I guess that means I'm not going to see TOA for Dominus then? /wink /wink

It not all about the money, it's about putting a team together who have GOOD ideas and actually know HOW to implement them.

Mythic was a nobody company until they made DAOC, and they made that on a fraction of the money MMO's have for development today. SWTOR is a prime example of throwing money into a black hole and still creating a garbage game. 

To me it's all about innovating. To many studio's try to copy/paste... it's a smart short term money making investment, but in the long run it hurts your brand and your company.

The problem is most games use beta's as a promotional tool used to promote and generate hype for their game.

By the time most customers get a chance to play a beta, the window for submitting constructive feedback  is over. Which is unfortunate because the devs are missing a large window of opportunity to address glaring issues most gamers would call the "point of no return." Where they cancel their subscription never to return.  

Beta's still provide an opportunity to test the game before you buy it, but I think the idea of actually contributing or getting anything changed died a long time ago.

I played this game hardcore for 1.5months and managed to get banned/unbanned 5 times in that timeframe. Aeria Games has no idea on how to treat customers. Their game was filled with bots, and they release statted cash shop costumes like (10% Crit rate)  to milk their customers every week. On top of that they would be in lotto boxes with a very RARE chance of even getting the statted costume. (Some claiming to spend $500 on boxes to only get level 10 mana potions) The only nice part about the game was that the cash shop items were tradeable. I collected them and got banned for doing just that. I played the auction house and was constantly getting banned because of the gold transactions. [GM]Tactics said I had been "duping" items in their shoutbox. They also manipulated posts I made on their forums to discredit me as a "duper" who cheated when all I did was NOT pay and play the economy to my advantage. You can read the FULL story on my blog, but my advise is to STAY AWAY from this game before your get too invested like I did. 

http://aeriagamestruth.blogspot.com/

Like I said before I was more then willing to fork over $15/month for the game, after all I had aquired $2,000-$3,000 Cash Shop AP items.  I was seriously considering the 10-slot bags when they came out because I had 15 5-slot bags I could convert. The problem was timing, I couldn't go a week in that game without getting banned and having to file a ban appeal. So you can see why I wasn't eager to spend $15 to say "Good Job" The content was lacking, to me it wasn't even a finished game. The only thing I COULD do was play the Auction House or get Ninja'd in Heroics... and I rather make the gold and buy the items and not waste my time crying over some ninja who took my item.

[GM]Tactics the Product Manager has directly accused me of hacking the game in their shoutbox. The only logical reason I can see is if they uncovered some bug or  that made it seem like I had been hacking. Based on my previous bans I think it's a more accurate assumption that they were treating anyone with large sums of gold a gold famer/hacker. 

I mean if you really look at it, if you accuse a customer of hacking your game and duping items it speaks volumes about your Company and their staff's ability to code properly. I'm sure other MMO's don't have to worry about items being duped or have to perform 2-3hr server rollbacks because they can't code and test their game properly. Sad part is they are just Copy/Pasting a game already developed in Taiwan. 

I could never take my case to court because "My time" is all based on entertainment. You cannot sue someone for being "entertained" poorly.  I will however be the biggest crittic on every MMO site, spreading the word on how this company treats their customers. Even if 1% of the people who read my Blog take my advise it will far exceed the $2,000-$3,000 cash shopitems I collected. I will never stop, I will always have spiders looking for Eden Eternal links to spread the word until this game gets shut down. 

Originally posted by Foomerang

 

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Originally posted by Tingtong1
I played this game hardcore for 1.5months...

 

I would of happly paid it had I known the account I spent 600hrs on would be banned for "Cheating"

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You spent 100 hours a week playing this game? That is absolutely insane. How are your eyes still in their sockets? How is your head anot caved in?

According to Raptr it was 569Hrs (including beta play)

http://raptr.com/TINGTONG

and I played the game about  7.5weeks from beta  so on average 76Hrs/Week.  I was hardcore. It's really sad how Aeria Games spit in my face and called me a cheater.

Originally posted by tinuelle

Originally posted by Tingtong1

Yea but I had a very simple plan with that in mind. I wanted to be "The Successful Player" who didn't need to buy Cashshop Items to be sucessful.  I had the time and was dedicated enough.

Well, I can understand why the F2P companies wish to ban that sort of successful players :)

To bad your project went wrong.

But in the end, a F2P game where players dont buy anything will end up with a lot of successful players wondering why their game shut down.

I was the top .0001% of the playerbase, I don't think anyone who played Eden Eternal could say they have made 10,000G/day 

I could of just as easily SOLD my gold to some RMT company and bought cash shop items. (The End result would of been the same... BAN!)

However, the mechanics of the game allowed you to buy cash shop items from players threw trade. So I bought $3,000 - $5,000 of cash shop items from other legitimate players for gold.  I played the game fairly, and threw  the contraints of the ToS, only to be called a "cheater" by Aeria Games Staff. If this company didn't want you to play for "free" then they should charge $15/month like everyone else. I would of happly paid it had I known the account I spent 600hrs on would be banned for "Cheating"

Originally posted by tinuelle

Originally posted by Tingtong1

Their idealogy is to ban any F2P player who does well in their game without purchasing cash shop items.

Then you shoulda bought a cash shop item!

Besides, people that play F2P games, and dont spend a nickle on them, then complain about their customer service experience is hilarious :)

Yea but I had a very simple plan with that in mind. I wanted to be "The Successful Player" who didn't need to buy Cashshop Items to be sucessful.  I had the time and was dedicated enough.

It's the reason I had so many screenshots in the first place.  I was going to make a post and be an example of how it all could be done... I was an example all right....

The reason you are a F2P game is to attract and hook customers who wouldn't otherwise give your game a chance.  Most players didn't have the time like I did to sink in the game so they just buy cash shop items to sell for in-game currency or use themselves. 

Stay away from this company and it's game. 

I played this game hardcore for 1.5months only to get innocently banned 5 times!!!! yes 5 TIMES! 

I was the GM of the #2 Ranked guild on Emerald  with 175 members called "Elysium"

You can read the whole story on my blog since it contains over 70 screenshots of how I played, and even a Youtube video of their GM's manipulating forums filters to discredit a post I was trying to make on the forums to make me look bad. YES REALLY!!

http://aeriagamestruth.blogspot.com/

There are bots everywhere, and all their GM's are focused on banning players who legitly buy cash shop items from players with gold. 

Their idealogy is to ban any F2P player who does well in their game without purchasing cash shop items.

If you have any questions i'll be happy to anwer, but STAY AWAY from this company and this game. or DON'T and find out yourself!

Don't let this company fool you, they ban innocent players without a second thought. I played this game for 1month only to get banned 5 TIMES!  for no reason. You can read my story on my blog. 

http://aeriagamestruth.blogspot.com/

The GM's in this game went as far as manipulating their own forum filters to replace specific phases to say I was Duping to discredit me from posting the truth. 

STAY AWAY! or don't and find out yourself!

time to close the WAR chapter and start making Dark Age of Camelot 2, or Camelot Reborn with updated engine and new content!

I would pay $30/month if the brought DAOC back from the dead.

I think it's mildly comical that no MMO company has ever taken a proactive approach at directly prohibiting and fighting RTM. The flaw lies within the industry who cannot capitalize on a 1 billion/yr market they create. Point the fingers all you want, but here we are again... 3months after a major game release... and the game is almost crippled by RTM. Who's fault is it really? The people who buy gold? Time to shore up some responsibility.

Sanya, It's funny to see someone with a stereotypical attitude about MMO player's opinionate grammer from a 12yr old retard and write a column about it..

The best part is while your snickering and passing CSR tickets to your buddies the customers with real game mechanic issues get stonewalled by what you call "Customer Service"  Would be nice to actually see a CSR fix an issue instead of getting the standard response of "No we can't help you, and Have a Nice Day" but we all know those escalated tickets with REAL problems are a higher paygrade then what you were doing. Everyone knows your Job was a glorified retard filter so I can see why these types of columns probably come up a LOT.

I know after so many years of having prepubescent teens groveling at your feet it's actually hard for you to believe that someone would actually submit a Bug Report and not care what you do with it. But it DOES happen. It happens because unlike the basement dwelers your used to associating with, they probably won't be playing your BUG infested game for longer then 8 months to see it get resolved.

PS. LOTRO community is full of over emotional women/men who need to plug and get laid or  jump off a bridge IRL. and no I didn't submit the ticket incase your wondering :)

Unfortunately it's people like the OP who keep reminding us why company's can't put out a decent game since wow. They simply FAIL at developing innovative game mechanics that WORK..

You think people are playing WOW because it's the only thing their PC can run? When you can pickup a PC that runs AOC,WAR for less then $500? If that's what you think then all I can say is........ WOW.  Consumer's will ALWAYS buy better hardware if they reach a limit with their software/games... It's a proven FACT. The issue is your not convincing them they NEED a upgrade. What makes people buy a Xbox 360 over a Xbox? Can we say.... HALO? Another perfect example was failcom. Most people were on the fence about upgrading until they discovered they produced a turd in a box. Even then 700k players whole heartly bought the game and upgraded their machines for a huge dissapointment.

Originally posted by Dana

And I don’t want to hear “but our graphics scale!” That’s not a valid counter argument. No one has ever successfully made a game that scales visually.

FFXI made their game scale and cross-platform years and years ahead of it's time. So thanks once again for proving you really know nothing about the industry you write columns on. Also Log on to LOTRO instead of writting fail columns and you can see that game also scales DX9--->DX10 Flawlessly and with good performance unlike WAR, AOC.

Don't bother quoting or responding because you've pretty much lost any credibility at posting a valid argument. I understand everyone has their own opinion but this was so far off in left field I had to post.

This scenario already played with the Dark a Light Release....

I expect this game to bomb at release as well, with the limited funding and small staff I expect downtime and patches to come at EQ1 pace.

The game looks good on paper, but when you play it you realize F2P games are better written.

This games concpet will always be what I like to call "Vaporware"

The forum moderators are putting in overtime thats for sure. Granted the game does have some finer points, but as it stands now it's not worth $50 I hope in 2-3 months they can make pvp playable at least.

Those  2 guilds are probably the biggest jokes on the server. I hope they manage to get 80 so I can get more free kills.

I ran into Zoticx from Shadow Consortium just today... he died around 5-6 times and prooved he's under the 18+ requirement. Anyways have a laugh on him I did quite a few times.

Anyone have an extra key? I missed my chance :(

So whats the catch? Restrictions? Limitations?

I'm sure they found some scheme to make money without selling a retail box or monthly fees.