Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
[Column] ArcheAge: Head Start - Scourge of Patrons
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
ArcheAge has its fair share of die-hard fans. Heck, I’ve liked the game since I saw first the screenshots and short trailers back in 2010. It’s sometimes been difficult to stay excited about ArcheAge over the last four years, but we made it. It’s Tuesday, September 16th, 2014. The game servers should be live and free players should be flooding the authentication server queues. I emphasize “should” because the last few days haven’t been kind to Patrons trying to enjoy their Head Start. Despite having multiple MMO launches under its belt, Trion has managed to fall victim to sophomoric blunders.
Read more of Mark Wilhelm's ArcheAge Headstart - Scourge of Patrons.
)
Comments
I posted this in the other news article, consider it a buyer-beware until Trion makes up for their greed.
This has been nothing but a disaster so far, and it keeps getting worse.
They also started to sell packs in Archeum/Gold/Silver pricings with significantly better contents than the pre-purchase packs of the same price, as if they couldn't say "thanks for your money now fuck off" any more clearly.
Many of us had very little playtime so far in the 'early access' because of severe server instability, and many people still didn't receive the stuff they paid for, while others received double (or even 8 times, including 6+ months of subscription time). Now, apparently they also gave F2P accounts 3 free months of Patron status, screwing over the queue's and serving as an additional slap in the face to all those who paid for it.
Currently a big -1 Trion... the very worst? No word on compensations, showing the pure greed this company has right now.
Edit: As someone else asked this; The difference in value of the packs goes up to around 50-60 euro, although the website is down mostly so I can't find a link to a more detailed forum post.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
IMO its a well deserved slap. One does not simply spend $150 on alpha games just to access them early. Founders had it coming. But hey, life is full of lessons to be learned the hard way. Just make sure not to repeat them with upcoming mmos so the companies learn not to rip consumers off.
Error: No Keyboard Detected!
Press F1 to continue......
I tried joining us servers and all were 2+ hr queues.
Said f* that and closed the game.
I've been waiting forever to play this game and I'm not falling for the "ZOMG CAN"T GET IN! PATRON ME!" So guess I'm waiting till they actually have enough servers to actually spread out the cluster f* of people.
it's a hot mess. the new 'starter packs' are not helping, either. they appear to be better than founders packs. i bought a founders pack last Thursday just so i could have head-start access...and well, we all know how that went - i couldn't even get them to send me an authorization email. now, i see starter packs advertised that are way better than the founders pack i bought, and for the same amount of money.
This was a spot on article, I feel victim to the same things hes describing. My fingers are crossed for a refund.
Though I have thoroughly enjoyed watching all the people who did get land say things on the MMO forums like "suck it up sunshine, you gotta earn it, or "Youre a weak minded fool who wont hack it in AA."
Comedy Gold.
Servers are packed to the gills! It's been great so far... can't take 2 steps without running into others... and that's an understatement. I think the download this morning and queue were just fine... I was expecting worse. Played a solid 3+ hours today not an issue in game at all. Smooth as butter.
I see many post people posting money grab or greed, people don't get it, you gave them your money, it's not money grab if your willing to add your credit card they didn't come up and said you most pay us to play are game.
What you think sub mmo are? thats money grab you have to pay us to buy are game, and pay us to even log in.
Arche Age is free, I am sorry for the people can't log in but you didn't pay for the founder pack just for the 4 day head start it was for the other item you got in the pack, just give it a bit the game will die down and then you can play all you want. Or just deal with the queues for now.
But anyhow, people have a lot of hate, there are some people have good points other just troll other so they can feel better.
It needs to be said that pre-ordering games is always a financial gamble these days. Kickstarter, Early Access, and now even subscription alphas continue to drive home that point. Publishers actively monetizing the "privilege" of playing a game's early version will consistently sell their founder's package at reduced rates later or otherwise offer enticements that will probably feel like a slap in the face for their early adopters. I witnessed this firsthand with Dragon's Prophet and their packs; saw it with the Steam sale on Landmark packs; now it's come up again with ArcheAge.
Don't pay for alpha. Or, if you really, really, really must, pay to play it early and not for the perceived worth of the goodies that are added in. The latter will almost always be far cheaper to get right around launch.
All that said, get your knives out. Now that ArcheAge has been officially released into the wild I expect to see this lauded game carved up as we do every other game that comes out.
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
nothing short of disgraceful the way trion has dealt with archeage,i bought a archeum founder soon as there went on sale and couldnt wait for the game to release,my acount was hacked last week and trion have not had the decency to reply to my ticket
i have no intention of playing archeage now even if i get my acount back,i feel sorry for every founder who payed hard earned cash to be part of archeage even tho i cant even access my acount hundreds if not thousands of founders are been harshly done by not only from trion but alot of the mmo community.shame on trion and small minded mmo community.
I wonder want my credit card issuer will say about this. Technically Trion need to be careful as people will start requesting refunds. Even if they don't give refunds, people can do a chargeback. I can easily call my credit card issuer and say that I had to endure 1-3 hours queues and do not get to enjoy the product I purchased, I can say that I encoutered game breaking bugs (I fell through the world and got stuck in the ocean lol) and graphical glitches (quest objectives not displaying correctly in the objectives log).
Pretty sure Mastercard will reverse the charge right away. But I hate doing chargebacks. I have never actually done a charge back and don't want this to be the first one. But since I only made my purchase last week, it is very doable as Istill haven't paid for the purchase.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Thats pretty quick-goin on 2+ hour queue so far here on ollo.
Are you having a laugh?
I have had such extremely little playtime wit server disconnects and queues that I have been able to get to a whopping lvl 17 since friday 6pm GMT. On each day I had to endure 1.5 - 2 hour queues, then when finally in the server crashed also often ... back to queue.
Also, people in our guild had worked out detailed release plans, Landrush, crafting, farming , levelling groups. All this planning went to hell with this chaotic start, our guild plots are all over the place, we couldn't get the farmers coordinated due to long queues and disconnects,
Given the fact that we all payed good money for a Founders pack this is a disgrace.
Trion so far was in my opinion one of the fairer and more professional companies, they now have a reputation to loose. I honestly don't know what they will be able to do about the shafting of the larger guilds, but I very much hope they will come up with something soon (especially re Landgrab) or the established guild will leave.
this reminds me of Silkroad online. The servers were full of bots and real players had to pay to log in before the bots.
Yeah, I'm hoping a lot of people will start doing the same. Not those who genuinely do research before pre-ordering and if they don't like it, well... it was a risk. But rather those who make a point of complaining when they feel they've been shafted in some way when no one forced them to put the money out other than wanting that PvP advantage.
Error: No Keyboard Detected!
Press F1 to continue......
That's a case where it's Trion's fault, in my opinion. They're not able to handle things as they are coming in, and you're getting screwed because of it. You have every right to expect a working product or to at least receive what you pay for as soon as you do -- baring other circumstances, such as server space (which is finite). Not activating your subscription is completely their fault, if you're in game and watching limited resource go before your eyes.
Though it's also somewhat the person in question's fault for falling for the "limited space" thing in an MMO. That's mainly just to create more hype and sell more starting copies. It's a practice that we're starting to support lately as a consumer base, so there's shared fault in that circumstance.