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Alaplaya/ProSieben screwing over our Planetside 2 experience.
manus
Member Posts: 46
So I recently became aware of ProSieben/Alaplaya publishing/distributing several of SoE games, having had experrience with said company have to admit I got quite disapointed instantly. Yet another way to screw over the European players and yet we always pay more for the same product...
So whats so bad about Prosieben?
--Alaplaya reserves the right to delete inactive characters after 90 days. (Now this might not be so bad to some of you, and some MMOs have that in the EULA, be patient)
-In violation of European and German privacy laws, Alaplaya publishes the real names of accounts that are past-due. (A german company not following rules, and taking advantage of their consumers...sweet under the context of "helping")
-Alaplaya/PSS1 is known for poorly-supported, security flaw riddled Korean-style browser MMOs. Not only does Alaplaya have a history of hacked accounts due to poor security, but they've done little to resolve the matter. More than a few players have expressed concern at the prospect of dealing with this shady company.
-EU players could lose access to SOE forums if they no longer have active Station accounts but instead Alaplaya accounts.
-SOE hopes that ProSiebenSat.1's location and expertise will result in in a greater audience for its games as well as more support and better localization for those under ProSiebenSat.1's umbrella. SOE even hopes that the partnership will result in "special content" for European players. (Now knowing the special content they have introduced in other games this might have dramatic negative effect on both european and us customer base and SoE wants it, wtf?)
-Now considering Alaplaya/PSS1 track record on adding special content to their game, why would they want them to add it at all - example of PSS1 adding to a game here.
-Previously, SOE had distribution agreements for Europe but nothing on the scale of what it now has with ProSiebenSat.1. It looks like EU players will need to transfer their accounts and characters over to ProSiebenSat.1's domain, although SOE promises that this will be an easy process. It's also important to note that these games and their servers will not interact with their North American counterparts, effectively separating the communities.
-Prizing will be different due to currency. We all know that $49.99 is the same as €49.99 right?
So what will you do about it, I know what I will do about it.
I contacted customer support and logged a complaint about it, just to feel better. Then I made this post hoping to create a discusion and maybe get enough buzz that us euro gamers can say no yet to getting screwed. If not I wont be playing Planetside 2 or any other SoE game published by ProSieben. Apparantly you can't pay with a European visa card on SOE games anymore.
(I suggest if you agree with me, log a complaint with customer support about the deal with prosieben)
So as you might have noticed I am quite biased against this deal, what is toughts on the Prosieben/SoE deal? Do you think SOE will benefit from this and do you think we as consumergroup are gaining anything from this deal?
Comments
Can we buy US SOE prepaid cards from Europe. I know I am not going to this prowhatever and I will not play any upcoming game. Pity was looking forward to the next Everquest.
One other thing if I do nothing and not register with them will my account be moved to Prosabien automatically in 30 days ?
You can buy a SC card from amazon, it's a little tiny hassle but it works. So you can propably workaround for station cash.
As for automatical transfer and deleting your old account I have no real knowledge, with the exception what sony has posted and prosieben which says you have to register with alaplaya/prosieben and it will be transfered. I haven't read anywhere that SOE will delete or automatically transfer our accounts to ProSieben.
Yet I am afried more steps will be taken to make sure european players will use ProSiebenSat1. As of know there is alot of people that have transfered EQ2 and DCUO accounts creating alot of steam over it due to having quite a bit of problems. Yet we are now efficiently forum wise two seperate communities so the ones using Alaplaya seem forced to only vent on their forums.
As a euro customer, if you want to play any SOE games that are included in the distribution agreement, you will have to either create a ProSiebenSat account for that game or transfer your SOE account to ProSiebenSat. You will be IP blocked from accessing that game via your SOE account.
However, ProSiebenSat account holders can choose to play on euro or US game servers, no blocking there.
Customer Service for SOE games will be handled by ProSiebenSat for all euro accounts. All ingame purchases and payments will be via the ProSiebenSat Cash Shop (SOE Sation Cash is for US accounts only).
Given the negative image of Alaplaya (ProSiebenSat's current MMO division), the future of the SOE games this distribution deal is fairly uncertain. We can only hope that ProSiebenSat will try to improve their service levels now that they have a real "profile" in the MMO market in Europe. I'm not very optimistic in this regard, but hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised.
It will take afew months for ProSiebenSat to get up to speed on handling SOE's games, because they have no experience with dealing with "AAA" F2P games. SOE's games come with a load of existing customers who are used-to a certain level of service and support, whereas ProSiebenSat/Alaplaya's current games are handled on a pretty much "take-it-or-leave-it" basis.
Regardless of what we say as customers, I believe that we are stuck with this deal for the next 2 years. If things really go badly, the deal may not be renewed, but it's highly unlikely that SOE will cancel it in the first year.
Well PSS1 cannot really do a worse job than GOA did with DaoC and WAR, right?
Right???
Ironically I think they already have done a worse job.
And their trackrecord is worse than any other company out there most likely, yet Funcom has quite a bit attention on the negative side of things. Propably until now most of us have been blessed with not ever having to deal with PSS1...
Omg, please no! after a long time without a decent game I really was looking forward playing PS2.
but this just sucks! I don't get SOE... why do they have to make such horrible decisions all the time...
First and foremost, the problem is its SOE. Period.
worst company ever. It is only a matter of time before they botch something and the game goes to shit. It is a crying shame how many games they have given their deathtouch to.
I really don't understand why companies still seperate EU and US servers this way, not with today's technology. EVE has been running from a single data center since release and they manage just fine. Given the bandwidth of most ISP packages today there's no real need for this geographical seperation, especially for an MMO where ping isn't that crucial.
Mosy people in the UK have at least a 20Mbps connection so you'd expect a ping of 100-150 ms across the pond, which is perfectly fine for most online games. They could just do the usual east/west coast servers then label some east coast ones as EU time frame and maybe some localised language servers. Job done.
Most of these deals end up a complete cluster f*ck anyway so why bother with them? Either keep all the servers together or do what Blizzard did. Open your own data center and staff it with your own employees. Anything but these partnerships with dodgy companies who just want to jump on the MMO cash cow bandwagon.
PS2 isn't a MMORPG. It's a MMOFPS. A ping of 150ms would be really annoying in a fast-paced game like this.
I was looking forward to playing this game, but if that means dealing with a company like PSS, I'm out. I'd rather pay to get good service than get crappy service for free.
Given that Alaplaya/ProSiebenSat1 have allowed for all the subdeveloped Asian and African country players, to join S4 League and literally destroy the experience for the EU players, as we got infested by hundreds of 500ms+´d players, i am now officially worried about the future of PlanetSide 2 in Europe.
Ya i don't know what's up with Germany but they have some serious moral issues there.They seem to have no problem ripping people off.
Frogster is on my list of most disturbing publisher/distributors.They are as good as thieves.
Quite some time ago,i was literally afraid to give out information to play another German game was called Neo-Cron if my memory serves me.I have never been afraid to register to games even in Korea the hacking capitol of the world,yet that German outfit seemed too shotty.
I don't hink i have ever dealt with Alaplaya however the name does ring a bell.Ok short search and yes i did play Florensia albeit for a very short time,didn't like the game at all.
I have actually never seen any good come from outside publishers in all my gaming history.I even remember playing ROM and feeling handcuffed by a very poor GM system/support forums.You get a whole chain of command operation,first the developer then the publisher then a whole new team licensed to handle the GM /forum work.
The reason it is so bad,is they sign contracts,clearly stating what is to be done.This means no heart felt interaction between customer and developer,just whatever is in the contract.I have seen GM's that have a contract to put out a once a week event.All i can say is WOW those events were so cheap it was like they spent all of 5 minutes thinking them up.
I guess only way to deal with them is to not support them and make sure the developer knows about it.The only problem with that is ,guess who you get from your developers support team?Yep more licensed cue card reading, non gaming support staff.
One thing i will mention is that ,are you UK people not used to paying more than everyone else lol?The cost of living there is scary no?I guess that is why they have pubs every third house so people can drown in their sorrows :P.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Not if they labelled servers for EU times, because then everyone would have a 150 ping. We used to play TFC and CS with much worse than that before broadband came out. Anything under 250 was considered a good connection. I still play FPS games on US servers with a ping around the 120-180 mark and have no problems at all. It's not a high ping that kills you, it's packet loss. As long as the connection is a good one, a sub 200ms ping is fine for FPS. 2/10ths of a second, an eye blink, that's all we're talking about.
But I agree with you about PSS. I was looking forward to PS2 as well. Not so sure now.
Personally I will not play Planetside 2 if I'm forced to use ProSiebenSat1, if I can't work around it.
Will it have any impact on SOE, not at all - but I might be one of the few that actually think SOE customer support is quite decent "sniff" , does it annoy me that I most likely will miss out on a great game - Not at all if I have to deal with Alaplaya...
eq2wire has a summary of the DCUO issues
http://eq2wire.com/2012/08/17/prosiebensat-1-multiple-accounts-authenticators-and-remote-access/
EQ2 fan sites
Thanks for the link, some interesting info there, particularly this bit:
I was wondering what motivated PSS1 to buy this "publisher" status. At first I assumed it was to gain access to "locked-in" Cash Shop customers (i.e. SOE F2P players), but now it appears that it was all a part of PSS1 masterplan to establish their digital sales portal.
Is this conclusion pure speculation ? Not at all, just read PSS1's recent business plans as outlined to shareholders and investors.
Q. So, how do you make money out of your F2P players without having to force them to buy stuff in your Cash Shop ?
A. Sell their accounts to a willing third-party and enforce the customer's loyalty to the new "owner" by using IP locks !
I will never play any SOE games. I dont like this. I never play games with european publishers at all... I think its bad for the players and there are no companies in the EU that are good enough to handle something like that. You will be forced to deal with a terrible, greedy and incompetent company and you will become a second class player compared to people that play on US/international servers.
Its better to just say "No !""... And hope it will fail. Support other companies with international servers instead.