---

Originally posted by Milliecake
I've been kinda siding with Trion on this one despite the obvious issues of bots and scripts and selling keys, it's all advertising so it's all good.
 
But then they kick the fans in the teeth by banning a simple story competition with VIP keys as the prize:
 
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?6307-Official-Rift-Short-Story-Writing-Contest!
 
It seems like they're deliberately trying to alienate the loyal fanbase in favour of the mindless masses, reminds me of another MMO company that I parted ways with this year...

---

 How is this kicking the players in the face? Abigale, the CM who closed the topic, clearly sad herself, said that the topic had to be closed because it wasn't actually "official"

---

Hi, Folks-

 

While this is a great idea and I salute Josh for doing it, we cannot allow a contest to be run on our official forum that is not run by Trion.

I do very much like the idea and I think you'll see a writing contest coming up soon. We just can't have an "official" contest that is not really official. Our lawyer would not be happy with me. ;)

So thanks, Josh, for the idea.

And sorry I can't let it happen.

 

---

That doesn't sound to me like a company that's trying to punch you in the back of the face.

Originally posted by Benthon

 

 How is this kicking the players in the face? Abigale, the CM who closed the topic, clearly sad herself, said that the topic had to be closed because it wasn't actually "official"

That doesn't sound to me like a company that's trying to punch you in the back of the face.

She said any competition run on their site, he could have named it unofficial and it would still have been locked.

As I said, they seem happy to hand out VIP keys like candy for advertising and I have no problem with that, but when the fans actually try to offer people a way to obtain one with some real effort other than spamming F5, they get knocked back?

Their game, their advertising, but it's not creating a good impression when they stomp on the fans' efforts.

Originally posted by Milliecake

Originally posted by Benthon

 

 How is this kicking the players in the face? Abigale, the CM who closed the topic, clearly sad herself, said that the topic had to be closed because it wasn't actually "official"

That doesn't sound to me like a company that's trying to punch you in the back of the face.

 

She said any competition run on their site, he could have named it unofficial and it would still have been locked.

 

As I said, they seem happy to hand out VIP keys like candy for advertising and I have no problem with that, but when the fans actually try to offer people a way to obtain one with some real effort other than spamming F5, they get knocked back?

 

Their game, their advertising, but it's not creating a good impression when they stomp on the fans' efforts.

 Running any kind of contest on their official forums isn't a good idea. It runs into legalities as Abigale explained. She wasn't rude and expressed sympathy to Josh, the OP.

Sorry, but the thread is titled: "Official Rift Short Story Writing Contest!" ... :\

I just remembered why im a reader.. not an avid poster to this site

The bots will bring you down to there level.. and beat you with experience.

108

Originally posted by Benthon

Running any kind of contest on their official forums isn't a good idea. It runs into legalities as Abigale explained. She wasn't rude and expressed sympathy to Josh, the OP.

Sorry, but the thread is titled: "Official Rift Short Story Writing Contest!" ... :\

Title was unfortunate I'll agree. And it wouldn't hurt to just change it or even make a new thread but the wording "we cannot allow a contest to be run on our official forum that is not run by Trion..." suggest even that wouldn't be acceptable. I could be wrong.

If I'm not, then I'm really confounded how multiple threads saying 'Go here to win a VIP key by spamming F5!' is any different to a thread saying 'Email some short stories here to win a VIP key'.

And no she wasn't rude, she's a very good CM with a very difficult job.

Originally posted by Milliecake

Originally posted by Benthon

Running any kind of contest on their official forums isn't a good idea. It runs into legalities as Abigale explained. She wasn't rude and expressed sympathy to Josh, the OP.

Sorry, but the thread is titled: "Official Rift Short Story Writing Contest!" ... :\

 

Title was unfortunate I'll agree. And it wouldn't hurt to just change it or even make a new thread but the wording "we cannot allow a contest to be run on our official forum that is not run by Trion..." suggest even that wouldn't be acceptable. I could be wrong.

 

If I'm not, then I'm really confounded how multiple threads saying 'Go here to win a VIP key by spamming F5!' is any different to a thread saying 'Email some short stories here to win a VIP key'.

 

And no she wasn't rude, she's a very good CM with a very difficult job.

 It is much different. :) One is a player trying to run a content on their official site and another is an off-site link to spam F5 for a VIP key.

While the story idea is great (and Abigale suggested they possibly use it in the future), it's really just the issue of a player running a contest on the official forums, which runs into all kinds of legal jib-jab that only a lawyer would care about.

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

So bascially we can use more than 1  account to get more  keys, and use bots LOVELY way to ruin another game.

 

You people love to ruin games and cheaters win again... Your blind if you do not see a problem with this as  people are selling your BETA CODES...  I do not understand why you do not see anything wrong, so bascially I can win a key and make a new account and win another, and another and another.

 

Also I can run bots o many accounts and win many to sell, I mean cmon it can be done, and 43-100 is fishy to say the least...Block there IP or block them from posting on RIFT forums. 

 

Anyhow I knew you would do nothing about this I plan to show the devs on the Rift forums and see what they think of this unfair and fishy contest.. i'm a programmer I know what can be done to cheat these contest and when I see 43-100 new accounts that sounds  fishy and your letting people win more than 1.

 

/rant off, I won't bother wasting my time on the next 2 days and I suggest the rest of you do the same, unless you plan on cheating thats the only way to get one.. unless you get lucky...

 

Alot of us did spam and did not get  one due to server over loading and such , which is fine to lose to that, but the bots i,m sure played a role in that since they spamming  your forum every 1-2 seconds.

I've elaborated above on the measures we've taken to make sure keys aren't claimed by bots. People will sell beta keys no matter what site gives them away or how they do it, whether its a drawing, first come first serve, anything. Only one key is claimable by a single account, and we have measures in place to deal with multiple accounts on the same IP address, etc.

I am not going to discuss all the specifics of what we do to make sure things are fair, but I can assure you that we are doing whatever we possibly can. Users selling our keys are beyond our control (unless they try selling them on our forums!).

Users who abuse our system in order to request a key will not be flagged to receive one, and their key will be reserved for the next user above the cutoff. This user will then be notified that they ended up qualifying for a key.

 There are measures to alleviate that though. USE JOIN DATE AS A MEASURE. Why is this so hard to understand. If someone just created in the last few days too bad. I know they ll say they read etc and never joined, but it s a measure to insure people will participate in the forums instead of just creating when it s convenient. It s a simple solution that should have been done in the first place.

We are not going to punish new users for signing up to our site, even if it is to get a key. We value all of our users, new and old. We do have sweepstakes that reward consistently active users by granting them additional entries into a drawing (increasing their chances, though not guaranteeing anything based on activity), and we'll definitely look into doing something like that if we can, but no promises.

Simply saying, "Hey, we have 100 keys but if you signed up today you can't have one!" just isn't going to happen, and in all my years as a reader I cannot say I've ever seen a site do this. If it has happened, it's certainly the exception, not the rule.

The keys were not given out to "insure users participate on our forums". They were given to us because a developer or publisher knows they can reach MMO gamers best through our site and sites like ours; having users stick around after they sign up to grab a key is a bonus. There is more to MMORPG.com than our forums, and there are many readers who have been reading here for years and years that simply never bothered to sign up, and they are no less valuable to us. We cannot discern between the two, it would be unfair to try, and we are simply not going to do it.

With that said, we do have contest types that do reward regular users as I outlined above, and this was simply not structured that way. This was structured along the lines of many of our typical first come, first serve giveaways.

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

I agree with MrcdesOwnr.. I have been a member on this site since 07.. this account was made last year so I could update my email address for spam reasons. I am not the biggest poster but I check this site daily for updates on various mmo's, I read the blogs, I love game discussions by fans, and I post when I feel like expressing an opinion on the matter. This may not be often but if there was a posts read number I guarentee it would be over 10k.

Anyways the point I am making is that 90% of people getting these beta keys are not loyal MMORPG members but just idiots that signed up because of they key and once they got it they are never coming back. SURE you might get 1 or 2% of those people that actually stay but your loyal fans that have been here for years are getting shafted and I guarentee more are going to go find somewhere else to share their opinions than on a site thats going to favor botters and people who don't deserve it. I don't even think I should deserve a key because I don't participate much but those guys that have been here for years and have 2000+ posts all need one.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Well said my friend, well said.

Originally posted by Methos12

Should've been only for [insert number] days old accounts and older.

Yeah, click on some of the posters and you will see that most, if not all, joined within a few days.

Thanks mmorpg.com for throwing a bone to the folks that have been visting for years.

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

So bascially we can use more than 1  account to get more  keys, and use bots LOVELY way to ruin another game.

 

You people love to ruin games and cheaters win again... Your blind if you do not see a problem with this as  people are selling your BETA CODES...  I do not understand why you do not see anything wrong, so bascially I can win a key and make a new account and win another, and another and another.

 

Also I can run bots o many accounts and win many to sell, I mean cmon it can be done, and 43-100 is fishy to say the least...Block there IP or block them from posting on RIFT forums. 

 

Anyhow I knew you would do nothing about this I plan to show the devs on the Rift forums and see what they think of this unfair and fishy contest.. i'm a programmer I know what can be done to cheat these contest and when I see 43-100 new accounts that sounds  fishy and your letting people win more than 1.

 

/rant off, I won't bother wasting my time on the next 2 days and I suggest the rest of you do the same, unless you plan on cheating thats the only way to get one.. unless you get lucky...

 

Alot of us did spam and did not get  one due to server over loading and such , which is fine to lose to that, but the bots i,m sure played a role in that since they spamming  your forum every 1-2 seconds.

I've elaborated above on the measures we've taken to make sure keys aren't claimed by bots. People will sell beta keys no matter what site gives them away or how they do it, whether its a drawing, first come first serve, anything. Only one key is claimable by a single account, and we have measures in place to deal with multiple accounts on the same IP address, etc.

I am not going to discuss all the specifics of what we do to make sure things are fair, but I can assure you that we are doing whatever we possibly can. Users selling our keys are beyond our control (unless they try selling them on our forums!).

Users who abuse our system in order to request a key will not be flagged to receive one, and their key will be reserved for the next user above the cutoff. This user will then be notified that they ended up qualifying for a key.

 There are measures to alleviate that though. USE JOIN DATE AS A MEASURE. Why is this so hard to understand. If someone just created in the last few days too bad. I know they ll say they read etc and never joined, but it s a measure to insure people will participate in the forums instead of just creating when it s convenient. It s a simple solution that should have been done in the first place.

We are not going to punish new users for signing up to our site, even if it is to get a key. We value all of our users, new and old. We do have sweepstakes that reward consistently active users by granting them additional entries into a drawing (increasing their chances, though not guaranteeing anything based on activity), and we'll definitely look into doing something like that if we can, but no promises.

Simply saying, "Hey, we have 100 keys but if you signed up today you can't have one!" just isn't going to happen, and in all my years as a reader I cannot say I've ever seen a site do this. If it has happened, it's certainly the exception, not the rule.

The keys were not given out to "insure users participate on our forums". They were given to us because a developer or publisher knows they can reach MMO gamers best through our site and sites like ours; having users stick around after they sign up to grab a key is a bonus. There is more to MMORPG.com than our forums, and there are many readers who have been reading here for years and years that simply never bothered to sign up, and they are no less valuable to us. We cannot discern between the two, it would be unfair to try, and we are simply not going to do it.

With that said, we do have contest types that do reward regular users as I outlined above, and this was simply not structured that way. This was structured along the lines of many of our typical first come, first serve giveaways.

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Very honest and articulate post MrcdesOwnr.

This type of contest is so counter-productive, it boggles my mind. How could camping a website, rapid-firing F5 promote any kind of positive behavior? What happened to inviting worthy beta testers that have been loyal followers of the game since day 1? Aside from the absolutely ridiculous certainty that bots would snag lots of these keys, am I supposed be an unemployed slacker so I can sit home all day hitting F5? Or even better, am I supposed to waste company time and sit in my office slamming F5?

Having people stalk Twitter, Facebook and MMO sites all day is disturbing and downright wicked. Is this the new way of doing things? Is this what we are teaching the new generation, to sit home like mindless drones, refreshing pages? Why not give these VIP keys to the hundreds of loyal followers on the Rift site? Why not come up with productive contests that promotes positive behavior and gives people with jobs and other responsibilities a chance to win?

This isn't about some beta that nobody will care about in a few months, this is about pushing the MMOG community in a forward direction, not 2 steps backwards.

Originally posted by Halow

I agree with MrcdesOwnr.. I have been a member on this site since 07.. this account was made last year so I could update my email address for spam reasons. I am not the biggest poster but I check this site daily for updates on various mmo's, I read the blogs, I love game discussions by fans, and I post when I feel like expressing an opinion on the matter. This may not be often but if there was a posts read number I guarentee it would be over 10k.

Anyways the point I am making is that 90% of people getting these beta keys are not loyal MMORPG members but just idiots that signed up because of they key and once they got it they are never coming back. SURE you might get 1 or 2% of those people that actually stay but your loyal fans that have been here for years are getting shafted and I guarentee more are going to go find somewhere else to share their opinions than on a site thats going to favor botters and people who don't deserve it. I don't even think I should deserve a key because I don't participate much but those guys that have been here for years and have 2000+ posts all need one.

i am a member since 2006 :(

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Well said.

Originally posted by acidworm

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

So bascially we can use more than 1  account to get more  keys, and use bots LOVELY way to ruin another game.

 

You people love to ruin games and cheaters win again... Your blind if you do not see a problem with this as  people are selling your BETA CODES...  I do not understand why you do not see anything wrong, so bascially I can win a key and make a new account and win another, and another and another.

 

Also I can run bots o many accounts and win many to sell, I mean cmon it can be done, and 43-100 is fishy to say the least...Block there IP or block them from posting on RIFT forums. 

 

Anyhow I knew you would do nothing about this I plan to show the devs on the Rift forums and see what they think of this unfair and fishy contest.. i'm a programmer I know what can be done to cheat these contest and when I see 43-100 new accounts that sounds  fishy and your letting people win more than 1.

 

/rant off, I won't bother wasting my time on the next 2 days and I suggest the rest of you do the same, unless you plan on cheating thats the only way to get one.. unless you get lucky...

 

Alot of us did spam and did not get  one due to server over loading and such , which is fine to lose to that, but the bots i,m sure played a role in that since they spamming  your forum every 1-2 seconds.

I've elaborated above on the measures we've taken to make sure keys aren't claimed by bots. People will sell beta keys no matter what site gives them away or how they do it, whether its a drawing, first come first serve, anything. Only one key is claimable by a single account, and we have measures in place to deal with multiple accounts on the same IP address, etc.

I am not going to discuss all the specifics of what we do to make sure things are fair, but I can assure you that we are doing whatever we possibly can. Users selling our keys are beyond our control (unless they try selling them on our forums!).

Users who abuse our system in order to request a key will not be flagged to receive one, and their key will be reserved for the next user above the cutoff. This user will then be notified that they ended up qualifying for a key.

 There are measures to alleviate that though. USE JOIN DATE AS A MEASURE. Why is this so hard to understand. If someone just created in the last few days too bad. I know they ll say they read etc and never joined, but it s a measure to insure people will participate in the forums instead of just creating when it s convenient. It s a simple solution that should have been done in the first place.

We are not going to punish new users for signing up to our site, even if it is to get a key. We value all of our users, new and old. We do have sweepstakes that reward consistently active users by granting them additional entries into a drawing (increasing their chances, though not guaranteeing anything based on activity), and we'll definitely look into doing something like that if we can, but no promises.

Simply saying, "Hey, we have 100 keys but if you signed up today you can't have one!" just isn't going to happen, and in all my years as a reader I cannot say I've ever seen a site do this. If it has happened, it's certainly the exception, not the rule.

The keys were not given out to "insure users participate on our forums". They were given to us because a developer or publisher knows they can reach MMO gamers best through our site and sites like ours; having users stick around after they sign up to grab a key is a bonus. There is more to MMORPG.com than our forums, and there are many readers who have been reading here for years and years that simply never bothered to sign up, and they are no less valuable to us. We cannot discern between the two, it would be unfair to try, and we are simply not going to do it.

With that said, we do have contest types that do reward regular users as I outlined above, and this was simply not structured that way. This was structured along the lines of many of our typical first come, first serve giveaways.

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Very honest and articulate post MrcdesOwnr.

This type of contest is so counter-productive, it boggles my mind. How could camping a website, rapid-firing F5 promote any kind of positive behavior? What happened to inviting worthy beta testers that have been loyal followers of the game since day 1? Aside from the absolutely ridiculous certainty that bots would snag lots of these keys, am I supposed be an unemployed slacker so I can sit home all day hitting F5? Or even better, am I supposed to waste company time and sit in my office slamming F5?

Having people stalk Twitter, Facebook and MMO sites all day is disturbing and downright wicked. Is this the new way of doing things? Is this what we are teaching the new generation, to sit home like mindless drones, refreshing pages? Why not give these VIP keys to the hundreds of loyal followers on the Rift site? Why not come up with productive contests that promotes positive behavior and gives people with jobs and other responsibilities a chance to win?

This isn't about some beta that nobody will care about in a few months, this is about pushing the MMOG community in a forward direction, not 2 steps backwards.

I couldn't have said it any better. Bravo!

What happened to the old contests where you got one entry for every day that you log into the site?  The ones that are somewhat fair, giving everyone  a chance...

It[object Window]s not too late to make this right....

Originally posted by Lork

Originally posted by acidworm

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

So bascially we can use more than 1  account to get more  keys, and use bots LOVELY way to ruin another game.

 

You people love to ruin games and cheaters win again... Your blind if you do not see a problem with this as  people are selling your BETA CODES...  I do not understand why you do not see anything wrong, so bascially I can win a key and make a new account and win another, and another and another.

 

Also I can run bots o many accounts and win many to sell, I mean cmon it can be done, and 43-100 is fishy to say the least...Block there IP or block them from posting on RIFT forums. 

 

Anyhow I knew you would do nothing about this I plan to show the devs on the Rift forums and see what they think of this unfair and fishy contest.. i'm a programmer I know what can be done to cheat these contest and when I see 43-100 new accounts that sounds  fishy and your letting people win more than 1.

 

/rant off, I won't bother wasting my time on the next 2 days and I suggest the rest of you do the same, unless you plan on cheating thats the only way to get one.. unless you get lucky...

 

Alot of us did spam and did not get  one due to server over loading and such , which is fine to lose to that, but the bots i,m sure played a role in that since they spamming  your forum every 1-2 seconds.

I've elaborated above on the measures we've taken to make sure keys aren't claimed by bots. People will sell beta keys no matter what site gives them away or how they do it, whether its a drawing, first come first serve, anything. Only one key is claimable by a single account, and we have measures in place to deal with multiple accounts on the same IP address, etc.

I am not going to discuss all the specifics of what we do to make sure things are fair, but I can assure you that we are doing whatever we possibly can. Users selling our keys are beyond our control (unless they try selling them on our forums!).

Users who abuse our system in order to request a key will not be flagged to receive one, and their key will be reserved for the next user above the cutoff. This user will then be notified that they ended up qualifying for a key.

 There are measures to alleviate that though. USE JOIN DATE AS A MEASURE. Why is this so hard to understand. If someone just created in the last few days too bad. I know they ll say they read etc and never joined, but it s a measure to insure people will participate in the forums instead of just creating when it s convenient. It s a simple solution that should have been done in the first place.

We are not going to punish new users for signing up to our site, even if it is to get a key. We value all of our users, new and old. We do have sweepstakes that reward consistently active users by granting them additional entries into a drawing (increasing their chances, though not guaranteeing anything based on activity), and we'll definitely look into doing something like that if we can, but no promises.

Simply saying, "Hey, we have 100 keys but if you signed up today you can't have one!" just isn't going to happen, and in all my years as a reader I cannot say I've ever seen a site do this. If it has happened, it's certainly the exception, not the rule.

The keys were not given out to "insure users participate on our forums". They were given to us because a developer or publisher knows they can reach MMO gamers best through our site and sites like ours; having users stick around after they sign up to grab a key is a bonus. There is more to MMORPG.com than our forums, and there are many readers who have been reading here for years and years that simply never bothered to sign up, and they are no less valuable to us. We cannot discern between the two, it would be unfair to try, and we are simply not going to do it.

With that said, we do have contest types that do reward regular users as I outlined above, and this was simply not structured that way. This was structured along the lines of many of our typical first come, first serve giveaways.

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Very honest and articulate post MrcdesOwnr.

This type of contest is so counter-productive, it boggles my mind. How could camping a website, rapid-firing F5 promote any kind of positive behavior? What happened to inviting worthy beta testers that have been loyal followers of the game since day 1? Aside from the absolutely ridiculous certainty that bots would snag lots of these keys, am I supposed be an unemployed slacker so I can sit home all day hitting F5? Or even better, am I supposed to waste company time and sit in my office slamming F5?

Having people stalk Twitter, Facebook and MMO sites all day is disturbing and downright wicked. Is this the new way of doing things? Is this what we are teaching the new generation, to sit home like mindless drones, refreshing pages? Why not give these VIP keys to the hundreds of loyal followers on the Rift site? Why not come up with productive contests that promotes positive behavior and gives people with jobs and other responsibilities a chance to win?

This isn't about some beta that nobody will care about in a few months, this is about pushing the MMOG community in a forward direction, not 2 steps backwards.

I couldn't have said it any better. Bravo!

u r the man !!!! 

Originally posted by atorh

Originally posted by Lork

Originally posted by acidworm

Originally posted by MrcdesOwnr

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Leucent

Originally posted by MikeB

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

So bascially we can use more than 1  account to get more  keys, and use bots LOVELY way to ruin another game.

 

You people love to ruin games and cheaters win again... Your blind if you do not see a problem with this as  people are selling your BETA CODES...  I do not understand why you do not see anything wrong, so bascially I can win a key and make a new account and win another, and another and another.

 

Also I can run bots o many accounts and win many to sell, I mean cmon it can be done, and 43-100 is fishy to say the least...Block there IP or block them from posting on RIFT forums. 

 

Anyhow I knew you would do nothing about this I plan to show the devs on the Rift forums and see what they think of this unfair and fishy contest.. i'm a programmer I know what can be done to cheat these contest and when I see 43-100 new accounts that sounds  fishy and your letting people win more than 1.

 

/rant off, I won't bother wasting my time on the next 2 days and I suggest the rest of you do the same, unless you plan on cheating thats the only way to get one.. unless you get lucky...

 

Alot of us did spam and did not get  one due to server over loading and such , which is fine to lose to that, but the bots i,m sure played a role in that since they spamming  your forum every 1-2 seconds.

I've elaborated above on the measures we've taken to make sure keys aren't claimed by bots. People will sell beta keys no matter what site gives them away or how they do it, whether its a drawing, first come first serve, anything. Only one key is claimable by a single account, and we have measures in place to deal with multiple accounts on the same IP address, etc.

I am not going to discuss all the specifics of what we do to make sure things are fair, but I can assure you that we are doing whatever we possibly can. Users selling our keys are beyond our control (unless they try selling them on our forums!).

Users who abuse our system in order to request a key will not be flagged to receive one, and their key will be reserved for the next user above the cutoff. This user will then be notified that they ended up qualifying for a key.

 There are measures to alleviate that though. USE JOIN DATE AS A MEASURE. Why is this so hard to understand. If someone just created in the last few days too bad. I know they ll say they read etc and never joined, but it s a measure to insure people will participate in the forums instead of just creating when it s convenient. It s a simple solution that should have been done in the first place.

We are not going to punish new users for signing up to our site, even if it is to get a key. We value all of our users, new and old. We do have sweepstakes that reward consistently active users by granting them additional entries into a drawing (increasing their chances, though not guaranteeing anything based on activity), and we'll definitely look into doing something like that if we can, but no promises.

Simply saying, "Hey, we have 100 keys but if you signed up today you can't have one!" just isn't going to happen, and in all my years as a reader I cannot say I've ever seen a site do this. If it has happened, it's certainly the exception, not the rule.

The keys were not given out to "insure users participate on our forums". They were given to us because a developer or publisher knows they can reach MMO gamers best through our site and sites like ours; having users stick around after they sign up to grab a key is a bonus. There is more to MMORPG.com than our forums, and there are many readers who have been reading here for years and years that simply never bothered to sign up, and they are no less valuable to us. We cannot discern between the two, it would be unfair to try, and we are simply not going to do it.

With that said, we do have contest types that do reward regular users as I outlined above, and this was simply not structured that way. This was structured along the lines of many of our typical first come, first serve giveaways.

No, instead, you just punish your loyal members who have jobs, plans during set time, slow connections, etc. Let me ask you this Mike, how many of these "new" users do you honestly think will be back? I bet it's far fewer than you think!

Besides membership should have its privileges. It's a friggin famous slogan for god's sake. As even some of the so-called "lurkers" have stated (and is quite obvious from their recent posts), they read the forums. How would those forums even exist if everyone just lurked and there were no members posting. At the very least, MMORPG should have offered some keys to its members. How hard would that have been? Huh?

With all do repect, I am so disappointed in this site and as I've stated in another post, if you guys don't do something to make this right, this loyal member is not for long here. I've been a loyal, just about daily visitor to this site that's contributed more to this site than can be said of your "lurker", no matter how you try to sugar-coat it.

Finally, so that we are clear, it's not the RIFT beta-key that has me peeved, but the principle of the whole thing. Your members should come first and if they don't then what is the incentive for these aforementioned new users of yours in bothering to stick around after these keys are gone? Why should I even bother sticking around? Let me guess, that one never crossed anyone's mind.

Very honest and articulate post MrcdesOwnr.

This type of contest is so counter-productive, it boggles my mind. How could camping a website, rapid-firing F5 promote any kind of positive behavior? What happened to inviting worthy beta testers that have been loyal followers of the game since day 1? Aside from the absolutely ridiculous certainty that bots would snag lots of these keys, am I supposed be an unemployed slacker so I can sit home all day hitting F5? Or even better, am I supposed to waste company time and sit in my office slamming F5?

Having people stalk Twitter, Facebook and MMO sites all day is disturbing and downright wicked. Is this the new way of doing things? Is this what we are teaching the new generation, to sit home like mindless drones, refreshing pages? Why not give these VIP keys to the hundreds of loyal followers on the Rift site? Why not come up with productive contests that promotes positive behavior and gives people with jobs and other responsibilities a chance to win?

This isn't about some beta that nobody will care about in a few months, this is about pushing the MMOG community in a forward direction, not 2 steps backwards.

I couldn't have said it any better. Bravo!

u r the man !!!! 

You know what? I hate chain quotes.

But when someone expresses how I feel, I'd rater hit the "quote button" than just parrot what they said.

That being said, I also feel like Im being punished for having a job. although Ive learned to deal with it over the years.

But I still think its bullshit that they seem to target the the demographic that has to "borrow the card" to play, when more and more evidence points to the over-25 mmo gamer.

*sigh* One day...one day, it will come true.

Read their website, these VIP and beta codes are for 'stress testing', and to simulate how things will be at launch....

They already have 'alpha' testers, and they picked people they felt would give good knowledge and feedback, supposedly a lot of people that the people from many different games had worked with in other betas and such...

I am sure a lot of good people didn't get invited, I have been playing online before the internet, but I am not gonna spout off about how they should of chosen me (even if its true!  j/k).

All these people are stress testing, and they did say they would add some off the stress testers to the 'alpha' squad, if they saw someone that they thought gave good feedback and showed good knowledge...I doubt it will be mnay though.

So they feel they already have the 'quality' people they need, and its publicity, even if some of its bad, for a original title, they don't have the luxury of a previous title, or the big name of some studios to trade on.  I haven't liked everything they have done, but I understand it from a business perspective and I would tweak it, but if they can stretch the advertising budget by say 15-20% by doing this, then I don't see how they could not do it.

Before anyone speculates, no I am not in alpha, just a realist....I look forward to the game, since I have not played a mmo seriously, since I left VG over a year ago...Release is 2-3 months away most likely, so it won't be long.

The fact of the matter is this: we were given 500 keys to give out for a beta that is beginning on December 3rd, so the idea is to get them out to you as quick as possible so you can get into the game and start playing and you can be part of all the events, which is the whole benefit of the VIP code over a normal beta key.

We typically do not do the sweepstakes type drawings or even the claim page first come, first serve giveaways for 500 keys, they are generally done for keys that number in the thousands.And for drawings, we usually give people a month to login every day and and accrue extra entries. Making you guys wait a month for keys to a beta that is beginning next week doesn't make sense.

For those of you upset about the giveaway times, the original plan was to give out all 500 in one day. So you would have had one chance to grab them and that's it. I decided to split the keys out over a few days and issue them at different times of the day precisely to afford people from all over the place with all sorts of commitments a chance at keys. So far, the keys were released in the late evening, the mid morning, and the afternoon.  Some users complained that we didn't afford players notice of when to expect the keys, and so we tried a three hour window with a day's notice today, and we ended up having some serious camping going on, so much so the site crashed momentarily and we endured some pretty massive lag.

I understand many of you are upset, but this was the best we could do with the amount of time and keys that we had. We truly appreciate your feedback and I can assure you that if we can do a drawing (which slants towards more active members) we will.

Thanks and I wish you all a safe and happy thanksgiving!

just ignore them girls here, which didnt even press ctrl+f5 i guess ^^