Age of Wushu – Page 2

Updated Story: Snail Games has decided to give everyone who bought the Elite package the permanent horse.

d. The permanent mount. There was quite a bit of miscommunication regarding this from both sides. When we were working on the package for the Elite players we honestly did not see it as an issue. There was no ulterior motive to the choice. We wanted to get a package to you guys as soon as we could. This as it happens, was a large oversight on our part. As such, we will be giving all ELITE package members the permanent mount that we promised. In fact, it should be sent to all ELITE package accounts by the time you read this 12.24.2012. Please accept our apologies in this matter. Our players are very important to us and we want to do our best to foster a good relationship.

Original Story:This is an excellent lesson for budding MMO developers, or really businesses as a whole. If you’re going to offer something as an incentive for people to purchase, it isn’t in your best interest to retroactively remove some of those perks. Not in the sense of PR or sales and, depending on your clientele, could wind up with you sitting in court. In a post on the Age of Wushu forums, Pyre announced that the terms of the “Elite” package for Age of Wushu are being altered, and that you should pray they are not altered further.

Elite members will be receiving 85 additional gold as well as 30 extra days of VIP, 2 temporary 14-day horses and an extra 20 gold as an apology. An apology for what, you might ask?

after long deliberation it was decided that a permanent horse was too powerful an item

Although Snail Games replaced the permanent horse and 90 days head start with other perks (listed above), a number of players are angry over the simple idea that the company retracted the perks after they had already started selling the packages including those bonuses.

(Source: Age of Wushu)

I had a chance to see Age of Wushu at New York Comic Con, which intrepid sleuths should take to mean “there was a line about two hours long to play it.” The people I did manage to watch play while staring over their shoulders, however, seemed to be having a fun time. Regardless, news broke this week from Age of Wushu in China that the developers have installed two cash shop exclusive skills. While it is unlikely that this system will be anything but popular in China, Snail Game is walking on eggshells if they expect the same system to work in the western hemisphere once Age of Wushu hits North America and Europe.

For their defense, the two skills are mostly for cosmetic reasons, versions of other skills that simply have better animations. RuneScape does this in a similar fashion by selling premium animations for actions like chopping wood and cooking food. According to players in the Chinese game, the skills aren’t very useful barring perhaps one or two, and players are buying them for little reason other than to feel special. While Snail Games has not dived into the realm of selling advantages, gamers should certainly keep an eye on the game’s Chinese servers.

Age of Wushu is a level-less, skill based game.

(Source: MMO Culture)