I will concede if you can provide anything concrete, and I mean *anything*, in any situation, from any game ever, to support that beyond a tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist's deluded rantings. "They knew it was going to fail"...... Come on. Are you kidding me?
The folks at Tabula Rasa knew.
Nobody knows for certain, of course. But, as a developer, marketer, whatever, you sit down and play your game, do you honestly think you won't know whether it's any good or not?
There are people in these companies that are hired specifically for making these sorts of projections.
Edit: In my earlier example, I'm sure the film company knew "Wing Commander" was gonna be a stinkbomb of a movie, and they needed to do something to make sure they didn't lost the 40 million they spent on it. So the answer, a long anticipated trailer.
Originally posted by RobsolfI don't think that's the point the OP is trying to make.
These game companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Consumers will believe what they believe, whether it's a notion of getting scammed or that the game is a finished product, whatever. But the results of feeding these betas to people that take them for demos is bringing about misleading expectations in those consumers. I believe that's what his point is.
There is little benefit to the company to sign anybody and everybody up for open beta, save for stress tests. They get limited, possibly misleading feedback, and those folks see the game in an inferior state; save for all those that are still really betas at launch.
Oh, on that aspect I agree. I think it was a bad decision to offer CB slots as part of package. It just easier to have people submit applications, to create a pool of the demographic you need, and maybe hand out a few keys as awards and media stuff.
im really glad to see you positions beign taken against controversial issues. this website, like any source of information should address real issues and not spew candy coated paid reviews all the time. It means much more to the community to hear somethign meaningful from the staff than from concerned forum posters. Everything posted gets turned into trolling/flame wars but the ignorant.
Keep up the good work. Never comprimise integrity.
I'm at the point where I believe the whole idea of "beta" needs to be rethought....from concept to implementation. Heck..even the definitions. How do thousands of random invites handed out all over the world equal "closed"? How could a "beta" last less than three months when it takes at least half that long just to design major changes on PAPER.
The last beta I was in made this painfully clear. They did it so bass-ackwards it was almost laughable. Shut out most of the established community for sign ups from outside news sites. Didn't set limits on players computers. No directed testing. No pipeline of fixes. Devs refused to discuss in the forums, saying all posts, including suggestions, must be in ticket form. Heck, they even encouraged the creation of "game guides" during the beta. Imagine that...a company telling the free-to-play testers that they should write down the shortcuts to success in the game so that they would be on hand for anyone at release! Ridiculous.
The whole thing is just gone off the tracks. I don't even think you could get a concensus amongst fifty of the posters here about what a beta test is, or should be, let alone the developers, general public, and press.
My complete and total disgust with Cryptic stems from the fact that they made such a bone-headed offer in the first place and THEN did not follow through on it.
But they ARE following trough on it. But because they want a more diverse set of testers than people who bought their way in, they obviously let in others too.
Nowhere it said CO-preorders would be the very first and only first to get into Closed Beta. Yet here you claim they are not following up on their promises. CO-preorders WILL get in the closed beta. It just started, have some patience!
I'm at the point where I believe the whole idea of "beta" needs to be rethought....from concept to implementation. Heck..even the definitions. How do thousands of random invites handed out all over the world equal "closed"? How could a "beta" last less than three months when it takes at least half that long just to design major changes on PAPER. The last beta I was in made this painfully clear. They did it so bass-ackwards it was almost laughable. Shut out most of the established community for sign ups from outside news sites. Didn't set limits on players computers. No directed testing. No pipeline of fixes. Devs refused to discuss in the forums, saying all posts, including suggestions, must be in ticket form. Heck, they even encouraged the creation of "game guides" during the beta. Imagine that...a company telling the free-to-play testers that they should write down the shortcuts to success in the game so that they would be on hand for anyone at release! Ridiculous. The whole thing is just gone off the tracks. I don't even think you could get a concensus amongst fifty of the posters here about what a beta test is, or should be, let alone the developers, general public, and press.
It's time for a redesign.
On this point, I couldn't agree more. One of the biggest causes for underperformance in MMOs is likely a lack of in-depth, quality testing.
I'm at the point where I believe the whole idea of "beta" needs to be rethought....from concept to implementation. Heck..even the definitions. How do thousands of random invites handed out all over the world equal "closed"? How could a "beta" last less than three months when it takes at least half that long just to design major changes on PAPER. The last beta I was in made this painfully clear. They did it so bass-ackwards it was almost laughable. Shut out most of the established community for sign ups from outside news sites. Didn't set limits on players computers. No directed testing. No pipeline of fixes. Devs refused to discuss in the forums, saying all posts, including suggestions, must be in ticket form. Heck, they even encouraged the creation of "game guides" during the beta. Imagine that...a company telling the free-to-play testers that they should write down the shortcuts to success in the game so that they would be on hand for anyone at release! Ridiculous. The whole thing is just gone off the tracks. I don't even think you could get a concensus amongst fifty of the posters here about what a beta test is, or should be, let alone the developers, general public, and press.
It's time for a redesign.
On this point, I couldn't agree more. One of the biggest causes for underperformance in MMOs is likely a lack of in-depth, quality testing.
It's hard to do that when a company like Cryptic is having a short closed beta then throwing open the gates to the masses with an Open beta and the game is still full of issues and bugs. I hope they learned that lesson from CO, but STO is getting a short beta as well. Cryptic seemed to care more about it's schedule than it did the integrity of it's game.
Please join me in letting cryptic know en masse at 6pm EST and for the rest of the night how disappointed we are with the treatment we received with regard to the STO closed beta.
Post this message:
We demand you allow those who paid priority into the closed beta & that Cryptic reveals what will be the min beta access for us!
Post this or something like it to the following people on twitter:
Please join me in letting cryptic know en masse at 6pm EST and for the rest of the night how disappointed we are with the treatment we received with regard to the STO closed beta.
Post this message: We demand you allow those who paid priority into the closed beta & that Cryptic reveals what will be the min beta access for us! Post this or something like it to the following people on twitter:
The issues: Contest winners getting in before those who paid. Regular applicants getting in before those who paid. No clear answer as to whether those who paid will be guaranteed a minimum amount of closed beta access. The censorship, deletion and moving of posts on their forums so that we can be easily ignored.
Someone above said it "wasn't Cryptic's fault" that CO couldn't hold subscribers. I boggled. If it's not their fault, then who is to blame? They broke the game themselves just after launch and lost many of their loyal customers within the 30 free days.
It seemed to me at least, that they could have cared less, they'd suckered enough people into paying for a lifetime sub on top of the box price that they thought they could do what they wanted and to heck with the playerbase. As Jon points out, if they're counting box sales instead of subs numbers, the picture is skewed anyways.
Publishing subscriber numbers and churn percentages at the 1 month, 3 month and 6 month watersheds should be industry standard, if only because it would force game companies to at least look at those numbers, and may force them to act to resolve issues in their games. If NCWest published churn rates for Aion we'd have a much truer picture than 1mil box sales. Getting away with crowing about box sales has no upside, since everyone knows they don't really matter in terms of the game's lifespan. Including the companies themselves.
I stopped playing Aion after a fortnight, it wasn't for me. I believe they now at least have GMs in Europe, which is something, but I'd bet there's still a mess of gold-spam everywhere.
All a MMO has to do to succeed now, or ever, is provide compelling, relatively bug-free gameplay that runs on as broad a range of pcs as possible. I'm waiting for SW:TOR because I trust Bioware to do that. Meantime, MMO-wise, I'm playing Fallen Earth, which to me is a game from a small house that punches way above its weight.
Its a real world out there, where the fine print is king and its the buyer's responsibility to be aware. We are not talking about Mommy and Daddy making promises to you, but rather real life actions, with real life consequences.
If you are dumb enough to purchase something on an assumption, then you are going to get burned - be it not getting to be the first one into a Beta test, discovering that there are extra hidden charges on your car lease,or discovering that discounted mortgage payment comes with with a big balloon payment at the end.
While I think its a cheesy sales perk, I think even less of people that claim they were 'scammed' because they assumed something that was never there.
People need to take responsibility for their own foolish actions, rather than trying to place blame on some 'big bad game company'.
If this were a gym membership, car lease or refinance, people would be telling you its your fault for not reading the fine print - aka not knowing precisely what you are purchasing, but rather just assuming what you will get.
I agree...it's called free enterprise. They can market stuff pretty much how they want. They only thing that matters is whether people buy the stuff and they make money. You don't like ftp, for instance? Don't do it.
There is no call whatever to act as if a company is being IMMORAL because of their marketing strategy...unless they are committing fraud. And fraud doesn't mean, oh, I was just unhappy cuz I didn't realize ...blah blah..because I didnt read ...blah blah..or I didn't know that some games actually will turn out to stink...etc. Fraud means outright lying, which is "actionable" either by the state or individuals.
Freedom means companies can be stupid. Don't buy their stuff, they fail. That's how it works.
Which by the way is why it IS a issue that bailed out banks are now complaining about regulation, but that is another rant.
Bottom line...you don't like what they do...don't worry...the marketplace will take care of it.
And if you plunked down your money with no research into the product or the conditions of the sale etc...whose fault is that?
Are some companies sleazy? Oh, only since like 4000 BC or so...terribly sorry its such a novelty!!
You know - I'm just not so certain of this fact anymore. At least when it comes to the biggest publishing companies (primarily thinking North American here, EA / SOE / perhaps Cryptic). I wonder if the business strategy for many MMOs isn't a whole lot closer to single player games than is usually thought. I'm starting to think that the big dogs in MMO publishing are starting to push for MMOs that provide just a few months of entertainment, and just hype the living daylights out of them prior to launch in order to maximize box sales. I'm thinking the strategy is simply to recoup and make a bit of profit off the first few months of live, and simply wait and see whether the game catches fire. It's almost like they know they can't plan on another WOW, so they're just going to toss out game after game with these huge hype machines behind them - and only if the game proves to be lightning-in-a-bottle will the big money for the live game come forth.
What you are suggesting is that insurmountable stupidity and the complete inability to learn from history on the part of the MMO consumer is consistently being banked on by the developers. That is the only constant that would be needed to have a business 'strategy' such as the one you are suggesting they are using.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
In CO, I was both. I usually ran out of text room in the quest comments area. I reported every bug(they had a pretty good system for this, with a search and a "I have the same bug!" option. The more I saw how their focus was gonna be on customization of costumes than powers, I lost heart in the endeavor and hardly ever participated. Just before launch I logged in to see where things went, and learned in no time that I would not be buying the game. I even logged onto the Halloween event; played for about 2 hours before quitting and uninstalling. When you can't even get a superhero geek like me to play for free, you've got trouble.
Imagine if Tabula Rasa offered lifetime subs...
Here's the sad truth: You are the person they can never please with superhero games (Be it Cryptic, or SOE, or NCSoft). Much like the die hard SW fans felt let down by SW:G (before the NGE, the real fans had already been turned off) and LOTRO (Tolkein fans might be the worst about it). And the same thing is happening with STO. Cryptic could NEVER with a thousand years of development make a game to satisify every hard core trekky out there. So they aim at an audience they can make happy and keep subscribing, the average gamer with an interest in Star trek. Same thing happened to AOC and Warhammer, though their fanbase was smaller so its not as noticable or vocal.
I think it´s fine that companies reward loyal customers with beta-access to new products. Actually I like the idea.
How does offering beta access for purchasing subscription time or pre-orders equal rewarding loyal customers?
Did you even read the article?
Purchased Subscription Time = Customer (and in this case it was purchased pre-Champions release so i'd throw in Loyal).
Have to say i'm feeling pretty darn bitter about the STO beta thing. Champions should be a F2P game, so my "lifetime" sub doesn't exactly mean anything (and it'll die a real quick death without swapping model soon). And then randomly selecting hundreds of non-paid beta slots (and even running numerous competitions for beta keys) prior to clearing the "paid for" queue just seems... mean.
Aion has no longevity either, it's a pretty F2P import game. And the insane launch queues were "fun" there too. But hey maybe it'll be fine, the subs a year from now (or even people that subbed after the first month) are a massivly better indicator than boxes sold.
In reference to my above post, go look at how many "I made a horrible, horrible mistake" posts there are on the official forums from lifetime subscribers who dropped big bucks to have lifetime access to a game they didn't know anything about, and then actually played the game, and realized they hated it.
Buying a lifetime subscription doesn't immediately make you loyal. Especially not if you haven't even played the game you're swearing a decent chunk of money to, and then turn around and vocally demonstrate your hatred for it. I'd call it foolish more than loyal.
I'm one of the few people who have been actually loyal to Cryptic over the past year, and they pass us up in favor of people who are willing to throw money at them.
But, of course, I can't completely fault them for it. Such is the world of business.
In my case I WAS a loyal CO player. The closed Beta was a big motivating factor for me to go ahead and grab the 6 month deal but I was already set to buy the game just based on my experience up to that point. Then they turned the game on it's ear on launch day. 3 days after I'd been playing and having a blast.
I can't stand CO now. Had I went with my instinct I would have only purchased a 3 month sub when I first got the game and I would have saved that money by canceling before my first month was done. AS it was I was content to just take advantage of the Star Trek Beta offer I also had. I enjoyed beta testing CO I figured I'd enjoy Beta testing STO as well. A month and a half later Closed beta started. I'm still waiting. In a month and a half from now Open Beta starts.
The issues: Contest winners getting in before those who paid. Regular applicants getting in before those who paid. No clear answer as to whether those who paid will be guaranteed a minimum amount of closed beta access. The censorship, deletion and moving of posts on their forums so that we can be easily ignored.
The answers are already there, you just don't like them.
That is how they wanted to fill their beta. Never promised you to be the 'first ones' in.
Same
no reason to 'guareentee' you a minim amount. You are only promised access to closed beta. That could be the last two weeks.
Its a private forum. If you cannot obey their simple guidelines, then they will moderate your posts and threads. The are a number of posts and thread about this topic that have not been censored, so your probably went overboard.
Cryptic has been pretty fair about handling this mess:
commenting about how they are working to get people into the beta as space frees up
allowing people to vent excessively on their forums.
Just because 'you' have not gotten in, does not mean others that 'paid' have not gotten in.
Again, you were never promised to be the first one in, nor where you promised to in the first few phases of beta.
The simple solution for me is to never spend money on something with the intention of relying on the company to follow through on nothing more than a promise. Advertised premiums or discounts are usually nothing more than a swindle. A good product can be sold soley on its merits of quality.
Champion's Online must not be succeeding like they would have wished for them to have to resort to swindling an entire different demographic (Star Trekkies) into propping up Cryptic's other game by purchasing lifetime subs(oh my) & 6-month subs for a game they have no interest in.
Not a valid theory here, as the offer was available before Champions even went live. So there's no chance the STO beta was offered in an attempt to "prop up" CO's "perceived failure."
STO was used to sucker more people into buying CO subs. Cryptic knew they could make more money by suckering in Trekkie's who were dying for the STO game by hooking them into CO first. CO was an afterthought when Crytic got the license for STO. Champions was a way for Cryptic to show to Atari and Paramount they could handle the STO game. If your too blind to see that then stop drinking the Kool aid.
See my above post. Cryptic offering the STO beta with extended CO subscriptions was purely a marketing-centered money-making scheme and an exploitation of the hype garnered by the use of an obscenely popular license.
All you have to do is say the words Star Trek and a lot people will pay damn near any amount of money for whatever it is. That's what Cryptic did here, they took advantage of that knowledge. The thing is that they needed something concrete to tie it to, that being Champions Online. They would've tied it to anything given the chance. In this case, going with CO was just the logical, and only, option.
Can't say there wasn't those of us trying to warn people about this. Anyone paying close enough attention to the CO forum would have read posts from myself and some others telling people to run.
There are companies out there that strive to be open, honest, and forthright with their customers and the public. Then there are others that will do whatever it takes to make a buck.
Well what can I say that, for the first time, I completely agree with you Jon on both points.
"Pimping" out beta slots is a bad thing to do and will only hurt the game in the long run. I did the big misstake of shelling out for the Mortal Online (Beta) and altough I did it mainly for the promise of the game I am not completely turned of about it (cannot say why as that would break the NDA).
Also saying how many copies an MMORPG has sold is not a good indication of how well it is going for it (or if it is a good MMORPG). It just shows how hyped up the game is. What is a good indication on how good an MMORPG is, is the retention rate and we all know how good the retention rate was for AoC and WAR. Aion is still unknown at this moment but lets just say that the XFire numbers does not look good...
Can't say there wasn't those of us trying to warn people about this. Anyone paying close enough attention to the CO forum would have read posts from myself and some others telling people to run. There are companies out there that strive to be open, honest, and forthright with their customers and the public. Then there are others that will do whatever it takes to make a buck.
They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Jon, I agree with you completely on the whole pay for beta thing. I think it sets up a huge and unrealistic expectation that ends up being completely crushed by the reality of the situation when testing begins. Developers really shoot themselves in the foot with this kind of strategy.
In response to your point about box sales though, I don't think companies always have a choice. If you've already spent tremendous time, energy and money to create a game only to see that retention rates are low, what choice do you have other than to attempt to play it off as though the game is a huge success? You can't come out and tell everyone that your game has horrible retention and will probably be dead in a year... That would only make matter worse. Even more players would jump ship if they knew that the game was rapidly bleeding subscribers. The only chance the companies have is to attempt to put enough positive spin on the whole situation as to attract new players and stop the bleeding.
Perception is HUGE in this industry and you can't make good things happen through negative press.
My complete and total disgust with Cryptic stems from the fact that they made such a bone-headed offer in the first place and THEN did not follow through on it.
But they ARE following trough on it. But because they want a more diverse set of testers than people who bought their way in, they obviously let in others too.
Nowhere it said CO-preorders would be the very first and only first to get into Closed Beta. Yet here you claim they are not following up on their promises. CO-preorders WILL get in the closed beta. It just started, have some patience!
And no, I'm not a trekkie or Cryptic fanboy.
As a matter of fact, it DID say that life subbers would be first, although Cryptic did quickly disclaim that as an error. Fair enough.
But I must disagree with you that they "ARE following through on it." Because so far, I and many like me, are still NOT in the closed beta. Perhaps they will follow though, perhaps they will not. But as of yet, they have not and that is my point - as long as they continue to delay, they will generate press like this and that is not a good thing for the game.
I completely understand the need to control access to beta. Cryptic should have made that clear in their initial ad. But I could forgive even that if they simply issued a statement like "CO life/6-mo subs will be given access to closed beta no later than half-way through the closed beta (or some such)." Some statement - ANY statement - beyond "trust us, bend over, you'll like it, we promise!" would go a long way to staving off an increasingly angry (an vocal) playerbase.
Better still, of course, would have been not selling beta access in the first place. And yes, Loekii, they DID sell it. Squawk all you want - money changed hands in return for which access to the closed beta was "guaranteed." That, my Norse god of mischief mispelled friend, is a sale any way you look at it.
Can't say there wasn't those of us trying to warn people about this. Anyone paying close enough attention to the CO forum would have read posts from myself and some others telling people to run. There are companies out there that strive to be open, honest, and forthright with their customers and the public. Then there are others that will do whatever it takes to make a buck.
They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Next time read what someone writes twice before posting. Then after that, read it again so you can edit your mistakes, so you don't look like a fool.
I never said companies aren't in it to make a buck. I said there were companies out there that will do whatever it takes to make a buck. Furthermore, I never specifically mentioned MMO anywhere in my response.
Finally, don't be so ignorant. We both know that there are some companies that have more lawful business practices than others.
Can't say there wasn't those of us trying to warn people about this. Anyone paying close enough attention to the CO forum would have read posts from myself and some others telling people to run. There are companies out there that strive to be open, honest, and forthright with their customers and the public. Then there are others that will do whatever it takes to make a buck.
They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Next time read what someone writes twice before posting. Then after that, read it again so you can edit your mistakes, so you don't look like a fool.
I never said companies aren't in it to make a buck. I said there were companies out there that will do whatever it takes to make a buck. Furthermore, I never specifically mentioned MMO anywhere in my response.
Finally, don't be so ignorant. We both know that there are some companies that have more lawful business practices than others.
Don't let the conspiracy theorists in the thread hear you say that.
I do certainly disagree with Cryptic selling beta access. Its a clever marketing gimmick, but in terms of the community... now we have people talking disparagingly about people who bought stuff. Who "paid their way", as it were.
Now, as to why Cryptic hasn't given an announcement as to when you'll be in: they can't guarantee this. Cryptic works hard not to release any info or plans that are not nailed down tight. They can't tell anyone when they want to have all the CO beta people in, because they don't know for sure. Lots of stuff can come up, like server instability, major game-breaking bugs, server breakage, anything.
Comments
I will concede if you can provide anything concrete, and I mean *anything*, in any situation, from any game ever, to support that beyond a tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist's deluded rantings. "They knew it was going to fail"...... Come on. Are you kidding me?
The folks at Tabula Rasa knew.
Nobody knows for certain, of course. But, as a developer, marketer, whatever, you sit down and play your game, do you honestly think you won't know whether it's any good or not?
There are people in these companies that are hired specifically for making these sorts of projections.
Edit: In my earlier example, I'm sure the film company knew "Wing Commander" was gonna be a stinkbomb of a movie, and they needed to do something to make sure they didn't lost the 40 million they spent on it. So the answer, a long anticipated trailer.
These game companies are shooting themselves in the foot. Consumers will believe what they believe, whether it's a notion of getting scammed or that the game is a finished product, whatever. But the results of feeding these betas to people that take them for demos is bringing about misleading expectations in those consumers. I believe that's what his point is.
There is little benefit to the company to sign anybody and everybody up for open beta, save for stress tests. They get limited, possibly misleading feedback, and those folks see the game in an inferior state; save for all those that are still really betas at launch.
Oh, on that aspect I agree. I think it was a bad decision to offer CB slots as part of package. It just easier to have people submit applications, to create a pool of the demographic you need, and maybe hand out a few keys as awards and media stuff.
good stuff
im really glad to see you positions beign taken against controversial issues. this website, like any source of information should address real issues and not spew candy coated paid reviews all the time. It means much more to the community to hear somethign meaningful from the staff than from concerned forum posters. Everything posted gets turned into trolling/flame wars but the ignorant.
Keep up the good work. Never comprimise integrity.
And if Star Trek Online tanks(I'm hoping it doesn't, I need an alternative to Eve Online) just think of how foolish Cryptic will look.
I'm at the point where I believe the whole idea of "beta" needs to be rethought....from concept to implementation. Heck..even the definitions. How do thousands of random invites handed out all over the world equal "closed"? How could a "beta" last less than three months when it takes at least half that long just to design major changes on PAPER.
The last beta I was in made this painfully clear. They did it so bass-ackwards it was almost laughable. Shut out most of the established community for sign ups from outside news sites. Didn't set limits on players computers. No directed testing. No pipeline of fixes. Devs refused to discuss in the forums, saying all posts, including suggestions, must be in ticket form. Heck, they even encouraged the creation of "game guides" during the beta. Imagine that...a company telling the free-to-play testers that they should write down the shortcuts to success in the game so that they would be on hand for anyone at release! Ridiculous.
The whole thing is just gone off the tracks. I don't even think you could get a concensus amongst fifty of the posters here about what a beta test is, or should be, let alone the developers, general public, and press.
It's time for a redesign.
But they ARE following trough on it. But because they want a more diverse set of testers than people who bought their way in, they obviously let in others too.
Nowhere it said CO-preorders would be the very first and only first to get into Closed Beta. Yet here you claim they are not following up on their promises. CO-preorders WILL get in the closed beta. It just started, have some patience!
And no, I'm not a trekkie or Cryptic fanboy.
On this point, I couldn't agree more. One of the biggest causes for underperformance in MMOs is likely a lack of in-depth, quality testing.
On this point, I couldn't agree more. One of the biggest causes for underperformance in MMOs is likely a lack of in-depth, quality testing.
It's hard to do that when a company like Cryptic is having a short closed beta then throwing open the gates to the masses with an Open beta and the game is still full of issues and bugs. I hope they learned that lesson from CO, but STO is getting a short beta as well. Cryptic seemed to care more about it's schedule than it did the integrity of it's game.
Please join me in letting cryptic know en masse at 6pm EST and for the rest of the night how disappointed we are with the treatment we received with regard to the STO closed beta.
Post this message:
We demand you allow those who paid priority into the closed beta & that Cryptic reveals what will be the min beta access for us!
Post this or something like it to the following people on twitter:
http://twitter.com/Cryptic_Stormy
http://twitter.com/champsonline
http://twitter.com/CrypticIrnAngel
http://twitter.com/CrypticAlivet
http://twitter.com/CrypticDiamonds
Also we should all try and create new threads on the STO and CO boards demanding answers.
The issues:
Contest winners getting in before those who paid.
Regular applicants getting in before those who paid.
No clear answer as to whether those who paid will be guaranteed a minimum amount of closed beta access.
The censorship, deletion and moving of posts on their forums so that we can be easily ignored.
Dunno... be careful what you wish for...
Really like the article, good one.
Someone above said it "wasn't Cryptic's fault" that CO couldn't hold subscribers. I boggled. If it's not their fault, then who is to blame? They broke the game themselves just after launch and lost many of their loyal customers within the 30 free days.
It seemed to me at least, that they could have cared less, they'd suckered enough people into paying for a lifetime sub on top of the box price that they thought they could do what they wanted and to heck with the playerbase. As Jon points out, if they're counting box sales instead of subs numbers, the picture is skewed anyways.
Publishing subscriber numbers and churn percentages at the 1 month, 3 month and 6 month watersheds should be industry standard, if only because it would force game companies to at least look at those numbers, and may force them to act to resolve issues in their games. If NCWest published churn rates for Aion we'd have a much truer picture than 1mil box sales. Getting away with crowing about box sales has no upside, since everyone knows they don't really matter in terms of the game's lifespan. Including the companies themselves.
I stopped playing Aion after a fortnight, it wasn't for me. I believe they now at least have GMs in Europe, which is something, but I'd bet there's still a mess of gold-spam everywhere.
All a MMO has to do to succeed now, or ever, is provide compelling, relatively bug-free gameplay that runs on as broad a range of pcs as possible. I'm waiting for SW:TOR because I trust Bioware to do that. Meantime, MMO-wise, I'm playing Fallen Earth, which to me is a game from a small house that punches way above its weight.
I agree...it's called free enterprise. They can market stuff pretty much how they want. They only thing that matters is whether people buy the stuff and they make money. You don't like ftp, for instance? Don't do it.
There is no call whatever to act as if a company is being IMMORAL because of their marketing strategy...unless they are committing fraud. And fraud doesn't mean, oh, I was just unhappy cuz I didn't realize ...blah blah..because I didnt read ...blah blah..or I didn't know that some games actually will turn out to stink...etc. Fraud means outright lying, which is "actionable" either by the state or individuals.
Freedom means companies can be stupid. Don't buy their stuff, they fail. That's how it works.
Which by the way is why it IS a issue that bailed out banks are now complaining about regulation, but that is another rant.
Bottom line...you don't like what they do...don't worry...the marketplace will take care of it.
And if you plunked down your money with no research into the product or the conditions of the sale etc...whose fault is that?
Are some companies sleazy? Oh, only since like 4000 BC or so...terribly sorry its such a novelty!!
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
What you are suggesting is that insurmountable stupidity and the complete inability to learn from history on the part of the MMO consumer is consistently being banked on by the developers. That is the only constant that would be needed to have a business 'strategy' such as the one you are suggesting they are using.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Here's the sad truth: You are the person they can never please with superhero games (Be it Cryptic, or SOE, or NCSoft). Much like the die hard SW fans felt let down by SW:G (before the NGE, the real fans had already been turned off) and LOTRO (Tolkein fans might be the worst about it). And the same thing is happening with STO. Cryptic could NEVER with a thousand years of development make a game to satisify every hard core trekky out there. So they aim at an audience they can make happy and keep subscribing, the average gamer with an interest in Star trek. Same thing happened to AOC and Warhammer, though their fanbase was smaller so its not as noticable or vocal.
How does offering beta access for purchasing subscription time or pre-orders equal rewarding loyal customers?
Did you even read the article?
Purchased Subscription Time = Customer (and in this case it was purchased pre-Champions release so i'd throw in Loyal).
Have to say i'm feeling pretty darn bitter about the STO beta thing. Champions should be a F2P game, so my "lifetime" sub doesn't exactly mean anything (and it'll die a real quick death without swapping model soon). And then randomly selecting hundreds of non-paid beta slots (and even running numerous competitions for beta keys) prior to clearing the "paid for" queue just seems... mean.
Aion has no longevity either, it's a pretty F2P import game. And the insane launch queues were "fun" there too. But hey maybe it'll be fine, the subs a year from now (or even people that subbed after the first month) are a massivly better indicator than boxes sold.
In reference to my above post, go look at how many "I made a horrible, horrible mistake" posts there are on the official forums from lifetime subscribers who dropped big bucks to have lifetime access to a game they didn't know anything about, and then actually played the game, and realized they hated it.
Buying a lifetime subscription doesn't immediately make you loyal. Especially not if you haven't even played the game you're swearing a decent chunk of money to, and then turn around and vocally demonstrate your hatred for it. I'd call it foolish more than loyal.
I'm one of the few people who have been actually loyal to Cryptic over the past year, and they pass us up in favor of people who are willing to throw money at them.
But, of course, I can't completely fault them for it. Such is the world of business.
In my case I WAS a loyal CO player. The closed Beta was a big motivating factor for me to go ahead and grab the 6 month deal but I was already set to buy the game just based on my experience up to that point. Then they turned the game on it's ear on launch day. 3 days after I'd been playing and having a blast.
I can't stand CO now. Had I went with my instinct I would have only purchased a 3 month sub when I first got the game and I would have saved that money by canceling before my first month was done. AS it was I was content to just take advantage of the Star Trek Beta offer I also had. I enjoyed beta testing CO I figured I'd enjoy Beta testing STO as well. A month and a half later Closed beta started. I'm still waiting. In a month and a half from now Open Beta starts.
The answers are already there, you just don't like them.
Cryptic has been pretty fair about handling this mess:
Just because 'you' have not gotten in, does not mean others that 'paid' have not gotten in.
Again, you were never promised to be the first one in, nor where you promised to in the first few phases of beta.
Not a valid theory here, as the offer was available before Champions even went live. So there's no chance the STO beta was offered in an attempt to "prop up" CO's "perceived failure."
STO was used to sucker more people into buying CO subs. Cryptic knew they could make more money by suckering in Trekkie's who were dying for the STO game by hooking them into CO first. CO was an afterthought when Crytic got the license for STO. Champions was a way for Cryptic to show to Atari and Paramount they could handle the STO game. If your too blind to see that then stop drinking the Kool aid.
See my above post. Cryptic offering the STO beta with extended CO subscriptions was purely a marketing-centered money-making scheme and an exploitation of the hype garnered by the use of an obscenely popular license.
All you have to do is say the words Star Trek and a lot people will pay damn near any amount of money for whatever it is. That's what Cryptic did here, they took advantage of that knowledge. The thing is that they needed something concrete to tie it to, that being Champions Online. They would've tied it to anything given the chance. In this case, going with CO was just the logical, and only, option.
Can't say there wasn't those of us trying to warn people about this. Anyone paying close enough attention to the CO forum would have read posts from myself and some others telling people to run.
There are companies out there that strive to be open, honest, and forthright with their customers and the public. Then there are others that will do whatever it takes to make a buck.
Your fail comment, failed.
Beta's are not rewards, they are annoying bug ridden messes. I beta to help games come out well not free play time!
Well what can I say that, for the first time, I completely agree with you Jon on both points.
"Pimping" out beta slots is a bad thing to do and will only hurt the game in the long run. I did the big misstake of shelling out for the Mortal Online (Beta) and altough I did it mainly for the promise of the game I am not completely turned of about it (cannot say why as that would break the NDA).
Also saying how many copies an MMORPG has sold is not a good indication of how well it is going for it (or if it is a good MMORPG). It just shows how hyped up the game is. What is a good indication on how good an MMORPG is, is the retention rate and we all know how good the retention rate was for AoC and WAR. Aion is still unknown at this moment but lets just say that the XFire numbers does not look good...
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They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Jon, I agree with you completely on the whole pay for beta thing. I think it sets up a huge and unrealistic expectation that ends up being completely crushed by the reality of the situation when testing begins. Developers really shoot themselves in the foot with this kind of strategy.
In response to your point about box sales though, I don't think companies always have a choice. If you've already spent tremendous time, energy and money to create a game only to see that retention rates are low, what choice do you have other than to attempt to play it off as though the game is a huge success? You can't come out and tell everyone that your game has horrible retention and will probably be dead in a year... That would only make matter worse. Even more players would jump ship if they knew that the game was rapidly bleeding subscribers. The only chance the companies have is to attempt to put enough positive spin on the whole situation as to attract new players and stop the bleeding.
Perception is HUGE in this industry and you can't make good things happen through negative press.
But they ARE following trough on it. But because they want a more diverse set of testers than people who bought their way in, they obviously let in others too.
Nowhere it said CO-preorders would be the very first and only first to get into Closed Beta. Yet here you claim they are not following up on their promises. CO-preorders WILL get in the closed beta. It just started, have some patience!
And no, I'm not a trekkie or Cryptic fanboy.
As a matter of fact, it DID say that life subbers would be first, although Cryptic did quickly disclaim that as an error. Fair enough.
But I must disagree with you that they "ARE following through on it." Because so far, I and many like me, are still NOT in the closed beta. Perhaps they will follow though, perhaps they will not. But as of yet, they have not and that is my point - as long as they continue to delay, they will generate press like this and that is not a good thing for the game.
I completely understand the need to control access to beta. Cryptic should have made that clear in their initial ad. But I could forgive even that if they simply issued a statement like "CO life/6-mo subs will be given access to closed beta no later than half-way through the closed beta (or some such)." Some statement - ANY statement - beyond "trust us, bend over, you'll like it, we promise!" would go a long way to staving off an increasingly angry (an vocal) playerbase.
Better still, of course, would have been not selling beta access in the first place. And yes, Loekii, they DID sell it. Squawk all you want - money changed hands in return for which access to the closed beta was "guaranteed." That, my Norse god of mischief mispelled friend, is a sale any way you look at it.
They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Next time read what someone writes twice before posting. Then after that, read it again so you can edit your mistakes, so you don't look like a fool.
I never said companies aren't in it to make a buck. I said there were companies out there that will do whatever it takes to make a buck. Furthermore, I never specifically mentioned MMO anywhere in my response.
Finally, don't be so ignorant. We both know that there are some companies that have more lawful business practices than others.
Your fail comment, failed.
They're all in it to make a buck. Don't kid yourself. No MMO can be made by 1 guy in a garage.
The companies out there that strive to be open, honest and forthright shut down after a few months since they can't afford to pay their bills anymore.
Next time read what someone writes twice before posting. Then after that, read it again so you can edit your mistakes, so you don't look like a fool.
I never said companies aren't in it to make a buck. I said there were companies out there that will do whatever it takes to make a buck. Furthermore, I never specifically mentioned MMO anywhere in my response.
Finally, don't be so ignorant. We both know that there are some companies that have more lawful business practices than others.
Don't let the conspiracy theorists in the thread hear you say that.
I do certainly disagree with Cryptic selling beta access. Its a clever marketing gimmick, but in terms of the community... now we have people talking disparagingly about people who bought stuff. Who "paid their way", as it were.
Now, as to why Cryptic hasn't given an announcement as to when you'll be in: they can't guarantee this. Cryptic works hard not to release any info or plans that are not nailed down tight. They can't tell anyone when they want to have all the CO beta people in, because they don't know for sure. Lots of stuff can come up, like server instability, major game-breaking bugs, server breakage, anything.