Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Anyone else feel bad for EME...
Pivotelite
Member UncommonPosts: 2,145
I think they really are quite an amazing company and I feel bad they were created solely by a company as crappy as BHS(developers of TERA) for the sole-purpose of publishing TERA.
They got a somewhat bad name just from publishing this game yet they are so amazing... for example...
1) You can ask for a GM in-game at the typical American working hours Monday-Sunday and usually have one respond to you rather quickly, sometimes even port right beside you to ask what you need help with.
2) They actually work overtime to help the community... they spent 7 hours helping us organize a 3v3 tournament by teleporting people to an area where other people couldn't get to to prevent griefing, they also livestreamed it for people who weren't participating to watch. This was not an event...it was a player run tournament we asked EME to help us with.
3) Even with only 3 servers, they still keep live-chat open from 11:00 AM - 08:00 PM PST monday-sunday. As well as having GMs in-game and the support ticket system.
4) They are the only GMs that have ever reset soulbound items so I could trade them to friends, or un-soulbound cosmetics so I could give them to other characters.
5) They actually took a suggestion I PMd them and implemented it in-game in the following patch... I was pretty flattered by that.
5) Then this morning I received a totally RANDOM hand written note from one of the GMs thanking me for my activity on the TERA forums and wishing me a merry christmas...I didn't even get a christmas card from most of my family members in the mail... this really surprised me. You can see the thread here of a few people posting pictures of the cards they received in the mail...sadly I don't have a functioning camera at the moment to post my letter.
http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/general-discussion/topics/Minea-65308?page=1
I feel bad because even though they do all this the community still gives them so much crap(even i'm guilty of this) and I'm positive it's BHS that is making the decisions, they need BHS to localize the client and bring over content, they need to talk with BHS before any decisions are made and BHS is just horrible at making good decisions, BHS is launching TERA in Taiwan right now and the OPEN BETA client of TERA in Taiwan has outfits/winter events with don't even have in the released version in NA yet!
So I just want to say, if EME every publishes another game besides TERA, don't judge them based on your experience with TERA, judge them based on what you've just read in this thread.
Comments
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
i don't really feel bad for them. i mean they accepted the Tera license, it's not like anyone forced them into it. they wanted to profit from this game.
i actually feel bad for Tera as a game. it could have, should have, been so much more....if only it wasn't so....over the top with it's asian theme. i mean the combat was pretty fun, the graphics absolutely stupendus.....but the overall feel was way too "cutzey" and "silly" for western taste. Really a shame....
Eh, it has nothing to do with the theme, it's all BHS. I don't know if it had to do with the lawsuit or what but BHS just seemed to leave the game unfinished, I still enjoy it but it's pretty sad when I think about what it could have been. Everything about TERA is unfinished, every system in the game is half completed and the old roadmap they set up was completely abandoned, they never ended up developing all the sandboxish features they had planned.
I feel bad for EME because I don't think they expected what they got from BHS, BHS just seems to have completely shifted it's focus from NA and is only paying attention to Taiwan, while everyone rags at EME for not making new content when they have nothing to do with content production, they need BHS to port it over.
EME tries too hard for a game like TERA and a publisher like BHS, I mean... i got a hand written letter in the mail from a publisher.
Hero Evermore
Guild Master of Dragonspine since 1982.
Playing Path of Exile and deeply in love with it.
Pretty much all of the changes EME made to Tera at the beginning seemed good on paper but actually hurt the game in the long term.
Its like EME did not test the changes at all and had absolutely no plans to replace what they removed.
EME is a company of good people but lets not forget that it was big mistakes that brought them to this point.
No they are not an amazing company. They have lied and insulted the player base in the past. They are also the only company (possibly in MMORPG history) to “try” and quad-dip their customers even though they were using the P2P model, as well as taking off several key patch notes that BHS and NHN introduced (specifically the RNG system). Note that this all falls into upper management and their poor decisions. Customer service and the folks at the bottom/middle of the totem pole are great though.
If you want specifics to what I said on the 2nd and 3rd sentence I will be more than gladly post what I posted on the official forums, but be prepared they are novel length posts.
I know all about your posts, and those cash shop additions are the EXACT same things they have in KTERA, EME is just bringing over what it gets from BHS. And after we literally exploded at them they actually changed a few things in the cash shop.
Besides, with everything tradeable in the AH and the generosity of the cosmetic drops during events I have bought maybe 10-15 cosmetics without spending one penny in the cash shop, also thanks to chronoscrolls I havent payed for my subscription in 5 months.
TERA has been F2P for me for 5 months now and i've managed to buy everything new that has come out in the cash shop off the trade broker. That isn't so bad is it?
I don't know about the EME/BHS hierarchy, those people are bad, people who work at BHS are bad, Brian Knox is bad, but EMEs solid foundation, the community service reps and community managers are AMAZING, by far the best folks in the MMO industry.
O.K. good I didn't want to have to port all of that stuff over here. I had about 6 in-forum letters and about 2 dozen folks unanimously agreeing with me on all of those stances. That’s why I never ever get emotionally attached to any game or gaming company. I think it was because of this and due to fact I’ve been MMO’ing for 12 years that I was able to see through the entire PR very easily and called them out on it. Things got so heated that I did get a final warning about being banned from the game and the forums, even though I never got a first warning. I would agree that upper management and especially Brian Knox have made some rather distasteful decisions, but everyone else at EME seem pretty awesome. I would agree probably some of the best in the MMO industry. It is a shame upper management isn't like this. BHS on the other hand I don't know.
The thing is the game has flat lined both in Japan and Europe. TERA NA is just doing barely O.K. TERA KR, I'm not sure. But with this recent announcement I could see them merge the servers down to 2 since they are always in low status. It’s either the lack of funds and resources (I guess that lawsuit did hit them pretty hard from what I read on the forums) or they are panicking over the regional populations and don't know how to handle it properly. You also have to take into account they are a small company and they have all of their eggs in one basket. I just hope they don’t go P2W (because so far from the early translations it seems to be the case over there).
My assumption is that all this work that BHS is doing recently is to try and solidify a successful launch in TERA Taiwan which is currently capped at level 51 in the open beta.
I have a feeling they may be releasing in China next and they want to have a solid foundation of a game, oddly enough the game is releasing in Taiwan with the P2P model while at the same time Korea and Japan are converting to F2P.
Terra isnt making money... in any region. They are looking to turn this around, and the changes that have been made are to increase the profitabilty worldwide. You are correct that they have yet to launch in China, and that doing so with a business model that makes money is crucial to the game. If it fails there, expect to see the game close out globally.
They are obviously making money if they are still making plenty of content and releasing in new regions, they aren't making as much as they want but they wouldn't continue to invest in something that is putting them into a hole. Just check my latest thread about the letter they posted that is adding tons of new features to the game this year.
On a side note...it seems EME was busy, as people keep posting all their new holiday letters from members of the EME staff... but this one completely caught me off guard.
http://i1161.photobucket.com/albums/q515/xicor333/2012-12-26115845_zps1187925d.jpg
Someone received a written message from the infamous Brian Knox! Man it was easy to forget he was even working on TERA considering he COMPLETELY VANISHED. Lol, wow, Minea must have convinced him to write just one letter.
Knox has some sloppy writing lmao.
Don't really care about their management decisions, but their customer service is so personal and helpful that it's borderline creepy.
I must be too used to pre-written robot responses/
Like using our credit cards to get our addresses and send us all Christmas cards creepy... but then again... I did appreciate that. Lol.
I havent followed Tera since shortly after launch, so I dont know about these "poor decisions" others have talked about. Sending out personal, hand written, holiday cards is a nice touch. It breaks that anonymity barrier and makes your involvement in the online world more personal.
A lot of this probably stems naturally from the workplace culture that EME has. I am sure this will lead to EME getting more business in the future. At a minimum, the decision makers who developed the culture within EME will probably find steady employment. Lets hope, atleast.
I saw this thread and just felt I had to supply some additional information on why EME is a terrible company.
Minea is the worst one, which is seemingly incompetent and bitchy. She temp banned me because I quoted her post about "Stop derailing the thread" with the comment "Some people break the rules to get attention". Argument for the ban? "Questioning moderation".
Since I didn't question the moderation at all, I submitted a ticket to the GMs asking them to tell Minea that she missunderstood me and I wasn't at all questioning her moderation but simply wanted to explain that we are all a bit like children. She never got back to me. In her eyes it was questioning moderation, and suggesting she could make a mistake was apparently even worse so she didn't consider I was worth even a reply. Forget that I apologized if I upset her, I was just trash that should be thrown out.
3 weeks later when the temp ban stopped, I resumed posting. But one day, without a single word of warning, permanent ban. Reason? "You have never once contributed anything to the forums."
The best part is that the VERY SAME DAY I had made a helpful post to a new member in the same thread as Minea posted in. So it wasn't even one day ago I had been helpful, and she had SEEN it, and she still had the guts to ban me on false premises because she was in a bad mood and didn't like that I didn't suck up to her daily. Overall I posted "Here is what you should do to increase your sales and profits" weekly, and yet she still claim "Never contributing".
Minea follows the rules of "A moderator can never be wrong" and does anything she feels like. I know several others who got banned without ever getting a warning. It is just a question about when she gets fed up and bans you. You don't even have to break a rule.
If EME cared for their customers they would have fired her months ago. But bleeding customers who Minea bans is apparently their market strategy.
Nice objective post . . . .LOL Looks like someone is still sore and has an axe to grind after been banned for relentless trolling several months ago - 5 paragraphs no less.
I had fun with TERA but still really couldn't capture me to stay with it. But I will say, EME has the best customer service I've ever dealt with - ever.
it was horrible when they still had somewhat of a population. one of the worst around. they had a few firings and shakeups with their CS people and then it became decent.
You might not think so, but 5 paragraphs on why EME is bad is more helpful than 1 line saying "EME SUX".And I never trolled, I usually argued with the trolls. (You know, the people who only posted "You are all disgusting pedos" as soon as they found an Elin thread to post in, or kept saying NCSoft sucks, but EME, built from former NCSoft employees is best ever, or why not those who said GW2 is only pressing 1,2,3 over and over, while that is exactly how TERA plays out as well.)
In the end it doesn't matter how correct and constructive your posts are, if the readers have already decided they don't like what they are reading. I know at least two others perma banned by Minea, without warnings, because they didn't want to blindly praise everything EME did.
I used to argue the same at the FFXI forums. Not ever did the moderators ban me for criticising and giving constructive feedback day after day after day.
And that will be another set of 5 paragraphs on how EME plays favorites, leaving trolls (if they insult Elin players) alone, while banning anyone who gives constructive criticism (Like I usually told Minea to try and mix in some casual posts and not just edits and locks all day, so she'd come across as more positive.)
The rather uninspired questing and grindy mob layouts is what turned me off though. I still have a sub until june funny enough so I might give it another go with f2p sure to breath some life.
EME did always seem like a cool company though and the community was top notch.