John Smedley tweets on Twitter regularly, follow him at twitter.com/j_smedley!

www.freerealms.com

Hello Everyone,

Today we announced that we have acquired the game PoxNora ( www.poxnora.com ) as well as the talented development team at Octopi. We’re very excited by this purchase. PoxNora is an awesome turn-based collectible strategy game. We plan on really supporting the game and getting the word out in a big way. I’m personally a huge fan of PoxNora. I got turned on to the game by the guys at Penny Arcade a while back… and I’ve really been impressed with how strong the community is and what an amazing development team they are. Our plans for PoxNora are to let the dev team continue to make the game better and to give them additional resources to do exactly that.

Long term we want to do some other games out of what has become SOE Tucson, but fans of PoxNora can be rest assured that we’re as excited about PoxNora as they are and we think this game has a bright future, particularly under the creative direction that the Octopi team has demonstrated.

Smed

Today we introduced Station Cash to EverQuest and EverQuest II. With this we added the ability to purchase items in both games. We have insured that we aren’t adding anything that could be considered imbalancing.

Why did we do this? We believe in giving our players different options in their gameplay. I realize this is something that is going to be controversial, but it’s also something that surveys are showing players are excited about… provided we don’t alter game balance and make these items required in any way. Be rest assured we will NOT add ANY microtransactions that will disrupt the integrity of these games.

Our long term plan for Station Cash is to give a flexible currency to be used in many of our games, particularly our future games. But we have big ambitions to do some really cool stuff for both our current and future players. Imagine being able to have a photo of your guild physically mailed to members of your guild, or get a t-shirt or poster of your character mailed to you.

We’ll also use it to do things like Character moves or Character renames over time.  Think convenience, not necessity.

Is this the slippery slope? I don’t think it is. We’re always going to have to be careful to make sure we don’t mess with the balance of any of our games. We also have no intention of making EQ and EQII heavily microtransaction based games. Our goal is to add cool new things that make players lives’ easier or more fun.

Enjoy, and keep talking with us, we want to hear from you!

Thanks

Smed

Hello Everyone,

Today we’re proud to announce that we’re accepting Beta Registrations for our upcoming game Free Realms. The website is www.freerealms.com and it has a lot of information about Free Realms, including videos.

Free Realms is a new kind of MMO that we think is going to be fun for gamers of all ages.  It’s a very different kind of gaming experience… and it’s all delivered digitally.

You can pick from a lot of different kinds of activities to engage in… including combat, raising pets, playing all kinds of mini-games such as racing, Destruction Derby, soccer, and many more. It’s pretty cool to be able to put your racecar driver outfit on and take your car for a spin on the track, or walk up to a soccer field and just start playing with your friends.

We’ve really built a game that is aimed at bringing in an entirely new audience into MMO’s… and best of all you can play for free if you want to.  We have put significant effort into making a lot of the content in the game completely free.

We’ll be opening the Beta up soon and we’re looking for some people that want to try a whole new MMO experience.

On a personal note, I’m a big reader of fantasy novels, and I’ve been reading a book called, “The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett.”  His website is www.petervbrett.com  and he has a great blog where he talks about the ins and outs of fantasy writing and the whole publishing process. It’s a great read.

His book is phenomenal and I can’t recommend it highly enough. The website for the book in the U.S. is www.wardedman.com (the version I’m reading is from the UK; they’re changing the book’s name in the U.S. when it’s released here to The Warded Man).

Have a good one,

Smed

Check out our very first video blog — featuring CEO John Smedley. He reveals exciting details about events, games and activities this summer.

 

Hello Everyone,

We just announced that EverQuest II’s existing Station Exchange service will be transitioned over to Live Gamer. If you haven’t seen that announcement, you can find it here.

I wanted to give you all more background on why we have made this decision. When we decided to begin our groundbreaking Station Exchange service, it was because we felt it was important to take a step in the direction of turning what had always been an illicit side of the MMO gaming market into something that would give people desiring to participate in that kind of activity a safe and secure way to do so. It was also our belief that by providing a legitimate alternative, we could cut down on the farming activity our players loathe and the large impact illicit virtual item trading has had on our customer service group.

In general, we’ve been pleased with the way things have gone on Station Exchange. It did indeed cut down on the CS issues we saw , but we can’t even begin to say it made a dent in farming activity. Farming has unfortunately become a big business, largely driven by companies on foreign soil that are virtually untouchable due to their location in places where the legal system just doesn’t give us the tools we need to fight this. The dirty little secret of the farming business is that many of these companies use stolen credit cards as well as charging back their purchases months after they conduct transactions. This fraudulent activity has risen sharply in the last 6 months both in the digital download business and in Station Exchange and this is an expensive fight.

We’ve been fighting this battle with these criminals for a long time. It’s clear to us that the systematic way in which these farmers conduct themselves has made this a top issue for us, both from a customer satisfaction standpoint and in the economic impact that this kind of activity has caused. We have also seen a sharp rise in the fraudulent activity within Station Exchange. This caused us to begin to use fraud screening services that were difficult to explain to our customers. Simply put – there were times that customers who had perfectly valid credit cards and had been long-time customers of SOE’s were denied transactions through no fault of their own due to being flagged by these services. We have evaluated new methods of fighting fraud, but they will take time to implement and, at the end of the day, we needed to implement additional solutions to this problem.

We were recently approached by the folks from Live Gamer. They had the desire to start a secondary market that would be sanctioned by publishers. They would only be operating in games where they had received a license to do so and in accordance with a strict set of guidelines including not purchasing from farmers, reporting suspected farmers to us and agreeing not to purchase from anyone we flagged as a farmer. We believe that over time, we can significantly cut down on farming activity industry-wide by having a legitimate secondary marketplace across multiple publishers. Live Gamer is run by very reputable people who have a vested interest in building a company that has the support of publishers. They will be concentrating on nothing but building this service and will be fighting the fight against fraud with a lot of resources dedicated to that effort, and we sincerely hope their efforts help our industry’s serious farming problem while offering a legitimate service for those players who want it.

We believe strongly that secondary markets such as virtual item trading are here to stay in online gaming. The growing number of players participating in this market tells us this. Games designed from the start to incorporate such activities could be a lot of fun, and while I don’t think this is ever going to be something the majority of people participate in, it will continue to be part of a lot of people’s gaming experience. If we can get rid of farming, or at least substantially reduce it over time, I think a lot of other people’s objections will disappear. There will always be those who believe that the game play should be pure. We respect that point of view and there are many here at SOE who play by that philosophy. But we also want to keep an open mind to the trends we see developing, so we can create the best gaming experience for all types of players.

This transition to Live Gamer should be a pretty seamless one. It will only be occuring on the existing EQ II Station Exchange servers. We will not be converting other EQ II servers. You can find more information about the transition at: www.stationexchange.com/livegamer and about Live Gamer at: www.livegamer.com

Smed

Hello Everyone,

Ordinarily I stick to Online Gaming stuff.. but this week I’d like to share something a little more personal.

This week has been a tough one for San Diego. These fires have just devastated our City. I know this is going to sound cliché, but the outpouring of help that people here have given each other has been nothing short of amazing to watch. The evacuation was one of the most organized and efficient things I have ever seen. We got the reverse 911 call at 4:30am on Monday morning to get out of my house (I live in a suburb of San Diego that is right on the border of Rancho Bernardo and Poway). That call literally saved our lives.

We got my 4 kids up and into my wife’s car very quickly, but I was terrified when I saw the flames coming our way while we were loading the kids into the car.

One thing you never, ever want to see while you are with your kids is fire coming towards your house.

Within 10 minutes the fire was at the house. I stuck around and was able to put the fires that started on my property out with a hose. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of what that looked like. At one point I realized I might not have made the best decision.. but for whatever reason we got very lucky. Our trees and bushes burned and our house smells like an ashtray, but we’re ok. Of course the power is going to be out for the next 2 weeks, but hey.. that’s a small price to pay. In my neighborhood 11 homes burned down, including the home of some very close friends of mine. You don’t think it’s going to happen to you, but when it comes that close it puts a lot of things in perspective.

 
The view from my backyard

We had a lot of people that were evacuated at SOE, and at this point it looks like we did have one person that lost their home. We shut our offices down for the week with the exception of a skeleton crew in CS and Operations. The problem is that even though a lot of people were able to return to their houses, the schools in San Diego were closed which caused a cascade of issues. There are still parts of San Diego that are still under mandatory evacuation.. and many parts that are without power.

I’d like to say thanks to all of you for understanding the situation and for the kind emails. We should be back to full strength by Monday.

Thanks,

Smed

I had pre-ordered the book, “Legend of the Syndicate: A History of Online Gaming’s Premier Guild,” by Sean Stalzer, and it arrived last night. I have to say this is by far the best book about online gaming I’ve ever read. Once I got it, I couldn’t put it down and just read it straight through.

It gives a detailed history of one of online gaming’s premier guilds, “The Syndicate ™”. In the book, Sean Stalzer offers a very insightful look into the bonds of friendship that were forged in various online games (UO, EverQuest and WoW). He talked about what makes The Syndicate ™ work, and went into great detail about the mechanics of the various games and what works and what doesn’t from a Guild’s perspective. I found the critique of the early days of EverQuest very humbling. I think it did a really good job of illustrating the power that online games have and showing where we can improve.

The overall sense I got from reading the book was something that I’ve personally felt for a very long time – online gaming can lead to making lifelong friends. You spend a lot of time playing with people, and over that time these bonds can be just as powerful as friends you met back in school. I strongly believe that’s the biggest reason people like to play online games in the first place. It may not be what brings them in, but it is certainly one of the biggest drivers of what keeps them playing.

Nice work Sean!

Smed

We just got done having our 2007 Block Party over the weekend. It was a great event and I was really happy to see how many fans ended up coming up from Comic Con. We got to show off videos for The Agency to a lot of the people that showed up. I was really pleased with the reaction we got from the people that checked it out.

Later this week we have SOE’s Fan Faire 2007 in Las Vegas. I’m really excited because we’re going to be doing something very different at this year’s Fan Faire. For the first time we’re going to be using Fan Faire to introduce a new game we’ve had in the works for a long while now.

I can’t wait for people to get their first look at it and actually be able to play the game at Fan Faire.  We’ll be revealing it in the Community Address at 5:30pm on Friday, August 3rd.

And don’t worry, if you can’t attend Fan Faire, you can watch the Community Address live … just click here for more info.

Smed