Back when I played Everquest 1, it wasn't 'loyalty' to either Verant Interactive or later Sony that kept me playing. The game sucked but I played it for years because my friends played it AND there wasn't any other real good alternatives
Hmm. Never claimed to be from a better generation. Never claimed that the company makes less either. My statement was that maybe I'm too old to understand why someone wouldn't appreciate not HAVING to spend all that money. If you spend it, its because you wanted to spend it while playing. (This is assuming you like the game enough to play.) Yeah, its free so more people will play it. Do you really think every player pays for Zen? The issue, unless I miss understand, isn't is the company making more/less money for worse/better content... it was, for me, why do people expect everything for nothing.
Also garbage logic.
Even the player that never buys zen in his life contributes to the game and the gaming company. Players are content, if you didn't have 15 year olds with no credit card farming away the AD to buy your zen then it would be worth less. They are consumers, and although the opportunity cost of them playing this game may be different from yours, stating that they should eat whatever garbage is handed to them with a smile on their face is ridiculous.
Many of those 14-19 year olds with no credit cards run MMO boards or participate in forums that review other games. If they are playing and enjoying your game then you will get positive reviews and your player base will grow.
Seriously everyone's time has value if you can't understand that stop posting on forums you are making yourself look stupid.
I'm totally with you in what you're saying, but I think what you state here is really the key thing. Our world is evolving. Brand loyalty for anything in today's world is becoming a very fickle thing because of how easy it is for people to share negative experiences. I think humans are just wired to want to share bad experiences, and also to listen to bad experiences. "Watch out, there are bears nearby!" With such an easy spread of information now due to Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I think we're entering into a very complex time for products of all sorts as far as attracting and keeping loyal customers.
It's unfortunate because what you say about games needing new players is completely true, and that it gets harder and harder for games to get new players when negativity is so easy to spread. However I also think that there are more and more new gamers out there all with differing tastes. So it's possible huge amounts of negativity will just keep away less dedicated players leading to more unified player bases which then leads to less negativity which leads to more new players.
Or massive negativity will kill products making companies realize they need to produce better products to avoid such negativity. Or companies will realize it costs too much to make products and we all suffer. Or crowd-funding will become a bigger and bigger source of products that aren't pushed into retail before they're ready due to people in fancy offices, wearing expensive suits, telling developers to finish what they're doing now, or else.
Either way we're in a new age and products are going to have to learn to deal with the ease of spreading negativity.
Or maybe people just want to help other people avoid potential problems by warning of negative consequences they've already experienced. Your own point of view here is negative, thinking that society's way of weeding out potentially problematic situations is a bad thing. It's not. It's a good thing if the warnings are true, which is the case with this game.
For me its not totally about the game itself but how you are treated in the game by the company. Recently (as i had posted before) I got banned out of hand by the systems autoban for talking about how to obtain gold in the game (Via drops and selling things) and did so in whisper to him. There was no GM hand in it, the system picked up on some key words and just booted me right there. Had that been a person on the other end of delivering that ban, he might have looked at that chat and saw what it was. Just a normal conversation about obtaining money in the game. Everything other than that is doable by me, I can wait for bug fixes, I can wait on higher level content, more game functions, or costuming, what ever. That is stuff i know will be showing up sooner or later.
What I can not stand is a system that bans a player with no human involved what so ever. I get they are trying to keep the sellers down in zone, but can they just not put someone in charge of doing that? It only happens in the main town, and there are only 4 servers. I donno. There has to be a better way than their current way. Worst part is when it happens you have to get ahold of them to fix the mistake, and as anyone can tell you, customer service will not get back to you for quite some time, and by the time they do, that player has already vented about his/her problem to friends, family or social media. In my case I posted what happened on Facebook (as my daily gripe about things, not "OMG the evil company stomped on me!) even so, two people who I had just gotten started on the game decided they would keep playing, but decided against buying any founders packs. I myself am out 300 bucks and not likely to spend more even if this gets resolved, my fault I guess for beliving in their product.
Needless to say, 2 people does not seem like alot, and it really isnt, however I know my case hasent been the only one. How many others have said negitive things about a game which drove people off? Negitive reviews tend to stick in your mind more than the good ones.
Every game has its good and its bad points. I like this games combat system, the over all style of it, and the content. Its customer service however is really lacking, and there is really no excuse for that, your wanting to make money, you need some way for people to contact you about problems they are having, and it needs to be done in a timely manor. The longer you make a customer wait, the worse off the experience will be for them. And truth be told, the market is FLOODED with Fantasy mmos, you could just as easily lose that player to another one. People will say things like "Good, we wouldent have wanted him here anyway". Its something I see alot of on these forums. Games thrive when they get influxes of new players, saying something like that and hoping its true is a good way to get a game shut down.
Also games require that human element, like the GM who takes care of the bans who can judge a ban based on the content of the flagged message, rather than "Boom your gone" from the system.
Anyway take it for what it is, which is an old gamers rant. My final thought on it though is this, the older MMO's had it right, people were the most important reason those games did well. In the end graphics sucked, we did not have all the features we have today, but some where we lost that 'human' element that made many of those so popular. We traded shiny graphics and easy gameplay, and easier ways to travel in game, for what we have now. And to be honest its just as much our fault as theirs. we have just learned to 'settle' with what we get, anyway, longer than I intended this to be, and it probably reads like a rabid gamer on drugs slamming kittens on the keyboard, but honestly its isnt. I have been spending my banned time looking at other games i did not even know was out. As for loyalty itself, I play 3 games by Cryptic, 4 if you counted City of Heroes. In two of them I bought their lifetime subs, in neverwinter a founders pack. If that does not say loyalty I dont know what does, however this recent event has me at odd with that, because while i may have been loyal to them, they sure have not been to me. 8+ years with them, and a simple system automated ban.
ive played a lot of mmos forums always have trolls, pvpers always complain the rogues are OPed, the healers always complain when their healing or dps gets nerfed, the market is ALWAYS broken, there are almost always goldsellers, (in lord of the rings online beta the gold farmers literally farmed because people could farm up dye components)
there are always people that are like you guys suck because you added X instead of the thing I wanted. prices are always to high, there are always to many <entered hated race> erping in <enter main rp hangout.>((ie worgen/nightelves in goldshire, or catgirls/succubi in pocket d))
there are always people complaining about the customer service or having been hacked or banned I feel sorry for these people. but it is not actually something that is unique to pwe. though due to the more massive scale of these games, the increase of scammers and exploiters and the fact a lot of them are made in other countries some of these aspects are indeed getting worse over time.
though I will say FTP games people seem to think they are owed something that they wouldn't get in subscription mmos either and its typically the ones that didn't buy anything. its free to PLAY, no one said how much it would be to WIN. Most games start out small and buggy but over time we get more outfits more content a better end game. and after a game is over we forget all the reasons we complained and think... why cant more games be like <enter your favorate mmo here>
this game also has the misfortune of having to compete directly with WOW the mmo king, and with the memory of city of heroes a 10 year old hero mmo that closed last December and was known for some of the best character customization of any mmo, as well as creating the arcetect system which was the ancestor of the NWO foundry. and being started in a time where mmos seem to start and stop on a shoestring with cruddy budgets and substandard quality control. heck even full video games are being released incomplete and charging people to buy DLC to finish the games they already spent 60 $ on.
IMHO PWE roots around in our pockets less than most cause at least we have the OPTION to earn zen in game.
But the bar is currently very low. There is a long way to go before you can again expect the sort of quality and development attention that many of us have seen in our lifetimes. Don't
.....exactly my point. Half assed coding. Useless forums cut off the quoted post AND my addition to it.
Might as well just say.....vote with your wallets people.
Negativity is hard to spread when it the things people have to be negative about are few and minute. Game breaking bugs making it from closed beta all the way into "live" are neither few or minute. Beyond horrible customer support and communication from development certainly isn't minute.
The hilarious thing is that some of the bugs that they CBA to fix from closed beta were ones that affected their revenue stream, rather than the player experience per se. If they don't fix those, then it's really hard to trust that there's an overall Plan(tm) to it all.
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katbozejziemiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 856Arc User
Comments
Red text QFT.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
No idea what I was going to post here
Also garbage logic.
Even the player that never buys zen in his life contributes to the game and the gaming company. Players are content, if you didn't have 15 year olds with no credit card farming away the AD to buy your zen then it would be worth less. They are consumers, and although the opportunity cost of them playing this game may be different from yours, stating that they should eat whatever garbage is handed to them with a smile on their face is ridiculous.
Many of those 14-19 year olds with no credit cards run MMO boards or participate in forums that review other games. If they are playing and enjoying your game then you will get positive reviews and your player base will grow.
Seriously everyone's time has value if you can't understand that stop posting on forums you are making yourself look stupid.
Or maybe people just want to help other people avoid potential problems by warning of negative consequences they've already experienced. Your own point of view here is negative, thinking that society's way of weeding out potentially problematic situations is a bad thing. It's not. It's a good thing if the warnings are true, which is the case with this game.
What I can not stand is a system that bans a player with no human involved what so ever. I get they are trying to keep the sellers down in zone, but can they just not put someone in charge of doing that? It only happens in the main town, and there are only 4 servers. I donno. There has to be a better way than their current way. Worst part is when it happens you have to get ahold of them to fix the mistake, and as anyone can tell you, customer service will not get back to you for quite some time, and by the time they do, that player has already vented about his/her problem to friends, family or social media. In my case I posted what happened on Facebook (as my daily gripe about things, not "OMG the evil company stomped on me!) even so, two people who I had just gotten started on the game decided they would keep playing, but decided against buying any founders packs. I myself am out 300 bucks and not likely to spend more even if this gets resolved, my fault I guess for beliving in their product.
Needless to say, 2 people does not seem like alot, and it really isnt, however I know my case hasent been the only one. How many others have said negitive things about a game which drove people off? Negitive reviews tend to stick in your mind more than the good ones.
Every game has its good and its bad points. I like this games combat system, the over all style of it, and the content. Its customer service however is really lacking, and there is really no excuse for that, your wanting to make money, you need some way for people to contact you about problems they are having, and it needs to be done in a timely manor. The longer you make a customer wait, the worse off the experience will be for them. And truth be told, the market is FLOODED with Fantasy mmos, you could just as easily lose that player to another one. People will say things like "Good, we wouldent have wanted him here anyway". Its something I see alot of on these forums. Games thrive when they get influxes of new players, saying something like that and hoping its true is a good way to get a game shut down.
Also games require that human element, like the GM who takes care of the bans who can judge a ban based on the content of the flagged message, rather than "Boom your gone" from the system.
Anyway take it for what it is, which is an old gamers rant. My final thought on it though is this, the older MMO's had it right, people were the most important reason those games did well. In the end graphics sucked, we did not have all the features we have today, but some where we lost that 'human' element that made many of those so popular. We traded shiny graphics and easy gameplay, and easier ways to travel in game, for what we have now. And to be honest its just as much our fault as theirs. we have just learned to 'settle' with what we get, anyway, longer than I intended this to be, and it probably reads like a rabid gamer on drugs slamming kittens on the keyboard, but honestly its isnt. I have been spending my banned time looking at other games i did not even know was out. As for loyalty itself, I play 3 games by Cryptic, 4 if you counted City of Heroes. In two of them I bought their lifetime subs, in neverwinter a founders pack. If that does not say loyalty I dont know what does, however this recent event has me at odd with that, because while i may have been loyal to them, they sure have not been to me. 8+ years with them, and a simple system automated ban.
there are always people that are like you guys suck because you added X instead of the thing I wanted. prices are always to high, there are always to many <entered hated race> erping in <enter main rp hangout.>((ie worgen/nightelves in goldshire, or catgirls/succubi in pocket d))
there are always people complaining about the customer service or having been hacked or banned I feel sorry for these people. but it is not actually something that is unique to pwe. though due to the more massive scale of these games, the increase of scammers and exploiters and the fact a lot of them are made in other countries some of these aspects are indeed getting worse over time.
though I will say FTP games people seem to think they are owed something that they wouldn't get in subscription mmos either and its typically the ones that didn't buy anything. its free to PLAY, no one said how much it would be to WIN. Most games start out small and buggy but over time we get more outfits more content a better end game. and after a game is over we forget all the reasons we complained and think... why cant more games be like <enter your favorate mmo here>
this game also has the misfortune of having to compete directly with WOW the mmo king, and with the memory of city of heroes a 10 year old hero mmo that closed last December and was known for some of the best character customization of any mmo, as well as creating the arcetect system which was the ancestor of the NWO foundry. and being started in a time where mmos seem to start and stop on a shoestring with cruddy budgets and substandard quality control. heck even full video games are being released incomplete and charging people to buy DLC to finish the games they already spent 60 $ on.
IMHO PWE roots around in our pockets less than most cause at least we have the OPTION to earn zen in game.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
The hilarious thing is that some of the bugs that they CBA to fix from closed beta were ones that affected their revenue stream, rather than the player experience per se. If they don't fix those, then it's really hard to trust that there's an overall Plan(tm) to it all.
Also, where's your Hero of the North title, Mr. Loyalty?