Is it normal that all the Russian players got kicked out of the SOTA community?

blorpykins · March 2018

Starr putt up this message a couple weeks ago, and it all happened pretty quietly.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/black-sun-customer-migration.110422/

In order to better serve our customers in Russia and the Baltic territories we are migrating all of them to Black Sun’s service starting with Release 51. This will allow them to have access to native Russian speakers for customer service and forums and it will also give them access to a fully localized store. This change should result in a much better customer experience for our players in those territories.

But now those players are figuring out what happened when they try to come to the forums and they are pissed. If they complain in the main forums the thread is locked and there is no answer to the questions of why they were forced out. They're just gone and no one seems to care because Port and Travian built a community forum with multi languages and even a Ambassador program. But they kicked all of Russia out. These are Kickstarter backers and POT owners with guild responsibilities and they all got the boot. That just doesn't seem normal. Do any other "single server" games do this to their players?

Wellspring · March 2018

Are they posting in Russian? I don't follow SOTA at all, but the change would make sense to me if it was due to the language barrier.

kitarad · March 2018

This game is in Bizarro world.

Electro057 · March 2018

They gave them their own custom forums and customer service. Sounds pretty generous to me.

blorpykins · March 2018

It's odd, there's this one thread here that hasn't been locked yet. Most of the players use a translate service to post in English if they need too. There is an entire new section of the forums for many different languages, but not for the Russians. The Russians also have a different cash shop and it's coming out that even their EULA is different. But it's all on the same game server.

It's confusing for me and I'm not really affected, accept all the Russian players I know are ready to quit.

SBFord · March 2018

I'm sure that Portalarium has a lot of "reasons" why this has been done, though it's inexplicable since many Russians are proficient English speakers and there's no real reason to exclude them both from the official forums and site.

Is there a different publisher for the Russian community similar to that in Black Desert?

Kyleran · March 2018

SBFord said:

I'm sure that Portalarium has a lot of "reasons" why this has been done, though it's inexplicable since many Russians are proficient English speakers and there's no real reason to exclude them both from the official forums and site.

Is there a different publisher for the Russian community similar to that in Black Desert?

Tisk, how soon they forget, in fact you helped share this news with everyone right here back in May 2017.

https://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/news.cfm?read=44190&game=935&ismb=1

Likely the transfer of Russian based forum accounts was part of the deal inked with Black Sun.

Many would view this as a plus, and I assume Russian players can create another account on main forums, but perhaps not?

blorpykins · March 2018

SBFord said:

I'm sure that Portalarium has a lot of "reasons" why this has been done, though it's inexplicable since many Russians are proficient English speakers and there's no real reason to exclude them both from the official forums and site.

Is there a different publisher for the Russian community similar to that in Black Desert?

There is, Portalarium has two Publishers Blacksun (Russia) and Travian (Germany). Where it doesn't feel normal is Portalarium has a Travian moderator helping out in the official forums and they are creating new forums for each language that will be getting localization. Travian and Portalarium just launched a campaign to find moderators to run each new language forum. The Russians and everyone around them are moved our of the community without even being asked if they want to go. Some of them aren't linked to Steam and now they can't get to their accounts to manage their cash shop purchases or to make sure their shipping information is correct for physical rewards.

There's also the matter of RMT. The player marketplace is on the official forums, and all the whales are there for the RMT, but the Russians and that entire part of the world is being migrated before the game launches and exactly when every other country and language gets their own moderator and language specific forum? It seems like there is more going on behind the scenes as to why this would happen.

SBFord · March 2018

Well then, given the known quantity, I don't see a problem, though I don't see any reason to not let them continue to post on the official site as well. That is, obviously, where the devs hang out.

Elsabolts · March 2018

Maybe they got caught hacking ? lol

SBFord · March 2018

Elsabolts said:

Maybe they got caught hacking ? lol

Well isn't that a gross stereotype and highly inappropriate.

CrazKanuk · March 2018

Soooooooooo, are we saying that we find it really weird and shocking that someone blocked non-natives from accessing their country...I mean site. Huh.... Interesting....

IceAge · March 2018

I don't know about you , but this guy is right . I mean he lives in Latvia, a European Union Country , with a language other then Russian yet, he is ..thrown in a Russian "territory" with , and I quote : "This will allow them to have access to native Russian speakers for customer service and forums and it will also give them access to a fully localized store"

Bad management is bad !

Ungood · March 2018

As the OP, it sounds like an Publisher issue.

Black Sun, has taken over as the publisher to the Russian communities, and no doubt paid to do so. Hence the new Store, EULA, and the like.

As such it might be a contract issue to have them post on other forums at this point.

Nothing against them directly, just a part of the agreement with Black Sun.

Wizardry · March 2018

Wellspring said:

Are they posting in Russian? I don't follow SOTA at all, but the change would make sense to me if it was due to the language barrier.

Only on paper but not in reality.

First of all the mention of LOCALIZED should scare anyone.Perhaps those Russian players already know a more intensive cash shop,who knows?Perhaps worse servers there can be lots of reasons.

I wil say this,FFXI we all played on the same servers from ALL languages and NO problems.Customer support had all the needed languages,simply ask for an English or Dutch or whatever support person.

ALso this would only ASSUME that ALL Russian players speak Russian and would NOT be an accurate assumption.Also WHO is to say the customer support would be better for them on a Russian based server?Who really knows,maybe they would only have 1 rep ,long wait times or simply be lazy and not answer phones at all or not care at all.I have personally dealt with foreign tech support in some Indie games and my experience was ALWAYS awful.

Interitus · March 2018

CrazKanuk said:

Soooooooooo, are we saying that we find it really weird and shocking that someone blocked non-natives from accessing their country...I mean site. Huh.... Interesting....

Except the rest of the world can apparently use those forums. So instead it looks more like a targeted group than mass exclusion.

JeffSpicoli · March 2018

kitarad said:

This game is in Bizarro world.

I feel more like we are living in it......

Sovrath · March 2018

Interitus said:

CrazKanuk said:

Soooooooooo, are we saying that we find it really weird and shocking that someone blocked non-natives from accessing their country...I mean site. Huh.... Interesting....

Except the rest of the world can apparently use those forums. So instead it looks more like a targeted group than mass exclusion.

I think it's pretty clear it has more to do with the Russian Publisher consolidating their players.

blorpykins · March 2018

Sovrath said:

I think it's pretty clear it has more to do with the Russian Publisher consolidating their players.

It was a very fast change, and it is affecting how people access their accounts and even their Kickstarter rewards. Some services in the game are tied to your account on the official website, and now people with thousands of dollars are being redirected.

There hasn't been a notification or statement from Blacksun either. The only notifications came from Portalarium telling everyone that that have to go elsewhere for service and help. It's not a good situation for lots of players right now.

If it is some sort of contractual thing with Blacksun why the last minute change? Blacksun went live with their localized services months ago.

Vrika · March 2018

It's normal that players are allowed to move to the new local service when it becomes available, but forcibly relocating people who have already paid is not normal.

On the plus side, if Black Sun doesn't translate everything to English and provide English customer service, then residents of Baltic States can get full refunds on everything they've spent on SotA.

Tiamat64 · March 2018

blorpykins said:

Sovrath said:

I think it's pretty clear it has more to do with the Russian Publisher consolidating their players.

It was a very fast change, and it is affecting how people access their accounts and even their Kickstarter rewards. Some services in the game are tied to your account on the official website, and now people with thousands of dollars are being redirected.

Hopefully next time they won't hand all that money over to untested people.

TheScavenger · March 2018

Its Trump's fault

...
...
...

I'll see myself out the door now

blorpykins · March 2018

Player from Canada says he's getting this. With commercial release in a couple weeks, they should probably try for an easier fix.

Sovrath · March 2018

blorpykins said:

Sovrath said:

I think it's pretty clear it has more to do with the Russian Publisher consolidating their players.

It was a very fast change, and it is affecting how people access their accounts and even their Kickstarter rewards. Some services in the game are tied to your account on the official website, and now people with thousands of dollars are being redirected.

There hasn't been a notification or statement from Blacksun either. The only notifications came from Portalarium telling everyone that that have to go elsewhere for service and help. It's not a good situation for lots of players right now.

If it is some sort of contractual thing with Blacksun why the last minute change? Blacksun went live with their localized services months ago.

Over the years, having seen various bits of news about development studios I've come to the conclusion that the industry just isn't professional.

Many developers are bad about communication. Some of them just think that if nothing is going on then there is no reason for communication or if there is a change that the players will figure it out.

I strongly suspect it has more to do with these programmer/gamers who are now in charge of companies and they never developed the appropriate skills for how to deal with the public.

I could be wrong but given my exposure to the few developers I've met I don't think so.

Aragon100 · March 2018

The Latvia and Ukraine people are not happy.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/avatar-customer-transition-to-russian-speaking-forums-and-website-really.111022/

Snikorts - I find it offensive to consider Baltic States as russian native speaker countries.
Are we going back to USSR? Really?

As far as I know we are in EU for a while now

English is not my native language, neither is russian... Avatars should choose for themselves where to belong.
It is especially puzzling regarding recent political developments in Russia.
This is not what I have backed for.
Hope that things will change for best.

Babai - I backed SotA on Kickstarter and now lost all access to my Royal Founder rewards page, shipment information etc. I feel completely betrayed and my personal data sold to some weird company with bad reputation...
I really want to have choice in a situations that involve my personal data and be back with international community.

Babai - Looks like i can't even change my avatar picture. I just got redirect to some weird russian site... that is incredibly infuriating. I doubt that even legal to sell their customers that way without their prior consent.

Babai - Well, at least one good news for me that i bought all my pledges and addons with Paypal so my credit card don't compromised and i don't need to block and re issue it ASAP.

ChavaiotH - Yes we have access to this forum, but we don't have access to our accounts anymore. And to the store. Many of us are not from Russia and can't buy anything in the russianstore.

Snikorts - Great... Now https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com redirects to https://www.sota-game.com/ and everything is in Russian language.
Only way to reach official forums is to type manually https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/ .
And there is no way to switch back. Which leads to less reasons to play this game.
Such an insult for a backer...

Astraeis · March 2018

This kind of dickery does the game no service.

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