I am so glad I stuck with the Japanese version, Trion is in the same category as Turbine when it comes to MMOs, garbage. Game On got Archeage's chat in order quickly (even before the F2P change), spam is near non-existent and they are slowly chipping away at the P2W features XL introduced to the game for Trion and the west.
Sad that no one in the west will know the non-P2W Archeage without jumping through hoops to play the non-western version.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
The last straw for me was the quiet change of the patron benefits.
What was originally sold as "10% discount on all Marketplace purchases" was simply changed to "10% discount only on purchases of credits for use in the Marketplace". They simply reneged on the deal.
And Trion had the gall to announce this as an ADDITIONAL perk of being a patron !
Claiming that this revision was because the promised benefit "would have taken uncomfortably long to implement" is simply an insult to my intelligence. The benefit was promised months before launch was even announced, just exactly how difficult WAS it to implement ? Does it require 6+ months of effort ? Puhleeeeze...
While I think most of the blame for AA's model falls squarely on XL games shoulders, Trion has one very unforgivable fail here.
The 10% patron thing...I would bet money that its XL games that does not want to give this. But you cant turn around and blatantly lie to the player base, treating them like idiots. As a previous poster said, its insulting to people's intelligence to say it would take uncomfortably long to implement.
Trion is no stranger to dishonestly treating people like morons like this (we are not closing servers, we are converting them to trial servers for an upcoming promotion...) but this goes beyond that. They need to deliver on their promise no matter how long it takes.
Usually i don't mind F2P games with cash shop. I have been playing NWN, STO, SWTOR etc without any problems. But given the nature of the sandbox design and open world PVP..the cash shop madness in AA is on whole new level.
To say it is out of control would be an understatement.
inside of me is laughing a little, i feel sorry for those who waited this game for almost 5 years and then the game ended up like this, i really am glad that i never fell for this game, though i always wanted to play
i'll be enjoying my WoD and hopefully you guys will get what you deserve from Trion!
I never ever say anything like this on here... but this article really comes off as a bitchy post we normally see on the forums. Not a professional editorial.
TBH? This was an awesome week. The trees and everything else is what I love about MMO's. The changes and evolving game. I know ton of others that think the same. It always keeps you on your toes and its not like the big overhaul that SWG did years before. I mean really look at all the changes? How many of these changes destroyed your life? So what if you dont like it? I didnt like the tree change either but I also look at it as a temporary inconvenience that all of them are. I can still play and enjoy myself. All you end gamers need to understand you will never be happy with an MMO when you shoot for end game. Take your time and enjoy it. Heck I have been playing since Alpha and I have not hit 50 yet. Why? Because im truly enjoying the hell outta the game. You sit back and do that? Your intensity goes up when it comes time for adrenaline and it is freaking amazing.
I claimed our castle, got my pretty new mount and armor, land is getting distributed to my guild members, made a HUGE chunk off of collecting taxes (50%, welcome to Calm lands), ran Serpentis, continue to dominate the East faction and business is as usual.
I would have to say, it was a pretty good week. Now for all of the things you posted above? Yes a lot of it sucks, but what do you expect from a FTP cash grab game? People are use to having everything handed to them on a golden platter, and when it actually happens, they complain about it? I hate to break it to EVERYONE but you are the reason this happens.
The average MMO players wants everything now, now, now and now and then when the devs finally give in, corners have been cut things overlooked and a piss poor product is released. Social media is everything now days, and when players blow up a companies social media demanding shit they are pressured to please them from shareholders and higher ups.
So, why the shitty release of Auroria? Why the terrible server stability? Because Trion has been rushed since Alpha/Beta to get people onto Auroria as soon as possible, and they have to get XL games to reverse engineer EVERYTHING to make this Korean MMO as Western as possible. Why the rush? Because we Western players need everything now, and we aren't willing to wait, oh god no, if you make us wait even 5 minutes more than promised, we will blow up every media outlet you have, cry wolf and even charge back the money we gave you, even though it is our fault that we rushed you and it is a shitty release.
The chests with the Tree's I'll admit ruined the economy pretty bad, that was something that should have never seen light. But, everything else, they did for the players to keep them happy and now it has blown up in their face, do I feel bad for the people quitting? No, honestly, a large chunk of them are the ones who wanted this to happen and now it was delivered poorly and they cannot handle it because they are your typical impatient Western MMO player.
This is why mmo's fail these days, its the players themselves that kill it, if something is remotely diffculty then whine cry and complain, then once its nerfed? they still while cry and complain except this time about how its too easy. As you said, most western mmo players expect everything handed to them on a golden platter due to mmorpgs like world of warcraft, this trend of having everything handed to you pretty much started with world of warcraft, and its just gotten worse. Was never like this till world of warcraft came out and brought mmo's to the casuals. Now casuals infest in the market and want everything now now now with no effort put in. Final fantasy 11 caved into casuals finally, and the game got ruined because its a complete joke now compared to the epic journey the game used to be.
TL:DR
You reap what you sow, you wanted this, you got it, now deal with it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
I claimed our castle, got my pretty new mount and armor, land is getting distributed to my guild members, made a HUGE chunk off of collecting taxes (50%, welcome to Calm lands), ran Serpentis, continue to dominate the East faction and business is as usual.
I would have to say, it was a pretty good week. Now for all of the things you posted above? Yes a lot of it sucks, but what do you expect from a FTP cash grab game? People are use to having everything handed to them on a golden platter, and when it actually happens, they complain about it? I hate to break it to EVERYONE but you are the reason this happens.
The average MMO players wants everything now, now, now and now and then when the devs finally give in, corners have been cut things overlooked and a piss poor product is released. Social media is everything now days, and when players blow up a companies social media demanding shit they are pressured to please them from shareholders and higher ups.
So, why the shitty release of Auroria? Why the terrible server stability? Because Trion has been rushed since Alpha/Beta to get people onto Auroria as soon as possible, and they have to get XL games to reverse engineer EVERYTHING to make this Korean MMO as Western as possible. Why the rush? Because we Western players need everything now, and we aren't willing to wait, oh god no, if you make us wait even 5 minutes more than promised, we will blow up every media outlet you have, cry wolf and even charge back the money we gave you, even though it is our fault that we rushed you and it is a shitty release.
The chests with the Tree's I'll admit ruined the economy pretty bad, that was something that should have never seen light. But, everything else, they did for the players to keep them happy and now it has blown up in their face, do I feel bad for the people quitting? No, honestly, a large chunk of them are the ones who wanted this to happen and now it was delivered poorly and they cannot handle it because they are your typical impatient Western MMO player.
The main problem for many mmo's isn't so much satisfying the playerbase but managing growth, profitability and long term game health. There are times where certain moves can ruin the economy and while this seems like a way of overcoming RMT's, lack of supplies and so on, they are looking at it through the lens of "I am a developer and this is what will happen" and less so as a "I am a player, this is what it WILL do to me".
That said there are developers and games that have made leaps by putting the right people in place and being honest such as as "this is what we are doing and we know that this issue is a problem and we are looking into it to make the best decision that doesn't cause mass upheaval".
Games like FF14 and Dust514, two games voted in the past by this website as being among THE WORSE they've reviewed have made overhauls in staff and while the verdict is out on FF14 being a successful overhaul Dust514 is heading in that direction too. At some level Trion and XL games need to take a page of seeing what players are concerned with and how they "Experience" the game.
I firmly believe caving into the playerbase is a bad idea but I also believe that ignoring them is equally as bad. They have to look at the situation at hand and honestly synthesize the best ideas from all sides to confront their biggest problems and how to best approach it.
Games like FF14 and Dust514, two games voted in the past by this website as being among THE WORSE they've reviewed have made overhauls in staff and while the verdict is out on FF14 being a successful overhaul
Pretty sure FFXIV ARR has had the most successful first year since LOTRO, maybe even WoW.
A lot of this due to the license, but the game seems to have had excellent retention in this era of steep declines after the first few months.
Wow, this article was surprisingly up front about things. It's not very often I read an MMO article and think "Ouch, burn!" multiple times throughout it.
It's definately well-deserved by either Trion and/or XLGames, though, IMHO.
LOL, like none of this hasn't been lighting up the forums...oh an article on MMORPG makes it real... come on folks, it's like saying after the fire, maybe we shouldn't have used lighter fluid.
Would be nice to see an article that hits the streets before it's plastered all over the internet twice over... news after the fact isn't news, it's a replay.
Compared to the forums, it's very tame.
My point is, compared to most other articles on this site, however, it's surprisingly vicious.
IMHO this is one of those "Trion/XLGames screwed up so bad that even MMORPG.com is calling them out on it" cases. It's not the first either (there was already a "Trion/XLGames screwed up so bad that even massively is calling them out on it" case, earlier. ...two, IIRC. Though I guess we did already have a "Trion/XLGames gave the MMORPG reviewer a free cash shop pack and he still gave them a negatively-worded review" case on this site, I suppose)
Yes, i too am surprised at how mmorpg.com is publishing such articles, as of late.
Back to the topic, it's obvious to everyone that things in Archeage are just not right for many reasons, whatever your take on F2P cash shop is.
From my personal experience after playing through CB3, 4 and OB, all i can say, beyond any conspirative demagogy, is that i have never ever came across a game with so many technical issues, more so when the people bought their access to the game.
Now i'll just stop here and ponder some more about paying rights to test something that eventually proves this low quality.
Originally posted by DMKano The Auroria fail only happened on NA servers - EU servers never got the bad Auroria patch so Trion waited to get the fix from XL before rolling Auroria out to EU.
DMKano defender of AA. It still happened even though it was only for NA players it still happened
Trion's greed and shady business tricks played a big role in why I quit the game and will never pay a penny on a Trion product ever again. This whole thing has been a poor joke on the customer's cost.
Apparently the 10% 'discount' also didn't apply to founder packs and purchases made during alpha/beta. Mind you I have already quit before this news arrived, but Trion couldn't be more obvious: Thanks for the cash, now fuck off!
ArcheAge and Trion are harsh reminders to myself and many others to be more conservative in our spending, and only spend when it is truly deserved. A sad moment for more honest developers, since this is another blow to the general trust between player and developer/publisher.
I personally spend close to 300 euro's on ArcheAge, Trion made sure that won't ever happen again.
I can't belive that they were handed a really good platform to host and expand a free to play game like this and handled it so poorly. I waited 2 years for this to come to NA and even pre ordered the $100 Alpha version. I never felt like I just thre money in the toilet B4 this release. And sence the rediculus events some of that were named here took place. I wipe my hands of this game and forget all about it.
NEVER again will I play a Trion game again. Never.
This game showed signs of being pay2win ever since the beginning. I don't know why I even bothered, but I'm glad I stopped paying. It was a game with great potential ruined by greedy developers/publishers.
This was also a lesson to me to never trust shady F2P models. I wasted too much money on ArcheAge.
Had lucky this time for been EU costumer, after the disaster in NA they push the EU patch release and things were more smoth around here.
But the problems are still there, maybe less people then NA but even so to many cant buy patron status and others cant even log in game, one of my friends is in this situation and i cant pay the monthly fee to my daughter account, ask suport since last saturday and nothing untill now, my account works fine, for now.
I will continue because i love the game but i confess i never expect something like this from Trion....
The best part is even when the server pops all drop so low that the remaining few fans left can get all the land their hearts desire they still won't be able to...because it's f2p no matter how dead it is there will always be bots and there will come a time where a higher percentage of land is owned by bots then actual players.
From what I heard and read, I believe they stuck these Thunderstruck producing trees in because they are trying to speed up our development to meet up with the other countries.
Though can't agree with and think of it as a money grab but can't argue that it's not an attempt to move us along though they haven't made many happy.
The whole new land grab was a disaster, and recently I just cant' find myself getting on the game anymore.
Comments
Trion took a gamble? They just simply fail at maintaining it, careless.
There are already successful MMO coming from the East, ie. Final Fantasy XIV: ARR 2.0+
I am so glad I stuck with the Japanese version, Trion is in the same category as Turbine when it comes to MMOs, garbage. Game On got Archeage's chat in order quickly (even before the F2P change), spam is near non-existent and they are slowly chipping away at the P2W features XL introduced to the game for Trion and the west.
Sad that no one in the west will know the non-P2W Archeage without jumping through hoops to play the non-western version.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
The last straw for me was the quiet change of the patron benefits.
What was originally sold as "10% discount on all Marketplace purchases" was simply changed to "10% discount only on purchases of credits for use in the Marketplace". They simply reneged on the deal.
And Trion had the gall to announce this as an ADDITIONAL perk of being a patron !
Claiming that this revision was because the promised benefit "would have taken uncomfortably long to implement" is simply an insult to my intelligence. The benefit was promised months before launch was even announced, just exactly how difficult WAS it to implement ? Does it require 6+ months of effort ? Puhleeeeze...
While I think most of the blame for AA's model falls squarely on XL games shoulders, Trion has one very unforgivable fail here.
The 10% patron thing...I would bet money that its XL games that does not want to give this. But you cant turn around and blatantly lie to the player base, treating them like idiots. As a previous poster said, its insulting to people's intelligence to say it would take uncomfortably long to implement.
Trion is no stranger to dishonestly treating people like morons like this (we are not closing servers, we are converting them to trial servers for an upcoming promotion...) but this goes beyond that. They need to deliver on their promise no matter how long it takes.
To say it is out of control would be an understatement.
- Hypetrain derail - - Burns in mass pileup -
Such sad failure.
inside of me is laughing a little, i feel sorry for those who waited this game for almost 5 years and then the game ended up like this, i really am glad that i never fell for this game, though i always wanted to play
i'll be enjoying my WoD and hopefully you guys will get what you deserve from Trion!
So What Now?
This is why mmo's fail these days, its the players themselves that kill it, if something is remotely diffculty then whine cry and complain, then once its nerfed? they still while cry and complain except this time about how its too easy. As you said, most western mmo players expect everything handed to them on a golden platter due to mmorpgs like world of warcraft, this trend of having everything handed to you pretty much started with world of warcraft, and its just gotten worse. Was never like this till world of warcraft came out and brought mmo's to the casuals. Now casuals infest in the market and want everything now now now with no effort put in. Final fantasy 11 caved into casuals finally, and the game got ruined because its a complete joke now compared to the epic journey the game used to be.
TL:DR
You reap what you sow, you wanted this, you got it, now deal with it.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
The main problem for many mmo's isn't so much satisfying the playerbase but managing growth, profitability and long term game health. There are times where certain moves can ruin the economy and while this seems like a way of overcoming RMT's, lack of supplies and so on, they are looking at it through the lens of "I am a developer and this is what will happen" and less so as a "I am a player, this is what it WILL do to me".
That said there are developers and games that have made leaps by putting the right people in place and being honest such as as "this is what we are doing and we know that this issue is a problem and we are looking into it to make the best decision that doesn't cause mass upheaval".
Games like FF14 and Dust514, two games voted in the past by this website as being among THE WORSE they've reviewed have made overhauls in staff and while the verdict is out on FF14 being a successful overhaul Dust514 is heading in that direction too. At some level Trion and XL games need to take a page of seeing what players are concerned with and how they "Experience" the game.
I firmly believe caving into the playerbase is a bad idea but I also believe that ignoring them is equally as bad. They have to look at the situation at hand and honestly synthesize the best ideas from all sides to confront their biggest problems and how to best approach it.
Pretty sure FFXIV ARR has had the most successful first year since LOTRO, maybe even WoW.
A lot of this due to the license, but the game seems to have had excellent retention in this era of steep declines after the first few months.
You know a game is bad when even MMMORPG.com trashes it.
Ouch.
paid for the patron during early beta, played for 2 days, asked for a refund
never looked back.
mega win, never been so glad with a decision i made, lol lol, not sure with you all, but i saw this game as a fail even during the beta it self
lol
So What Now?
@TiamatRoar ;
Yes, i too am surprised at how mmorpg.com is publishing such articles, as of late.
Back to the topic, it's obvious to everyone that things in Archeage are just not right for many reasons, whatever your take on F2P cash shop is.
From my personal experience after playing through CB3, 4 and OB, all i can say, beyond any conspirative demagogy, is that i have never ever came across a game with so many technical issues, more so when the people bought their access to the game.
Now i'll just stop here and ponder some more about paying rights to test something that eventually proves this low quality.
DMKano defender of AA. It still happened even though it was only for NA players it still happened
Trion's greed and shady business tricks played a big role in why I quit the game and will never pay a penny on a Trion product ever again. This whole thing has been a poor joke on the customer's cost.
Apparently the 10% 'discount' also didn't apply to founder packs and purchases made during alpha/beta. Mind you I have already quit before this news arrived, but Trion couldn't be more obvious: Thanks for the cash, now fuck off!
ArcheAge and Trion are harsh reminders to myself and many others to be more conservative in our spending, and only spend when it is truly deserved. A sad moment for more honest developers, since this is another blow to the general trust between player and developer/publisher.
I personally spend close to 300 euro's on ArcheAge, Trion made sure that won't ever happen again.
Trion's handling of AA made me unsub from Rift and completely uninstall Glyph and all Trion products from my computer.
I had already quit AA more than a week before Auroria.
In addition to being finished with Trion, I'm done with all f2p titles. I'm letting my sub on SWTOR run out this month.
I just have ESO and WoW right now.
I can't belive that they were handed a really good platform to host and expand a free to play game like this and handled it so poorly. I waited 2 years for this to come to NA and even pre ordered the $100 Alpha version. I never felt like I just thre money in the toilet B4 this release. And sence the rediculus events some of that were named here took place. I wipe my hands of this game and forget all about it.
NEVER again will I play a Trion game again. Never.
Had lucky this time for been EU costumer, after the disaster in NA they push the EU patch release and things were more smoth around here.
But the problems are still there, maybe less people then NA but even so to many cant buy patron status and others cant even log in game, one of my friends is in this situation and i cant pay the monthly fee to my daughter account, ask suport since last saturday and nothing untill now, my account works fine, for now.
I will continue because i love the game but i confess i never expect something like this from Trion....
From what I heard and read, I believe they stuck these Thunderstruck producing trees in because they are trying to speed up our development to meet up with the other countries.
Though can't agree with and think of it as a money grab but can't argue that it's not an attempt to move us along though they haven't made many happy.
The whole new land grab was a disaster, and recently I just cant' find myself getting on the game anymore.