I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
I say, the tone of MMO Fallout has been quite negative this past week. You know what we need? Free stuff. If you wanted to get into the early head start for Everquest II’s latest expansion, Sentinel’s Fate, you’re a little late: The expansion has already launched. If you have not purchased the expansion yet, and would like to get in on an exclusive item, then you’re just in time!
Continuing the natural bandwagon of offering exclusive items per retailer, Sony has an offer to make through Steam you won’t be able to refuse. Players who purchase through Steam will receive access to the Guarding of the Learned Armor. For $40 USD, current players will be able to enjoy all that Everquest II has to offer, while new players will receive the whole experience, plus thirty days free time.
One important thing to note: Unless Sony has changed anything, you will need a valid form of payment if you are a new customer, in order to get the thirty days.
When Cryptic Studios announced that the upcoming expansion to Champions Online, Vibora Bay, would be a paid expansion, the reaction from the community was nothing short of explosive. Players saw an expansion adding in what should have been added in (a fill-in for the late game leveling gap), and overall were quite offended at having to pay for something they saw as vital to the game. Something worthy of note is that, even after Cryptic announced that the expansion would be free, the players were still angry about it, but now for other reasons.
The point with Cryptic is that the community felt that they were trying to get away with as much as they could, believing that the paid expansion announcement was a test to see if the community would buy into it. Thus, Cryptic had essentially sealed their fate from the first announcement. The same is going on with Allods Online and Gala-Net’s current predicament: The cash shop is ten times the price of the Russian version, and core game elements were removed or gutted in order to force people to fork out real money.
gPotato put out a release late last night in response to several criticisms of the game that surfaced over the past week. Among the two responses, the cash shop price:
“We are not sitting and waiting just to see how many dollars we’re going to make over the next four weeks.”
This raises several questions. If you weren’t looking to see how much money you could get, then why did Gala-net raise the prices ten times over the Russian version? Why was end-game raiding severely gimped in order to make perfume use mandatory? There are more questions to be asked, and even more to be answered.
What is done is done, at this point all Gala-Net can hope to do is move forward, make some adjustments before the game goes live, and hope all goes well. As I’ve pointed out before, and I still stand strong by this, the quality of Allods Online as a game allows it a rare benefit in that if this mistake is fixed quickly enough, the game can move ahead and leave this incident in the past. One aspect I have been paying heavy focus on is that the community wants this to work, and the thread that has been set up for feedback is already populated by great ideas, and progressive thoughts.
At this point, Allods Online isn’t nearly as close to a trainwreck as people may think, but closer to a failed sump pump. If Gala-Net can quickly get the motor started, and perhaps move the upholstery to the first floor, then the most damage you’ll see is a waterlogged carpet that needs to be replaced.
In my current line of customer service work, saying the wrong thing to the wrong customer can be devastating. Odds are, if you tell a customer exactly where they can stick their refund, you’re going to get fired on the spot. Now, business can do all they can to stop employees from saying stupid things, as that just leaves one or two customers annoyed and potentially lost for good. Meanwhile, when an employee reveals something maybe they shouldn’t have, or reveals something that, despite false, damns the company, then you’re going to have a real problem on your hands.
Enter Square Enix! I don’t get to talk about Square Enix, nor their unconventional conventions of MMOs, so I always jump on the opportunity… So essentially once since MMO Fallout started. MMOsite is reporting on a Square Enix Human Resources employee who revealed the following on his blog:
“I think some amongst you will know, but FF11 started in 2002 … Well, this year it’ll end and the stage will shift to FF14.”
-Square Enix Employee
Now being Mr. I-Hate-Rumors, I immediately assumed one thing: This means Square Enix will shift much of its attention towards Final Fantasy 14, which makes sense. As for Final Fantasy XI being shut down; considering the number of players who still enjoy XI, and the message shutting down such a profitable game would send that player base, Square Enix would have to be more insane than normal to think that the players would just jump right over to XIV. Sure, some will, but overall Square will wind up with a predicament similar to that of Asheron’s Call 2.
Final Fantasy XI is eight years old this year, and still remains one of the (if not the) most popular MMOs in Japan. The game is showing its age, but by no means is the title ready to go on the cart. No, I think Final Fantasy XI has a good few years left in it, assuming Square isn’t using Final Fantasy XIV as the club to beat XI to death. There are still plenty of events planned for Final Fantasy XI, yet to come.
Luckily, Square got right on the case: The post has been removed and there has been an announcement that the post is a lie. That being said, thanks to your average sensationalist blogs, the topic will be on whether or not Square Enix is lying.
It’s always a good idea to tell your employees, especially your Human Resource people, not to reveal information that might be damning to a game, especially if the information isn’t really damning, but you’re going to word it in a specially cryptic fashion that makes it look so.
MMO Fallout 