Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
I got this far into this string before I found something that I 100% agreed with.
Archeage is a bear of a game that has been turned into a bullish piece of ignorable crap by a company more interested in making the maximum amount of money during the products projected life-cycle rather than extending that life-cycle in any way, shape, or form.
But then I guess that's what you are going to get from a company that has no real stake in its own product right? All they, meaning Trion, are, and have been there for from the start is to invest and recoup money.
The business model is bad from the top down.
Perhaps you should have carried on reading the thread, maybe after you read other peoples responses to Good_Apollo you might get a clue.
The money has already been made. The objective now is to get it to a point where they are not bleeding the money made. In that process, they may lose more players but they will remain in the black because their overhead will be manageable. Trion went into this venture knowing there was a niche market for it. They made a lot more initial money than they could have ever imagined with their alpha entry fees. It is now settling into what they thought it would be but their overhead is still large due to the initial on-rush and it is starting to eat into their profits. They are going to make it manageable by down-sizing. This move will down-size the operation and keep the business model profitable. Trion may be wet behind the ears as a gaming company but they are very savvy when it comes to business and making money.
The game was set up almost from the instant to make money. What Trion is trying to do is make FAST money, and it is obvious in all of their agendas. The push for PVP. The push towards a more gear-centric community. The push towards piracy and sea battles. The push away from anything PVE in any way.
I mean seriously? Have they really come out with all of these patches and updates while people are still glitching their way through GHA on a daily basis?
Did they really ninja nerf the entire game with the 1.7a patch, literally FORCING anyone who was playing a PVE game to move in the direction of cash shop assisted obsidian weapons instead? Only to, simultaneously, draw more unsuspecting players into settling inside PVP zones so that they can either sink or swim like the whales that they want them to be immediately?
Did they really spend the money to open up the world trade channel, make it so that you could repair on the fly, use the auction house on the fly, add bags to the game that can make you enough gold to live off of and basically not have to spend time doing ANYTHING else other than earning those and PVP'ing while 90% of the server can't, and probably never will be able to get beyond the first boss of Krolal's Cradle or even consider taking down some of the other world bosses in that game without the assistance of admin's?
Nah, they're on a money grab like no other. I still play it though because beneath all of that there is still a pretty good game to be played.
But do I trust Trion in any way, shape, or form to be looking out for this game? Absolutely not. Everything they are doing is a calculated move down to the penny to milk this thing for the maximum amount of money that they can. They aren't bleeding anything but LOL's all the way to the bank.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
I got this far into this string before I found something that I 100% agreed with.
Archeage is a bear of a game that has been turned into a bullish piece of ignorable crap by a company more interested in making the maximum amount of money during the products projected life-cycle rather than extending that life-cycle in any way, shape, or form.
But then I guess that's what you are going to get from a company that has no real stake in its own product right? All they, meaning Trion, are, and have been there for from the start is to invest and recoup money.
The business model is bad from the top down.
Perhaps you should have carried on reading the thread, maybe after you read other peoples responses to Good_Apollo you might get a clue.
I don't need a majority to hear the truth. That's some mob mentality stuff right there, and I really don't subscribe.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
I got this far into this string before I found something that I 100% agreed with.
Archeage is a bear of a game that has been turned into a bullish piece of ignorable crap by a company more interested in making the maximum amount of money during the products projected life-cycle rather than extending that life-cycle in any way, shape, or form.
But then I guess that's what you are going to get from a company that has no real stake in its own product right? All they, meaning Trion, are, and have been there for from the start is to invest and recoup money.
The business model is bad from the top down.
Perhaps you should have carried on reading the thread, maybe after you read other peoples responses to Good_Apollo you might get a clue.
Honestly, everyone knows XLGames can walk on water, anyone who says otherwise is just a Trion Fanboi
Believe it or not, Trion was actually an awesome company back in days of RIFT (sub based, pre expansion) They really did care about players and offered lots of stuff for free that would have been charged in other MMO's
Then came Defiance, game designed by total rookie team that ignored all the feedback from alpha testers. For example they didnt even care when testers told them you can get 9999999 damage and HP just by using Cheatengine.
All they cared about was quest fixes so console crowd would be happy.
And now they failed again in AA effectively loosing last bits of respect any sane gamer could have had left.
Trion is now in same series with rest of the cash grab companies like Perfect world, Gameforge, Gamersfirst, Wargaming, Gaijin.... etc etc. Lack of talent and management.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
maybe , but the server merges supports his theory
given the history of the devs and AA community, this will be a cataclysm of EPIC proportions
something, like this killed all the dinosaurs..maybe this one will bring them back?
Actually no. His theory is that Trion had significant influence on the form the game took in its release to the West, this is not supported by any evidence. He further theorizes that Trion is in a position to alter the game to attract a larger audience, again this is not supported by any evidence.
What is available is evidence that server mergers will happen and I see this as a sign of a low population.
As DMKano said "Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture. "
Agreed, Trion have come in for a lot of flack over this game, which i am not sure they really deserve, as unless they have some kind of control over the games coding, there is not much they can really do to improve/change things, thats not to say that Trion are entirely blameless, but perhaps they are not the devils they are often made out to be, strange though that Trion comes in for such a lambasting and yet XLGames seems to get a relatively free pass, all things considered.
This is such an old joke that it's not even funny anymore.
Atari = the entire game development world. That's how old it is.
Sony = Verant = whatever we are calling it this week but its still being paid for by SONY.
and the list goes on.
Trion is XLGames. Just because one acts as a shell for the other does not make BOTH of those companies COMPLETELY responsible for what goes on in that game.
If I see my wife and my best friend in bed together, I don't really need to know what's going on in the bed as beds are only made for a couple of things. Likewise business.
My point being, since we are using big words like "conjecture" and all, is that the difference between Trion and XLgames is one of simply Syntax as they, for the sake of the entity known as "Archeage" are one and the same.
Here's the thing...even if we were to draw a distinction between the two, the best thing that we could come up with, and this is provable through the various live-streams that Trion has done that were as poorly thought out as the patches that resulted from them, is that XLGames, for all intents and purposes, put out a fine, playable, product with a lot of long term earning potential, and it was TRION who made the various suggestions that have been leading to the dismantling of that business model in lieu of something akin to a "buy your way through it" kind of franchise.
Ideas like putting more archeum into the game and using terms like "Western Market" which in and of itself has become synonymous with "weak", "greedy", and "lazy" are just the beginning of the shenanigans from which all of this chaos has ensued. Point being that the folks at Trion are no more MMORPG players, in the traditional sense, than the folks that games like World Of Warcraft was created to draw in. No disrespect of course. The genre needs that kind of energy as much as anything else. But my question is does it have to permeate every single title to the point of nausea? Is there, or will there, never again be a game where people can actually feel proud of the time they spent playing it other than to say "Holy Crap! I spent a LOT of money and wasted a LOT of time messing with that piece of junk!"
Every move right now that Archeage development is making is a move towards forcing you to spend more money.
They lessened the hit points on the farm carts and took away the ability to create the things that you needed to fix them and gave those things to the general merchant for gold.
That is only one example and I can go on for days because I am right up in that piece watching their every move as they make it.
This server merge thing? All about giving the whales more feed to justify their expenditures while themselves saving on server money.
Originally posted by Righteous_Rock They should leave it be, to me an empty server just makes the world feel larger.
I agree with this as long as you're not meaning "empty", but rather just low enough population that you're not running into 15-20 people in every location and you still can find pvp or have plenty of trades going on. That's what I like
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
Here is something that is not conjecture. Either Trion did:
A.) Signed a contract to publish a game without giving them the control they thought they had which is apparent when Scapes stated they had a lot of control over the cash shop but now turns out he was wrong as the final contract gives them very little control. Meaning they suck at business and signed a contract allowing XLgames to hammer Trions reputation into the dust
or
B.) they do indeed have more control than your buddy at Trion knows and they do actually suck at game design.
Either way you look at it Trion is not blameless by any means.
Nobody is blameless. Trion made a bunch of mistakes with AA as this was their first published game, so as with any first in life hindsight is 20/20. Let's see how they do with their next published game, prior experience goes a long way.
The term "prior experience goes along way" counts for us mugs that bought into beta just as much.. It will be very interesting to see how many people get taken in again with Trions next venture.. No-one can argue that AA hasn't damaged Trions reputation in a serious way with MMO players.
Trion are not worth bothering with now as far as I'm concerned as things stand, and thats from personal experience with AA since early beta.
I cant pretend to know how Trion will handle the land in a server merge, but I can offer up what other versions of the game (KN) did, and you should expect something similar to happen.
They removed all owned land from both servers, sent all the blueprints back, and when the new server opened, it was a massive land grab all over again. Neither server had priority, you had to run and fight for the land you got, just like on launch (but worse because everyone is leveled and geared now). I would expect something similar to happen here. The only difference may be if Trion recognizes the need for different time zones and availabilty, and opens up only certain zones and housing areas, and fills them in time slots.
I believe you are right, but in the KN mergers didn't everyone get mailed their house/farm plans, furniture and building materials? So all they had to do was find a plot and build. Of course when you merge there just simply isn't going to be enough plots to go around so many will miss out. Especially guilds who have multiple plots joined with mansions etc.
And of course, if you are not there to log in within the first 5 minutes of the server opening you are screwed. All the plots will go in nano-seconds.
I suspect Trion will know this will lose them customers, but they are willing to wear that because the near dead servers must be losing them money.
It's not about money loss - if it were - they wouldn't wait til Q4 to do this - it would be happing like next week lol.
Higher pop servers provide a better player experience - a better player experience means happier players- a happier player is a customer who is likely to spend more money.
This is why any game merges servers - to improve player experience because that always leads to higher profits.
A lot of players will loose their land they have worked so hard to own and maintain all these months.
Please tell me how loosing land will provide for a "better player experience"?
Land barons holding shit loads losing it all will make for a far better player eperience. Will be more to go around if enough barons lose out. Plus their tears would be lovely to taste...
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
maybe , but the server merges supports his theory
given the history of the devs and AA community, this will be a cataclysm of EPIC proportions
something, like this killed all the dinosaurs..maybe this one will bring them back?
Actually no. His theory is that Trion had significant influence on the form the game took in its release to the West, this is not supported by any evidence. He further theorizes that Trion is in a position to alter the game to attract a larger audience, again this is not supported by any evidence.
What is available is evidence that server mergers will happen and I see this as a sign of a low population.
As DMKano said "Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture. "
Agreed, Trion have come in for a lot of flack over this game, which i am not sure they really deserve, as unless they have some kind of control over the games coding, there is not much they can really do to improve/change things, thats not to say that Trion are entirely blameless, but perhaps they are not the devils they are often made out to be, strange though that Trion comes in for such a lambasting and yet XLGames seems to get a relatively free pass, all things considered.
This is such an old joke that it's not even funny anymore.
Atari = the entire game development world. That's how old it is.
Sony = Verant = whatever we are calling it this week but its still being paid for by SONY.
and the list goes on.
Trion is XLGames. Just because one acts as a shell for the other does not make BOTH of those companies COMPLETELY responsible for what goes on in that game.
If I see my wife and my best friend in bed together, I don't really need to know what's going on in the bed as beds are only made for a couple of things. Likewise business.
My point being, since we are using big words like "conjecture" and all, is that the difference between Trion and XLgames is one of simply Syntax as they, for the sake of the entity known as "Archeage" are one and the same.
Well, you heard it here first folks, Jake Song and his company now work for Trion!
Whats new? companies of all types are out for that fast money, name a companies out there that not after for fast money, naming no cash shop, no selling mounts ouside the game, no expansion selling, no buying this box to get more item over from the standard cost, if the game is good, they can live off slow money just selling you a box and giving you a sub free with free expansion for a sub game, or a free to play game giving you ads just to keep the game running, there make money for is very slow not as fast.
Originally posted by Rivol Trion have announced on their forums that mergers will be occurring along with server transfers later this year, either Q3 or Q4. They state they don't plan to merge servers in the traditional sense, they are planning something different. We all wait to see what they mean by this, because with the non instanced housing a normal merge will upset a lot of people. Lots of players have spent many months building their houses and plots, usually at great expense. To see that wiped would be heartbreaking.
Well so much for not merging servers. Trion practically lied to everyone about that. Instead of calling it a server merger, Trion is calling it a "SERVER EVOLUTION". I've personally never seen so much PR spin in my life.
Players are outraged, now that they have discovered that they are going to lose their land.
Well so much for not merging servers. Trion practically lied to everyone about that. Instead of calling it a server merger, Trion is calling it a "SERVER EVOLUTION". I've personally never seen so much PR spin in my life.
Players are outraged, now that they have discovered that they are going to lose their land.
They are preparing everyone well in advance in hopes of attaining a soft landing. Not sure they can pull it off though. That's about as toxic a community as they come. Prepare for armageddon.
Agree. There is nothing they can do that will make the community happy. It's a tough pill to digest. Non instanced housing is by nature something that would be hard to do, much less the cutthroat community they are dealing with.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
maybe , but the server merges supports his theory
given the history of the devs and AA community, this will be a cataclysm of EPIC proportions
something, like this killed all the dinosaurs..maybe this one will bring them back?
Actually no. His theory is that Trion had significant influence on the form the game took in its release to the West, this is not supported by any evidence. He further theorizes that Trion is in a position to alter the game to attract a larger audience, again this is not supported by any evidence.
What is available is evidence that server mergers will happen and I see this as a sign of a low population.
As DMKano said "Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture. "
Agreed, Trion have come in for a lot of flack over this game, which i am not sure they really deserve, as unless they have some kind of control over the games coding, there is not much they can really do to improve/change things, thats not to say that Trion are entirely blameless, but perhaps they are not the devils they are often made out to be, strange though that Trion comes in for such a lambasting and yet XLGames seems to get a relatively free pass, all things considered.
This is such an old joke that it's not even funny anymore.
Atari = the entire game development world. That's how old it is.
Sony = Verant = whatever we are calling it this week but its still being paid for by SONY.
and the list goes on.
Trion is XLGames. Just because one acts as a shell for the other does not make BOTH of those companies COMPLETELY responsible for what goes on in that game.
If I see my wife and my best friend in bed together, I don't really need to know what's going on in the bed as beds are only made for a couple of things. Likewise business.
My point being, since we are using big words like "conjecture" and all, is that the difference between Trion and XLgames is one of simply Syntax as they, for the sake of the entity known as "Archeage" are one and the same.
Well, you heard it here first folks, Jake Song and his company now work for Trion!
...
...
You know man, you drop that name and you make that statement, and you link up your funny meme as though the concept of a company developing a HIGHLY exploitable REAL LIFE CASH BASED game and then releasing that game under a shell company that can then utilize those exploits in order to TRICK people into spending exhorbitant amounts of money on it is a completely unreasonable and impossible concept to you.
Bottom line to me though is this. You CANNOT trust ANY title that has its earnings so firmly tied to the adjustable spending of its player base that is so willing to lackadaisically institute patch after patch which result in the increased spending of REAL LIFE CASH by its player base.
And you can go back through each patch and each move that this company has made and CLEARLY see how it has manipulated the game developed by XLGames to do EXACTLY THAT.
Like I said, I can rifle off a bunch of them right off the top of my head but worst of all would be to STEAL back the land that you have already SOLD to your playerbase just so that you can go out there and grab it all back up and SELL it to them again.
And sure. You can blame it on the gold farmers. You can blame it on the hackers. Hell, you can blame it on grandma Sissy. But at the end of the day it still results in the same thing. The whales buy more Apex and your company makes more money. And that all happened because of something that YOU did. Not anyone else.
If you don't believe me, just head over to the forums and look at what they just released on the subject. Look at it from the perspective of a money guy and think to yourself how this is going to benefit the monetary intake of the title. Then look at it from the perspective of a crooked money guy and think about what ways you could make even MORE money off of this event and then settle in and watch what happens after this thing goes life.
You want a prediction? I can give it to you right now.
Tons of people are going to gear up in order to race to those prime real estate plots that they now know are lucrative. They are going to run down to Hellswamp, they're going to race up to Auroria to get as close to the water as they can, they are going to plop down next to Solis and Two Crowns, and in order to prepare for this they are going to buy TONS of the newly release scarecrow farms that can only be purchase using credits or tons of hard to earn gilda (which would be better spent elsewhere of course and so they will BUY credits) in order to plop them down in those spots where they know they can stage packs in order to make the most gold.
Chi-ching!! Mo money! Mo money!!
Then they are going to be HELLA surprised when they get down to these spots only to find out that SOMEONE with a better excuse, be it a bot with a land grabbing program or a guy from Texas who is closer to the servers or whatever lie they are telling or have been able to get away with telling in the past, has ALREADY GRABBED UP ALL OF THE PLOTS in the area that they beelined for.
So then they are going to try to backtrack, returning to the newbie areas in order to at least set up a safe place to do their basic stuff only to find that ALL OF THAT LAND HAS ALREADY BEEN GRABBED UP AS WELL, by SOMEONE with a good excuse, be it that they got there first or because of one of the other BS stories that have been told that they can get away with. And so the ONLY way that these players are going to be able to find land on these newly HIGHLY populated servers is either going to have to be to buy it, using in game gold, or plop down in a PVP area, feeding the PVP population.
If they buy it using in game gold and they don't have enough in game gold to buy it then they are going to have to buy more Apex in order to get more gold.
Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money, Mo Money!!
If they don't buy it and settle out in the PVP areas where they are most assuredly going to be ganked on a daily basis then they are going to have to get their gear together in a hurry, and the only way to do that is to BUY it with gold. And if you don't have enough gold to do that then you are going to have to buy a few more Apex in order to get that gold.
Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!!! Mo Money!, Mo Money!!
And best of all. If the people who have grabbed up all of this land just happen to be un-sancitoned, mission impossible type, upon capture we will disavow any knowledge of your actions type employee's or relatives of employee's of XLGAMES or TRION, then you not only get to force the playerbase to spend a bunch more gold in order to get what they already earned in the game the hard way, but you also get to DESTROY THE GOLD, taking it completely out of the circulation of the economy and forcing ALL the players to either play harder or .....you guessed it, BUY MORE APEX
Cha-Ching!! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money! Mo Money!!
And let's not even mention the idea of shoving everyone together in the first place. I play on one of those low pop servers and trust and believe me when I tell you that the Whales are there.
How much more then are those folks going to spend in order to compete with a whole influx of new Whales? It's gonna be a feeding frenzy!! And guess who makes all of THAT money too?
Cha-Ching!! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money!! Mo Money!!
And yeah, everything that I am saying could just be some kind of paranoid fantasy. But when laid up against the actions that this game his already taken towards is playerbase, actions that you can easily go and see in the release and response of each patch, would you really be willing to lay your hard earned cash up against so many possibilities for corruption?
Not saying not to play the game. Just saying that for those of you who are all up in there trying to beat each other by spending a ton of your real money, these guys have got you in a really bad way and are squeezing for every drop of milk that they can get out of you. And to those of us who are simply in there playing the game at the pace that it was designed to be played sans that kind of expenditure it is really obvious that this is what's going on.
And anyone that tells you that this stuff is impossible is no doubt either looking at the whole thing through rose colored lenses, suspect, or plain old not paying attention.
This is simple looking out for yourself, and your money, 101.
And the paranoia credo (my own creation) says that I am not the smartest man in the world so if I can think of it, odds are that someone else has thought of it too, is already doing it, or is going to do it.
Pretty sure players are having a revolution which is why the evolution is happening in the first place. Lol
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
Originally posted by Rhoklaw It's really quite simple. If they cared at all about the game or the community, they would have made a pay to play subscription only server. Since we all know that won't happen, than it's obviously safe to say that this game was never anything more than a money grab.
What happen they did make a subscription only server? then end up people leaving due to any part of the game, they can't get the server full, then be same thing people will say, if they cared about the game or the community there throw more money at ads to get more people in. When pure sub game are not doing so hot this days over f2p. But mmo are money grab they are there to get your money. But if it was sub, can't play so have to pay up even if it's bad.
Originally posted by Rhoklaw It's really quite simple. If they cared at all about the game or the community, they would have made a pay to play subscription only server. Since we all know that won't happen, than it's obviously safe to say that this game was never anything more than a money grab.
What happen they did make a subscription only server? then end up people leaving due to any part of the game, they can't get the server full, then be same thing people will say, if they cared about the game or the community there throw more money at ads to get more people in. When pure sub game are not doing so hot this days over f2p. But mmo are money grab they are there to get your money. But if it was sub, can't play so have to pay up even if it's bad.
Funny thing here, i play subscription only.
and guys, stop spamming over and over, over the same matter, there is a sticky on top of this forum for all the pay to win gibberish of yours, dont need to spam all that junk on every topic.
For that matter i have an constant influx of APEX through gold (for free in your terminology) and wouldnt need to spend any real money and play for entirely free.
ITS MY CHOICE to pay a subscription and get Patron to support the developers for the best gameplay on the market.
I think she's trying to entice all the people who quit over not being able to get land to come back to be milked again. Of course it's false hope. Hackers will take the land as usual and then anyone who wants land will have to spend real money to get the gold and tax certs to buy it from them on top of subbing or resubbing for the ridiculously low odds that they'll actually get a piece of land during the rush. I'm betting almost no real players will. It will go to the hackers. And Trion won't care because it's more money in their pockets either way.
Also, clearly PvP whales are more lucrative than FarmAge whales. I guess once you shell out hundreds for land on your server you can pretty much go along spending little to nothing after that, but PvPers will always be chasing the latest Pay to Win gear.
All I can say is I'm glad I never spent money on this game, but I'm very sad that greed ruined what could have been a fun MMO.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
I joined this game when it first released. I eventually managed to acquire four 24x24 and 2 16x16 plots all adjoining each other in Two Crowns, in one of the more lucrative servers, and all of the other wonderful crap that goes along with it. As the weeks went by and all of these reports of hacks, and exploits, and the P2W money grab increased, I saw this "train wreck" for what it was and dropped this game cold-turkey, like a bad habit, leaving everything behind. I haven't looked back since. The game is an invaluable text book lesson for any aspiring gaming company about how NOT to manage an MMO. So much unrealized potential lost in this game and it is all due to poor game play implementation and lousy business management practices . A sad story indeed.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Its not good enough plain and simple. If the core of your game isn't good enough to build momentum and growth, small tweaks and patch's even expansions wont cut it. Final Fantasy had to rebuild the game from the ground up to make it popular and that game just continues to grow. There is no real recovery once the merges start. Its a sign your game has peaked and is now retracting back to some sustainable population.
Comments
Perhaps you should have carried on reading the thread, maybe after you read other peoples responses to Good_Apollo you might get a clue.
The game was set up almost from the instant to make money. What Trion is trying to do is make FAST money, and it is obvious in all of their agendas. The push for PVP. The push towards a more gear-centric community. The push towards piracy and sea battles. The push away from anything PVE in any way.
I mean seriously? Have they really come out with all of these patches and updates while people are still glitching their way through GHA on a daily basis?
Did they really ninja nerf the entire game with the 1.7a patch, literally FORCING anyone who was playing a PVE game to move in the direction of cash shop assisted obsidian weapons instead? Only to, simultaneously, draw more unsuspecting players into settling inside PVP zones so that they can either sink or swim like the whales that they want them to be immediately?
Did they really spend the money to open up the world trade channel, make it so that you could repair on the fly, use the auction house on the fly, add bags to the game that can make you enough gold to live off of and basically not have to spend time doing ANYTHING else other than earning those and PVP'ing while 90% of the server can't, and probably never will be able to get beyond the first boss of Krolal's Cradle or even consider taking down some of the other world bosses in that game without the assistance of admin's?
Nah, they're on a money grab like no other. I still play it though because beneath all of that there is still a pretty good game to be played.
But do I trust Trion in any way, shape, or form to be looking out for this game? Absolutely not. Everything they are doing is a calculated move down to the penny to milk this thing for the maximum amount of money that they can. They aren't bleeding anything but LOL's all the way to the bank.
I don't need a majority to hear the truth. That's some mob mentality stuff right there, and I really don't subscribe.
Honestly, everyone knows XLGames can walk on water, anyone who says otherwise is just a Trion Fanboi
Believe it or not, Trion was actually an awesome company back in days of RIFT (sub based, pre expansion) They really did care about players and offered lots of stuff for free that would have been charged in other MMO's
Then came Defiance, game designed by total rookie team that ignored all the feedback from alpha testers. For example they didnt even care when testers told them you can get 9999999 damage and HP just by using Cheatengine.
All they cared about was quest fixes so console crowd would be happy.
And now they failed again in AA effectively loosing last bits of respect any sane gamer could have had left.
Trion is now in same series with rest of the cash grab companies like Perfect world, Gameforge, Gamersfirst, Wargaming, Gaijin.... etc etc. Lack of talent and management.
This is such an old joke that it's not even funny anymore.
Atari = the entire game development world. That's how old it is.
Sony = Verant = whatever we are calling it this week but its still being paid for by SONY.
and the list goes on.
Trion is XLGames. Just because one acts as a shell for the other does not make BOTH of those companies COMPLETELY responsible for what goes on in that game.
If I see my wife and my best friend in bed together, I don't really need to know what's going on in the bed as beds are only made for a couple of things. Likewise business.
My point being, since we are using big words like "conjecture" and all, is that the difference between Trion and XLgames is one of simply Syntax as they, for the sake of the entity known as "Archeage" are one and the same.
Here's the thing...even if we were to draw a distinction between the two, the best thing that we could come up with, and this is provable through the various live-streams that Trion has done that were as poorly thought out as the patches that resulted from them, is that XLGames, for all intents and purposes, put out a fine, playable, product with a lot of long term earning potential, and it was TRION who made the various suggestions that have been leading to the dismantling of that business model in lieu of something akin to a "buy your way through it" kind of franchise.
Ideas like putting more archeum into the game and using terms like "Western Market" which in and of itself has become synonymous with "weak", "greedy", and "lazy" are just the beginning of the shenanigans from which all of this chaos has ensued. Point being that the folks at Trion are no more MMORPG players, in the traditional sense, than the folks that games like World Of Warcraft was created to draw in. No disrespect of course. The genre needs that kind of energy as much as anything else. But my question is does it have to permeate every single title to the point of nausea? Is there, or will there, never again be a game where people can actually feel proud of the time they spent playing it other than to say "Holy Crap! I spent a LOT of money and wasted a LOT of time messing with that piece of junk!"
Every move right now that Archeage development is making is a move towards forcing you to spend more money.
They lessened the hit points on the farm carts and took away the ability to create the things that you needed to fix them and gave those things to the general merchant for gold.
That is only one example and I can go on for days because I am right up in that piece watching their every move as they make it.
This server merge thing? All about giving the whales more feed to justify their expenditures while themselves saving on server money.
And tell me its not.
I agree with this as long as you're not meaning "empty", but rather just low enough population that you're not running into 15-20 people in every location and you still can find pvp or have plenty of trades going on. That's what I like
The term "prior experience goes along way" counts for us mugs that bought into beta just as much.. It will be very interesting to see how many people get taken in again with Trions next venture.. No-one can argue that AA hasn't damaged Trions reputation in a serious way with MMO players.
Trion are not worth bothering with now as far as I'm concerned as things stand, and thats from personal experience with AA since early beta.
Add in less RNJesus and Id sign up for a £25 a month sub right now...
Land barons holding shit loads losing it all will make for a far better player eperience. Will be more to go around if enough barons lose out. Plus their tears would be lovely to taste...
Well, you heard it here first folks, Jake Song and his company now work for Trion!
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Well so much for not merging servers. Trion practically lied to everyone about that. Instead of calling it a server merger, Trion is calling it a "SERVER EVOLUTION". I've personally never seen so much PR spin in my life.
Players are outraged, now that they have discovered that they are going to lose their land.
http://forums.archeagegame.com/showthread.php?196325-OFFICIAL-SERVER-EVOLUTION-amp-FEEDBACK-THREAD-(in-progress)
You can pick up after your dog and put it in a plain brown bag or a fancy bag from Tiffany's but it's still dog poop.
They can spin it however they want but...
And Trion hasn't had a very good record at doing anything with this game beyond cashing in.
Agree. There is nothing they can do that will make the community happy. It's a tough pill to digest. Non instanced housing is by nature something that would be hard to do, much less the cutthroat community they are dealing with.
I self identify as a monkey.
You know man, you drop that name and you make that statement, and you link up your funny meme as though the concept of a company developing a HIGHLY exploitable REAL LIFE CASH BASED game and then releasing that game under a shell company that can then utilize those exploits in order to TRICK people into spending exhorbitant amounts of money on it is a completely unreasonable and impossible concept to you.
Bottom line to me though is this. You CANNOT trust ANY title that has its earnings so firmly tied to the adjustable spending of its player base that is so willing to lackadaisically institute patch after patch which result in the increased spending of REAL LIFE CASH by its player base.
And you can go back through each patch and each move that this company has made and CLEARLY see how it has manipulated the game developed by XLGames to do EXACTLY THAT.
Like I said, I can rifle off a bunch of them right off the top of my head but worst of all would be to STEAL back the land that you have already SOLD to your playerbase just so that you can go out there and grab it all back up and SELL it to them again.
And sure. You can blame it on the gold farmers. You can blame it on the hackers. Hell, you can blame it on grandma Sissy. But at the end of the day it still results in the same thing. The whales buy more Apex and your company makes more money. And that all happened because of something that YOU did. Not anyone else.
If you don't believe me, just head over to the forums and look at what they just released on the subject. Look at it from the perspective of a money guy and think to yourself how this is going to benefit the monetary intake of the title. Then look at it from the perspective of a crooked money guy and think about what ways you could make even MORE money off of this event and then settle in and watch what happens after this thing goes life.
You want a prediction? I can give it to you right now.
Tons of people are going to gear up in order to race to those prime real estate plots that they now know are lucrative. They are going to run down to Hellswamp, they're going to race up to Auroria to get as close to the water as they can, they are going to plop down next to Solis and Two Crowns, and in order to prepare for this they are going to buy TONS of the newly release scarecrow farms that can only be purchase using credits or tons of hard to earn gilda (which would be better spent elsewhere of course and so they will BUY credits) in order to plop them down in those spots where they know they can stage packs in order to make the most gold.
Chi-ching!! Mo money! Mo money!!
Then they are going to be HELLA surprised when they get down to these spots only to find out that SOMEONE with a better excuse, be it a bot with a land grabbing program or a guy from Texas who is closer to the servers or whatever lie they are telling or have been able to get away with telling in the past, has ALREADY GRABBED UP ALL OF THE PLOTS in the area that they beelined for.
So then they are going to try to backtrack, returning to the newbie areas in order to at least set up a safe place to do their basic stuff only to find that ALL OF THAT LAND HAS ALREADY BEEN GRABBED UP AS WELL, by SOMEONE with a good excuse, be it that they got there first or because of one of the other BS stories that have been told that they can get away with. And so the ONLY way that these players are going to be able to find land on these newly HIGHLY populated servers is either going to have to be to buy it, using in game gold, or plop down in a PVP area, feeding the PVP population.
If they buy it using in game gold and they don't have enough in game gold to buy it then they are going to have to buy more Apex in order to get more gold.
Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money, Mo Money!!
If they don't buy it and settle out in the PVP areas where they are most assuredly going to be ganked on a daily basis then they are going to have to get their gear together in a hurry, and the only way to do that is to BUY it with gold. And if you don't have enough gold to do that then you are going to have to buy a few more Apex in order to get that gold.
Cha-Ching! Cha-Ching!!! Mo Money!, Mo Money!!
And best of all. If the people who have grabbed up all of this land just happen to be un-sancitoned, mission impossible type, upon capture we will disavow any knowledge of your actions type employee's or relatives of employee's of XLGAMES or TRION, then you not only get to force the playerbase to spend a bunch more gold in order to get what they already earned in the game the hard way, but you also get to DESTROY THE GOLD, taking it completely out of the circulation of the economy and forcing ALL the players to either play harder or .....you guessed it, BUY MORE APEX
Cha-Ching!! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money! Mo Money!!
And let's not even mention the idea of shoving everyone together in the first place. I play on one of those low pop servers and trust and believe me when I tell you that the Whales are there.
How much more then are those folks going to spend in order to compete with a whole influx of new Whales? It's gonna be a feeding frenzy!! And guess who makes all of THAT money too?
Cha-Ching!! Cha-Ching!! Mo Money!! Mo Money!!
And yeah, everything that I am saying could just be some kind of paranoid fantasy. But when laid up against the actions that this game his already taken towards is playerbase, actions that you can easily go and see in the release and response of each patch, would you really be willing to lay your hard earned cash up against so many possibilities for corruption?
Not saying not to play the game. Just saying that for those of you who are all up in there trying to beat each other by spending a ton of your real money, these guys have got you in a really bad way and are squeezing for every drop of milk that they can get out of you. And to those of us who are simply in there playing the game at the pace that it was designed to be played sans that kind of expenditure it is really obvious that this is what's going on.
And anyone that tells you that this stuff is impossible is no doubt either looking at the whole thing through rose colored lenses, suspect, or plain old not paying attention.
This is simple looking out for yourself, and your money, 101.
And the paranoia credo (my own creation) says that I am not the smartest man in the world so if I can think of it, odds are that someone else has thought of it too, is already doing it, or is going to do it.
@jesad. Pretty much as you described.
I am so disappointed in gamers today. They are willing to take this crap.
They will wait it out and see what Trion actually does.
Instead of Evolution, players should just have a Revolution. (UNINSTALL)
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
What happen they did make a subscription only server? then end up people leaving due to any part of the game, they can't get the server full, then be same thing people will say, if they cared about the game or the community there throw more money at ads to get more people in. When pure sub game are not doing so hot this days over f2p. But mmo are money grab they are there to get your money. But if it was sub, can't play so have to pay up even if it's bad.
I found this interesting.
The Public Relations Director is from SOE.
She is supposedly a professional. Calling her customers "Land Barons/Slum Lords."
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-04-16-linda-brasse-carlson-joins-trion-worlds
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
Funny thing here, i play subscription only.
and guys, stop spamming over and over, over the same matter, there is a sticky on top of this forum for all the pay to win gibberish of yours, dont need to spam all that junk on every topic.
For that matter i have an constant influx of APEX through gold (for free in your terminology) and wouldnt need to spend any real money and play for entirely free.
ITS MY CHOICE to pay a subscription and get Patron to support the developers for the best gameplay on the market.
I think she's trying to entice all the people who quit over not being able to get land to come back to be milked again. Of course it's false hope. Hackers will take the land as usual and then anyone who wants land will have to spend real money to get the gold and tax certs to buy it from them on top of subbing or resubbing for the ridiculously low odds that they'll actually get a piece of land during the rush. I'm betting almost no real players will. It will go to the hackers. And Trion won't care because it's more money in their pockets either way.
Also, clearly PvP whales are more lucrative than FarmAge whales. I guess once you shell out hundreds for land on your server you can pretty much go along spending little to nothing after that, but PvPers will always be chasing the latest Pay to Win gear.
All I can say is I'm glad I never spent money on this game, but I'm very sad that greed ruined what could have been a fun MMO.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
I joined this game when it first released. I eventually managed to acquire four 24x24 and 2 16x16 plots all adjoining each other in Two Crowns, in one of the more lucrative servers, and all of the other wonderful crap that goes along with it. As the weeks went by and all of these reports of hacks, and exploits, and the P2W money grab increased, I saw this "train wreck" for what it was and dropped this game cold-turkey, like a bad habit, leaving everything behind. I haven't looked back since. The game is an invaluable text book lesson for any aspiring gaming company about how NOT to manage an MMO. So much unrealized potential lost in this game and it is all due to poor game play implementation and lousy business management practices . A sad story indeed.
Its not good enough plain and simple. If the core of your game isn't good enough to build momentum and growth, small tweaks and patch's even expansions wont cut it. Final Fantasy had to rebuild the game from the ground up to make it popular and that game just continues to grow. There is no real recovery once the merges start. Its a sign your game has peaked and is now retracting back to some sustainable population.