When Sony Online Entertainment (SoE) decided to release RMT transactions on all of it's Everquest 2 servers, I knew from the start this was the signal of the end of the EQ2.

Why?

Because not only did SoE release this major installment literally without warning (with the SoE forum moderators not even knowing what to write about it) and with only a minor update note to keep it even more low profile, they promised it would not be released on non Exchange servers (after the player population yelled a, "HELL NO!!"). The management lied to it's customers, and now even forcing this RMT without a choice.

Already disappointed with the TSO (The Shadow Odyssey) expansion, and the reason I bought it (the mount, which was broken from the start as it doesn't scale to my Barbarian character); not able to even tradeskill much due to the XP change (making it more difficult to level from 70 to 80); not able to profit from it, as Provisioning doesn't make money in the game; and bored to tears with little to do but mindless quests at 74 (too low still for the good content; yet too high to kill more interesting content); and the ever increasing less people online to play with when I'm online; RMT was the final match to torch my account.

I canceled my account. And canceled it to never come back.

Still upset with all that, and after the VoyageCentury item mall experience still fresh in my mind, I proceeded to voice my displeasure on the official forums. I tried to be polite and sticking to the subject, but SoE's fanbois are a dime a dozen there (bought and paid for by more trinkets). They would twist and turn your words into exactly what I didn't say; outright troll; get personal with their acid dripping, "Have a nice day" replies. I guess the final straw was when a poster asked how was the server population, and I told the OP the truth of not only the server population my own experience as a new player.

The end result is this badge of honor..

This is how SoE silences the critics of dropping a hot pile of crap in their lap, and expecting any customer to take the stench and all.

I purposely searched for a MMO without a item mall after watching how IGG (VoyageCentury's franchise owner) had ruined the game in an effort to milk players for their last red cent -- and the abuse of city scrolls. EQ2 is a subscription P2P MMO, and considered it the safest to not go that route as Sony is a big name.

Wrong!

RMT is evil to games. It turns a game to have and have nots, with those who worked for their goods feeling cheated by Junior with mommy and daddy's credit card(s) buying hard earned gear and goods. No longer is the game about skill and working the names, it's about who can rob a bank to bankroll the future costs to stay alive and keep up with these brats.

Sidenote: IGG's online store wasn't always so secure, so when I would refresh the browser, I could sometimes see the amounts purchased by other players. What did I see? Item mall cash cards to the tune of $500 and $200 increments. Not yearly, not even monthly -- weekly. Folks with that much income spending on a game they play for hours to no end, don't have a real job. BUT, gold sellers have the cash!

So far EQ2's population is divided between the fluff buyers; the defenders who'll tap dance for SoE (as they expect to be paid in some form for their "loyalty"); the usual gold sellers who keep claiming it's all harmless (yeah, my big toe!); the wait and see types; some angry types; and a smattering of posters claiming to cancel their accounts. But the general pulse is still the population doesn't prefer RMT, but will sample some of the fluff.

That's the death knell for Everquest 2, as once the door is open, players get used to the junk and the rest is history -- much like what occured with IGG with it's limited item mall, that eventually expanded with the Hurricane Island game expansion, making the the item mall no longer a simple option to survive it.

I'm still upset, having lost 3 months of my life playing EQ2; harvesting over a 1000 with about 900 rares left (all going to waste); buying an expansion that's worthless to me (and what it did to the gameplay); and encountering their fanbois that I want to eat and spit out,

Eventually I'll calm down. Eventually I'll move onto another game. But I'll never forget this incident. No more Sony games; no more Sony movies. If it's Sony it's donkey doo for me now on. Will NOT support bad conduct, no matter what.

Read this and weep SoE fanbois and SoE itself -- Everquest 2 has become literal #2 in my book.

>:(

Really didn't want to leave the official EIDOS forums, but when folks are crabby for crabby sake, I don't have time for the petty bickering - JC went Home. :)

Why the bickering?

Nothing really new to talk about. DX fans have been posting about everything under the Sun and beyond for months, and efforts to plead to the EIDOS devs to have something to talk about, just didn't work. So now it's resorting to thread bumping and trying to forum seed to keep interest alive -- something I warned simply won't work in itself, as a forum is about content, not personalities (as any forum admin and/or designer understands).

Now have to wait another month or so for the dev blog (won't doubt it'll be open in October, as that's the time frame for such notices). And I hope it's more about DX the game, than the Eidos Montreal studio, as fans want some indication DX3 is more than a concept on the drawing board.

Meanwhile, Enjoy the Silence...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXaZBdCfrRI

Upon learning that TimeGate Studios was releasing F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate, I was thinking, "Oh, brother, they did the same o' same o' again", and sure enough I wasn't the only one who thought so. It's showing this franchise is on the wrong track, as it's gameplay formula and graphics are both getting dated.

What makes the franchise worse is learning about Project Origin -- the much awaited Monolith Productions sequel to the original F.E.A.R. game -- only to discover that the same "fans" are still pulling the ears of Monolith to make the game just another MP slaughterhouse. Now Monolith claims it's going to fill in some of the storyline gaps in Project Origin and the main entity will remain Alma, but I'm wondering, how can they when the "fans" want just more MP action and no more than 10hr playtime with SP? SP is where the storyline will take place, and if it's going to be full of throwing grenades and shooting clones for 10hrs, how will the Pointman will know anything if the whole game is going to be but 20 minutes of story, with about 10 minutes of spooks?

So what do they do? They remove the Pointman, kill off the whole team, and start with another group. So, we get a new guy but never know who the Pointman really was (with the convulted idea that a generic protagonist is better since anyone can be him). Meanwhile, being humans humans want to know of their origins and why the hell they're even there, let alone why everyone around you is dead or going to die.

The main problem with the F.E.A.R. franchise (sorry Monolith renaming it won't remove it's heritage from the original, as it'll still be referenced by that acronym forever), is that they try to have their cake and eat it too. But it can't work if the main fan base isn't into storytelling and SP, when the game is marketed based on the SP -- as there's no spooks in MP, it's just a FPS shoot up. Either concentrate on a good plot, or just make it into a FPS gorefest, but don't market the game as a kewl SP thriller when it never was.

And before I end this rant, I want Monolith and all the F.E.A.R. MP fanbois to remember another game that was named a "project". It was a spin off of the Deus Ex franchise by the name of Project: Snowblind.

Anyone remember that game?

...Hearing not even a pin drop...

Project Origin, is indeed a snowblinded attempt at game design if it remains a MP heavy game. It'll miss it's mark again, with a fan base that's anything but 17+ to appreciate a good immersive storyline. Heck parents are letting their 11 year-olds play it, and MP reflects it. :roll:

Yes, I hit the F.E.A.R. Extraction Point forum like a storm, because it needed it. ;)

Why the 3.0 rating? Because the game plot sucks - truly, truly TRULY sucks. It also didn't help that the animations were mostly the same (except for a couple new entities), nor the textures/materials. Expansion packs are an extension of a previous game, but some change in the theme and variation would've help a heck of a lot.

What else sucks about F.E.A.R. XP? Voice acting. Rumbling through the .arch00 files I see why Harlan Wade was just sitting in that cell, as the voice files weren't made by Grant Goodeve, and sound terrible. Also heard the voice of Bishop with the crane operator. Can understand the need to spread a few voice actors around, but Warren Specter was right about the quality of voice acting in games - either it's overly dynamic (not real), or monologue style to the point you want to RUN from the character to save your sanity!

What gets me about F.E.A.R. XP is how all that is right and just is destroyed. You watch helplessly as friend upon friend is murdered. So now the point man is totally alone, except for Betters (who may be a double agent working as part of the point man's "evaluation", which folks forget is still ongoing).

If I had Monolith's ear, I would say this about F.E.A.R. 2: don't mess up the plot by taking all those tips from MPers! Go back and fix the holes, not just release more fragging madness, as folks need to understand why the hell they even bought the game, let alone play it. It's those who want to play SP, and it's those who's interested in the "world" that pay for the game (Sierra/VU/and/or you gummed it up with the release of F.E.A.R. Combat, since now folks have no need to pay for the game - why not just give XP and F.E.A.R. 2 away for free, too?). If a new revision is more soap operas twists that are crazier than "As the World Turns", then the F.E.A.R. franchise is DOA. The XP sales and ratings should be a clue how bad it can be when you're trying to mix two game genres into one and concentrating on the MP side, it doesn't work. The game needs a story, we need to know why Alice, Jin and Jankowski were supposely killed (if anything why Alice, since her crime was what - and in XP, why her eyes are they way they are? She didn't die that way). Bring F.E.A.R. 2 back into some order, so folks will want to play the game, not move onto greener pastures (Bioshock, for example is coming out soon enough). Oh, one more thing: give us more modding tools! At least a model converter so we don't have to use hacked and cracked Maya and 3DSMax to even edit a model.