“You know, Everquest 2 had the exact same system. Digital trading card packs that had cool looking mounts, house items, and other things that were cosmetic. But the chances at getting the best ones were extremely rare. I spent hundreds of dollars trying to get some things, but I never did. Do you see my jumping up and down and stomping my feet like a 2 year old at Sony? No. Why is that?” Stark.1350
You do know Sony has killed every MMO it ever got its inept hands on right? They really are not something you should judge good MMO practice on.
"
I really don’t pity anyone who wasted ridiculous amounts of money on keys. I see a lot of complaints there was a lack of solid information regarding the chests. Not once were you told you’d be guaranteed festive items from these chests OR that the drop rate would be low. The only solid information you had was that you would have a CHANCE of getting festive items.
So based off that lack of information you’re so readily complaining about, after the fact, you went ahead and gambled a decent amount of money away. Completely your choice to do and I don’t think anyone should be forced into a corner and apologize for your irresponsibility.
You wanted festive skins? Should have went with the things you knew were guaranteed like the town outfits or mini pets instead of taking a chance." slapdot.3760
The problem with that is, it means Anet wasted their time in developing those skins, or indeed the black lion chests at all. If the only way you have of selling a product is to tart it up with a chance to have something new, actually give them a real chance or they’ll never buy them again.
Things aren’t looking good for the BLC Christmas editions with Wreath focus and Candy Cane pistols at this rate.
“Bought $50 + 9 gold worth of gems to buy keys and got nothing.
I will never buy gems again, I’ve learned my lesson.” Tower Guard.5263
And this is the problem that the Whiteknights don’t get, for the price of a second box sale they’ve done themselves out of years of money. Perhaps Tower wouldn’t be dropping $10 a month, every month but they might do once every three months, that’s $40 a year, every year until the game pops its clogs.
If they’ve done this to enough people, well things look dire for them.
“1000 posts and 32k views and no updated response. i am getting increasingly angry at arenanet’s failure to address this issue. what ever happened to caring about your customers??? they better be ready for this kittentorm that is coming.” proxy.3297
That maybe what they are doing, readying themselves and running around like headless chickens bouncing ideas on how to unscrew themselves over this.
“I would assume that their PR department has told them not to. Otherwise they could just inflame the situation more than it already is. As it stands now all they need to do is stay quiet for a week, and this will all blow over.” Kiviar.7063
That certainly worked wonders for SW:TOR and TSW didn’t it?
In a weeks time the meme’s will be set in and it will take a monumental effort on their part to undo any negative general view this causes.
“So guys should I get GW2?”
“No way man they proper screw you with the cash shop.”
Things burying your heads in the sands did “Bioware/EA do everything wrong when it comes to MMO’s”, “TSW is bugged, every quest doesn’t work”. Better communication could of saved those games, it might save this one, or at least their chances of getting people to use their store.
"
So if I buy a lottery ticket and get nothing then tell the lottery officials that I should get my money back that is not entitlement? These people believe that through spending their money on a random thing, without knowing the odds, that they are “entitled” to a prize". Sounds like the definition of entitlement to me. They got what they paid for, the chance to get something.
See you at Xmas, maybe you’ll have better odds then. The chests are calling after all"
Blueroseknight.7954
You do know that lottery tickets have the odds printed on them right? As do scratch cards.
Do you think people would be quite as kitten’d off if Anet had given the odds of getting these skins up front?
No they either would of not bothered buying the keys, or accepted the odds and run with it. It’s the not telling people upfront the chance of getting a skin which makes it seem like such a shameless cash grab.
“If they shut the game down, they shut it down. I’m going to go out in a limb here and say that GW2 probably has many many times the playerbase that CoH did even in its heyday, but that’s purely speculation. Point is, what NCSoft might or might not do in the future isn’t really relevant to this discussion.”Ekera.5281
I would hope that it would have relevance, at least in how Anet respond to this. If you work for a company that is under another company that has a habit of shutting down Western studios to use their money for Eastern Projects, you’d want a large income of money to buffer you in case of a kitten up overseas.
NCSoft will all ways favor their homeland studios, which fair enough most big companies will do, if only for better press around their head offices, but if you’re kittening off your customer base and it’s your first content update? Perhaps a mild state of panic has to occur, not so much this for this time, but for three years down the line when overspending on ‘Magical Bikini Elves Grindathon Four’ has your parent company looking for a quick freeing up of cash.
TLDR Version: Don’t kitten off your customer base just in case your boss is looking for some one to fire when someone else kittens up.
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@Blueroseknight – I’m not sure where imbeciles like yourself learned the word “entitlement”, but you obviously never learned what it actually means. People spent real money for nothing…and are upset about it. That’s not what entitlement means.
But for the high and mighty among you that like to belittle the criticisms of others, this will hurt you in the end, because people will be less likely to spend money at the cash shop, which means less development money. Because of this thread, I will not be spending any of the money I had planned to spend tonight on gems." Dravyn.4671
Entitlement is the latest buzz word, used by shady publishers and internet trolls to describe people who complain because they are not getting their moneys worth.
Unhappy with a buggy game with a terrible ending, that ruins a series of games by being so kitten poor? Why you’re just whiner who thinks they are ‘entitled’, I rarely wish physical harm on people but whoever the kitten head at EA is, he or she needs a punch in the face.
“Sorry to folks who opened thousands of Wonka Bars; guess you didn’t get your golden ticket. Not Wonka’s fault though so grow up.” Blueroseknight.7954
Well given that even in that fictional setting the odds were revealed before hand, and they weren’t and haven’t in this case yet….
“First let me say I’m glad we have NCSoft’s COO here to let us know their plans regarding Arenanet going forward. Thanks for that!
Second, nothing you receive in game has any tangible real-world value. Selling gold, items or accounts for money is against the Terms of Service. So it’s not really possible to legislate against this as a form of actual gambling since all you are doing is paying money for virtual cosmetic items that have no resale value." Ekera.5281
You just have to look at the companies past history, heck they even recently shut down a game and sacked the entire development team without notice, a team that was making them money by the way, to cover a refocusing on their Eastern market and teams even if said teams haven’t been doing so great.).
The fun thing about the law is it evolves, while you say that it can’t be legislated, all it takes is for example some one to pass a ‘Virtual goods/currency act’ that gives some measure of value to these items, and boom there you go new untapped taxes for cash hungry governments.
We’ve already started towards this with several ruling against the deletion of peoples characters, accounts and items by malicious third parties.
They’ll have to do something, if they get a bad name for being rip offs with their cash shops, then the money will stop flowing in.
If the money stops flowing in, then as a Western Developer, NCSoft won’t hesitate in shutting them down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next three or four years, laws do get passed that make these types of grab bag/box transactions classed as gambling, after all if you take a look at say Zynga, governments are missing out on quite a big piece of the pie from these transactions.
Oh it’s worse if you just for a laugh change your country and see how little the American’s pay in comparison.
Yeah, looks like the whole system is bugged. : / Also, I heard the lack of drops issue can be fixed by relogging (rumor) but I can’t test it because I always get normal loot.
That didn’t work for me.
After about thirty minutes of idling around chatting, mobs started dropping stuff again.
Seeing as I experienced this while farming for mats for my armour, it is not a rumor.
Fell victim to this myself today, I was farming mobs for the second tier of blood. Managed to trigger it without even trying hard to kill mob in a quick time, whammo no drops at all from mobs.
Not in that zone, nor in the two other zones I tried after that, a good half an hour later I started getting drops again, after just leaving the game alone for awhile.
Given that I wanted to make my character a set of armour that required 45 blood, 30 venom sacs and 15 claws to make. I’m left feeling that until this is changed, I no longer desire to continue with crafting, which makes GW2 yet another mmo with a pointless crafting system.