Sony's MMO marketing shows signs of desperation

I wouldn't neccessarily call them offering EQ2 on FilePlanet free for a month desperation. They do that all the time...as a matter of fact they did that with WoW not too long ago and they started doing it with Auto Assault and D&D Stormreach.

SOE has two expansions coming out very soon, how is it outrageous that they would want to promote their games?

The free Planetside thing has been long overdue and would breathe new life into the game. This is just another shot at getting the game in the public's eye.

Advertising SWG to new players is the best thing they can do for that game right now. New players won't be jaded nor miss old classes that were never there for them. Building a new playerbase is just about all they can do at this point.

As for referencing the Penny Arcade comic, and the article they wrote recently, they should consider looking in the mirror when they write about company shills, being on the Blizzard payroll with their own booth at the World of Warcraft fan convention.

Ok, I'm not a really big Sony fan, my prior posts can attest to that. But as much as I like seeing Sony get bashed, my MMORPG'ing side of me can't stand and watch it get overly bashed. I've played EQ for years and even to this date I still play it. However, I myself am beginning to stray away from the MMORPG's and find myself playing my Xbox 360 more and more. I'm thinking that next month, I might even cancel my Station Access pass because of that very reason. But Jago is right, WoW and other MMORPG's do the same thing and regularly. I just got a 14 day free trial for EVE Online, does that make EVE Online a bad thing too?

Yeah... Heh, SoE is dying. If you asked me, it started going downhill since McQuad left. Planes of Power picked back up, but then the MMO rush was hitting hard... Planetside was a noble effort, but should have never happened. FPS fans do not want long term build.

Eitherway, I think Vanguard will be the new flagship of hardcore MMO's once it comes out. I imagine EQ and EQ2's playerbase completely migrating to Vanguard. I know a lot of people that aren't playing MMOs(including WoW) until Vanguard comes out. It'll be big, it's got the momentum already. Then again, I haerd nothing about WoW until it came out. Sleeper hits the way to go?

i remember downloading this in time for valentines day, but now i cant find it O_o. where can i download it for free? i know i did it before, legal. but i cant find it now =/.

Almost all of the other MMOs offering free play are still in beta, and offering free access to the beta--that's not the same in my book. Offering a cut-price all-in-one package and simultaneously offering a month's trial of an aging game is surely going to confuse people beyond all reckoning.

WoW offered a 10-day cut-down trial, not a whole month's play (the game and a month's play is what you get in the retail box; this 10 day trial was nowhere near). I think EVE falls into a slightly different category as it doesn't have anywhere near the advertising and publicity resources SOE have behind them--game quality aside, piling on the promotions like this is tantamount to standing outside game stores with placards going "PLEASE play our games!!!11!"--enough to put anyone off.

Good thing Sony has shown so much success in the online game marketplace. This is good news for their Playstation HUB. Oh, maybe it's BAD news...

So #7, I suppose making over a billion dollars over its lifespan with Everquest is not successful ? Spurring and truly ushering all that is MMORPG (including paving the way for games like Wow, DDO, pick your favorite MMORPG) for the past 7 years and still making profits is not successful ? I guess that is BAD news for Sony....

Dear Joystiq-ers,

Wanted to drop you a note to let you know that we’re doing well over here at Sony Online Entertainment! Despite this post, running three of the Top 5 MMOs in North America (EverQuest, EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies) has not reduced us to a state of “desperation.”

From your piece: “Casual gamers or those new to MMOs might get suckered in briefly…” Yes, exactly, glad you’re getting the idea, at least partially. We currently have more than 800,000 people playing our games. Would we like more? Yes. How do we get more players? Marketing is one way. This includes advertising in magazines, on websites and -- very occasionally, when we have the budget and really believe in a title -- on TV. Marketing also includes media relations (what I am doing right now), creating demo programs, forging partnerships with companies like Intel and Nvidia or setting up cross-promotional activities like /pizza.

Calling our demos desperate is like referring to Joystiq’s cross-network linking as a sad attempt to get people to care about your site. How do you get people to look at your blog? You RSS your feed out – wow, it’s sad that Joystiq is so desperate for readers that you have to blindly cast your words out into the internet and hope that someone pays attention. OMG, Joystiq also accepts advertising dollars from evil marketing companies – SELLOUTS!

What’s up next? Is Joystiq going to begin criticizing every video game company that advertises in a magazine? Perhaps id Software and Valve are going out of business because they release free demos of Quake 4 and Half-Life 2. Maybe Coke and Nike are about to collapse because they run TV ads. I’d like to think that Joystiq is smarter than this, simply because I read and enjoy your site every day.

Both SOE and Joystiq need eyeballs to keep us viable as businesses. This is why we periodically run demos or ads for our games and why you guys are given support on other Weblogs, Inc. Network sites. This post was completely snarky and particularly stupid when you put on a thinking cap to look at what we’re doing from a business perspective, instead of merely trying to pile on to whatever random nonsense the supergeniuses at Penny Arcade spew out.

Gotta go, I’ve got a whole day of evil marketing ideas ahead of me!

Chris Kramer
Dir., Corporate Communications
Sony Online Entertainment

Almost forgot – EverQuest® Prophecy of Ro™ and EverQuest II® Kingdom of Sky™ are both in stores on Tuesday, Feb. 21!

Wow....Chris pwned this article.

It's obvious the author of this news report posted it out of bias, not reporting fact.

"If playing PlanetSide for free isn't enough for you..."

Yes, Planetside will be free, but it will also have MASSIVE limitations on rank. SOE is giving players the full game, not the limited, free demo anybody can join. That's like saying, "ID Software is giving away Doom 3 for free!" when it's only a playable demo.

It's not legitimate reporting. Report fact, not your own personal grudge.

Hey Kramer, your comparring HL and Dom DEMOS to a FULL VERSION GAME (EQ2) you are giving away for free on Filplanet. Sorry, but 2 different things.

Funny seeing you go postal though, all this heat of what you think is "right" and 75% of the gamming community, (G4TV, PCGamer, other publications) think is wrong is finally getting to you guys.

Come on Chris, you CLEARLY know that something's going wrong with your strategy. Only 800,000 for those games combined? Huh.. WoW is so far ahead of you in terms of users, it isn't even funny anymore. Your marketing claptrap is cute, but bad news buddy...

A lot of us have PLAYED your games.

SWG? Come on. You guys know what trash it is! You're BLEEDING away your userbase!

EQ2? I played this for three months, and left without any regret. Penny Arcade is totally right... hire some G** D*MN Artists for this game! Do something! It's TOTALLY uninvolving, DESPITE the deep crafting systems!

EQ one really pushed the envelope... but your company completely lacks the ability to speak to their players without telling them what they really want!

Oh, and Kramer... I have the Collector's Edition of EQ2! It's sitting on my shelf in its pretty little tin right now... if you REALLY care for your customers, let me send that POS back to you for a full refund of my $80!

So I guess trolling Joystiq's comments page is just another form of "Marketing" these days Kramer? No wonder you guys are getting your arse's kicked.

Nobody's bashing what player-base you DO have right now - what everyone is noticing is the fact that there seems to be ZERO hope of improvement for SOE in the future. You're leadership is stuck in a creative and ideological rut that was dead and buried 5 years ago.

800,000 today - 400K tomorrow? 200K the next? And you expect Blizzard and NC Soft to just "Go Away"? What about Red 5 and some of the other start-ups that are showing genuine talent? Maybe you'll find a day-job writing books like Koster once you start to actually acknowledge the reality of the situation.

Get back to work Kramer! And stop wasting your lunch breaks trying to convince us SOE isn't going down in flames.

Sorry Chris but the games are a joke...when you have to bundle multiple games together like that you basically are HOPING someone is suckered into paying for one of them.

Oh and before WoW was gold, I beleive they also had beta tests so that isn't a sign of desperation. It is actually a smart move b/c since you are targeting the PC audience, FilePlanet is a pretty good place to start.

I love to bash sony just as much as the next guy but as a casual gamer I am no longer playing (and paying for station access) for a very specific reason. It's just too time consuming.

You know what the sad part is. All of those games have enough content to keep me busy and paying for years. They really aren't that bad (and very good at certian things).

Its funny how when an emulator is released the very first servers (and most popular) are those that allow 15x exp and loot of the normal (company run) server. Sony is the master at adding expansion content at a regular rate you'd think they would have figured out how they could get ahead in this genre space.

It's simple. Release 15x exp and loot servers and watch your revenue come in. Keep releasing and expansion every 6 months and people will continue to play even though they maxed out much quicker. Thats how you could get me to pay you 21$ a month agian.

You want the casual gaming dollar, be MORE casual!!!!

Actually, Planetside is a rather casual game, maybe one reason why SOE is recognizing the market(such as GW and the more casual based WOW-compared to EQ2 etc).

PS has better per minute fun than most games out there-you have to actively aim, drive/gun vehicles, plot strategy etc etc, instead of the grindfest associated with the average MMORPG.

All I have to say is that those SWG commercials are absolutely *terrible*...I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it (it was airing during an episode of AOTS on G4 and I thought it was one of their little parodies). Literally, that commercial would scare me away from the game. The commercial has the same aesthetic/vibe as a commercial from fly-by-night operation peddling the $19.95 idiotic gadget of the month.

Exaggeration, the great province of game journalism. I fail to see how promotion of a game would put people off, we're not talking about Puffy Combs' face on every television station and 32 oz big gulp sold at 7-11. I guess if giving your client away for free is a sign of desperation, then all the indie MMOs I like are very desperate. Or maybe they just have a different business model? I don't play any SOE MMO games, but I don't exactly envision their products drying up and blowing away anytime soon.

To all you people laughing at SOE for not having such as big a player base as WOW:-

Are you really that narrow minded to see that 800,000 players is a decent amount. Its a very large player base in reality, and to all of you stupid people out there, it only seems like such a pitiful number because of the incredibly impressive number of people playing WOW. Let me remind you that that is certainly not the average number of people you can expect a single MMO to get. Blizzard has skewed the idea of what is a good sized player base because of the phenomenon that is 'World Of Warcraft'.

You must realise that no other MMO out there is anywhere near the number of players that WOW has, so you can't laugh at SOE and ignore the "pathetic" numbers that every other MMO company has (excluding Blizzard ofcourse).

My opinion of all of you, is that you are all fanboys of Blizzard, and don't realise how they are the exception to the norm.

Well... The way I see it, he should've kept quiet.

"We currently have more than 800,000 people playing our games"

ROFLMAO!!!! x10 They got EQ, which is arguably the MMO that set the standar for MMOs, EQ2, MxO and A GAME WITH STAR WARS ON IT'S TITLE and yet they got 800k subscribers???

A little indie company, basically working out of a garage in the Netherlands made a MMO that just recently hit 100K subs and consistently has 20K users online at the same time. Some of you might have heard from it. But "running three of the Top 5 MMOs in North America (EverQuest, EverQuest II and Star Wars Galaxies) (and yet only having 800K subs) has not reduced us to a state of “desperation"

Well Anon...

I don't know how much you know about MMOs, but I've been around since the old days of UO (before it was Trammel and Felucca), and I'll tell you this... Having 800K subs, for a company like SOE, IS PATHETIC! Lineage 1 and 2 have more than 800K subs, Final Fantasy was close the last time I checked... And let's not forget, They got the Star Wars license, wich under any other circumstances, is permission to print your own money. So by anyone's standards, having 800K subs BETWEEN ALL SOE GAMES is plenty pathetic.

Hehehe. Here's a clue for Chris Kramer:

EVE-online, run by 5 developers and well past launch -- growing steadily (just joined the 100k club).

SOE Titles? Not a one is showing ANY growth -- and you lost at least 100k accounts on SWG alone over the last three months.

You're getting your asses kicked, and unless you start a MAJOR shakeup, you're not going to regain market share.

I suggest you start at the top. Your problems and issues range across multiple products -- admittedly SWG is a special case, light years worse than the rest -- but crappy customer service, low-quality releases, rushed development cycle and a highly amateur quality to your work -- you find that everywhere in SOE products.

Oh, and good luck with Smedly's new pay-to-play "red velvet rope" plan. Talk about crash and burn. I'm looking forward to you trying it out -- I only wish I could hear it when Smedly plays "pin the blame" on that call.

800k? You must be joking. Unless planetside and MxO are running 200k each, there's NO way. SWG might have 100k TOPS, and EQ2 topped at 300k.

If you didn't totally screw upSWG beyond repair, you might have had a shot.

It is pathetic that the best game you have left is Matrix, and you didn't even DESIGN that.

Oh yes, Mr Kramer, 800k subs between EQ, EQ2 and SWG is SUCH a hot number. The old workhorse you bought out from Verant, its prettier, yet dumber and less fun younger sister and the money-generator with a fan following almost as big as Jesus's... and then the poor jerks at MxO, who are bleeding population since you cut their only real fun out of the game -- events. How proud you must be.

If you're not desperate, you might need to take the red pill and wake up.

SOE's name is becoming poison in the PC gaming community, and you people have honestly asked for it. Maybe if you try providing content, polished code and improvements to the games your company buys rather than removing the parts of them that made them appealing, rather than insulting your user base and rather than telling us what you want us to like instead of listening to what we actually DO like, you might not have to troll forums to defend your company's tarnished reputation and crappy name.

Polish your games or polish your resume, man. Leave the flaming to we gamers who have far too much time on our hands since your company ganked the games we USED to pay you to play. Before your people took a dump on them AND US in hopes of WoW sub numbers.

Ta, corporate flunky.

Azhrarn
EX SOE Customer
Currently Blizzard customer and forums troll.
Official Grrl-Gamer Scorned

Reply to SOE Marketing.

I believe the point of the article was that a lot of money is being spent to market games that by and large are not viewed/reviewed favorably and have been on the market for a long period of time.

The scent of desperation comes from your own team and corporate structure with the acting president of SOE posting and having to actively deal with the SWG franchise on a forum level because the staff in place in that game seems to screw up communication at every oppurtunity. That is not a normal situation. I can think of no other person in Smedley's position having to do this.

There is self admitted rumors flying around of SOE losing staff in the developer areas. We have seen at least 3 major publications editorials rip your online game swg.

NC Soft a company you formerly dominated and a startup in Blizzard have over taking your company in the marketplace and you are telling us all SOE as a company isn't getting desperate and hungry?

You all need to check your attitudes, compasses and take a long hard look at the direction SOE is heading. It reminds of a certain company named activision which went down this path.

P.S. I am an angered swg vetern who wants a pre-cu server. Apparently its to hard to give customers who gave you 1 year of subscriptions and bought your overpriced games the version they paid for. Nice attitude from a company who is doing ohhh so well.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=214464

It would appear this is the backlash as a result from some sort of falling out over at PA ... if the above poster is indeed Chris Kramer

I would imagine though comics like this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/02/15

might have driven him over the edge.

What Kramer seems to not understand that SOE can advertise with billions and all the advertising in the world is not going to help them draw more players to their games. Want to know why Mr. Kramer? It really is quite simple. SOE has shown so much disrespect and contempt to their player base over the last few years that many players won't even touch an SOE game.

Go to any game related website that is devoted to MMO's and read their forums. There is not a day that goes by that someone doesn't post a message regarding SOE and how they treat their player base. Whether SOE wants to believe it or not(they have this belief that it is the "vocal minority" posting and the majority never even visit a website let alone post on one), these little gems sparkle brilliantly in amongst the normal forum noise that permeates these websites. Why? Because the post reponse numbers make them shine that way.

Word of mouth Mr. Kramer...word of mouth...and the word is SOE doesn't give a rats arse about their players. Time and time again your company Mr. Kramer has proven this to be true. Eventually it is going to catch with you and as you said, you only have 800k subsrcibers to your games. 300k BTW are all Planetside subscriptions that SOE just recently reactivated. So that makes the true number somewhere around 450k to 500K and I am being very generous here with these numbers.

SOE use to be the premier gaming company of the internet, well not anymore Mr. Kramer, and SOE has only themselves to blame.

Oh, and you coming to this website and bashing the article proves my point very well. I have never been here before today, to this website that is, no...I just came across no less than five other gaming related websites that have threads about "your" response to this article and after reading it I felt I needed to repond. Word of mouth Mr. Kramer...word of mouth...

SOE better wake up and realize that the players they piss on today are the players that will make damn sure others do not have to go through the same treatment they did. As long as SOE continues to totally neglect their player base through disrespect and contempt - you'll reap what you sow.

The problem is the 'vocal minority' aka all the SWG vet’s they ninja screwed with the NGE have kept the fight up so long, the wider community can’t help but start to take notice.

Now, big names in computer gaming media are popping digs at SWG and more importantly at SOE directly. And word is getting around everywhere.. When PC GAMER has 'New SWG Sucks!' on it's front cover it's got to be time to worry...

They supposedly have signed for this big DC Comics MMO…

well, if I were DC and I saw what’s being said in the main stream media, I'm sure I be calling LA and SOE and finding out what's up?

And if someone from DC read this, SOE will give you a buggy, unfinished, unstable pile of pap a majority of people will only play at launch to see if its gets ‘better’ (reaches 10% of what SOE promise).

When players complain they will be labeled ‘the hard core whining minority’.

Bug fixes will be the ‘lock and stock’ of content patches.

Content will actually come in monthly half baked expansions ($).

If the media comment on how poor it is they will be called ‘Sony Bashers’.

Belated tip for SOE management: You should always, always be nice to the people who got you to where you are now...because you'll see them all again on the way back down.

Or, to phrase it in a more classical style: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind"

I think this is a very good move on Sony's part. If you look at internet porn, which is very successful, this is how ALL the big porn sites now market. They do not sell membership to one site, but to a portfolio of sites. The goal is to get....$15 recurring for the rest of your life. You get that by not having people quit. The best way to do this is to offer more content. NCsoft has already started to see this and I am sure this has been very profitable for them. WoW is going to struggle a little more with this billing concept since they don't have a portfolio of MMORPGs just yet.

In the future, this is how all the big game sites will sell product. On the internet, mainstream always lags porn and porn has been doing this for 2-3 years now successfully.

"We currently have more than 800,000 people playing our games."

Thats what ? One WOW server ?
As more QUALITY games hit the market you guys get more and more desperate LOL.

Wow Kramer you guys at soe are really showing your quality lol. First with Smed flying into the swg.allakhazam.com forums to try and quash rumors now your running in here with one of the most venomous posts from a company representative I think I have ever seen, shows how truly sad and pathetic you all have become at soe. OMG lol, too funny you come into a person's blog site and troll them roflmao this is too rich.

Good luck in the unemployment line roflmao, I doubt they would hire someone with your attitude at Del Taco. I know I sure wouldn't.

So many fanboys of WoW here it would be impossible to disseminate truth from fiction, why it is that WoW fans feel the need to bash an ageing game with a (in comparison) far smaller user base just cracks me up, the biggest difference in the way Blizzard design it's game & the way SoE designs it's games is player commitment, WoW is pick up 'n play for 30mins stuff, it does have some artistic flair, if you like the cartoony looks, SoE's stuff thus far is more demanding of a players time.

I don't begrudge WoW it's success, in fact Everquest has benefitted from WoW's "opening up" of the marketplace, the number of WoW players that were former eq players is a very tiny proportion of WoW's userbase, most were brought into mmo's for the first time by WoW, this proves the market has a lot more growth potential, why shouldn't eq swg & eq2 not be able to grab a slice of that new market?

Advertising is needed, the only way to garner new interest in the MMO market is to take the game to the people from non-gaming walks of life, exactly what Blizzard did, and the only way to do that is via the media available, not only that but Blizzard had a huge fanbase for it's product since diablo etc.

People have been saying "the end is nigh" for SoE's games for almost as long as EQ has been theirs yet it's still turning over a healthy revenue for them & they continue to innovate with what is the longest running 3d mmo out there.

I've played WoW & enjoyed it, but it has it's problems, & I have seen plenty of people complain about it too, lifespan, lack of endgame, lack of depth, lack of content, the game does exactly what it says on the tin & in it's early development cycle was geared to get people to the high end quickly but enjoyably, the biggest problem is there is so little to do once you are at that high end, people argue "but it's got replay value as you can level other toons" well, hello they really don't have much choice if they want to keep playing without going utterly mad from boredom, i did, i went back to eq where there is a decent challenge involved.

I guess i come from the dinasaurs of "hard core gamers" I have been playing EQ2 for 7+ years since the days of McQuaid, with my husband whom was disabled years ago, We have played honest, and have never had issues with being banned, or suspended due to violating the "EULA".

In the last week 03/10/06, SOE shut my husbands account off, without cause, or reason, along with hundreds of other gamers on our server and world wide. My husband also is a "hard core gamer" which obviously doesnt fit into SOE's Game design. They are only looking for casual gamers, to lower the amt of usage online, while still maintaining their revenues without necessity to upgrade their hardware for larger capacity.

SOE recently merged all of the servers on EQ2 to lower the costs of implementing their PVP servers, In doing so they increased their population of their servers, which has resulted in large lag problems due to server resources. Major functions in the game have been shutting down IE Zones, Brokers, House Vaults etc, due to overpopulation and server stability.

SOE has still not released a fix for the issues they are having, this past friday SOE did a "Batch Ban" which was a world wide, banning heavy users under a "FALSE violation" of their EULA.

None of the players banned recieved notification, or explanation of the ban itself, nor was their an investigation done by SOE. Nor, will their departments will respond with any comment, as to why these accounts were banned. And after 5 days now of petitioning, and writing letters that are ignored, making posts that are blocked, and calling this company will they still give me any information other then some 'Mysterious violation" in which not one of their employees has any information about.

This banning oddly enough takes place just days after the release of their latest expansion, which was undoubtedly timed out to ensure they profited from the players whom they were going to "WRITE OFF" to make room for casual gamers.

SOE treats its customers like statistics on their profit and loss statments. They do not want hard core gamers, because hard core gamers are using their servers resources every day, It is now, cheaper to write these "HARD CORE GAMERS" off, then to fix their systems to support higher population on their servers, without refund to these players whom have now lost all the time they have put into these accounts, the money they have invested to play the game, their only response?, for a request for reimbursement due to lack of use?, or reinstatment?, simply for unused subscription fees they have already PRE COLLECTED? is to refer their EULA. In which their EULA clearly states that they do not guarantee access to their game.

What kind of joke is that? You write off over 300 people on one server alone, and you do not even tell them why you are writing them off? yet you THINK you can keep their money for the year? I'm sorry to say.. but thats FRAUD. ITS FRAUDULENT TO SELL A PRODUCT AND NOT DELIVER ON IT OR TO DENY ACCESS TO IT!

If this statment is untrue, then SOE is welcome to send me an email at: dancy_254@msn.com to explain to me how my husband, whom was disabled years ago, has "mysteriously" violated their EULA, or how they feel they are justified to take money from their customers, then deny them access to a product, that they have already prepaid for. If SOE didnt want our business, they should have told us before they allowed us to invest hundreds of dollars in their product.

Come on guys and gals, Kramer knows that WoW is kick SOEs butt into the next year

Quoted from the New York Times "World of Warcraft is completely owning the online game space right now," said Chris Kramer, a spokesman for Sony Online Entertainment, buyer of Matrix Online and one of Blizzard's chief rivals. "Look, Matrix Online is good, but it's like being in the early 90's and trying to put a fighting game up against Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter; it's just not going to happen. There are a lot of other online games that are just sucking wind right now because so many people are playing WOW."

800,000 players ? /golfclap You use to have a million until SOE monkey wrenched with SWG to many times and let's not even talk about the CSR and forum mods who ban business at the drop of a hat.
Kramer you work for a poor company that has lost alot of goodwill from your customers. We laugh at you at your efforts to defend their actions.