When Allods Online was running through its beta period back in 2009/2010, it was praised for the amazingly high quality of gameplay, stability, wealth of content, and prospects for future expansion. Many of us in the press were referring to it as the free to play World of Warcraft, standing high above its brethren. When the game was in beta, there was nothing short of praise from themepark fans of the game’s high quality and deep prospects for success.
Unfortunately, gPotato shot themselves in the foot early on with poor decisions in cash shop items that required players to spend money (and a considerable amount) in order to play the game properly or be able to stay competitive later on in PvP or participating in raid content.
The perfume was later removed and replaced with another, equally unpopular cash shop item which was later made free. Judging by the latest news out of Allods Online, the community has not been so forgiving. gPotato announced the merger of the last two remaining servers in North America, to one.
With one server left in North America, the future presence of Allods Online on the continent is in question. gPotato will need nothing short of a miracle (or perhaps a marketing campaign) to bring this title back from the ditch.
In the July 7th patch, Fear of Death is going to be removed and replaced with item curses. When a player dies now, there is the chance that a curse will land on a slot in their inventory. If the item is rare (Rare, epic, or legendary only) the curse will invert the stats of the item. More importantly, bosses now have a chance of dropping rare items in an already cursed form. So, as one Allod Online’er put it, Astrum Nival essentially took a temporary grievance that can be waited out, and turned it into a permanent grievance that must, without exception, be fixed with a cash shop item or heavy gold in the auction house.
It’s been eight months since I talked about Allods Online, and the update that added in item curses. After my post, gPotato implemented a cash shop item called the Holy Charm, which is the cash shop item described above. Also in that eight months, I believe that the holy charm has far outweighed its presence, because gPotato appears to be gearing up to remove the item, and possibly the curse mechanic altogether.
In a news post on the Allods Online website, PioPico has announced that Holy Charms are now completely free! There are no limits to how many you can buy (aside from how many you can hold), and the post does not specify if this sale is permanent or only temporary. If you do play Allods Online, there isn’t much of a reason not to stockpile these. Otherwise, if gPotato does keep the mechanic in and the sale ends, at least the prices should come down heavily in the game’s auction house (albeit, doing that they may as well rename Allods Online to Zimbabwe Online, with how high inflation would be).
It’s shameless advertising day on MMO Fallout, and today’s publicity prostitutes are gPotato with Allods Online! Sex sells, and nothing says free to play cash shop fantasy title like two blond haired women in underwear groping one another.
Is it just me, or does the woman on the left bear a resemblance to Yeoman Janice Rand from Star Trek?
Back before Mortal Online launched, I believe it was Henrik who said Star Vault could easily find a publisher, but they would be forced to alter a lot of the game’s content in order to please them, and allow the game to ship. Since then, I’ve been thinking about the relationship many developers have with their publishers, and I can only describe it one way: Battered person syndrome. How many times have you heard of major parts removed from a game, not because the developer decided upon it, but because the publisher demanded it? Electronic Arts (most memorably with Spore) is guilty of it, as are most other big name publishers. In fact, with many MMOs it feels as if the publisher does all the talking, while the developer sits in the back and hopes it’s not doing anything that will result in a beating after the press conference. This is, of course, no different than your local television station choosing not to air certain stories because an advertiser doesn’t like them, or the firing of a Gamespot employee because of his Kane and Lynch review, but the standard seems to be that the publisher wears the pants in the relationship.
So why is it that whenever I think of gPotato (or Gala-Net), I think of Jerry Lewis? A bumbling, fumbling figure who is always apologizing but never really taking control of what goes on around him. You can’t help but feel this way every time a major issue comes up in the game, be it the cash shop prices, the fear of death mechanic, and now the curse mechanic, among others, where Gala-Net comes back and says “Sorry, we can’t do anything. All we can do is forward your suggestions to Astrum Nival, and hope they implement updates.” This has become the token response and offers up plenty of reason as to why I declared Allods Online as potentially the biggest PR disaster of 2010.
Is Astrum Nival really in such a position where they can dictate the terms to their publisher, in a direct opposite to what is generally an “industry standard,” as disturbing as that terminology sounds? Does the potential for Gala-Net to say “either you start listening to us or you’ll have no publisher,” instill such little fear, that AN could turn around and say “that’s okay, we have X other publishers lined up to put our game out, under our terms.” Or is Astrum Nival really just the Duke Nukem of developers, where when poor old gPotato sends their fifth courier of the week with humble requests, they are met with a short and concise “blow it out your ass,” followed by a round of buckshot to the chest, with gPotato only receiving a response a week later when the messenger’s disembodied head appears in the mail, accompanied by a single-word letter: “no.”
I have always noted here on MMO Fallout that, as far as cash shop grinders go, Gala-Net publishes some of the better quality titles. Not that my word holds much sway, but Allods Online and Aika Online were the only two cash shop grinders to make much of an appearance here on MMO Fallout, and really many other MMO news websites. The difference between Aika and Allods, however, is that when Aika Online had its own cash shop issues (region issues) they managed to fix it in a way that satisfied almost everyone involved.
Watching gPotato deal with Astrum Nival is akin to a friend in a bad relationship who refuses to acknowledge the stagnant environment, despite their consistent somber appearance, and the little fact that they break out sobbing whenever the conversation turns to the estranged partner. So you continue to watch as the explanations become more desperate; doing it for the kid, there’s still hope, doesn’t want all the time to be wasted, it will resolve itself, think about the good times, etc.
But speaking of the child, where is Allods Online in all of this feud? Not neglected, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t be very appreciative of the treatment he is receiving. He certainly would be a lot more popular in school if his parent (Astrum Nival) would stop embarrassing him and losing him friends by showing pictures of the time he wet the bed (last week), and had to wear mom’s underwear for the day because all of his was in the wash. And where will we find Astrum Nival and Gala-Net when they enter his bedroom to find a note on the table, and an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the desk? They will find that it’s too late to settle their differences, have the two teams actually listen to what the other has to say, and perhaps treat each other like they took a small interest in what the other was saying.
And at the end of the day, when Astrum Nival is standing over its only creation, wondering how those years of development could have gone down the drain, the president of Gala-Net will look on with a massive grin on his face, as he announces, “I’m sorry to hear about your loss, but I have good news. Aika Online just launched its next expansion, and we have two upcoming MMOs we’ll be publishing in addition to our current list of seven. Hey listen, if you have a new MMO coming up, you know where to contact us, but I can’t promise much: Very busy with publishing offers.”
Perhaps I’m just personalizing this on a level too far.
You heard it poorly translated here first, MMO Fallouters! It’s good to see that the word has finally reached Astrum Nival, even with all the Western Allod’ers whose “Russian friends” claim that the Russian version is now “a barren wasteland” and are not trolling at all I swear. There are a number of people angry over the replacement for fear of death: armor curses that can only be removed by cash shop items, but that is another story for another day.
You heard it here first…well, second. It almost feels like back in April that I last talked about Astrum Nival, Gala-Net, and Allods Online, and quite frankly I am disappointed at my seeming lack of ability to play on this cesspool of bad public relations. In fact, I would go as far as saying only Cryptic Studios can rile up their base in a fit of rage to match what follows an announcement from Gala-Net.
To those of you who have slipped out of the loop, Allods Online is a recently released free to play Russian MMO that has garnered quite a bit of controversy this year, all of it surrounding the title’s cash shop. The game itself is of top quality, especially compared to the over-saturated free to play cash shop market, but ever since the cash shop opened in February developer Astrum Nival seems to be digging themselves deeper and deeper into a growing pit of flames.
In February, the controversy began with the price of items in the cash shop, with a focus on the fact that there was a 1,000% increase across the board for cash shop items compared to the Russian version, that I specifically held back on writing about until I could confirm that the prices were indeed intentional. Not only were the prices intentional, but were followed by a patch that made Perfumes much more useful. Perfume is a cash shop item that is used to remove Fear of Death, a debuff that stacks and adds 25% drop in stats per stack, up to four times, and at end-game can take hours of waiting or a nice sum of gold. With the patch, not only did leveling become slower, but monsters became tougher and resurrection by another player now incurred Fear of Death. As I put it:
I’d like to take a closer look at number 2, because this is something a lot of Allods Online’ers have pointed out to me: What this means is that Heroic Instances, which cannot be exited, now have a requirement for perfume. As perfume lasts for 30 minutes, and costs approximately 75 cents per bottle, the Allods Online forums were kind enough to do my math for me and figure out that raiding at end-game will cost an easy minimum of $50 per month
It took less than a week for gPotato to announce that the prices would be coming down on cash shop items, which I had pointed out was moot as now the focus had turned on the Fear of Death and perfume mechanics. March brought restructuring to the cash shop. In April, while gPotato was busy pinning all of this on Astrum Nival, I noted that the Russian patch notes indicated the removal of Fear of Death, following a player-driven poll asking which feature players would most like to see removed. I also noted at the end this item cursing feature that was set to replace Fear of Death, but that I didn’t have much in terms of details on it at the time.
Fast forward to June and here we are. In the July 7th patch, Fear of Death is going to be removed and replaced with item curses. When a player dies now, there is the chance that a curse will land on a slot in their inventory. If the item is rare (Rare, epic, or legendary only) the curse will invert the stats of the item. More importantly, bosses now have a chance of dropping rare items in an already cursed form.
The only method of removing the curse is through a cash shop item that must be either bought on the cash shop or through the auction house (from those who purchased it on the cash shop) for a hefty sum. So, as one Allod Online’er put it, Astrum Nival essentially took a temporary grievance that can be waited out, and turned it into a permanent grievance that must, without exception, be fixed with a cash shop item or heavy gold in the auction house.
We all have those MMOs that we’ve quit for various reasons: Lack of depth, that one annoying feature, lag, abundance of bugs. I, to set an example, recently started playing Fallen Earth again, which I had quit shortly before picking up Aion in late October. What I found was a much improved game, not to mention a whole abundance of features that were not in the title when I stopped playing. I’m looking forward to starting the construction skill, but most notably is the lack of lag. I’m actually disappointed that I dropped Fallen Earth so soon, although my reasoning was because of the intense rubber-banding.
On the other hand, I also started playing the Allods Online beta again, and was immediately reminded of why I quit. Allods is a fun game, but some of the quests I had in my journal made me want to set my computer on fire. Not to mention the fact that I quit Allods mainly for the same reason I quit World of Warcraft; because the game just got boring. The cinematic effects die off quickly after the tutorial, and the prospects of systems similar to, if not even more strict, than the Fear of Death mechanic or armor cursing make me hesitant to put any investment into the title.
So have you given your old MMO a chance? And what was the result?
And I shall whisper, no. Being the publisher of an MMO is hard work; your tasks are relegated to bug reporting, polishing upcoming versions, localization, and running events. You don’t fix bugs and you can’t add in any features, and you serve essentially as a franchise for the MMO in question. A lot of people don’t know this little gem, and the end result is that the publisher usually ends up taking flak for what the developer is doing (or not doing).
Gala-Net has seen your criticisms and feedback and wants you to know…It’s really not their fault. Gala-Net, or as you know them better, gPotato, is the publisher of both upcoming titles featured on MMO Fallout, Allods Online and Aika Online. In a development diary, Gala’s own Darren Allarde wants to let you know exactly what Gala-Net does in regards to Allods, mainly so you can be sure to direct your rage against Astrum Nival next time.
“We don’t fix bugs, we report them. We don’t program and work on new in-game features, we hear what you have to say, tally it up, and communicate to Astrum Nival the feedback that makes sense for the game in our region.”
-Darren Allarde, Gala-Net, on Allods Online
But you aren’t here to hear Gala-Net direct your complaints to the correct source, we’re here to talk about Astrum Nival who undoubtedly wants some of that old time loving back. You know, back when Allods Online wasn’t just that punching bag for punkish sarcastic twits who run MMO bl-diverting attention! and was still an MMO to give paid MMOs a run for their money in the form of seven thousand dollar runes.
Astrum’s been running a poll on what the players would like to see removed, and topping out the list on both English and Russian localizations was easily the removal of Fear of Death, the debuff upon death that can only be fixed by waiting, paying out the wazoo with gold, or buying expensive cash shop perfumes.
Well seeing as how Russia has at least 8 hours on the rest of us, the patch notes for the Russian Allods have already been released, with the following line poorly translated in Google:
According to the summarization of voting canceled “The fear of death.”
You heard it poorly translated here first, MMO Fallouters! It’s good to see that the word has finally reached Astrum Nival, even with all the Western Allod’ers whose “Russian friends” claim that the Russian version is now “a barren wasteland” and are not trolling at all I swear. There are a number of people angry over the replacement for fear of death: armor curses that can only be removed by cash shop items, but that is another story for another day.
More on Allods Online and its return to grace after these messages from our sponsors (grab a sandwich, this might take a while…actually grab me one too).
Allods Online is a great example of how a title can grow under the guise of a World of Warcraft clone, gain the attention of both gamers and publications as a beacon of individuality in the WoW Clone genre, pull forward and grow a community that could rival the Darkfall community in terms of loyalty and vicious attacks on naysayers. That being said, Allods Online is also an excellent example to how a company can turn its customers against it in the flash of a hand.
gPotato’s response spoke to many players as “deal with it, and pay up or leave,” however the latest announcement should shed some light on the situation. This week, Allods Online will receive an update, and gPotato has
restructured the pricing based upon your feedback in conjunction with the data we’ve reviewed and communication with our developer. Consequently, we’ve revised pricing so that more people can participate in this feature of the game.
gPotato, on Allods Online
Sure, gPotato can play a mean fiddle, but can they put a crack in the wall with a sweet but ferocious melody? As I’ve mentioned before, the community is still in a position where they are more than willing to return if the prices of the cash shop are lowered and gPotato does something about the requirement of investment in order to stay competitive at end-game.
So Allods Online isn’t going anywhere, at least not for now. The benefit of not having launched yet is that you get to make stupid mistakes like this and still make up for it in time for the big day.
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.
Allods Online is a very interesting title, not only because of the game itself but the community and the developers that surround it. Allods has what very few developers can boast about, a community where even though players complain about certain aspects, they are very ready to admit that they will continue playing, because the game is just that good. Just that good is exactly what Allods Online is, a shimmering glow of light in a sea of your run of the mill Asian grinders (Yes, I’m aware Allods is a Russian game), a title looking to be the World of Warcraft of the Eastern Seaboard:
Until, of course, those Ruskies ruined it for us. For anyone who plays Allods Online in North America, your jaw likely dropped when you logged in just a few days ago to find that the long awaited cash shop had finally opened, to the tune of ten times the price of the Russian version of the game (Every website I’ve visited parrots twenty times, but $2 to $20 is what we in the mathematical world call “ten times”). Mark this is the first major blunder of gPotato. Granted, at this point teasing the frothing-mouthed community would be about as smart as dangling your tasty fingers in front of a T-Virus infected Doberman on steroids, so gPotato waited about a day and came out with the next bombshell: The prices were intended. Missing the point entirely, gPotato attempted to calm down the crowd by assuring them that more items would hit the cash shop soon.
So you’re walking out of the crumbly mess that is the Allods Forums and thinking to yourself: “Well, at least that was the worst of it,” in which case you would be promptly crushed by two tons of irony. The latest patch to hit the Russian server (as patches normally do hit Russia before swarming over to the West) is less of a bombshell and more of a nuclear “whoops.” Actually, that’s a good idea. You heard the term coined here first folks, the “nuclear whoops.” Back on topic, the latest patch brings in sweeping changes to Allods Online.
Perfumes are the game’s method of removing Fear of Death, a debuff that lowers stats 25%, stacking up to four times, on a timer that increases as you level up. Previously, at end game the timer maxed out at 45 minutes, and perfumes could be purchased through a daily quest, or through the game’s gold shop. Fear of Death could also be removed by paying a lump sum of gold, and negated in many instances by being resurrected by a player. gPotato must have known its community wanted more, because carousing through the latest Russian patch notes, I found the following:
Increased amount of experience required to achieve levels of 20 to 40.
Spells resurrection is now subjected to objective effect of Fear of Death in the absence of the effect of Patron.
Number of health and damage caused by high-level monsters slightly increased (up to 25% at 40 m level).
So not only do monsters hit more (up to 25% more at higher levels), but it takes longer to level up, and being resurrected now subjects you to Fear of Death. Numbers one and three are pretty irrelevant to the overall point, but I’d like to take a closer look at number 2, because this is something a lot of Allods Online’ers have pointed out to me: What this means is that Heroic Instances, which cannot be exited, now have a requirement for perfume. As perfume lasts for 30 minutes, and costs approximately 75 cents per bottle, the Allods Online forums were kind enough to do my math for me and figure out that raiding at end-game will cost an easy minimum of $50 per month. Mounts were added into the game as well, but if you want them to be at peak efficiency you’ll have to buy feed from, where else, the gold shop.
Here’s an interesting note: Players are boycotting the cash shop, not by not playing the game, but by continuing to play for free. Presumably, the idea is to load on the cost to Gala-Net to host the servers, while throttling their income by not paying for anything in the cash shop. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Granted, this isn’t all coming from the community. The original team that developed Allods has been long gone since the days of the closed beta, making it not at all unbelievable that the game has taken a 180 in terms of direction and planning, from a title that was once about never having to pay a single cent, to a title about paying to keep yourself out of virtual hell. Rather than making a game where your income comes from many players paying small sums, Gala-Net decided to turn the title into a game where no one pays anything, because everything is too overpriced, and a subscription to another MMO is a much better deal than paying that same $15 on a couple days worth of perfume.
There are plenty of theories as to why these events are taking place, with the target audience closing in on itself as each day passes, with questions being asked: Is gPotato really that out of touch with how much players are willing to pay?
Allods Online is a great game at its core, and the support shown to it by its players is astounding on all levels, and really why I considered making this weekend Allods Online exclusive. The players are voicing their support for the title and making real suggestions: Bring the prices down and we’ll pay. Make the game a monthly subscription and we’ll pay.
Allods hasn’t “launched” yet, so it isn’t too late for Gala-Net to throw in some quick changes to the cash shop to get themselves back on the player’s good side. No developer should sit and watch their reputation thrown into the trash before release, and that is quite a big feat considering the warm receiving Allods was getting just a few weeks ago.
MMO Fallout 