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Mourning- Unethical Business and Horrid Game
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lol 5$ says jenangless is Egomancer
"What are you smoking? IF you consider having to do a charge-back a refund, then yes, everyone got a refund."
your wrong. the company that handled the orderes for them sent a rep to the forums and posted his info so everyone could contact him to get a refund fi they wanted one... Sorry if this derails all your little scam and conspiracy theories but thats the facts of the matter.
"lol 5$ says jenangless is Egomancer"
you would like that wouldnt you? so ya'll could go on with your little hatred fest making up nonsense..
Reality is your friend.
Jenangless is one of the ryl fanbois that the devs called to come here for jihad
Nonsense ???
Reality is your friend ???
Well reality is clearly no friend of yours... unless your talking alternate reality that is.
Most of the people you are labeling as "haters" have been through the process of constructively and obejectively discussing this game for almost 6 months on an almost daily basis. I can tell by both your attitude and your post count you were not around nor did you read any of it !
Therefore you have no idea what your talking about and I doubt you even read all the posts in this thread.
We stopped taking this game seriously when the developers and managers of it stopped taking it seriously and decided to cash in on the basis of an alpha test. It became a complete joke... now we joke about it...
If you dont like it stop reading..... o wait... you havnt read anything yet have you ?
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
"What is so hard to understand about this?? A billing company doesn't just randomly bill people for no reason, only order's from the top. IF the billing company did charage early, that is a break of contract, and Mourning would ever right to sue them a massive ammount of money. And that didnt happen did it? But everyone knows the pre-order scandal is a vicious plan. When something goes wrong in a company, it isn't "billing" or "some guy"- it is the CEO. It doesn't matter even it billing was seperate company- the CEO(or leader of the company) contracted them, and is responisble for there actions with his game. He is responsible for any faults or fraud like activities. However, Horizons doesn't feel it has responiblity to anyone."
RRR
I think it's the objective of your past self to make you cringe.
First grow up "get a life" oOoOo thats clever. Second get some help you may be paranoid schizophrenic. People did'nt try to hurt Mourning they did it to themselves. As someone else said there is no billing accident they new exactly what they were doing when they charged people for a product that was not what they promised. To belive anything else is just being ignorant. If they really cared they woulda scrambled to get peoples money back to keep the fan bases faith.
But they didnt they decided the fan base instead of playing there game, that they should help build it. As far as preaching to the wind wha the hell is that supposed to mean. I'll put this game down with facts until they shut it down or deliver what they promised. Why? Cause i like to see bad company's get what they deserve.
If my posts turn 1 person off this Sham of a game thats good enough for me.
lmao
If there are Mourning fanboys, this is a great bunch of mmorpg.com fanboys. People who just blindly follow mmorpg.com and likely haven't tried the game on their own. And for those that have and don't like it.. WOW! What does that say? Not a heck of a lot. Every one among us has games we dont like. So your choice is Mourning.. good for you.
Someone also made the post of "well look at how long this thread is". Well thats because the same 3-4 people are posting the same thing over and over and over. Here is a thought.. why not post something new and original? If you choose not to thats fine. It will just show the quality of this thread which isn't much. Just a bunch of mmorpg.com trolls. Either who have not played the game at all or spent 1h ingame and figure they know all the features the game offers. mmorpg.com is the one site that is avidly against Mourning, which is fine. However that just makes this thread incredibly biased in thoughts, impressions and opinions. So the posts here are skewed and biased and dont represent everyone else. For example any fan of Mourning doesn't likely come to mmorpg.com so they won't post a defense. Simply leaving all your mmorpg.com fanboys to spam your nonsensical thoughts.
Now I don't play Mourning myself. Compared to the other major titles it doesn't stack up atm and rather spend my time in Guild Wars(pretty fun btw). Only reason Im posting this is its incredibly annoying to read 3-4 mmorpg.com fanboys try to talk about how they think they know anything about what it takes to make a game or what Mourning actually has to offer. Who on earth are you guys kidding? Community PR for Mourning isn't great... at all.. but we are talking about the game itself. Of which you have no idea of.
Feel free to play the EQ2 and WoW clones. A game like Mourning which actually is trying to offer a parental line and the ability to play via your offspring are the sort of novel ideas that are refreshing and welcomed.
Finally the game is 19.99. From the get go you can't expect the mmo to be as good as WoW or EQ2 with that price tag. Its a mmo still in construction and development, hence the tag. You get your full value for that game.
Get a clue. You guys don't speak for anyone else, at all. Just yourselves in this tiny, tiny corner of the mmorpg world. Mourning had a rough start but if they can implement their actual novel ideas, more power to them. Will help the industry immensely.
I really wish Egomancer wouldn't post here though. Just feeds the trolls and doesn't do any good(kind of like my post). However I suppose at times its hard to keep quiet. But hes a dev and Im just a gamer. So imo, Ego, get back over in Mourning and back it as best you can.
Edit: Oh, I should add, I too was upset at the early billing and how we preordered a game that has not all its touted features implement. Wasn't overly cool. However these guys are very accomodating with refunds on both my preorder copies. The only fans that didn't get much help were the ones spamming in threads rather than pming or returning it to the sender or other obvious routes.
Yea, this topic is so "full" of lies that the mourning devs have taken it upon themselves to break there own rules./sarcasm Instead of moving threads, they are deleteing anything that is mentioned in this topic( as a source). They are also reading this topic frequently to find if there are any new topics posted that they can delete. Even contructive posts are gone now, for example felsin's first review of mourning is gone because it was mentioned on mmorpg.com. Any of the "don't buy" posts from buyers are gone as well. They have also made a filter to block "somethingawful" and "mmorpg.com".
If this isn't proof they are deeply afraid of this topic and somethingawful.com what is?
As a side note, you will not find comments in this topic by mmorpg.com mods and have not said anything sence the break up. They are not encouraging anyone. However, your Mourning Dev Friends seem to make nasty comments about mmorpg.com mods and love to make comments about Dark and Light as "vaporware". They love to threaten sites like mmorpg.com and somethingawful.com. Ironic isn't it? Mabye they shouldn't troll other games/boards/sites...... either way, they have a business and we don't. Its just unprofessional.
He is a "project manager" according to the credits page, programmers from the credits page havent posted at all as far as I know . There is no such thing as "early billing" in a contract, also there is still no info on 40% discount.
I also somehow doubt regular letters have a return address in comparison to parcels (think thats the correct english word), did you recieve the cd:s or did you cancel before april 1:st?
Good thing you managed to get money back without cancelling the payment or doing a "payback" on the creditcard.
But banning somone for telling how to cancel charges on creditcards & saying that pre-orders cant be cancelled is just unethical/lying (the whole "pre" signifies that the order isnt done). I myself have never payed full price for a pre-order beta (WoW, CoH, dont know about MxO but they didnt take full price either).
If the billing company did such a shitty job that means the contract was faulty/shitty which is the project managers/ publishers fault.
Having the project manager running around (on 3rd party sites) & blaming others for being Dark & Light devs is just stupid (this is a grown man we talking about, his job is to make sure the project succeds not to blame others/ hide info).
Also throwing lawsuit threats around is also fairly stupid especially when it was clear that they where trying to hide that it was crap & that noone is allowed to post about that. Why has not there been a lawsuit for the whole pre-order issue?
"Forum upgrade" which was just to delete 3 years of posts (the archive had info about issues that are still present). Doing wipe just because of trolls is just one meaningless excuse, forums only wipe as last resort or if server got faulty harddrives or something. (New color scheme was in before & is not a big deal under vBulletin forum system). This all adds up to:
A trainwreck is more fun that a functioning track & train, this summarises Mourning pretty good.
Just seems most of the cynics are simply posting out of some personal grudge against the developers and taking it out on their project. Can't we just hate the devs but not the game?
The vast majority have seemingly either not played Mourning or only spent an hour or two ingame. This is obviously no basis to form an opinion on the actual state of the game. Just their own opinions which everyone is entitled to have but doesn't change the reality of the actual state of the product.
Which btw, isn't great! But for 19.99 you again are likely getting a fair product.
As for what Mourning does on their forums.. I have to say imo, they are far too timid. If someone has no intention of playing the game and bashes it then ban them. If they solely go to the forums to dissuade other people from playing then ban them too. They serve no purpose to the betterment of the community and the actual fans of Mourning definetly don't appreciate their presence.
However if they have a constructive post on how to improve the state of the game, then more powre to them. Just that many of the disgruntled posters that have been banned here did not do that and they are fully aware. Granted they made an eloquent post on occassions but they also openly bashed the game and the devs. That is rarely tolerated anywhere.
This game has enough problems to deal with. Their best bet is to get rid of the naysayers(as they have had ample time to voice their displeasure), and just try to create the best atmosphere possible to those that do want to play the game.
You seems to have problems even answering other ppl posts. You just off topic about how the people haven't played the game. It doesnt matter this thread deals with the unethical business practices of mourning, and yes, look back we have quite a few posters talking about how they played the game and felt it was crap.
In the end, the forum deltetion, filters, random deletation of any negative post(Spoonbender said it was very disappointing) and delteation of anything mentioned on this forum is sad. The simple fact, is ego is terrorified of this thread and thinks the romanian style censorship is the only solution. Censorship shows weakness not strength.
I didnt preorder so i wont make any comments about that... except that paying 30$ with the promise that that 30$ will be 40% off the game price, and then selling the game for 20$ is reidiculous.
I have been following mourning for about 5-6 months now, i have to admit i was greatly impressed by the ideas that the game was going to have... however... as i read the devs' posts i quickly came to realize that there is no way in heave that i will ever play that game.
The way the devs treat their CLIENTS is horrible. I deeply regret WISH... oh god how those devs could respond in a professional manner. Now I am playing SWG, and i find their customer service to be spic and spam (they've improve ALOT int he last 2-3 months).
I dont care how good a game is; if im going to be treated like trash, scared of being banned for saying a constructive comment, or anything of that sorts - there is no way they are getting my subscription money.
Treat your client well, and let the game defend itself. thats how it should be done.
Well, yet again I can't believe I am going to say this after actually agreeing with Egomancer on something yesterday BUT I am in agreement with you. This post is probably going to not make a lot of people unhappy but honestly I am tired of it.
This has really gone on too long now. I don't know where the renewed venom is coming from at this point. Mourning has obviously suffered a bad fate already and is hobbling on one leg over the actions of the company.
Everyone is aware of the issues that actually cared to do a little homework on the game at this point. What was a iron handed moderation technique when Admini was actively handling the forum has now turn into a flame fest where they have to worry about a bunch of people that want to throw around "free speech" and use the word "Nazi" over and over flaming them to no end. Creating a forum for the sole purpose of slamming Mourning? Really guys, give it up. The damage has been done, by both the Mourning staff (development team and publisher) and the users here that have voices their concern (and often MORE) here and on the official forums.
I tire of hearing how its a scam; the game is obviously not a scam. It does exist, and people are playing it. There may have been some PROBLEMS with achieving that for many but none-the-less there was no intentional scam, if you don't see that by now youre a fool. Many people may however feel ripped off, and with VERY GOOD reason. Many of those people have voices their issues, some in a decent fashion, some in a down right ignorant manner.
What Limitless Horizons did with the pre-order billing was shameful, however that needs to be taken up with them. Unfortunately the developers are handling the official forum instead of the publisher, which causes a lot of large issues since the dev team has to be reasonable and answer for all the s
tupidity of their publisher.
Do I hate Mourning? No, I do not hate it; as a matter of fact I know almost nothing about it.
Do I hate the Dev team? No, but I do think they need to take some business 101 lessons and some customer service courses badly. I also feel they are extremely unprofessional. Thats been said, probably in 20 different languages at this point by a thousand people. There is nothing informative about this anymore or constructive.
Do I want Mourning to tank? Yes and No. If it did completely tank that may still save the community and make other companies wary of trying such tactics in the future. However I do not wish ill-will on the Mourning staff (ok, maybe Admini a little). I do believe this was something they put their hearts into and believed in greatly, even if they couldn't achieve their dream in the way they intended and made every bad move I could possibly think of.
My involvement in it came mostly from my concern for the MMO community. Pay to beta, thats an absurd idea and sets a HORRIBLE precedence for us with future companies. Paying as they develop the game? Dear God, what nightmares that can bring to my wallet if I wish to play games in the future. The level of acceptance is low enough as it is in the MMO community without nonsense like this. However, as I have already said, the damage is done. Nothing more can be gained by this level of hatred. Mourning is limping along; it may or may not make it. Those that actually do wish to play it at this point, AFTER everyone voicing themselves one way or the other I think have the right to play it and do so peacefully without being ripped apart anymore. They OBVIOUSLY know everything thats going on by now, this continued exercise in mental masturbation is helping no one.
Give it a rest folks, really.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
My involvement in it came mostly from my concern for the MMO community. Pay to beta, thats an absurd idea and sets a HORRIBLE precedence for us with future companies. Paying as they develop the game? Dear God, what nightmares that can bring to my wallet if I wish to play games in the future. The level of acceptance is low enough as it is in the MMO community without nonsense like this. However, as I have already said, the damage is done. Nothing more can be gained by this level of hatred. Mourning is limping along; it may or may not make it. Those that actually do wish to play it at this point, AFTER everyone voicing themselves one way or the other I think have the right to play it and do so peacefully without being ripped apart anymore. They OBVIOUSLY know everything thats going on by now, this continued exercise in mental masturbation is helping no one.
Give it a rest folks, really.
Yes, most people involvement has been for this reason. Seen the shameful admini and egomancer make money off such nasty business practices, is kinda sad. And it will encourage more devs to think this behavior is acceptable, when frankly it is not. This topic has stoped quite a few buyers, which is good and bad. I just think it's saving people money. Hard to feel sorry for people that flame other sites, making fun of mmorpg.com and call Dark and Light "vaporware" when there game is indeed crap.
Either way, the mourning mods are the ones that blew this thread out of the water. By deleteing all threads in assiocation with this topic, they seem very afraid.
I don't think you get the point mate.
Ok this time I will speak personally, I won't generalize.
I don't flame Mourning or Egomancer because everybody does.
My reason to do so, is much more focused on discouraging people to buy this game, because they have been cheated to buy what appears to be a finished product, when in fact is not even half made.
I am preventing innocent people from buying Mourning by mistake , believing that this game is somewhat playable or slightly enjoyable, when in fact is not (judging by the objective reviews of few players posted in the Mourning Forum and quickly deleted)
Let me be clear here:
1)I don't have anything against people that genuinely wants to help the (lost) cause of Mourning, by buying the game and financing the devs to improve the game.
If you want to help Egomancer and Co because you think that the game is promising and it will be a master piece in the future, then it s fine.
It is your money, you know in which status the game is, so you won't have nasty surprises.
You know it is a risk, but you accept the risk because you think that it will be worth it in the long term.
Nothing wrong with it.
2)What I don't want is people to be decieved in believing this game is a finished product, when in fact it should be still in closed beta.
Most of the people that are curious about this game probably think that Mourning is at the same level of Anarchy Online or Horizons when they were released, therefore they might think: "Oh well, maybe it is a bit buggy but in a few months Devs will be able to fix most of the bugs".
Wrong. Reality is that Mourning is not anywhere near the status of Anarchy or Horizons when they were released.
AO and Horizons were unbelievebly bugged games, really frustrating to play, but you could still play them.
There were mobs to kill, quests to make, things to craft(horizons) and the majority of mechanics and content was in place.
In Mourning there is none of it:
-Very few mobs to hunt (If any at all)
-No quests
-Leveling and skill system not entirely implemented
-No trading System
-Crafting not implemented
-The revolutionary "Bloodline" system not implemented
-Part of the world disappear completely while you play
-Thousands of bugs to be fixed
-Servers very unstable
-Devs rude and arrogants, and overall incapable to manage the community let alone a company.
(Even if some of the above have been fixed, the game has still way to go before being "fit for consuption", so please don't start contesting every single point, I am talking about the readyness of the game as a whole)
THIS GAME IS NOT FIT TO BE SOLD!
This kind of business is not acceptable in any shape or form, no matter how much the Devs are trying to make this game better, you DO NOT release to the public a game passing it like a finished product when it is just in advanced Alpha.
This is simply not acceptable.
And since negative posts are swiftly deleted in the Nazi Mourning forum, the only way to counter balance that, is to have the negative posts posted in MOORPG.com forum, so people will know what are they are letting themself into, before they buy this sort of a game.
These are my reasons, I genuinely care about people not wasting their money in buying a game that is not playable. I value money, and like me there are lots of people out there that believe that paying 20$ for this game will be a theft.
So to avoid that, I want to warn them in advance, like any other respectable citizen of the world will do for their fellow citizens.
If in 3 or 6 months this game will be playable, then you come here and post about how much this game has improved, in that case, we might be willing to listen (If it genuinely got better).
So if you will excuse us, we will keep posting here at MMORPG.com, how crap this game is (which by the way is the truth).
You keep posting in Mourning how "amazing" this piece of junk is (and keep dreaming).
This look like a great deal to me, don't you think?
[quote]Originally posted by ste2000
[b]
A few comments to what you think or not that is implemented ingame:
1. There are currently around 9000 monsters on the map with around 60 different 3D models each of them with 203 versions of textures
2. Indeed there are only 2 quests
3. Leveling and skill system is indeed partially implemented (bows are not in ATM but except that the rest are there)
4. Trading system is in
5.Crafting is implemented but you can not earn xp from crafting (that worked at some point but we changed the system and it is not working now). We will fix this as soon as possible (there are 1000 other things more important on the pipeline)
6. The bloodline is not implemented
7. Parts of the world do not dissapear completely when you play, I assume that you are talking about our terrain system that is patch based and sometime I suppose that you can see the terrain margin.
8. Thousand of bugs to be fixed - true
9. Now it depends what do you understnad with servers are unstable. After the launch the servers run 48h without any crash so from the technical point of view the launch was a success. But it is true that we restart them daily and we patch them very often.
10. Devs rude and arrogants? Well, I will not comment on this one.
Everybody says here that all I want is people money, which is not true. We refunded almost everybody that asked it. I want to point that there were less than 2% that wanted to get the money back and I htink that this is within the normal limit. On the other hand I deeply regret what happened with the preorders and I appologize to the people that felt scammed by that. The company that handled the preorders did not do game distribution before and the results were not good (as all of us saw). The result was that we changed the billing company (and belive me that ccbill is charging us more for card processing than the old one so we actually lost money from this change). So far I am happy with ccbill and we did not have problems with the new card processing comapny.
I want to let you all know that we do not have a hidden agenda to scam people or to rip them off. We did not work 3.5 years to cheat people and if we wanted that we would have launched the game earlier before investing a lot of money. The point is that we had to launch the game from more reasons, the financial one being one of them.
You all must be aware of the fact that my company is not exactly Blizzard or SOE. This game budget is 100 times smaller than the one of EQ2 for example. This game is not supposed and never was to compete with EQ2 or WoW. To make a price and quality comparison a Ferrari or Lamborghini costs around 100k $. If EQ2 would have been the Ferrari then it would have been as someone would have given me 1000 USD and ask me to make a car frm those money. If you are skilled enough I suppose that you can make something that has 4 wheels from car components dumped at the car cemetery but what you assemble will never run on the street as fast and smooth as a Ferrari.
In tis industry there are no wonders anymore. Just look around you! From all the companies that are making for the first time a MMO almost all of them canceled. Even established publishers with a good track record failed (Dragon EMpires and Codemasters) and there are others that are not doing so good.
Think at this: DnL was pushed back another half an year, Darkfall no one knows when will be launched and the other games still have a long time to go until release. Did you asked yourself why? It is because these small companeis can not compete with the big guys. SOE, Blizzard have the money and the knowledge to make MMORPGs and frankly speaking it will be very difficult for newcomers to catch them from behind.
I am proud that I launched Mourning even it is not the game I dreamed to me. I am proud because I managed to do this despite all the odds that were against me. Maybe I lack some PR skills but I am not perfect and I do not know how to do everything on this world. My job was to make a game and I made it, good, bad, as I knew. As I posted here or on my forums, I do not remember right: this was the limit of our competence. More than this we could not do (as a team) and frankly speaking this is more than 75% of other companies that now are forgotten did.
Do you know that when I started to develop Realms of Torment (former name of Mourning) other 80 companies started to make a MMO? Well, today from those 80 companies less than 10 exist and the best titile released by one of those is Horizons (we except from this list WoW and EQ2). Why is that?
I am sorry to say that the future is not as bright for the MMO industry as it was in the past. It costs more and more to develop a MMO and the requirements are higher. Fadeus and the others say that they are doing this because they do not want crappy products to be released anymore. Answer yourself: if Mounring have been released 4 years ago would you have said that it is crappy? Which means that the quality of the games is increasing and consequently the number of companies that can compete is decreasing.
And it will keep decreasing until there will be a few companies, less than 5 that will dominate the market. That day MMOs will be an evolutionary genre. Do you want that? If yes you can come here and say that I want to scam people and I did it only for the money (which I can assure you that is not true)
Egomancer
a
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| Microsoft Windows XP Pro x64
| ABIT AN8 x32 Nforce4 SLI x16
| AMD Athlon FX-60 Dual-Core 2.6GHz
| Corsair 3.1 GB DDR 400 Dual-Channel
| (2x) BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 320mb
| Creative X-FI Xtreme Gamer
| Western Digital 250Gb SATA
No, that was not my point at all. I don't care if it comes out looking like Donkey Kong 1. And the fact that you don't get what I said makes me beleive you really don't realize the reprecussions of what you are doing. However, I don't blame you for doing them, you have your own interests to look after at this point.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Yes I made the post about how long the thread is. I am also one of the regular posters. Think about this.... If there was no new negative material to post about, why would anyone be posting? Mourning keeps supplying us with stuff to laugh about, so we keep laughing, Im getting a giggle out of you right now! If you think you can come here and tell us how, when and what to post then you have truly spent too much time on the Mourning boards and it has warped your sense of open discussion and free speech.
You dont play Mourning ?? So in other words your talking out your butt!
Yes there is another title that is 19.99 its called EVE and it is better than both WoW or EQ2 and has none of the problems associated with Mourning. You really need to check your facts before you post mate.
Well if we are only posting for ourselves, how did we get your attention so effectively ?? Again you say one thing and do another... no wonder you relate so well to the Mourning Devs.
We wish Ego wouldnt post here too, his broken logic is only matched by his broken english.
And if you had been reading the posts on this forum since late 2004 you would have read the repeated posts that said DO NOT PRE-PRE ORDER THIS GAME. But you werent reading them because you were too busy being a complete knowall and getting led by the nose by people who wanted to rip you off. You think getting a refund is good ? No that just confirms you were ripped off. If it was a legitimate transaction you would have not needed a refund. Its pretty simple logic, Im sorry it evades you so completely.
Lastly why dont you take some of your own advice and stop "feeding the trolls". We dont need your lame inputs to enjoy bagging this game, we can rip the suitcase out of it very effectively without you. But of course you cant can you, because you are as fascinated by this as the rest of us, the only difference is you got sucked in.... and now you cant deal with it.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Mhhhh....................
Egomancer, this business is very competitive. You should have known that going in and you should be well aware of it now. Your product is going to be compared to the ones who came before it, as well as the ones that are out now. If it's able to stand on its own merits, then it will always have a following, which is a boon to a small company like yours. However, you only hurt yourself when you appeared too sensitive to your critics. You're always going to have them, regardless of how good a product it is. You can't please everyone.
But the fact of the matter is, is that your product is buggy, has 'promised' features which aren't implemented yet, and is just another clone, poorly done, of other, better, games out there with nothing to distinguish it for itself, other than the bad reputation of the mods/developers. By your own admission, you say that the skill and levelling implementation is only partially done. What are people supposed to do then? Why pay to do something you can do for free elsewhere? No one wants to play a game that is more painful than enjoyable.
I hope you learned one thing out of this, and that is that PR matters. You got nailed hard on this and a lot of it could have been avoided if you had a good PR spin on it. You could have asked for donations and/or investing from others, rather than charging people for it.
In a couple of months, this game might be worth taking a look at, but for right now, people's money is better spent elsewhere if they're looking for a MMORPG.
Ego,
I understand that you are a small company, and I appreciate the fact that you are working hard.
I always admired small company like Mithyc, Turbine, Funcom and CCP which started with few resources, and managed to somewhat finish their product and also to keep their reputation intact.
Your company is slightly different from the above.
Your problem is that you lack communication skills and the formula of your business is a bit dodgy.
I don't think that you want to scam people on purpose.
You need to finance your project and obviously you try to get money coming in, just to survive, which I understand.
And I know that sometimes there are difficult decisions to be made and sometimes this decisions are the wrong ones.
Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect, but usually when you do mistakes you apologise and try to correct the problem.
What you do instead, is to blame everyone else except yourself, which is not the way to lead a business.
Take your resposnabilities as head of your company and people will appreciate your honesty.
Now about the scamming accusations.
Again, the point is that you should be more honest and clear about the status of your game.
Since there are lots of people that are willing to pay to play Mourning Beta, you don't need to pretend that this game is "released" as in "finished", because by your own admission is not.
Here s the description of the game as it appears in Fileplanet:
No mention of this game being in Beta anywhere on the official Website or on Fileplanet.
People that want to buy your game gives all the feature described as granted.
How do you think they will feel when they log in and find half of those feature are working and the other half are highly bugged?
This is deceiving your customer which is a sort of a scam.
I don't know if you are aware of it, but advertising features that are not available in the product is illegal in US and EU.
Why do you think Gamigo (EU distributor) don't want to release your game yet?
Because it is incomplete and they don't want to ruin their reputation or get sued, and you know that.
What you should do is to take off all this fluffy description and inform the potential customer that the game they are going to buy is still in Beta and that more feature will be implemented in the future.
In this case people can decide if they want to spend their money and help you out financing the game, or if they want to wait a bit more till the game gets better.
You don't give the choice to your customers, you just lead them to buy a product which is incomplete, without warning them in advance.
If people wants to spend 20$ to play a Beta, there is nothing wrong whith it.
It s their money after all, but it should be clear to everyone that this is a Beta, don't try to hide it.
See, what you have to change is your attitude towards your customers, you should be more honest and apolegetic.
People doesn't like to be cheated and lied to.
Stop doing this, be more honest and keep working hard and maybe your game one day will be a game that people will talk about for the right reasons.
Last advice, you should hire someone that speaks good english and has experience in communication to take care of PR and the Community management, and hire good Mods for your Forum, some of them are about 13-14 y/o and it is unacceptable that a forum is moderated by kids.(Spoonbender is the only person that has the skills to be a Mod, I suggest you to put him in charge of the Forum)
Lastly, the whole fuss about Mourning is the impression that you are trying to sell a Beta as a finished product.
If you advertise that the game is still in Beta, and people still want to buy it regardless, then I won't have nothing to argue.
And nobody will have anything to argue.
On the other hand, If you keep going on with your old strategy to cheat your customers, people like me will keep boycotting this game, and there is nothing personal in doing that, it is just common sense.
If there is something dodgy going on, it is every good citizen duty to report to the authorities and making it public rather than ignore it.
I hope you ll understand that.
Regards