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A.Net suspending first party digital sales of GW2
plescure
Member UncommonPosts: 397
A very unusaul move. The only other MMO ive ever known to do this at launch was Darkfall
From their Face book page:
Ensuring the best possible play experience for our fans is our highest priority. We’ve said before that we would be willing to temporarily disable first-party digital sales if we felt our high player concurrency may compromise player experiences. We have now reached that point.
Effective immediately we have disabled sales via buy.guildwars2.com. To be clear, box and digital sales are still available via our retail partners. We are tracking our concurrency closely while expanding our infrastructure. We’ll re-enable first-party digital sales as soon as we feel that we can do so safely. ~RB2
If someone is talking in general chat in a language you dont understand, chances are they're not talking to you. So chill out and stop bitching about it!
Comments
It's a good move! Better to stall sales a bit to ensure a better experience for current players, then go Blizzard's Diablo III way and piss everyone off with lag and login issues for weeks!
And look where D3 is now? Everyone I know who bought that game... every single one of them regret buying it. Me included!
I am having a blast now with Guild Wars 2 with no issues and no lag! And I am playing from Europe even.
( altho I was smart and rolled on a US server :-P )
Well honestly, nearly every server is listed as full .. and since you cannot create a home on a full server, you must stop sales.... or add new servers.
The pre-sales did a number on this game, but box sales finished servers off. My local retailers are now sold out .. my Best Buy had 25 shelf copies on Tuesday, and they are all gone now (I bought the last copy).
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Lolipops !
I dont believe tthis, they are saying:
We sold to many copies, and we dont want your money we care for our playerbase and want them to have the best expirience when playing.
Amazing move there, beats the greed of Blizzard anyday.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Which again, is a good move!
Blizzard lost total control of Diablo 3 during the first weeks and just continued on selling more boxes! They didn't give a crap at all!
The login issues and severe lag issues continued for weeks and it wasn't until enough people got fed up and quit, that the presure on their servers dropped and game became actually playable and you being able to login when you wanted to.
Blizzard didn't do jack.... just PR talk and just sat on their butts and waited for the problems to solve itself. All they cared about was box sales and getting the Real Money Auction House online to rake in more cash!
What ArenaNet is doing now, is what Blizzard used to do with World of Warcraft back in 2004, when Blizzard still cared for their customers and weren't the greedy money hungry giant they have become now.
all aboard the blizzard hate train.. chu chu chu
But in all seriousness D3 issue was/is different to the GW2 issue, D3 had issues with too many people logging into the game at the same time and peek hours, this effected just the person trying to log in and not those currently playing. GW2 issues do effect people currently playing.
It also feels like ANET are sitting on their butts waiting for the party bug to go away they have said it's due to load on the servers but it's been a problem since BW3 and no sign of a fix.
Sorry guys, I really can't resist: reminds me of Darkfall, when fanbois where ready to sold their mothers and whatnot to get a "limited quantity key".
But even better: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/152804/cartmanland-commercial XDDDD
Besides, there are tons of online retailers packed with keys and selling them at much less than the overpriced arenanet digital shop, so this is really just a marketing stunt (not posting my e-shopping links as I am too lazy to go thru the forum rules and see if it's permitted or not to refer commercial sites).
WoW did this back in late 2004. They actually stopped shipping for a few weeks while they were getting more servers online. It's not really a "bad" sign, although internet commentators tend to have pretty short memories about this kind of thing.
I suspect its a matter of analysis. Given that the servers are full, and that adding more people would result in them having to add additional servers (which cost money), they have decided that they would lose less money by suspending their web site sales, than what it would cost for the additional servers.
Ehh Diablo 3 had serious lag issues during peak hours in the first weeks. It was terrible. Not to mention being disconnected on critical moments like boss fights, having to log back in finding yourself dead and having to do the entire thing all over again.
Its not a good move its a forced move they have no choice in the matter. To me thats a red flag that the underlining problems GW2 has are not minor and cannot be fixed quickly. Stopping sales on a B2P game is never a good thing and Blizzard knew that. potential customers will look for reasons why and will see all the problems being posted on the web and that will do even more damage. They should have had a contingency plan in place but of course Anet get away with this when Bioware got hammered for not having a plan b.
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Never happened to me. Were as we're all experiencing 10 seconds lag spikes in GW2, well I didn't play yesterday but on Wednesday it was a joke.
It might be a good move from the perspective of those who are already playing, but it's a slap in the face to those who had intended to purchase this weekend. And it's criminally bad business practice by ArenaNet - to tell potential customers "No, we're not actually able to take your money" is just about the worst place to be in business and demonstrates a woeful lack of planning and preparation on their part.
This is pay day for about 90 per cent of the UK by the way - so if you were waiting until you got paid before purchasing this game - as I suspect many were - too bad. Good move ArenaNet!
fixed for ya.
You see, EA promised limited sales, but then lifted sales restrictions when the game sold, causing MAJOR server conjestion.
I think Blizzard had the hardware to support surges for X-pacs. Even when WoW launched, Blizzard limited the game and made it hard to find, back in late 2004 through early 2005. It just wasn't on store shelves.
Then Activision took over, but thats another story.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Guild Wars 2's future and longetivity entirely depends on heavy populated servers, due to PVP playing such a huge part in this game. (W v W v W)
They know very well the current rush will die off the coming weeks and population decreasing on current servers.
Every single MMO release these past years has gone terribly wrong due to opening up too many servers.... spreading out the people and then ending up with empty / low populated servers a month later! SW:TOR being the perfect most recent example of that!
I know it sucks, but what do you really want?
- Say "feck it" I want to play now! Having them opening up too many servers and then end up on low populated servers a month later.
or
- Suck it up! Wait a week or two for the rush to die off a little and then being able to play a heavy populated servers and enjoy the game for many months to come.
I know I would pick the latter..... wouldn't you?
What do you want them to do man!! Christ sake!
Go EA/Bioware's way and keep on selling.... opening up massive amounts of servers and then have over 90% of them end up low populated a month later?
And then having to deal with server mergers and have the entire internet and media Doom and Glooming the game that it's dying and a being a huge failure!
They only have two choices here!
1. Opening up more servers and face the above scenario.
or
2. Stall sales a little and manage the initial rush instead.
At last!
A dev that gets that digital product is limited by the infrastructure in place, and so you very much have a limit of the stock you have (or can ethically sell... it gets to the point that you are selling a service you cannot support)
Most just keep selling and piling it, obviously thinking because the product isn't a physical box that they have infinite stock.
Kudos again to ANet. Service before greed. The way it SHOULD be.
Must hurt to hear the truth hmm ?
I used to be one of the biggest fan of Blizzard, i hate them now for a couple of reasons.
Greed - the greed of blizzard is unmatched.
Death servers BEGGGING for help for years on end, what does blizzard do ? a blue post once a year saying: We are aware of your position and we are discussing ways to assist you in the meantime throw us your money.
D3 was a farce, worste game of the year, played out in 14 hours and had 10 YEARS of development rofl.
MONEY MONEY MONEY and let the playerbase go fuck themselves as long as they pay us
But they lost around 4 million players now since WotLK, and many more will quit in MoP after they see what MoP realy is, another bad Expansion to milk the playerbase out even more.
Nothing to do with hate for WoW, but thate to Blizzard who lost their most loyal fans and choosed to milk us out like cows.
Arenanet shows they care about server stability, their playerbase, maybe at the start, maybe they become the new blizzard ? who knows.
But at least they show their playerbase how you can run a good market and still make lots of profit.
Something Blizzard lost when all those ships of money came in.
Nothing personal to the WoW fanboys, i was in your shoes, untill i needed to tranfer 10 chars 2 times, and then i pulled the plug and said, FUCK YOU with your death servers.
Aye, you're right of course. I'm just pissed off. Been looking forward to this all week. Got up at 7am to start the download before going to work and got hit with the news. Now I have to try and track down a boxed copy, but since Game has closed most of its stores in the UK (and specially in NI where I am), that's not that easy to do any more. Grrr!
Chu Chu Chu ... there's more room on the train.
If Anet cared they would have fixed the party bug months ago, not hating on them as I am very much enjoying GW2 but it's a major issue they've know about for a long long time but seem to be doing nothing about it, forums are offline, trading post is unstable... Gem store though thats fine, dont see them taking down the gem store do you?
It's like a shop owner who doesnt want to sell anymore because the till is full...
A company like Anet/NCsoft doesnt have a single server to hand the sales/website data separately?
Are things that bad?
Bad management of assets and priorities IMO.
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