Mind you, what did we expect
Really? Gawd. There's no way anyone could just forget to mention the game being cancelled, so they're deliberately ignoring us. I'm beyond caring now of course, but I'd simply love to know just why they think like they do. What's going through their heads? I've never ever seen a company and its staff so determined to mistreat their customers or bury one of their assets. It's truly perplexing.
Deep down in the fundamental thinking behind SOE's decisions is there even a reason for the stuff we've had to put up with these years, or is it just some sort of joke? I just can't wrap my head around it.
I think it has been mentioned elsewhere: SOE was likely spending copious amounts of money with WB every year, to pay for the privilege of using the concept of The Matrix etc.
In a failing economy, SOE were probably directly comparing MxO with SWG; which doesn't seem to show the same degree of dwindling interest. It also had a far greater quantity of public interest from SOE's initial involement with the MMO. And, yes, there is a chance that SOE were looking at establishing Rights on other WB titles, and the Matrix was a good method to establish this.
So how would this change? What would be the projected upturn in subscriptions from an advertising campaign for MxO? Would players for the likes of WoW, migrate to this game and justify the investment of more Devs and such? I imagine the cost outweighed the projected advantage and further investment was not regarded as holding a viable business case. It is quite likely that the cost in licencing, staff and amenities has meant that MxO has not shown a profit for over a year: it may have even been running at a significant loss for many months. It was only a matter of time before they stopped flogging the Dead Horse.
So why did SOE not warn us of the dangers which threatened MxO? Why would any company draw attention to a failing business interest? It certainly wouldn't improve their stock price and openly admitting the issue may have prompted a mass exodus and a barrage of "I told you so!"'s. There was simply no advantage to making such an announcement.
Who is ultimately responsible for the death of MxO? Us. The general public simply don't hold sufficient interest in the genre; especially so long after the last film title was released (and without any future releases on the horizon). It is classified as a cult following and even those few staunch fans, who kept with MxO, would sporadically disappear off the "radar"! The MxO players never really saw the true risk of MxO completely shutting. Even if we had, would absentees have returned to pay their monthly subs in the spirit of charity? I don't see brimming servers even now, when noone is paying a damned cent!!
Where do my sympathies lie? The staff. They must have been aware of these problems and yet they tirelssly continued in their roles: it must have been very demotivating to work under the threat of "the axe".
That is why we stand where we are today: In retrospect, "it is inevitable..."
All that only really explains why they eventually cancelled MxO, a decision which I guess I can understand. It doesn't account for any of the communication issues, however, the latest one being complete silence in the podcast.
Coro wrote:
Why would any company draw attention to a failing business interest? It certainly wouldn't improve their stock price and openly admitting the issue may have prompted a mass exodus and a barrage of "I told you so!"'s. There was simply no advantage to making such an announcement.
I completely understand you feel mistreated, as do many others and I also to some degree. However, I think were I SOE, I could see many potential risks of compounding the problem, in making such an announcement. Whilst customers might be dissatisfied by being "kept in the dark", I don''t think we would have been overjoyed if promptly informed of the problems the MMO faced.
"Ignorance is bliss..."
Procurator wrote:
Because it doesn't make SOE look good, of course
Why would they say they canceled an MMO that belongs to their station pass. It's bad advertisement.
you sound surprised.....
I knew I'd be misunderstood on this point. I should have explained myself more clearly.
We've been kept in the dark for ages, whereas I doubt very much that they'd finalised their plans for MxO's closure until a few months ago. It's this extended period of poor communication (that lasted for years, not the brief period where they considered the game's closure) and MxO's overall poor treatment that I don't see being explained in your post.
I don't even think the delayed announcement can be excused, actually. SOE doesn't have any shareholders to satisfy (that I've been able to work out - can't say I've researched it too thoroughly), and even if it did they wouldn't take much notice of a minor asset like MxO. And they can't hold off the bad publicity a closure will produce anyway. If anything, they've made it worse for themselves by giving us such little notice. The gaming community remembers things like this.
In short: their treatment of us and this game hasn't done them any good, and I refuse to believe they're so stupid as to think it would be good for them. So what were they thinking?
So you're saying that the less SOE talks about the closing of MXO, the worse it'll be for SOE's image?
I believe the exact opposite. Every site or news item that I read has the same replies: "Was that game still going on?" / "I thought that game closed servers years ago..."
The less people that SOE can inform about MXO, the better. People didn't know this game existed, that's why SOE never mentioned MXO anywhere.
No one knows about MXO and the people who know don't care. Free Realms has 3 million free accounts. I doubt EQ2 will lose any players because SOE decided to ditch MXO.
So again, the reason they don't mention they're closing one of their MMO's is because people hardly knew about MXO. Would SOE mention the closing of MXO, it can having nothing but a negative impact on their image. By not mentioning MXO, only those few MXO players will feel neglected. How many vs. many is that? Everyone who tunes in to podcasts vs. the few MXO subscribers who care?
MxO's closure is all over the gaming press. Not in a high profile way, obviously, but everyone's heard the news. It's become apparent that SOE has mistreated MxO, and that will filter through. The more they do to hush it up, the more the people who do care will kick up a fuss. It just can't do SOE any good.
SOE can't hide what they've done. So any attempt to hide it makes people mistrust them. You see the same effect everywhere, especially in politics. This tactic is such a huge guarantee of failure that I don't understand how SOE can continue down that path. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
