Tag: Turbine

"No Intention At This Time"


People who read this website know that I am a free market capitalist, so my response to changes in the business model is simply that consumers should, and will, vote with their wallets and their mouths. If a developer does something you don’t like, don’t give them your money, and let them know exactly why in a civilized manner. Marketers are people just like you and me, we need a decent amount of feedback in order to know what players are dissatisfied over.

I think we understand by now that the phrase “at this time” is a back door to allowing a company to do a complete one hundred eighty degree turn on their policy at some point in the future. The safe route for navigating the “at this time” phrase is to remind yourself not to translate the phrase into “we don’t want to do this,” but as its more accurate “we would like to do this, but we feel that the market/demographic may not be receptive to it at this point, or we feel a reminder that we are not doing said action at this exact moment in time will satisfy some of our uneasy customers who we plan on convincing over the next few months.” After all, how many times have you heard “we have no intention at this time of (adding free to play/shutting down/merging servers/cash shop/etc)” only to have that same event occur within a year or two?

“At this time” is still an interesting phrase. After all, for all of us who see it as a verbal form of twirling one’s mustache nefariously while slyly directing the movie’s hero toward the entirely not poisoned glass of wine, there are plenty more who buy into the false promise that it usually accompanies, and it appears to still be a viable marketing tactic. Turbine recently released non-cosmetic gear on their cash shop for Lord of the Rings Online, breaking their previous commitment but justifying it over the virtue that the armor is relatively low-tier. Oh and,

“Furthermore, we have no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store.”

At least not until metrics come back on the recently added gear to let us know if enough people are willing to throw money into the system. Again, as a capitalist I am personally unopposed to the idea of Turbine selling gear for stats. I think Turbine has proven itself responsive enough that if the community backlash is strong enough, they will indeed take the offending items down. For others, however, the message isn’t heard until the servers are a ghost town, and usually by then it’s too late.

But then again, I’m a capitalist, and if an MMO bankrupts due to poor design decisions, it is entirely on the heads of the developer.

“No Intention At This Time”


People who read this website know that I am a free market capitalist, so my response to changes in the business model is simply that consumers should, and will, vote with their wallets and their mouths. If a developer does something you don’t like, don’t give them your money, and let them know exactly why in a civilized manner. Marketers are people just like you and me, we need a decent amount of feedback in order to know what players are dissatisfied over.

I think we understand by now that the phrase “at this time” is a back door to allowing a company to do a complete one hundred eighty degree turn on their policy at some point in the future. The safe route for navigating the “at this time” phrase is to remind yourself not to translate the phrase into “we don’t want to do this,” but as its more accurate “we would like to do this, but we feel that the market/demographic may not be receptive to it at this point, or we feel a reminder that we are not doing said action at this exact moment in time will satisfy some of our uneasy customers who we plan on convincing over the next few months.” After all, how many times have you heard “we have no intention at this time of (adding free to play/shutting down/merging servers/cash shop/etc)” only to have that same event occur within a year or two?

“At this time” is still an interesting phrase. After all, for all of us who see it as a verbal form of twirling one’s mustache nefariously while slyly directing the movie’s hero toward the entirely not poisoned glass of wine, there are plenty more who buy into the false promise that it usually accompanies, and it appears to still be a viable marketing tactic. Turbine recently released non-cosmetic gear on their cash shop for Lord of the Rings Online, breaking their previous commitment but justifying it over the virtue that the armor is relatively low-tier. Oh and,

“Furthermore, we have no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store.”

At least not until metrics come back on the recently added gear to let us know if enough people are willing to throw money into the system. Again, as a capitalist I am personally unopposed to the idea of Turbine selling gear for stats. I think Turbine has proven itself responsive enough that if the community backlash is strong enough, they will indeed take the offending items down. For others, however, the message isn’t heard until the servers are a ghost town, and usually by then it’s too late.

But then again, I’m a capitalist, and if an MMO bankrupts due to poor design decisions, it is entirely on the heads of the developer.

Turbine Vs Cryptic: Turbine Introducing Forgotten Realms?


In the past, I’ve discussed the ongoing “fight” between Turbine and Cryptic Studios over how Cryptic’s upcoming Neverwinter MMO will directly compete with Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online. After an undisclosed settlement with Turbine, Cryptic made it clear as day that Neverwinter is not an MMO, and never will be an MMO. That being said, when Perfect World Entertainment purchased Cryptic, the developer did a flip and announced that the game would be a full open world MMO.

According to DDO Cast, Turbine has been busy purchasing domain names relating to Dungeons and Dragons, as well as Forgotten Realms. The optimist in me wants to believe that Turbine is planning on throwing the first punch by expanding the game into Forgotten Realms territory, and pulling back any customers who might have left for Cryptic’s game. The pessimist in me, however, feels the need to point out that companies buy domain names all the time for a variety of reasons. A selection of domains are below:

ddounderdark.com
ddoforgottenrealms.com
ddo-motu.com
lolthiscoming.com (Lolth is coming, thank you comments.) 

But why is this relevant? The Dungeons and Dragons community is fractured (to say the least) when it comes to Eberron and Forgotten Realms, to the point where some won’t even touch Turbine’s MMO because it takes place in the former rather than the latter. In the event that Turbine does launch a Forgotten Realms expansion, it would offer a substantial increase to their potential player base.

(Source: DDO Cast)

Additional Links:

Lord of the Rings Online: Removing Transfer Restrictions


When MMOs open their games to the public, the standard servers tend to fill out rather quickly, but the servers that were popular prior to the transition are regularly first to become overloaded by a combination of new and returning players creating and transferring characters. In the case of Lord of the Rings Online, Turbine decided to restrict character transfers over to select servers: Brandywine, Dwarrowdelf, Elendilmir, Imladris, Landroval, and Riddermark. With the recent update allowing players to pay for characters to transfer with Turbine Points, Turbine announced that the restrictions will be lifted on server transfer.

That is to say, the transfer will still cost you the standard price: $25 or 2995 Turbine Points. You can check out the whole post here.

Got through the whole article without a TP joke. You all sit tight, this is a cause for celebration.

Turbine Issues Account Security Warning


Greetings,

Turbine is concerned that a third-party recently may have attempted to access forum account information. There is no indication at this time that your account was modified or compromised. For your protection we suggest you change the password to a unique, hard to guess password not associated with any other sites or services. If you changed your password after October 11th, then you can disregard this message.

To change your password, please follow these steps:

  1. Go to https://myaccount.turbine.com/ and click on “Forgot your password?” You may also click this in the game launcher.
  2. Follow the instructions on how to recover your password. A new password will be sent to this e-mail address.
  3. Once you have received the password reset e-mail, change your password. Please remember to use unique, hard-to guess passwords that are not associated with other online services or sites.

Turbine takes your account security seriously. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at https://support.turbine.com/. You may submit a new inquiry to our Customer Service team, and they will be able to assist you further.

Thank you,

Turbine Support

(Source: Email sent out to Turbine account holders.)

Turbine: Change Your Passwords


Number one question coming into MMO Fallout over the past few days: Has username and password information been stolen from Turbine’s forums? The answer, until something official can be confirmed, should be taken as a probably. While not confirming that any data was stolen, Turbine posted a news bulletin of the forum maintenance with the added note that polayers should change their passwords.

As an additional precaution we recommend that all players change their passwords by visiting http://myaccount.turbine.com. Please remember to use unique, hard-to guess passwords that are not associated with other online services or sites, and always look for and report unusual activity in your account to Turbine customer support.

I recommend changing your password proactively.

I Love A Good Conspiracy Theory: LOTRO Forums Hacked?


Nothing says loving like a hot conspiracy bun in the oven, I always say. If you use the Lord of the Rings or Dungeons and Dragons forums, you’ve likely noticed that Turbine has taken them down due to an unspecified issue:

We have identified a potential issue in the forum system.  As a precautionary measure we have disabled our forums while we investigate.  We will bring the forums back online when we complete our work.  We thank you for your patience.

In all honesty, and given the unseen amount of people who work to crack forum software, this will likely turn into a vulnerability issue. If my assumption is correct, they wouldn’t be the first forum knocked out today (my favorites list shows three fan sites down due to a breach of security). But the important thing is that Turbine is able to do damage control and get the forums back into a working state. Tweakers.net is reporting that the servers have indeed been breached, via SQL injection, although there has been no confirmation from Turbine. Reportedly this issue stems from some poorly assembled coding used to transition Codemasters customers over to Turbine’s service.

While the Turbine forums are down, why not browse the third party forums and take in the conspiracy theorists?

I found it amusing that just after they added the thread saying they want to hire new developers that the forums mysteriously were brought off line

I love the idea of the ex-employee happening to be a skilled and vengeful hacker. It’s like a murder-revenge story, but suitably nerdy.

Let's Talk Free To Play "Customers"


Today I wanted to talk free to play, primarily the base that makes up the players and customers, two terms I want to keep separated for the purpose of this article. Let’s take Lord of the Rings Online as an example. A player is someone who downloads the game for free, accumulates Turbine points using in-game rewards and not buying them, and makes it as far as he can before running out of free points, getting bored, and quitting. A customer is someone who pays, be it in any amount of Turbine points, or through the VIP system.

I used Lord of the Rings and not Runescape because Runescape free players are, in a way, customers. Although they don’t pay any money out of pocket, they view advertisements which, according to Jagex’s financial reports, made somewhere around 7% of their revenue in 2009, and have likely remained about the same since. Getting in free players is a financial incentive in itself to Jagex.

For the rest of you, however, I’m going to use the drug analogy. Your first hit is always free, because the goal is to get you hooked and going back for more. Going back to Lord of the Rings Online, my readings are sporadic, but from my understanding a player can get around level 30 buying quest packs (many of which are rather cheap) using only the Turbine points given as task rewards. By that point, your next inclination is likely “well that Turbine point card at Target is only ten bucks. Might as well buy one.” Of course you know where the addiction goes from there.

But the companies that make free to play games aren’t sinister drug dealers who want you hooked, they recognize that the players who pay will be footing the bill for the players who do not, so they offer incentives to dole up some money. Turbine offers free points for VIP members, others offer extra bag space, better loot, and higher experience for subscribing.

Like drug dealers, you have to learn to avoid the bad ones. There is a very fine line between incentives for subscribers and punishing free players. Years back I had a chance to talk to an ex-customer service rep (not here on MMO Fallout) for a Korean MMO whose player (not subscriber) numbers rivaled World of Warcraft’s. What I found most interesting was the company’s policy on free vs paying members. A lot of the time, paying members were allowed to cheat, farm gold, use bots, etc, while free players would be routinely banned for minor offences. The internal policy was that the people were paying, so why not let them do whatever they wanted? As for the free players, “screw em.” There would be many more to take their place.

Harsh, but I’ve been called rather unsympathetic for indifference towards a group I’ve referred to as “permanent freeloaders” in the past so not at all surprising. What you need to understand when entering a game with full resolve that you will never pay a dime, is that the company has minimal interest in your presence. Sure you might bring friends into the game and they might pay for some stuff, but your demands will be met with a deaf ear.

On games like Runescape, Champions Online, etc, I often hear the permanent freeloaders complain about being treated like wallets waiting to be opened, but why would you expect anything else? A grocery store doesn’t offer free samples because you look famished and they’d like to feed you, and a developer doesn’t offer up their game for free because they hope less people will pay and more will simply enjoy the game. At the end of the day, the company has to pay its employees, and they’ve found a way to do that but far more efficiently with the free to play system. Like I said with Dungeons and Dragons Online, going free pays off more.

One of MMO Fallout’s core principles runs around MMOs as like a relationship between the developer and player, and free to play just goes to further the analogy. Developers have realized over time that a great majority of customers need to see what they’re getting into before they want to saddle up and cash in, and this system is just the way to do that. To go even further, a good cash shop game is like a gorgeous person you meet at a public place. You talk, have some things in common, and decide to have dinner. Slowly, but surely, you get to know each other better and the relationship becomes solid and loving. Next thing you know, you’re buying your love that brand new 2011 Kia to go in the garage of the house you just bought together. This is the best way to form a long-lasting relationship.

Then you have folks like Astrum Nival (Allods Online) who approach you in a bar, drunk, and just start dry humping you and spilling martini all over your good clothing. When you push them away, they get angry and violent, and start shouting about how you should be privileged to even call for their notice, and how anyone else would be throwing themselves at them. Sure, they might get successful with one or two people, but none of the relationships will be long, they will definitely be expensive to those they sucker in, and the ordeal will probably just put their partners off of forming future relationships.

Are we still talking about video games?

Let’s Talk Free To Play “Customers”


Today I wanted to talk free to play, primarily the base that makes up the players and customers, two terms I want to keep separated for the purpose of this article. Let’s take Lord of the Rings Online as an example. A player is someone who downloads the game for free, accumulates Turbine points using in-game rewards and not buying them, and makes it as far as he can before running out of free points, getting bored, and quitting. A customer is someone who pays, be it in any amount of Turbine points, or through the VIP system.

I used Lord of the Rings and not Runescape because Runescape free players are, in a way, customers. Although they don’t pay any money out of pocket, they view advertisements which, according to Jagex’s financial reports, made somewhere around 7% of their revenue in 2009, and have likely remained about the same since. Getting in free players is a financial incentive in itself to Jagex.

For the rest of you, however, I’m going to use the drug analogy. Your first hit is always free, because the goal is to get you hooked and going back for more. Going back to Lord of the Rings Online, my readings are sporadic, but from my understanding a player can get around level 30 buying quest packs (many of which are rather cheap) using only the Turbine points given as task rewards. By that point, your next inclination is likely “well that Turbine point card at Target is only ten bucks. Might as well buy one.” Of course you know where the addiction goes from there.

But the companies that make free to play games aren’t sinister drug dealers who want you hooked, they recognize that the players who pay will be footing the bill for the players who do not, so they offer incentives to dole up some money. Turbine offers free points for VIP members, others offer extra bag space, better loot, and higher experience for subscribing.

Like drug dealers, you have to learn to avoid the bad ones. There is a very fine line between incentives for subscribers and punishing free players. Years back I had a chance to talk to an ex-customer service rep (not here on MMO Fallout) for a Korean MMO whose player (not subscriber) numbers rivaled World of Warcraft’s. What I found most interesting was the company’s policy on free vs paying members. A lot of the time, paying members were allowed to cheat, farm gold, use bots, etc, while free players would be routinely banned for minor offences. The internal policy was that the people were paying, so why not let them do whatever they wanted? As for the free players, “screw em.” There would be many more to take their place.

Harsh, but I’ve been called rather unsympathetic for indifference towards a group I’ve referred to as “permanent freeloaders” in the past so not at all surprising. What you need to understand when entering a game with full resolve that you will never pay a dime, is that the company has minimal interest in your presence. Sure you might bring friends into the game and they might pay for some stuff, but your demands will be met with a deaf ear.

On games like Runescape, Champions Online, etc, I often hear the permanent freeloaders complain about being treated like wallets waiting to be opened, but why would you expect anything else? A grocery store doesn’t offer free samples because you look famished and they’d like to feed you, and a developer doesn’t offer up their game for free because they hope less people will pay and more will simply enjoy the game. At the end of the day, the company has to pay its employees, and they’ve found a way to do that but far more efficiently with the free to play system. Like I said with Dungeons and Dragons Online, going free pays off more.

One of MMO Fallout’s core principles runs around MMOs as like a relationship between the developer and player, and free to play just goes to further the analogy. Developers have realized over time that a great majority of customers need to see what they’re getting into before they want to saddle up and cash in, and this system is just the way to do that. To go even further, a good cash shop game is like a gorgeous person you meet at a public place. You talk, have some things in common, and decide to have dinner. Slowly, but surely, you get to know each other better and the relationship becomes solid and loving. Next thing you know, you’re buying your love that brand new 2011 Kia to go in the garage of the house you just bought together. This is the best way to form a long-lasting relationship.

Then you have folks like Astrum Nival (Allods Online) who approach you in a bar, drunk, and just start dry humping you and spilling martini all over your good clothing. When you push them away, they get angry and violent, and start shouting about how you should be privileged to even call for their notice, and how anyone else would be throwing themselves at them. Sure, they might get successful with one or two people, but none of the relationships will be long, they will definitely be expensive to those they sucker in, and the ordeal will probably just put their partners off of forming future relationships.

Are we still talking about video games?

Lord of the Rings Online Begins European Migration


The European servers for Lord of the Rings Online should be down by now, as the big migration begins toward a single global service for Turbine’s MMO. Beginning today, Turbine will be transferring users to the new Lord of the Rings global service, a transition that will take approximately two to three days. To entice players, Turbine is offering a full year of VIP for £79.99.

The global faq can be found here. Hopefully the transition goes seamlessly. It’s been a good few years for Lord of the Rings players in Europe under Codemasters, hopefully Turbine can show them just as loving of a home when the move is completed later this week.