ProSiebenSat.1

[julfo]

Originally Posted by Rago

Pro7 is not "so unknown" At Least the have different TV channels and show in Germany

I dont see any Problem in playing on Both.

Except I don't live in Germany, so they are unknown to me. And, since I'll probably be spending a fair bit of money on this game through Microtransactions, I want it to go to the right people: SOE. I don't know what a German company that I have never heard of is going to do with my money, and thus, I'll be playing on US servers until I know more details about what exactly is going on.

There are big media companies in the UK that have TV channels etc. But this doesn't mean I would touch any of them with a 10 foot pole, let alone my credit card. The fact I can't trust companies in my own country makes me even more skeptical of companies from other countries. Is it my fault for being cynical and paranoid? Probably. But this is my hard-earned money that we're talking about, not to mention the experience playing PS2.

/rant

[Nemises]

...but you trust Sony?

[FatherJack]

Originally Posted by julfo

Except I don't live in Germany, so they are unknown to me. And, since I'll probably be spending a fair bit of money on this game through Microtransactions, I want it to go to the right people: SOE. I don't know what a German company that I have never heard of is going to do with my money, and thus, I'll be playing on US servers until I know more details about what exactly is going on.

There are big media companies in the UK that have TV channels etc. But this doesn't mean I would touch any of them with a 10 foot pole, let alone my credit card. The fact I can't trust companies in my own country makes me even more skeptical of companies from other countries. Is it my fault for being cynical and paranoid? Probably. But this is my hard-earned money that we're talking about, not to mention the experience playing PS2.

/rant

I don't like this much either but I ain't got 45 days free playtime on my soe account because sony felt generous......

[Nephilimuk]

Except I don't live in Germany, so they are unknown to me. And, since I'll probably be spending a fair bit of money on this game through Microtransactions, I want it to go to the right people: SOE. I don't know what a German company that I have never heard of is going to do with my money, and thus, I'll be playing on US servers until I know more details about what exactly is going on.

There are big media companies in the UK that have TV channels etc. But this doesn't mean I would touch any of them with a 10 foot pole, let alone my credit card. The fact I can't trust companies in my own country makes me even more skeptical of companies from other countries. Is it my fault for being cynical and paranoid? Probably. But this is my hard-earned money that we're talking about, not to mention the experience playing PS2.

Understand your upset but the deal was set up between SOE & Pro7 so SOE will get cash from this (think franchise/Strategic Partnership/risk share/ don't want to get involved in a European legal quagmire). I feel like a let down consumer myself (9 years sub), but I am sure that will place me in the irrational emotional quadrant of the marketing chart in any business meeting.

See what happens neither company have any interest in this failing. You will have to create a Pro7 account to play PS2 in Europe, Radar confirmed in a previous post, we all have to live with it.

[snaffe]

I have had 100% "omfg I cannot wait" for Planetside 2.

This outsoucing/joint venture put a 20% dampener on my mood. I work with this sort of stuff in my professional life (joint ventures/outsoucing customer service).

Like the network guy who put up a response from an infrastructure point of view - I share his pessimism from a management point of view.

Jesus, H Christ this could be an absolute clusterfeck. German consumer services are very "by the book". That culture will seep through everything. Good luck with finding the relevant languages with little attrition if you try and support all those languages out of Germany. When you get attrition, you get noobs on the customer care lines, when you get noobs, you will end up with unanswered questions to your queries.

Dear god.

The title of this thread should be changed to "marketing, management and customer services in Europe handled by outsourced partner, not SOE". (or words to that effect).

I truly had no idea what this thread title meant.

[GuyFawkes]

I tried looking on pro7 twitter page, there were 287000 following, but it was all in german so Ive no idea if there were 287000 fans or 287000 complaining.

I went to the pro7 website, and couldnt even find a reference to ps2, it struck me as being not news worthy there.

Gives me great hope

[Sabot]

Originally Posted by GuyFawkes

I tried looking on pro7 twitter page, there were 287000 following, but it was all in german so Ive no idea if there were 287000 fans or 287000 complaining.

I went to the pro7 website, and couldnt even find a reference to ps2, it struck me as being not news worthy there.

Gives me great hope

You'd have to check the Pro7 games site for references to PS2... I mean there's no more on PS2 than any other game they have, and there are a few lines written on the partnership with SOE... but nothing special on the site in particular. Probably have to look for press releases or something if you want more info on that, from their point of view.

[Figment]

Well, I just decided to go and make an account at Pro7, to prepare for the eventual arrival of PlanetSide.



My registration went as such:

First I had to find it. Since I didn't know the website, I searched google and found www.prosiebengames.de quickly enough. Fair enough I think, so I arrive and find the site in German. Not a problem for me since I speak German as a third language, but I'm sure the British users would already go "ew, its the foreign!" (). I first looked around the site a bit to see if I could find anything on PS2, nothing, but did see DCUO and EQII, confirming I was on the right site. So I decided to register, but as I went near the reg button, I saw the websites for the various nations. Alright, nice, own language sites.

So before registering, I went and clicked on what I believed to be the dutch version of the site, being pleasantly surprised there to be a dutch version of the site.

Well, there isn't. Not in that sense, what happens is they take you to another website that's basically a dutch variant on their site, just significantly more basic as it highly favours images and no text. Descriptions of games are about one sentence in length and one image.

However, I was not quite prepared for the difference between the German site and http://www.sevengames.nl/ , which not only looks utterly childish, it also is incredibly basic. (I'll compare more later on). I thought "oh well", let's see what happens, and I registered on the dutch site. The email arrived quickly.



So I go to my email inbox and am shocked to find this:




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Hallo Figment,

herzlich willkommen in der Sevengames-Community! Um Deine E-Mail-Adresse zu
bestätigen und Deinen Account in vollem Umfang zu aktivieren, klicke bitte
auf folgenden Link:

[Registration link]

Nach der Aktivierung kannst Du Dich sofort mit Deinen Zugangsdaten einloggen,
Deinen persönlichen Avatar (Stellvertreter) konfigurieren, Deine Profildaten
vervollständigen und sofort loslegen!
Sollte der angegebene Link nicht funktionierten, kopiere bitte die URL in das
Adressfeld Deines Browsers!

Falls Du Fragen und Anregungen zu Sevengames hast, schreibe an: [email protected]


Viel Spass wünscht,

Dein Sevengames-Team


www.sevengames.nl
http://www.sevengames.nl/imprint


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uhm... I register on the DUTCH website clearly made for children and get a standard email in GERMAN?

What? The whole point of going to a dutch site is to AVOID the German language!



Though most dutch adults can speak some broken German and most can be derived from the context, you can't expect German language used in mailings (or support) for non-German sites! If they have to use a standard language, have them use English!

Do British users get German e-mails too if they register on the British version of the website? I'd hope not!



So I decided to go to the British site. Which I couldn't find at first: I saw the AT (Austria) and CH (Suiss) versions (all in German) are identical to the German version, while the others are all in the sevengames format. Odd, since the Suiss have a large French and Italian speaking populace. Note that the Belgian site is again in Dutch, but doesn't share the site with the Dutch players for some reason. Perhaps they also didn't realise that 40% of the Belgian populace speaks French... Which btw, doesn't exist: there is no FRENCH version. There is also no Spanish, Italian, Polish, Danish, Finnish or Czech version. There is however a Norwegian version (NO) and Swedish version (SE).



Hmm. That's going to annoy people when they have to make the switch to Pro7. Let's assume most people would want to go to the British version as the most international one. But again, where is it?



Now, it turns out the website for the UK is called www.sevengames.com and is noted on top there not by UK or a British national flag, but by "COM". Ehr... Oookay, so you do all kinds of national tags and then there's "COM", makes perfect sense. Why not just call it .co.uk then? >___>

What I noticed is that this site too, like all but the German language copy pasta sites, has the same basic site as the other non-German sites.

So, anyway I noticed that the frames are pretty bad translations on the dutch site since the grammar on the dutch site was... Typical babblefish. "Dat speelt de community" (non-dutch word at the end and it translates directly to: "That plays the community", not a very nice grammar feel, has it?).

I also noticed that they haven't put up the section for PlanetSide 2 on the dutch site, but they have for the British and German site. Even if it's not easy to find. (It's in the tab Free Downloads and searches don't turn up results).

http://www.sevengames.com/planetside-2
http://www.prosiebengames.de/planetside-2

Note that the download button there links to www.planetside2.com .



The Forum on the Dutch site is even worse. Please don't get me started on their forum design... Just... go to their forum section in any of the non-German sites under community and cry. Yes, they're independent forums, no populace and they don't even have subsections per game or whatever you would expect.

Note that the German forum is actually worse... because I can't find a forum at all! How do they plan to built international communities? How do they plan on receiving feedback? It does seem that their site is under construction, because their buddy list "will be there in the future" on the front page (or they mean that you need buddies first before it shows up). But it's not there yet. I don't see anywhere where a forum might be found either.



Note also that in the top 10 of BROWSER games, it lists both DCUO and EQII, while if you look for them, they're found under "Free Downloads" (next to the Battle Games and Browser Games tabs. Ehr. Okay...

Honestly, they got to step up a bit if they suggest they can support SOE games and also in the local language. Because right now, this isn't instilling much faith for the future.

Originally Posted by Dart

Haha if I ever seemed trustworthy I assure you it was an illusion, but yeah man that was me. I renamed to Dart (expecting people to spell Dartagnan while under fire was always a little optimistic) and that's how I'll be rolling in PS2. Look forward to seeing you in game!

Never trust a Brit with a french royal musketeer guard name!

[GuyFawkes]

Originally Posted by Figment

Well, I just decided to go and make an account at Pro7, to prepare for the eventual arrival of PlanetSide.

#snip#

I read the whole thing

Reminds me so much of GOA / codemasters. Running in circles to get nowhere.

The big difference here is that ps2 is like a tiny little part of the whole thing to pro7, and we get dealt with as such.

A good comparison would be how a tiny island in the pacific is part of the British commonwealth. Sure, they come to the commonwealth games, and the Queen makes a visit every 5 years. To the average UK resident its just some island in the middle of nowhere, but to the Islanders its their home, and something to be proud of.

[Rago]

Hahahaha sound chaotic, Ill help you just paste me German text via private Message, i´ll check them out on the Weekend and Help you with you questions

The Guys from pro7 told me that my Planetside account will be automaticly moved to pro 7

[julfo]

Originally Posted by Nemises

...but you trust Sony?

Yup. Wanna know why? I've actually heard of Sony in the UK, and I've actually handed money over to them before. They have a good track record. They have actually administered large games with great success before.

[snaffe]

Figment thanks for a great post. Imagine that level of confusion just based on the websites, imagine the total lack of centrality when things go wrong and for game launches and so forth.

Scary.

[Figment]

In the end, I don't mind Pro7 running things, but they have to realise they can't provide this level of support and get away with it.

I really hope I completely missed their actual forums somewhere and that they do take these things serious on a game by game basis (though if that's the case, they really messed up in their web-design as it is now).


But yeah, found it funny their description of PlanetSide 2 is creating the expectation that it's already launched and active. I fear their complete infrastructure to support the game is really poor and they'll be completely dependent on SOE for a long, long time.

[sunzen]

What's going on is a disgrace for the European community. Treated like SOEs poor cousin.

[Nemises]

...perhaps it'll be completely transparent, the only difference to the user being who you are signing an agreement with..?