half-cocked with an irate article. As Zelda taught us — it’s dangerous to go alone!

…

So I had a tremendous visit with Kander and Zoltaroth over the weekend I was in San Diego which I wouldn’t trade for anything. I did visit SOE headquarters on the Monday before SOE Live and was given an exemplary tour of the different game floors including Next and PS2 (Hizzy is currently walled off and in the dreaded “black box”), the all-important customer service and QA areas. I got to ooh and aah over concept art from past expansions dating back to launch and see one-of-a-kind memorabilia. I admit I let my guard down and that’s right when I was snapped back to reality.

A Shot Across the Bow

As a rule, staffing numbers are not a data point publicly shared by most corporations. When asked, most companies would assure you that they have more than enough staff to meet the needs of their customers. So with this backdrop, I posted what I thought was a heartfelt tweet:

@EQ2Wire: Always been amazed at how much #EQ2 stuff we get given the size of the Dev, QA, and CS teams. Today confirms it.

My innocuous comment was taken as a shot across the bow, and I got rapped on the knuckles for it.

As I was touring SOE, I got to see the EQ2 bull pen. I got to see Tom Tobey’s outrageous ornamentation of his desk (alas he was out of office). I got to see Aaron (Gnobrin) working on shoulder pieces for expansion armor. I got to talk to the designers about the dungeons they’ve been building and populating. I get that I was a guest in SOE’s house. But these are the kinds of things I post on my site every day. Yet within seconds of my tweet, I was hearing about how I was “bashing SOE” again. My relationship with SOE is strange indeed.

Having been to San Diego, I wouldn’t pass up another visit to hang out with EQ2 devs, but I’m not sure I’d impose myself on SOE’s offices again.

Marketing

There are LOT of things about SOE that I am very happy with over the last few years. Communication with players has improved by leaps and bounds. SOE President John Smedley has been very forthcoming and candid about the company’s missteps. He’s taken to Twitter, Reddit, and even his own blog to tell his side of the story and SOE’s vision for the future.

It is hard to think back to the days when servers could come down for hours without so much as a peep and no explanation ever offered. We used to be treated like mushrooms — kept in the dark and fed crap. In the bad old days, games like Star Wars Galaxies and FreeRealms would have been shut down without barely a comment. We’ve come a long way since those days.

That said, I’ve had it up to here with SOE Marketing. Usually when I post something wrong, someone is quick to come along and tell me I’m wrong. So far, I’ve NEVER been dissuaded from my opinion that SOE Marketing is completely disconnected from SOE’s customers (the players), completely insulated from the game teams (the impression I’ve always gotten was an “us vs. them” attitude), and completely tied to the old guard approach of wining-and-dining Press sites and fighting like hell against developers interacting with players, open communications of any kind, or supporting fansites.

I can think of countless examples of Marketing glitches, but the two that come to memory are the recent Best Buy and currently running GameStop promotions for StationCash. In both cases, a number of players are reporting that the stores were never notified about the sale and did not stock cards in preparation for it. The whole point of these promotions is to get the cards into the stores, yet that doesn’t seem to be happening. We’ve seen this in the past with the expansions. Marketing doesn’t seem to have found a way to effectively communicate with retailers.

Coincidence?

Do I believe that Maggie, Tramell, and Omeed all departing SOE in the same month is a coincidence? Not for a second. People tend to stay at SOE for many years, and it’s rare that they leave unless they are asked to. So for three of the most visible people at SOE besides Linda Carlson, Dave Georgeson, and John Smedley to all depart raises questions. The video game industry has the kind of culture where nobody speaks on the record about a former employer unless they don’t plan to work on video games any longer.

Is my admiration for Omeed, Maggie, and Tramell misplaced? That’s what someone told me in a pointed response after reading a draft of this article. After all, SOE’s widespread adoption of Twitch, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit has coincided with their tenure. We’ll have to see if SOE continues with the Insider and Livecast programs in their absence to confirm or debunk that theory. But the bigger question raised by my enraged compatriate is, has SOE forsaken the traditional communication methods in favor of the new and shiny?

Get Off My Lawn!

If someone wants to keep up on EQ2 news, and for some reason they’re averse to spam refreshing my own site, then they must trawl not only the EQ2 forums, but also the Twitter accounts of Holly, Linda, Aaron, and Akil, plus SOE’s Facebook page, plus EQ2’s forlorn Reddit page, plus watch the monthly EQ2 Insider programs (Assuming they continue), plus the EQ2 forums, plus SOE Live, plus Podcasts (remember that Kander, Dave Georgeson, and Holly have all appeared on the EQ2Talk podcast).

I do my best to consolidate all the EQ2 news that players might be interested in one place, but what about Landmark? What about EQNext? There is a bewildering array of places that players must search to keep up with the news. While all these social media platforms are ok if that’s where players want to get their news, shouldn’t all this information also be collated and consolidated into official posts on the EQ2 forums or EverQuest2.com?

The point could also be made that SOE is chasing a ghost with social media. To borrow a Latin expression: Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. It means “after it, therefore because of it”. EverQuest II has 17,000 Twitter followers and some 82,000 likes on Facebook. Taken at face value, this would suggest that players want to be informed about EQ2 through those channels. However, several years ago, Marketing launched a campaign called “ConnectDING”. Goals were set based on the number of Twitter and Facebook followers and in-game prizes were rewarded for meeting these goals. Not surprisingly, tens of thousands of people signed up one-use accounts for these services to game the system and get these rewards. A social media account about a video game was gamed? Say it ain’t so! So there’s really no way to know how many people actually utilize Facebook and Twitter to keep up with EQ2, as the numbers have been tainted by manipulative practices.

In years past, the annual Fan Faire convention used to have an on-site survey where players were asked what sites they used most for keeping up with EQ2 news. The big dogs like Massively and ZAM were mentioned, as well as sites that talk about EQ2 exactly twice a year — when they’re invited out to SOE Live all expenses paid, and at Expansion time. We’re talking conglomerate news sites like IGN, MMORPG, Curse, etc. Of course there wasn’t a fansite to be seen on that list. Fast forward to 2014 and I wonder if SOE could definitively state where people go to keep up with news about their games. I pointedly asked someone in Community “You don’t really think players go to IGN for their EQ2 news, do you?” My question was dismissed out of hand with a “You must not know many EQ2 players.” My face still stings a bit after that one.

A Marketing Mixup

Last year, Welcome Reception at SOE Live was an endurance test for audience members and game producers alike as extensive reveals were given for each upcoming title. The keynotes ran so late that the H1Z1 folks weren’t the only ones looking like zombies. So for this year, the pendulum swung the other way and each game’s presentation in the welcome reception was trimmed to the name of each game’s expansion, the release date, and that game’s panel schedule for the weekend. Personally, I would have liked to have seen a little more information given, while press sites apparently would have preferred LESS information to be given.

Speaking of Marketing, it’s time to get on my soapbox.

SOE’s Marketing Department absolutely positively gives away the store to Press sites.

• Some of them get free airfare, free meals, free hotel
• They get to see the game expansions in a Press tour 2 or 3 days in advance of everyone else.
• And they are promised exclusivity on information.
• All of this in the hope that they’ll write a half-decent, mostly accurate article that players who DO NOT play or read about SOE games might stumble onto them.

I’ve talked extensively on my problems as a fan site with Marketing over the years. I have a long memory for their disastrous treatment of EU and Australia/New Zealand players over the years with regards to expansion purchases and preorders for several years. But during and after SOE Live, my feeling that something absolutely needs to change in Marketing if SOE is going to be successful going forward has been firmly cemented and I cannot hold my tongue any further.

The sad thing is the game teams would LOVE to have Community and Marketing talking about their games. But that’s not what happens. You get this very canned, prepared, sterile message that gets pumped through the Press sites and forget the rest. Marketing doesn’t want people going “off the reservation” to talk directly to developers, to have fansites that actually play the game to get get interviews. It’s like those terrible “electronic press kits” we used to get on DVD movies in the 1990’s. I’m so glad that cooler heads have prevailed and people who are passionate about movies have been allowed to produce special features and documentaries.

Press sites, for the most part, are not passionate. They are to a fansite as a synthesizer is to a real orchestra.

Screwed by an Embargo

First up, and this was something that upset the developers as much as the players, 5 hours before the EverQuest and EverQuest II keynotes began, Press sites had their embargoes lifted. This means that people at home got information about the upcoming expansions before people at SOE Live. This is what happens when Marketing promises the moon to Press sites, rather than the players and fansites that actually talk about their games not 3 days a year but 365 days a year.

Why did this happen? Because apparently the release dates weren’t supposed to be shown at the Keynote. So this one change was enough for Marketing to throw open the floodgates. Players who’d flown out to Las Vegas who happened to refresh IGN, Massively, etc. knew what the expansions were about before they walked into the panels. What a slap in the face for the devs and players.

Omeed

Second, SOE lost Omeed Dariani last week. As brand manager for the EverQuest Franchise, Omeed has kicked some serious butt in getting the word out and a positive message for EQNext and Landmark and the franchise in general. He’s promoted positive, open communications about these games which are so crucial for the company’s future. His approach of putting fansites and player communication first, rather than the old guard idea of holding everything back for Press site exclusives has been a rousing success. And frankly, he was personable and well-liked in the community, not to mention the endless hilarious self-deprecating memes. So despite his successes, why did he leave? He absolutely positively could not stand the constraints of Marketing anymore. To quote his recent Reddit post on the subject:

“I chose to leave because my direct supervisors didn’t support the community-first marketing approach we’ve taken on the EQ Next/Landmark teams. After months of trying every way I could to convince them that we had the right approach, I felt it was better for me (and my sanity) to move along.”

His comments sum up my personal experience with SOE’s Marketing Department. They think that fansites and direct player communication are — at the very least — not in SOE’s best interest, or (speculating on my part) a threat to their positions.

Instead, they put all their eggs into the Press site basket. The irony of this is, I’ve spoken with two well-known MMO press sites that cover all the big boys — Blizzard, Trion, etc. Despite all the perks provided for SOE Live, during the rest of the year these press sites both described dealing with SOE Marketing as an absolute pain in the rear! Getting information from SOE about either new games or expansions for existing games is analogous to dentistry. In contrast, every other game developer seems overjoyed that a press site wishes to talk about their games and bends over backwards to provide them with information, videos, game screenshots, and developers interviews.

You may be asking what Omeed means by community-first. Unlike most customer-focused companies, SOE’s organizational structure has Community reporting to Marketing, who reports to Sales. I feel that this shackles Community and is a conflict of interest. With that reporting structure, it is in Community’s best interest to support entrenched Press sites to the exclusion of fan sites. From what I’ve seen in the last 7 years, this is precisely how SOE operates.

This is more speculation on my part, and some may view it as unfair, but I think it is very telling that even SOE President John Smedley seems to have largely given up on trying to use official communication channels to express himself, preferring Reddit, Twitter, and even starting up his own blog. This to me is a chilling indictment of Marketing and the existing communication channels. I have seen overall communication at SOE improve dramatically over the last few years, from Smedley down to the game teams. Yet Marketing seems hell bent on trying to protect their job security and we’ve now lost two incredible people because of it — Omeed Dariani and (speculating here) Margaret “Luperza” Krohn.

Out with the Negative, In with the Positive

Ok enough negatives! Here’s some positive things I saw at SOE Live this year:

• While not everyone will agree, I felt that the EverQuest II expansion keynote was the best we’ve had. Usually, we have the Producer and Lead Designer get up and give their little schpeils in front of a Powerpoint. This year, EQ2 designer Jeff Bard (Yes that’s his real name) gave a 10 minute lore presentation in-character to give us the Age’s End storyline in dramatic fashion. For a tale that’s been spun out for a decade, telling the story this way makes a lot of sense.

• What a difference a Lead Designer makes. If you were at Fan Faire in 2009-2011, you’ll likely remember that most questions received a ubiquitous “We’ll look into it”. Last year and even moreso this year, if a question was ill-advised, the devs said so. If a request was unlikely, they told us. If there was something that did seem possible, the devs asked for more details so they could discuss it and implement that feature properly. For most questions, our expectations were set. We don’t want automatic “Yes” to everything. We just want to know what is possible or not possible, and the devs delivered that information in spades.

• I’m glad that SOE broadcast several of the panels on Twitch including the opening, closing, the keynotes, and the tournaments. I know some people feel this takes away from those who drop $1200+ to travel to Vegas, stay in the hotel, etc. but I don’t agree. The keynotes are planned weeks in advance. Everything in them will be posted online almost immediately. What’s unique to SOE Live are the Q&As where we get to ask for features, fixes, and improvements. It’s in the Dev chats in hallways and restaurants. You cannot reproduce this level of accessibility in a Twitch stream.

• I thought the Grand Banquet was the best, maybe in the history of Fan Faires. The food was good. The presenters were engaged and had clearly rehearsed well. The event was professionally done. The Costume Contest and Player Got Talent segments were well-done and, with the exception of one player who succumbed to stage fright, the acts were all enjoyable in their own ways. People really got into them!

Conclusions

I had an incredible time at SOE Live this year. Most of my current guild was here, including my partner-in-crime on EQ2U Dethdlr. My friends Jim and Christy were able to make it again from Australia. All the EQ2 fansites were represented including Lera of EQ2Furniture, Niami Denmother of EQ2Traders, Afista of EQ2DesignGallery (who just got hired to work for SOE, yay!), and, Dellmon of EQ2Talk. I got to chat with Katanallama who presented an incredible player panel about A.C.T. and EQ2 Macros. And I got to chat with players at our EQ2Wire/Raid Council gettogether and in the downtimes between panels.

Spending almost entire week in Vegas makes for quite a different experience. Every year the event seems to start and finish in the blink of an eye, so the extra time was worth the extra hotel bills. Speaking of the hotel, I’m glad that SOE was able to nudge Planet Hollywood and get their cell phone service upgraded. Last year, if you were anywhere in the hallways, conference rooms, or especially the ballroom, you were lucky to get EDGE service, and even text messaging was impossible most of the time. This year, I got full 4G/LTE service even in the far corners of the ballroom. Now, I will say everyone’s cell phones burned through batteries within hours because they were constantly hopping from femtocell to femtocell (say that 5 times fast), but that’s what power bricks are for!

>>> Add more about eq2 expansion, art and animation, and overall impressions of the upcoming expansion

I think next year will have a hard time topping this one, as I truly had a fantastic time.

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I have no knowledge of the behind-the-scenes interaction between Omeed and Marketing. I can only speculate based on what I have seen and heard over these years from various sources. My perception, as a fansite, is that Marketing has always put Press sites first, has offered scant support or information to fansites, and hesitated to communicate with players until the uproar makes it absolutely necessary. It’s always seemed to me to be a reactive rather than proactive organization.

The official policy of Marketing is: any fansite for an SOE game has one point of contact — the Community Manager for their respective game. Yet none of the most popular, successful fansites for SOE games limits themselves in this way. EQ2U and EQ2Wire have greatly benefitted from the friendships we’ve established on the EQ2 team, and direct interactions with the producers, designers, and developers. The same can be said of fansites of every other SOE games.

In the early years of EQ2Wire, I didn’t know anyone at SOE. I just posted my editorials, criticisms and commentaries in a vacuum. There were times when I was dead wrong. There were times when I posted an unnecessary rant just minutes before someone from the EQ2 team owned up to the issue and promised a resolution. I do not miss the days when I could not e-mail, PM, or otherwise ask someone if they were aware of an issue and whether I should keep a tighter grip on my horses before running off half-cocked with an irate article. As Zelda taught us — it’s dangerous to go alone!