Tag: Snail Games

Age of Wushu's Subscription Is Character-Bound


AgeofWushu

Those of you in the know are likely already aware that Age of Wushu is a free to play title featuring a cash shop and VIP subscription. What you may not have known, even if you have played Age of Wushu during its long beta period, is that the VIP subscription is bound to your character, not your account, as stated by Snail Game’s Community Moderator:

VIP will be character bound. If you have VIP currently on Blue Dragon, you will not have VIP on White Tiger.

Age of Wushu’s VIP service costs $10 per month, per character that you wish to attach it to, and offers perks including offline leveling, increased rewards and warehouse/stall space, and more. I’d like to think that the problem here is some combination of poor translation and perhaps a misunderstanding of the market. Taken for what it is, VIP is basically a package of time-based perks that you buy from the gold shop. It isn’t a traditional subscription in the sense that you enter your credit card details and the game bills you monthly, you have to manually top off your account with gold and purchase the package.

Owing that, Age of Wushu’s VIP being character bound isn’t really surprising or unprecedented, even if it doesn’t invalidate complaints by some players that the service should be account-wide. Perhaps the mistake is that the VIP package sounds too similar to the traditional subscription services we’ve come to expect from other MMOs, which explains why some players are surprised that the benefits are character-bound. Either way, the reaction I’ve seen to this has been pretty mixed, with players split pretty much down the middle in support/rejection.

Age of Wushu Yanks Certain Preorder Bonuses


AgeofWushu

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)

Age of Wushu Will Sell Abilities, At Least In China


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)