Originally posted by midmagic

Originally posted by thexrated

Well, micro-transaction models are in their infancy, but of course companies like SOE do what is most profitable for them. They are a business and responsible not for the gamers, but to their shareholders.

 

They are not responsible to the gamers but are responsible to the shareholders? Really? I strongly hope business people have not fallen so far. Without a happy customer base there are no shareholders because you sell nothing and the stock is worthless because no one believes in the company. Always, customers first (quality product, fun stuff, blah, blah), the more successful game companies live by this motto. This is the same random nonsensical cliche being touted around as the new "we are your boss and you answer to us" by silly people whining about the government.

Yeah....and by that logic the happiest customer is the one who gets something for nothing.  Sure, companies spring up from nothing to give away their product for nothing, all to make the "customer" happy because that is the company's job.  Not really -- every game designer who makes a game and sells it is doing it for the "greed", not just to make you happy.

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

Originally posted by kobie173

Originally posted by miagisan

they gave you weeks to transfer for free, quit your bitching

 

Several months, actually.

 

I received an email giving me 6 days notice, in total, of the upcoming server closures.  I believe the closures were announced on the forums only a few weeks ago, much to many people's surprise, since they said they had no plans to close the "transfer from" servers. 

If you don't read the official forums, and you didn't check your email spam for the last 6 days, you're in for a nasty surprise if you log into one of the closed servers.

Even with 6 days notice, or a few weeks on the forums, why charge a fee to move off of a server they are closing down?  Really?

Well, the first announcement of server closings due to the success of character transfers that I received was on September 16th, for a total of 1 month's notice. I then got a follow up notice on October 9th, the 6 day mark.  Perhaps you missed an email?
 

Why charge a fee?  Because unlike allegedly not archiving PreCU code, they are archiving the player data.  It doesn't mean they're letting it sit on a hard drive somewhere to be accessed at a moment's notice but likely it's compressed and offline.  To retrieve it possibly requires a tech to physically pull the media, perhaps discs for a jukebox, and then, depending on how far in the future this is done, run clean up scripts to ensure it is compatible witht he current server version.  How much are they paying their techies these days...? 

Ultimately they could say "sorry, it's not available, reroll" but they aren't and if a bit of cash can be made, there ya go.

Originally posted by bluegrazz

LOL $OE does it again. Everytime you think you have seen it all- $OE 1ups the madness.

I mean, wow- theres no server but you need to pay to transfer? What about the "vets" who might want to try out the new changes Sony Reps keep posting about. LOLOLOL.

Sorry I find this funny but I cant help it. One day people will learn to just avoid everything with the $OE name on it. No matter how cool  the idea, no matter the I.P. , No matter the features- Its $OE- Avoid like the plague.

Rather than having no characters because a server was shut down, vets have the remarkable opportunity to recover them -- no other company offers such a feature! 

Originally posted by hfamgamer

Originally posted by blueshadow

 We have "kicked a game that been lying down" for too long now. Its time to stop.

 

 Why should I ?!?    I spent two years grinding out proffesions then going thru the jedi village grind to obtain the ultimate goal of unlocking jedi just to have them give it away a month later  as a starting proffession. If anything, SOE "kicked" me....right in the damn teeth.

 You go on and enjoy your game sir. I however will never forgive or forget.

Death ultimately kicks us all in the teeth.  This is why we enjoy today instead of grind for tomorrow.

Star Wars was going downhill back when Timothy Zahn decided to make reference to "chocolate milk" in _Heir to the Empire_ but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Smed may be capitalizing on this, but the idea is coming from a book to be published and that likely was authorized by GL....  Sad, but I'm sure the justification is that supernatural powers have always been a part of Star Wars, that whole communing with undead jedi ghosts and all...

Originally posted by mrw0lf

Bots pay subs

incentive to prevent bots = 0

Some players pay botters for virtual goods

Players enjoying their virtual goods will play longer, thereby extending their subscriptions.

Friends and guildies of players buying virtual goods play longer because they have people to play with, thereby extending more subscriptions.

incentive to prevent bots = 0

Originally posted by baff

Let me get this straight, you think the retailer intentionally cancelled the CD key just to piss off their customers?

 

Cryptic sold the boxes to a country  that sells games at a lower  retail price than in western Europe or America and wherever and those people sold the cd keys online for less than their rivals in more expensive markets sell the entire box.

 

When Cryptic found out about this, they cancelled all those keys. It is in their intrests to sell the game for a higher price in the premium marketplaces.

 

 

Your contract of sale is between you and your retailer only. It is to them that you must demand your refund. You CC card company will help you. They guarentee all your purchases.

But you weren't deliberatley shafted by your retailer, you were deliberately shafted by Cryptic. It was they that issued your CD key, they that cancelled your cd-key and it is they that could re-activate it but refuse to. If it's proof of purchase they need a copy of your credit card statement and a link to the website selling the item would do it.

I can't in any honesty however recommend dealing with Cryptic support. those guys really suck in a big way. You'd do better to get a refund and buy it again. Save yourself al the frustration.

Cryptic isn't arbitrarily going to cancel all of the keys that Asia's equivalent of Gamestop purchased without that company taking them off the shelf to never be sold.  If they were taken off the shelf because of this arrangement, regardless of how they made it onto another retailer's "shelf", that's not Cryptic's issue.

Originally posted by brenth

I HATE the in game auction houses because they are so narrow and flawed and easily manipulated.  and its really hard to figure out what price to place on your  items (are the items allready posted  fair?  or are they there because they are too expensive?)  and if you post stuff for a low fair price some farmer can just buy them up and repost them at their higher monopoly price

...and yet you still get all the money that you offered for your product...
 

Originally posted by TheHatter

**nvm previous post (if anyone read it) I  misunderstood**

 

Hopefully, this doesn't extend to impose on the Freedom of Speech and Press.

How would you expect it to impose on the first amendment?  If anything, this is protecting abuse of the first amendment.  By mandating a reviewer has to disclose any gifts/freebies/payments for his publishing efforts, it is effectively  trying to clamp down on false advertising.  Essentially, it's a stab at the fairly new saying "if' it's on the internetz, it must be true!"

Furthermore, by focusing most of the penalty on the benefactor  of the review (the company/designer/retailer) rather than the blogger (in most cases), prosecutors have a very defined target to prosecute.  It makes more sense to focus on the source of the payola rather than the recipient given the the breadth of the internet.

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

Originally posted by Acornia                                                                                                                                                                          ...just wish the fines were much, much higher, say in the million dallor range.

 

The fines are 'per infraction', so say there's a poster here on these forums who is paid to spread the gospel about a certain game, and they post say 50 times... that's 50 X the fines (if they don't disclose their employer and get caught, of course).

LOVE IT!

Forum posts do not equal blogs.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by therain93

If that wasn't brilliant enough, they doubled-down by implementing a new "Super SideKick System".  Basically everyone on the team scales up or down to the mission-holder's level.  Previously, players could only sidekick to 1 other player.  When the issue came out, a lof of people including myself were a bit meh, but with reflection and playtime, have really enjoyed it.  The timing of a free activation and double-xp weekend on October 8th (likely the same time as when the Halloween event starts) should see a nice boost to playerbase again.

 

Sounds good, now SoE just need to steal the Examplar/Sidekick system from CoH and put it into SWG. :)

Honestly, it's an idea EVERY game should steal.

Originally posted by DeDroa

Please list every game you know of or can find that have wings in them.

Assuming you were referring to mmo's.....

1. City of Heroes / City of Villains
2. Aion
3. Perfect World
4. Champions Online

Originally posted by SgtFrog

I like this site :)

 

It's not horrible, just frustrating at times due to the......unchecked passion shall I say? ( ' :

Originally posted by Ponico

It's a culture thing. All that MMORPG needs to do is lift their sleeves and start banning people and create interesting conversation. MMORPG doesn't try to create a culture, they just sit around picking their nose. A good community needs a certain amount of care and sometimes a good backhand to redress it.

I understand that at first, people will get mad at locked thread and such but in the long run, it will be easier for everyone.

Most definitely.

**boggle** No Dragon Age: Origins?  Wonder if that falls under the category of spiritual successor and thus was excluded...  Some games do look interesting, particularly Borderlands and I am alive.

Originally posted by TUX426

Originally posted by therain93 

Issue 16 addressed this by altering xp distributed in the Mission Architect and also by giving players new difficulty settings whenever they entered a mission.  For example, someone who wanted to solo and have a real challenge could specify how many levels higher or lower the mission could treat them as well as treat the player like he was a party (from 2-8 players).  So the Tank who wanted to fight an army complsed of lt's and bosses could say "treat me like i'm 4 levels higher than i really am and populate the map as if I were a party of 6".

 

That's actually a brilliant way to handle "instances" in an MMO. It allows the solo or small group player as well as the guilds to all participate in the content.

If that wasn't brilliant enough, they doubled-down by implementing a new "Super SideKick System".  Basically everyone on the team scales up or down to the mission-holder's level.  Previously, players could only sidekick to 1 other player.  When the issue came out, a lof of people including myself were a bit meh, but with reflection and playtime, have really enjoyed it.  The timing of a free activation and double-xp weekend on October 8th (likely the same time as when the Halloween event starts) should see a nice boost to playerbase again.

Nope, mmorpg.com didn't ruin mmo's for me -- some discussions have been quite inSIGHTful.  On the other hand, generally lax to poor moderation has ruined mmorpg.com for me.  Like mmos, mmorpg.com seemed better in older days but has devolved due to the aforementioned rabid fans/fanbois -- as a result I don't visit as frequently as I once did.  Argument generates page views though, and page views generate ad revenue...

edit...possible freudian slip (' ;

I'm not playing Aion but I'm a bit surprised that they haven't borrowed the strategies from City of Heroes, given the lengths they went to in order to lock it down -- trial account limitations (no tells or broadcast allowed), "report spam" options, broadcast spam frequency limitations.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by rsreston

I think it's a great idea for SWG - the original idea in CoX seems to have sucked everyone to its missions but in a negative way, but I don't think that's gonna happen in SWG. I'm eager to see what will come out of it.

 

That's interesting, what was negative about the usage of the system in CoX?

As for the difference between Storyteller and Chronicles, I thought I'd try and clear that up.

The two systems are quite different, Storyteller is used to decorate world areas and although it can be used to provide content in the way of inviting people to a story where you have placed an army of Battle Droids for instance, there are no system generated rewards.

Chronicles is a quest builder system that does have system rewards for the creater and the user when creating and completing quests.

---

Star Wars Galaxies - Storyteller

With this new assortment of tools, Storytellers can build their own points of interest and locations, and even populate them with attackable NPCs (non-player characters). Players are still the most important part of any event, but with the new Storyteller props and NPCs, player events will be bigger and better than ever!

Storyteller is not an expertise system, nor is it a profession. It is an item-based system that begins with the Storyteller Vendor.

Star Wars Galaxies - Chronicles

It's time to open your imagination and start creating stories to share with your friends. With the Star Wars Chronicle Master System, you now have the ability to create stories from relics you will discover throughout the galaxy. Use the Quest Builder to write your story with the relics you have discovered. Hit "Create Quest" to consume the relics and create a holocron in your inventory.

---

It will be interesting to see if and how players are able to link the two systems together, perhaps have a set of Chronicle Quests that are also part of a Storyteller setup.

Thank you VERY much for the clear differences.  When Storyteller was announced, I was under the impression it allowed players to generate quest content, much like the CoX Mission Architect.

Edit:  As for what happened in City of Heroes, the "negative" aspect to the MA was that players could design missions for relatively easy farming before the latest issue.  As a result, a high percentage of the playerbase essentially disappeared from the game worold, staying sheltered inside the MA building, powerleveling up with multiple 50's yet having no clue how to play or even that there was an entire gameworld out there. There really were brand new players with no 3 month badge that had level 50s but never knew there were zones beyond Atlas Park.....

Issue 16 addressed this by altering xp distributed in the Mission Architect and also by giving players new difficulty settings whenever they entered a mission.  For example, someone who wanted to solo and have a real challenge could specify how many levels higher or lower the mission could treat them as well as treat the player like he was a party (from 2-8 players).  So the Tank who wanted to fight an army complsed of lt's and bosses could say "treat me like i'm 4 levels higher than i really am and populate the map as if I were a party of 6".  The net result is most people are our of the MA now (the powerleveling types anyway) and grouping has drastically improved.  While some people try to declare MA dead, I think we'll see better quality story arcs now (or at least they won't be buried under farm maps).

Originally posted by metalhead980

Originally posted by RadioMaryja

sorry but Sacred 2 is not a good game. its crap. ppl have right to make an opinion, and since everyone's a critic - get used to it.

Sacred 2 was reviewed before the patch that fixed near every problem. It was given 3s and 4s and clearly is closer to a 7 or 8 now.

Reviewers are jumping the gun because a game is hard and it takes near forever to progress in the game so they toss together a BS review by the time they level to 3 because it takes a few hours.

You see it all the time, Console reviewers rating a PC type Rpg badly because it has a learning curve.

 

Edit: also ever wonder why Sacred 2 is still 59.99 after all of this time? because everyone knows the game is rock solid and one of the only quality dungeon crawlers on the market that released in the last couple years.

Surely by now a "Bad game" would have dropped to bargin bin prices on 360 no?

So, you're really saying the reviews were accurate at the time of writing, before the patches....?