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Trion's 10% (or lack thereof)
It's been reported on a few sites that Trion still hasn't provided the 10% discount on marketplace items sold to Founders and Patrons in ArcheAge.
Trion's now confirmed on its forums that it won't honour this, apparently because it is "too difficult", and will offer something "equitable" instead. Nobody knows yet what that is, but since a 10% discount is hard to be anything other than a 10% discount, it'll be interesting to see how this goes.
Comments
Yea Archeage has made me lose a lot of respect for Trion. I won't be buying one of their games ever again. Shady shady stuff going on with that game.
I am sure many had an eye opener the way Trion handled Defiance. It is not the same company anymore.
At one point Scapes said they were working on it, and that the 10% discount would be retroactive.
I guess this guys will say anything just to stop the complaining (threads) on their forum.
Edit:
It was Ocho, not Scapes.
http://forums.archeagegame.com/showthread.php?56603-No-10-Discount-on-Marketplace-Purchases&p=726545#post726545
No difference though, both are community managers.
I'm a gamer and I play games, not virtual vending machines.
Sadly, I agree. I bought ArcheAge founder status on the basis that Rift used to be handled so well. I played Defiance a little, but saw it transform into an RNG box cash grab, which seems to be the general direction of the company as a whole.
I bought the Founders (49.99) because I felt I would be playing a long time.
I knew of the 10% off in the list of things I'd get but never really crossed my mind until reading about it in the forums. It's horrible they can just say "umm, no we changed our mind".
I *bought* two expansion scrolls which were never delivered for 600 credits and the credits were taken but as mentioned, I did not receive the goods. I sent them a ticket. That was on 9/30/2014 and the ticket has still not been addressed. I cannot even use Live Chat since it says "You must have purchased Patron status". Well I have a buff every time I log in and I gain labor offline.
I won't be spending a dime on the game anymore but i'll still help my guild with stuff.
Won't honour this? How do you come to this conclusion? It seems pretty clear to me they intend refunding the 10% discount retrospectively via their own accounting system instead of at the time of purchase from the in-game marketplace.
Nowhere have they said people won't get the discount at all as your post infers.
http://forums.archeagegame.com/showthread.php?104281-Scapes-No-10-Discount-on-Marketplace-Purchases
They've said they will not implement the 10% discount, and instead will offer an alternative that they consider equitable. That seems pretty clear to me. If they're just going to implement the 10% discount in a different way, the post would be meaningless.
The 10% discount on all cash shop purchases for patrons AFTER RELEASE was widely advertised in all of their promotional material right up until launch and for a full week after.
Everyone quite naturally assumed this meant as soon as the game was released and when it didn't happen, it was though to be just another annoying glitch.
Trion who appears to have promised that without XL's approval, was then forced to backtrack and spin "after release" into "at some point in time after release" when XL obviously said NFW to the idea. For the past month Trion has been trying to get XL to honor the 10% discount and change their mind. It seems that they now have a definitive "NO."
This is a PR disaster for Trion who now look incompetent in being unable to come through with it. It's XL who is at fault here but Trion either can't or won't be completely honest about it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I absolutely agree with you, I went from one of Trion's biggest fans to one of its biggest detractors on this site. You should have seen the email I sent them after getting a chargeback when they tried to deny me a refund. It was a glorious bit of literature.
It's actually even worse than that...
Originally Trion advertised it as a straightforward 10% discount with no disclaimer. You can see this all over the place in the press release reported by sites (including this one):
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/31591/Patron-Program-and-APEX-Revealed
They then added "after release" to the Patron information on their website, and only when people complained about the lack of 10% did they backtrack saying it was supposed to mean "at some point after release", which was clearly a PR spin to try to get out of it.
I think there were several misrepresentations on Trion's part. Someone pointed out on another thread that nowhere did it say before launch on their website that a lot of founders pack purchasers wouldnt get land. Which of course is because they sold more founders packs on the premise of exclusivity. Not to mention AFTER selling tons of founders packs, they decided to open 2 servers at launch that werent available to the founders during prelaunch.
I had to threaten them twice with doing a chargeback, but they did eventually refund my $150. So I appreciated that at least. Like you guys, however, my opinion of Trion is changed forever. What a disaster this launch has been.
Yeah, the list goes on. They also said that the founder items would be available on all characters on your account, but then changed it after people bought the packs to be limited to only the first six characters you make. I can't see any sense in that as you can't sell or trade the items and they're mostly cosmetic anyway.
I think that the people most upset by everything are those that were previously loyal customers of Trion, as people spent a lot of money of founder's packs believing they could trust the company.
Absolutely. I really thought the Rift launch was all in all pretty decent, and I respected that about Trion. That was indeed my biggest reason for buying the preorder. I learned my lesson about preording a while back, apparently it was time to relearn it.
I remember back to the year I spent in Rift and just how much I enjoyed it. There was a point when my account was broken into and they called me at work to verify whether it was me and the issue was resolved before any harm was done. It was literally the best customer support experience I've gotten from an MMO.
Justifying someone being terrible at their job in defense of AA? Frankly, Ive seen a whole lot of people that Trion lost as customers with the same story we have. The guy I talked to was terrible, when i told him Id stop paying for patron status in rift as well, and completely uninstall it, he pretty much said "Oh well, go #*&@ yourself." I dont care what your job is, if you cant take pride in it, you need to find another one. Theres no defense for bad business practices.
Ive never had a job where it was okay to lose customers because of my lack of professionalism.
Beyond that Ill admit to going on a bit of a crusade against Trion on this site, every gamer that reads one of my posts and says "yeah Im not playing that" is a punch in the gut to the unscrupulous company that Trion has turned into.
Yeah through this whole process with AA I have lost a ton of respect for Trion. Before release my account was "hacked" and I was double charged for $150 packs, which took weeks and hours on "support" chat to resolve. Then release of AA was a nightmare with 8 - 10 hour queues as a patron and founder. Lastly what has really put me over the edge is the fact that the game on a whole is an in your face P2W, with a give me your money cash grab model.
I don't think I will be visiting anymore Trion games from here on out.
Well played. You should be a professional journalist. The mainstream media could use a person with your skills.
My reading of Scapes post is that the 10% discount will not be put directly in the marketplace but rather Trion will implement a solution on their side. It seems completely obvious to me that what they will be doing is giving periodic 10% refunds on all that is spent by patrons. This kind of solution would be equitable but not exactly ideal in that you will loose access to some of your funds until they are refunded. Everyone knows that rebates are not the same as direct discounts even though they theoretically get to the exact same point eventually.
I suspect that Trion is simply trying to figure out what they should do in addition to giving month end rebates to truely make the deal equitable. Will the rebate be larger than 10%? will you get bonus gems back? will you get bonus loyalty points for what you spend? Who knows. but I will bet it will be something more than the base 10%
I think one thing this all clearly demonstrates is that publishing someone elses game and thereby having little or no control over the product you are trying to sell is not a great way to do business. I would love to see Trion simply buy out XLGames. Perhaps continue to use them as an overseas studio but otherwise take control of the project.
Of course that won't solve the way that they have seemed to have gotten greedy with the new cash shop. That is more of an ethical problem with management.
All die, so die well.
My response wasn't defending AA or saying support people are terrible at their jobs. It was a comment about the posters perceived "threat" to Trion. LTR.
BTW, your "glorious bit of literature" was probably not read as well. The only person that marveled at your grand work was you.
Honestly, stop crying over spilled milk. You got burned. Caveat Emptor. Live and learn. There are other games out there to play. There are other games on the horizon. I suppose all those people who bought into lifetime subscriptions in other games that went F2P certainly felt burned too... they learned there lesson. Now so have you.
This is not the game for you, you know it, I know it, everyone reading this thread knows it. Get a refund, don't get a refund, but really, you're not convincing anyone to play or not to play this game... it's 15 minutes of fame has already left the building. Those who were going to play it, already have. The rest, probably never will.
WoD releases in like two weeks... prepare to praise it and bash it, it's the next one on the chopping block. You can complain about how $65 is a bit steep for so little new content. You know, the usual. Come the new year we have several titles looking to be bashed as well. Fear not, your opportunity to be fleeced is endless, it does not end with just one game or one developer.
Rejoice!
I am a professional journalist, in fact. I don't get paid to write on here, and neither do I try to post material that would be paid for.
Your reading into what the post says is speculative. Nothing in the post indicates what you suggest as far as I can see. If Trion does offer something that is truly "equitable", then fine. Given their track record on this, I'm not willing to assume that.
Unethical business practices will never change if people stop crying over spilled milk.