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The question often asked, "Why do I bother posting about MO?"
HerculesSAS
Member Posts: 1,272
I can speak only for myself here, but the question in the title has been asked many times by supporters of this game who come here often to defend it from people like myself.
It's been a while since MO was released, and in the beginning I basically thought it was a terrible game and would have been happy to leave it at that. I didn't care to play it, I knew how poorly it was developed early on because of conversations in IRC I had with Henrik, leaving me with the early (and later proven) idea that this guy has no idea what the hell he is doing. I got glimpses into the code thru hex editors and spy programs because of them touting "We have hack protection!" (they don't), and found a lot of stuff written in Swedish.
But that's irrelvant, honestly. It was, and continues to be, a crappy game that barely plays. But if that was all, I wouldn't bother posting about it. And since people continually ask the question to myself and others, I figure I'll at least explain why I continue to bother. In short, because Henrik and SV are lying, cheating, unethical thieves. Allow me to explain.
When MO was first coming out, there was a pre-order system that you would buy the game from. This was intended for people who wanted the box and CD, some type of memorabilia to commemorate the game as well as have access on day one. I bought the game this way, and so did quite a few of my friends. After playing the beta and realizing that the game was terrible, I figured okay, I'm not going to bother with subbing because it was an atrocious game, and since they didn't ever send me my box after months of waiting, I finally decided to reverse payment on my credit card. I got my money back, and so did several of my friends, for a product that was never delivered in a reasonable timeframe.
However, unbeknownst to most of us, SV retained our credit card numbers without our permission, and used them to enroll us ALL into the game subscription. We never signed up to subscribe, and there was nothing about subscribing in the purchase of the box. All it was, was simply a purchase of a box, a physical product, and shipping. And now, here I was enrolled into subscribing without my consent. No big deal, I informed my credit card company and made sure to uncheck the subscription on the site (because I wasn't sure if it would work). However, several of my friends were in the military, and deployed to Iraq, or Afghanistan. And as such, they were not informed of being enrolled into the subscription at all. When I finally got around to getting a hold of them, SV had managed to charge quite a bit of money onto their credit cards without their consent, and they were having a hard time getting their money back through the credit card company as well. SV literally stole money from them without their consent.
It is for this reason alone that I continue to explain what SV is, and how they act. They have continued the unethical and lying behavior in almost every "patch" thus far, promising the world, delivering a broken and shoddy result. They have double billed customers, or even triple billed. And if there's another opportunity for them to put a bunch of money into their pocket at the expense of their users while they are about to die off (and I think it is well on its way), they will do it. And my goal in continuing to talk about SV's misdeeds and ineptitude and lack of ethics, is to draw attention to this, so that people will not be taken advantage of again.
If SV wants to publicly refund the money of all the money they stole however, I will be happy to call it quits, but I very much doubt they will. Anyway, this is really meant to answer the perpetual question about "why do I bother posting", so enjoy.
Comments
I dont think people who pre-ordered deserve their money back honestly. It was clearly going to be a terrible game. It was your decision to buy something before you saw it or heard reviews about it anyway. It was 100% the buyers choice.
Remember Old School Ultima Online
just to clarify what actually happened.
SV began a subscription on all players who had purchased Mortal onlnie during beta on release day, they sent out an email to each accout holders registered email stating that subscriptions would start and they would have to cancel their subscription to avoid payments in the future, the first month of course was free of charge since all game payments included 1 mnoth of free game time. So players had around 5-6 weeks to cancel their subscriptions before payments would indeed start. and everyone who registered their email with their purchase recieved notification.
I also think that this was a bad move on SV's part since some people stupidly used temporary email acconuts which they of course didnt check on a regualr basis. But the fact is they sent notification players had around 6 weeks to cancel subscription, it was certainly a bad call on thier part obviously but they did it to make sure everyones free month was used up the first month of release.
If you didnt recieve your game then you should of contacted support, often i havent recieved products i have ordered online and have to go down that same route. Althoguh your prefectly allowed to cancel your payment and get refunded throguh your credit card company. But since you esentially got what you paid for and had the option to contact support to recieve your lost game box you cant really blame anyone.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
If you pre-ordered and got a box, then you don't get your money back. But that doesn't mean they get to SUBSCRIBE YOU. It's like buying a copy of a magazine at a newsstand, and then find out that the bookstore took your credit card and enrolled you into a subscription for that magazine.
If you preordered a box and didn't get it in a reasonable time (3 months?), then you are well within your rights to get your money back as you didn't get the PRODUCT YOU PAID FOR.
[quote]I dont think people who pre-ordered deserve their money back honestly. It was clearly going to be a terrible game. It was your decision to buy something before you saw it or heard reviews about it anyway. It was 100% the buyers choice.[/quote]
I just couldn't resist replying to this... That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. He didn't even receive the goods man!
I think we are all in agreement with your statement...Let the buyer beware, and hopefully a lesson was learned about pre ordering a game for beta access.
But I think the OP was talking about the money they charged for subbing by automatic enrollment into their subscription plan- Many who had bought the game a year or so earlier and had forgotten all about it.
I too would not be so vocal against MO- But SV is the most shady, lying, dishonest and downright unethical company I have ever seen. Henrick is inept at his job and is ripping folks off.
I am opposed to SV. A company with its ethics (lack of) deserves to fail badly. I am here and will continue to be so long as the lies and the hype and false promises continue.
They only sent that email WELL after it was found out they were going to do this. Even the GMs at the time said "no way, that's not possible, SV isn't going to do that", only to find out that they WERE doing that.
It's not a "bad move", it's totally unethical and illegal to boot. It's matter of factly, STEALING.
Who the hell automatically subscribes their playerbase using their CC? No other game company but MO has done that.
It was shenanigans when it happened.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
if its illegal why didnt you take them to court, the emails were sent out before your free mnoth started, a month is aronud 4 weeks thats 4 weeks before the payments would have left your account. when you recieved your email why iddnt you cancel the subscription? there was plenty of talk on the forums also over this issue anyone visitng them near rleease would have been made aware. Wrong yes, illegal? not so sure but you let them get away with it.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
Because I live in the US, and they are in Europe, plus nobody is going to take a court case seriously for something that amounts to less than $100.
I am amazed, really, just simply amazed, that you'd even think to defend this behavior. It is 100% illegal, and if you read my bookstore analogy above you'd get an idea of why. When you refuse to accept facts or logic in an argument, it's simple to see that despite what I say, you won't agree with me. But I am here to at least offer this morsel of information to those who can look at the facts of the situation and make a reasonable determination for themselves. You don't feel ripped off, because you wound up SUBSCRIBING to the game. But for plenty of people who didn't, and then got their money stolen, you can be assured they DO feel ripped off.
-As stated, first SV officials and fanboys were saying "No, they would never do that" and then..Well, they did it anyway. If I bought a game a year ago , chances are I wouldnt be using the same email since I regularly change email's that I use for gaming, forum sign ups etc....This has never been a problem with any game I have bought except MO.
Illegal? Well, I never authorized my card to be used that way but in my case (personally) I had been involved on the forums, knew it was coming and played out my first few months in hopes of some improvment. It didnt hurt me but many others were blindsided. I feel it was illegal, but I know little about how international law would work here and I am not an attorney, so thats just my guess.
What isnt a guess is this double/triple billing fiasco. I had long been unsubbed but had this happen to me it would have caused me to probably bounce the check to my mortgage company and end up buried in late fees. I place a specific amount in the account I use for online bill paying and that could/would have cost me a fortune to fix or at the very least caused a lot of grief.
SV should have at payed back more than they took. If I am overcharged at a store here in the US I can (by law) be compensated past the diffrence in price.
SV should also be held accountable for all the lies and broken promises. If a company lies once it could be a mistake, twice an oversight but the amount of lies here is pretty much consistant with EVERYTHING SV says.
Many people use a throwaway email account when signing up for a game. In fact it is advised by many game companies as an extra precaution against hacking.
You wouldn't check these emails on a regular basis, especially if you had no intention of playing the game any longer.
Using the previously gained credit card info in the way they did was unauthorised by the credit card holder and therefore fraudulent.
Sending the email didn't give them authorisation because there was no 'opt in'.
They knew what they were doing when they did this. Totally criminal.
Like i said i think its wrong they shouldnt of done it. But in paying for anything and registering your email adress to it you should always use an email adress you frequently use. Email today is consdiered as a perfectly viable way for a company to contact you just like a letter throguh the psot. So lets start off by saying im not defending them im just saying you dont get any sympathy from me since oyu were sent an email that would of prevented you from paying a month of game time.
If its illegal band together with all the rest of the people that were burnt by this practise afterall there must be hundreds and not just this one person moaning on an mmo forum every day.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
If you signed up with an ethical company there would be no reason to check your email other than to confirm a password change or something along those lines.
I myself have used maybe 20 different email accounts for games over the years. I've never had reason to check them.
Sorry, but there's no excuse for what they did.
My issue with them dates back to what I consider to be their totally unethical and misleading pre-order fiasco. They made a statement about the only way to insure you would have a spot in game on release was to pre-order the game. Now, coming from the Darkfall launch where they literally shut off players from buying the game.. I totally fell for this and waited up until like 2AM the night the pre-orders went live. They were claiming a summer or Sept launch and took preorders in July.
Anyhow.. I get my order in.. eventually I DL the game for Beta group A. OMG what a joke it was. I firmly believe that every other company would consider it as an early pre-alpha... yet here they were selling the game as though it would go live in 2-3 months. Litterally all you did was spawn a naked avatar at the bottom of a lake.. unable to do anything but die and get buried by other naked men...
Whatever... no big deal I guess.
I hadn't loaded up the game since that first day... then I realize the months have past.. Summer ends.. Sept goes... no word from them. I send messages to the company asking for an update. Never get a response. Now... yes...NOW I start to get pissed. I start to ask on the forums what is going on.
One of their moderators responds that yes, it seems pretty shady (his word) but I should just write it off.. afterall what can I do?
F-THAT... Here is a company that has taken my money... decided (apparently) to delay the game... never send me a damn message at all... and ignores repeated attempts to get an update on my part. That's just total bullshit.. so eventually (I think it's nearly Christmas) I had enough and research the actual law. Lucky for me I live in the US and if you accept a credit card as payment we have certain protections. One of those states that they MUST deliver the good paid for withing a certain number of days of charging (I forget how many). I explained the situation to my bank.. and sent them the repeated attempts I had made at contacting SV. The bank attempted to contact SV. Shortly there-after I was credited my initial charge plus interest owed.
So what fueled my Mortal dealings was the pure arrogance of the company.. that felt justified taking my money under what I consider false pretenses.There was NO way the game could launch in Summer 09.. or Sept... heck 99.9% of folks will say that even when it DID launch a year later it was in an early beta state... and only now is approaching what most games would consider a product that could be sold. That's over 2 years later!! Then to top it off, they ignore my attempts to get an update.. and have official moderators that admit it was "shady" but that there wasn't anything that we could do about it. Hell no.. there was plenty that could be done.. and has been done. If it wasn't for my posting (and some others).. their later efforts to bill all pre-orders for subscriptions would not have been raised. Even though such an action was AGAINST their own TOS which stated that you would only be billed a sub AFTER YOU SELECTED A SUBSCRIPTION DURATION AND PAYMENT TYPE (none of which happened and the TOS was subsequently changed.. but never agreed to by most folks that quit)
During my travels I also noticed that there were some select few folks who felt compelled to try and lure others into "supporting" the company, lead by the CEOs own statements that claimed if MO failed it would be the end of sandbox games (what a joke). If anything.. it further fueled me as I strongly believe that MO has turned off the vast majority of players to sandbox games. Those folks may never give the genre another shot... and that's a shame.
Sorry for the rant... but thanks for broaching the topic Herc.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
...doesn't this topic have about a dozen threads already? You might have to search back about a year though, since that's when it was relevant.
Say what you got to say to justify 4000+ posts of hate between the two of you. I lost money on something, I am not going to continue on investing as much time and energy as some of the haters in MO forums. I played in beta, preordered, cancelled and moved on. I didn't feel the need to post ~1200 and ~3000 times why the game sucks and people should stay away.
I actually wrote out a long post insulting you to hell, but thought better of it.
It's a shame, these people are trying to make sure a company like this doesn't do what they did again to people like yourself and others. Yet, you have no respect for it. It is truely astonishing.
I bash DF and MO as much as I can. I love sandbox games and they are ruining it with their horrible design and business practices. No wonder most people don't want a sandbox anymore. They all suck.
By the way, I was another one of those people who paid for a box and never got it. You just can't let a company like that get away with what they are doing. Even if that means posting every day about it to try and drum up awareness. SV deserves nothing but the worst.
This is a MMO forum and we are here because we like discussing games, so good posts about one is never bad.
Of course if you only posts about MO it would maybe be slightly weird, but "because I like the game" is a valid reason.
Bad posts and just repeating the same thing over and over on the other hand is trolling and why trolls bother doing what they do is a mystery to me (too much spare time is a part of it but it must be more than that).
@Deathshroud You have a uh...special mind. Welcome to the KaBlock list
I did a charge back as well. They sold us a game that was "launch ready," which turned out to be a lie. Any attempts to contact SV were ignored. My credit card company spent nearly two months trying to get someone from SV to talk to them and give their side of the story, but finally confessed that they were getting a lot of complaints against SV and that they had never been successful in getting in contact with anyone at SV. SV is easily the most unprofessional company I've ever had dealings with.
Maybe that's how MO has survived this long; trickle payments from a bunch of people who don't realize they've been paying a sub :P
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I would like to know if the people that were double and triple billed that DID not notcie or complain got reimbursed.. I am betting no.
What is so perplexing is not the fact that people criticize MO, but the amount of time some people devote to doing so. The MO forum is far more active than comparable games (Darkfall) and much more active than much newer ones ( Perpetuum, Xsyon, Earthrise, Dawntide). Almost all of this difference is attributable to people more actively making negative posts about the game. The balance of critics versus advocates is not that much different on those forums, just the activity level is.
In an effort to have some thing negative to post about MO, people end up sifting through lots of information. dredging up old topics, posting minutia about the game, and framing concerns in the worst possible way.
Sifting through lots of info: Can anyone find another MMORPG forum that has had so many threads about the financials of the developing company? If someone doesn't play a game, how on earth do they stumble on IRC quotes to complain about the IRC moderators, short of spending time lurking in IRC or sifting through IRC logs?
Dredging up old topics:What does http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/326851/Full-Review-now-up-at-MMOHUT.html add to http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/324760/MMOHUT-online-gameplay-of-Mortal-Online.html that warranted a whole new thread ? How long ago was the double billing that people keep bringing up? You are predicating this accusation of theft on events almost a year and a half old (charging for something where there was a clearly implied desire to dubscribe, just no expliciti agreement other than the lack of response to an e mail) How many times have people brought up Eyjafjallajökull?
Posting minutia: Does any other MMORPG so consistently repost people's goofbye/ragequit posts from the official forums? Why does the departure of one player or dissolution of a small guild warrant a new thread?
Actually I think you are talking about the first time people were double billed it happened againg not to long ago.
So what you are saying is. If people think a company is corrupt they should not say anything about it?? And just mosey along and hope people find out for themselves?
What it an acceptable time to spend online criticizing a game? Is there some type of standard? Who appointed you the arbiter of what is an acceptable amount of complaining? Why do you care? Also, most of your argument seems to be an ad hominem attack on the OP. Does it matter how much time he spends posting against MO? Or the length of time since the perceived wrong occurred? What about his claims of “shady” dealings by SV? Do they have merit?
Just wondering…
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...