plaguelands.comSmedley’s skill in the art of bs has increased to epic proportions! (300)
Once again John Smedley, CEO of Sony Online Entertainment is doing what he does best, reverting back to his usual antics, lying and deceiving, same ole’ same ole’ as they say and his hubris furtively in tact, bad habits do indeed die hard. Smed has been playing his injured hand the last week over on the fohrums after the Penny Arcade fiasco trying to redeem support in some fashion, but on this particular flop Smed has been caught cheating and I’m fed up with his never-ending bullshit, I have the truth and will disprove John Smedley’s claim of SOE never releasing an incomplete product.
It started back in late December on page 5 of the CBS mail-bag when a former disgruntled SOE subscriber slammed SOE accusing Smedley of being solely responsible for SOE’s bad business ethics. What should have been an enlightening read for many was quickly dismissed for a lack of evidence and the troll like nature of the submission. I posted in agreement with the accusations over on n3rfed, but I was exhausted on the topic so didn’t go into further detail, in rebuttal John Smedley was interviewed a week ago by CBS news’ Gamecore where he refuted the anonymous accusations.
“I’m bent about that one,” Smedley admitted in a phone call. “As a person, I have zero problem with criticism. I don’t have any problem whatsoever with our customers complaining. I think it’s perfectly legitimate, and I think it’s perfectly legitimate for you guys to have a mailbag with hate mail from Star Wars Galaxies. But of all the mail, that’s the one that bothered me because it’s filled with a bunch of BS.”
“There has never been a release by Sony Online Entertainment that has been incomplete,” Smedley said.
Well, well. I can’t sit back and say nothing about this. Smedley can’t manipulate his words and hide the truth this time. Anyone who is familiar with John Smedley’s tenure at SOE knows this is a flat-out fucking lie and inept, lacking in basic cognition if he indeed honestly believes there is some truth to his statement. In other words, lay off the crack pipe Smed.
After the above statement was published yesterday, that same very evening Smedley immediately back-peddled his statement on the foh forums.
“The new CBS story including the interview I did is now up here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/tech…in500397.shtml
For the record, it was done prior to my getting involved in this thread. One quote I gave the CBS interviewer had to do with us never releasing anything that wasn’t done . Throughout this particular thread I’ve had you all (and here I will give Utnayan the credit) point out several times in the past where there were unfinished pieces of some of our expansions.
As I’ve double checked some of the specific instances he listed (and others as well) I think it’s fair to say that there were indeed cases where stuff wasn’t properly finished as it should have been. In other cases stuff was in fact completed, but bad loot was dropping.. or in some cases some progression stopping bugs.
I apologize for that.
We’ve got the process in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again. My biggest beef all along with these issues is the idea that we would have done it on purpose. That has never been the case. We do take a great deal of pride in what we do, and as I’ve stated before in this thread we love making great online games. We need to always keep quality as our main priority when we’re releasing content, and I think for the most part we do. I also know that as a company we’ve matured and our releases have gotten cleaner and cleaner. We’re never going to be perfect, but we can and we will be better.”
Apology not accepted. I wanted an apology and an explanation 3 fucking years ago, and what’s this horse shit research Smedley did in the last week to just discover the fuckups. Right…
Facts or Secrets or whatever catchy tagline suits you
Before John Smedley’s sole reign at SOE headquarters, there was Brad McQuaid, under Verant Interactive McQuaid served as Vice President and carried a myriad of badges on various projects, during McQuaid’s lead EverQuest prospered and grew to over 450,000 subscriptions while also sustaining a very high subscriber retention rate. Eventually SOE wanting to pursue additional subscription based revenue games to their existing repertoire of web based ad revenue games purchased Verant Interactive. After this acquisition took place is when most players from this particular era witnessed noticeable changes for the worse which EverQuest was taking, someone was ripping out the guts. Brad McQuaid no longer hand a hands-on approach with EverQuest’s design instead busy under the new hat of being SOE’s Chief Creative Officer and John Smedley took the reigns as Chief Executive Officer.
Frustrated with the new role, a year later, if that, Brad McQuaid departed from SOE in early October 01 shattering the vision that remained, the upcoming expansion, Shadows of Luclin was released shortly after his departure in December 01. Jeff Butler soon followed McQuaid’s footsteps in January 02, Butler who held the role of producer on EverQuest live and expansions. A few lead developers who were primarily responsible for the development of the Shadows of Luclin expansion also left SOE before and after the expansion later joining Brad McQuaid to form Sigil Games Online. With all these lead developers leaving during Shadow of Luclin’s development it’s a safe assumption that behind the scenes was in disarray.
Some actual comments from a lead developer who worked on the Shadows of Luclin expansion.
Kendrick
Light PosterRegistered: Apr 2002
Location: San Diego CA
Posts: 3
To FoH:Well done. I mean that.
Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t design Seru to fuck you guys, hell, I never designed encounters and zones to fuck people, I designed them to be DONE. I was not on some ego-trip, to my thinking, if a mob wasn’t killable OR being killed, I failed somewhere.
But Seru was supposed to take some time to get to. The big NPC’s in Ssra were meant to be harder than, for instance, and in my original tuning of, that was the case. He was meant to be an upper end encounter, no doubt, but not THE encounter, or even in the top five of Luclin.
The real challenge of killing Seru was supposed to be simply getting geared up, and getting to him. And not through the skylight. (Gflux was to be turned off in that area, but for some reason it never happened.)
After you got there, it was meant to be a big fight, but not a marathon.
I’m going to cop out a bit here, letting you know I had nothing to do with any of the changes after December 18th, since, well, I was outta there, so I don’t know what they’ve done to his HP/AC/ATK/Inates. He had a LOT of HP, but not stupid amounts. Certainly not 1.2 million. That must have changed, of course. His mitigation was set high, but less than some of the other big mobs you’ve done in Luclin.
As far as The Blade of Truth, I was ordered to make it non-usable. Not my call, personally I think a weapon model that looks that good/unique should be in circulation.
Anyway, once again, well done.
John Capozzi
Bill Fisher, another lead designer who worked on Shadows of Luclin has also gone on record stating he only had a few weeks to design Vex Thall and never had the opportunity to the zone appropriately including itemization before it was released. Unfortunately, at the time of writing I couldn’t find this post, it’s been over a year since I last saw it, but I’m able to prove its factuality with a statement from one of Fisher’s former guild members.
Source: Bill made that zone in one week, by himself, then shortly left for Sigil. I’d like to see anyone else do better in such a short period of time, and alone at that. Blame whoever was left in charge of it for the tuning after players entered it. The other zones that he actually was able to play in (Kael, Temple of Veeshan), were fantastic.
Personally I played through Shadows of Luclin logging in hundreds of hours on my played. I’m sure some of you reading this did the same, and you know Shadows of Luclin expansion was a cataclysmic disaster, atrociously riddled with bugs, zones were left unfinished and untested, in some cases it took up to six months for SOE to revisit and retune zones appropriately. I could write an epic saga on all the incomplete disasters stained on SOE’ and back it up with actual evidence including statements from former GM’s and former developers.
Where exactly was John Smedley? Probably counting the player’s money and not giving two shits about the development phase until subscriptions starting sliding. When that happened he was mainly responsible for going back and reversing SOE’s stance on their long term anti-RMT (real money for item trade, ebay, etc.) and launching Station Exchange enabled servers as a test-bed EverQuest II. You will see their RMT model fail with SOEATTLES upcoming mmog which will be largely developed around this model. Real money trade is not wildly successful in NA/UK when compared to the Asian mmog market and Smedley and his other bureaucrat cronies at SOE need to remove their heads from each other’s asses instead of trying to force this model down the throats of a playerbase that is largely against it.
Further Criticisms
-John Smedley has no clue and must have been oblivious to the development of SOE’s projects since he first stepped foot into his position, maybe he gave himself a lobotomy after Brad McQuaid left the company.
-John Smedley is and has a detrimental effect to SOE’s image and development as a dominate publisher and operator.
-SOE needs to reestablish themselves in the next generation by restructuring their lead positions at the top starting with the CEO. They have great developers working on projects like EverQuest II, projects which have huge potential for growth, what they have been needing is better visionaries leading the helm in the corporate structure from fucking everything up as they have in the past.
-SOE would have had over 1 million subscribers across their smorgasbord of games if it wasn’t for their inept and asinine decisions by the corporate structure that has the development by the balls.
-You can’t out bullshit the playerbase, players see right through it.
In the eyes of thousands of former SOE subscribers John Smedley’s reputation is damaged beyond repair, and for very good reason, all past and present criticism is well deserved, and his latest outcry happens to be another one of his entangled lies and he is scrambling with an apology, we all make mistakes, but there is no more excuses for his failure. Smedley has earned this awful reputation and there is nothing that will redeem it. If I were to talk to Smedley over the phone or face-to-face I would offer the best advice he needs to hear, I would suggest he resign from SOE and not work in any capacity in the mmo industry, well okay, maybe as a janitor.
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- 02.23.06 / 7pm
Bravo for your insight into the fuckups of SOE.
I think because Brad is working on Vanguard, everyone is getting their hopes up. I hope Brad can follow through with those promises, but let me get back to the subject at hand.
I see John as hanging on for dear life to his job. I can ONLY imagine what the atmosphere around the office is because he is there. Every programmer cringing when he opens his mouth, or usually, they hear him start to type in his office. John, step down. Something. You are no longer trusted and people don’t want to be apart of anything you do. Ok, maybe your mother does (and that’s not a low blow. My mother would want to be a part of what I do.), but the majority of vocal gamers are saying FU SOE! I can’t even justify giving SOE any of my money while he is still steering the company. I don’t see myself doing so anytime soon.
Lying will get you no where. Sure you’ll fool a few people, but most people with an IQ over 70 will see right through it. Find someone else to be the voice of SOE. Step down a few positions and give someone else the reigns. Or… just shut the fuck up and quit trying to be heard. Let your games speak for themselves. Let the quality of your company’s work revive your subscription base. Take a few lessons from EVE online my friend. They released a buggy game. People tried, laughed, and left that game. Yet over the years, CCP has turned a joke into something amazing. It will take time to get back on the good side of the force. Don’t expect it to come tomorrow. BUT DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH! KEEP IT SHUT AND DO YOUR JOB!!! ARE YOU THE FREAKING PR PERSON FOR THE COMPANY? IS THAT WHAT YOU WERE HIRED FOR? If so… what a joke.
I want SOE to succeed. I want them to continue to innovate and release good games. Even SWG can be revived with the right dedication. Just please… stop surfing the forums, message boards, and the like and start pointing your company in the right direction.
*sigh*
NNNNNY
To be honest, your VI/SOE timeline sounds like some sort of religious tract that celebreates MMO-Jesus McQuaid and lays all blame on some foreign entity that came out of nothing, swallowed poor Verant Interactive and made it part of some sort of soulless corporate machinery.
I have a slightly different perception.
EQ was developed by 989 Studios, a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment. Look at your orginal EQ CD, it’s right there. EQ was developed by a Sony subsidiary. Smed was right there from the beginning, in fact it was him who hired Brad McQuaid to make EQ.
When EQ became so much bigger than 989’s core business (IIRC sports games), the game was spun off into a new company: Red Eye Entertainment. Shortly after it was renamed to Verant Interactive. As McQuaid mentioned on the Vanguard forums a few months ago, VI was financed by some other Sony entity, which means VI was part of the Sony corporate construct.
In 2001 Sony Pictures Entertainment consolidated their online entertainment activities. SOE “bought” VI from whoever owned VI - probably some other Sony subsidiary. SOE even relocated to San Diego. I’m pretty sure the “new” SOE was little more than Verant with a new name.
My point is that you basically had the same people at SOE that you had at Verant. Smed was head honcho at 989, Verant and now SOE. I’m not convinced that all these bad business decisions over the years would not have happened if SOE had never bought Verant.
We also lack insight into the developement process of SoL. The premature release wasn’t the only issue with that expansion. How deeply was Brad McQuaid involved in the design process of SoL?
As I see it, SOE simply went into the direction into which Verant would have headed anyway, even if it had remained nominall independent, because Verant was the core of SOE and we had the same people in charge.
I find this established myth, that SOE bought Verant and ruined it all, rather unconvincing. All I see one core business (EQ) that went through a bunch name changes resulting from restructuring within the Sony corporate conglomerate, while more or less the same people remained in charge. Minus McQuid, of course, who took off in late 2001.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply certain mistakes wouldn’t have happened, McQuaid is not some revolutionary miraculous game developer that will save the mmog genre from its pitfalls.
The goal for my timeline was to basically disprove Smedley’s claim in the CBS news interview by providing a somewhat worthy example instead of pure conjecture, in this case, Shadows of Luclin and how during the expansion’s development several lead developers left shortly after McQuaid did in oct 01, including Jeff Butler in early 02, whom was the producer for this expansion and a large portion of the content wasn’t fine tuned appropriately and yet the expansion was still released in dec 01. There is insight from a few developers who worked on their assigned implementations, not a lot of it, but what is evident is enough to disprove Smedley’s blatant lie from the interview. Of course some of the best insight are from the players who raided during the initial couple months after the release and experienced the disastrous fuck-ups first hand.
My original post isn’t about SOE versus VI, I only added some history as a backdrop to clarify that their was only one overall corporate entity responsible for the expansion’s development. However, I am tired John Smedley’s antics, if he is not lying, I am tired of his ignorance and I stick to all my original criticisms.
Actually if I remember correctly Red Eye/Verant spun off from 989 before EQ was released. 989 was on the original cds because they were the publishers.
Later Verant was bought by Sony Pictures and renamed SOE, at which point Kelly Flock was appointed CEO, with Smed as Chief Operating Officer, here’s a link (http://www.everquest.info/news_detail.php3?id=132).