With only 2 weeks left until the launch of ArcheAge Unchained, this is yet another uninformative broadcast (2 weeks in a row now) that is failing at convincing me, that Gamigo is up to the task of being able to properly handle this post-launch. The only one who can really answer some of the questions being posed with any degree of authority is going to be Khrolan (Merv Lee Kwai), the executive producer of ArcheAge and also the SVP of product development (basically overseeing the rest of the former Trion library) at Gamigo.
Again, if this weren’t about Gamigo taking on the publishing after acquiring Trion Worlds assets and the fact that key former Trion staff are still handling ArcheAge for Gamigo, I wouldn’t have as much reservations at the existing price points of the packs.
Repeating what I opined about before, the library of games that Gamigo handled before the Trion Worlds acquisition were far easier to put on auto-pilot (with bare minimum operational and customer service personnel). That has always been how Gamigo ran their operations; when they merged (lets face it, this was still actually an acquisition) with Aeria Games, it was about cuts, cuts, and more cuts on the Aeria Games side (100 of the 260 personnel at the time, were let go). Employees at Aeria Games pre-merger were happy with their work environment but saw it go downhill post-merger when you read some of the Glassdoor reviews. Similarly, a lot of Trion staff were released after the acquisition.
Post Trion acquisition, this part of the business was no longer, “business as usual per Gamigo’s modus operandi”. They relocated the EU servers first earlier this year but also tried to migrate the game into a lower cost cloud service (since this is something they have been able to do with most of their pre-Trion acquisition library). Something like ArcheAge is a different beast though and doing that caused service stability issues for EU players; Gamigo had to go back to dedicated servers. There is also a different level of competency and logistics involved with overseeing a third party title like ArcheAge. As a result, they had to later rehire some previous staff to better manage ArcheAge.
Now they are in uncharted territory with handling two different business models for this third party published game (where they’ve had some challenges managing the existing free to play version since the acquisition). Gamigo’s leadership is looking for a quick buck and to fish the wallets out from the whales pockets (you cannot change their mindset even though outwardly, those same folks PR wise will try to say the right things to make it seem like they care).
At the lower levels though, you get the above (a community manager ill-equipped to answer the most common questions that interested players want answers to given that there is only 2 weeks left before they launch this new business model). He’s trying of course (by talking about some of the new skills or builds in general) but it is painfully obvious that it is filler for the lack of real information that players want to know. But this is what happens when the key person is unable to make it (I’m presuming Kwai is still working out of the US). What made this stream entertaining was reading the chat and also the fact that the short trailer for naval battle royale had no sound (last week, the swiftblade trailer had a much louder sound level).
The usual apologists (the ones hoping this business model will help to fulfill some of the lost potential that ArcheAge originally offered) have been trying to rationalize last weeks stream which was already uninformative. Sure, these CM’s come across as very enthusiastic about ArcheAge. I would say that is part of their job and well, you see this same facade across many other games. I don’t see how anyone can give this one a pass.
The lack of information also isn’t because XLGAMES is slow to provide that. If that were an issue, then Gamigo should not have even teased the announcement (and then made the announcement of the actual pack information and release date). The fact that some details like making sure that cosmetics are made BoP or even whether or not there will be an actual PTS for Unchained, are things that Kwai should’ve worked out with XLGAMES before greenlighting any announcement of the launch date.
Seeing how this is being handled with only a small window before launch, I don’t see how Gamigo will manage this buy to play version any differently once it launches. My skepticism is warranted and convincing me otherwise is all on the company offering the service. Gamigo is failing this easy test for me so far.
