Next week (January 15th) will be the 3-month mark since the launch of ArcheAge Unchained. With the laundry list of issues with the ArchePass (along with the other in-game bugs), XLGAMES has yet to provide any fix to the reported bugs (and this is with them launching the “premium” server in Korea utilizing the same system which has these same buggy issues). And on the publisher side, nothing has changed with Gamigo where the communication (especially from the production staff; the ex-Trion people) has been sucked into a black hole. The instance server infrastructure continues to be problematic with more players complaining they are unable to queue any instance (Golden Plains, Fall of Hiram City, Red Dragon’s Keep, etc) let alone those who are able to, but end up disconnecting later. While it is the holidays, this shouldn’t be used as an excuse (especially when it’s a product that has an upfront cost associated with it). Yes, I know that behind the scenes, the mentality is the status quo (treating it like the free to play counterpart which has also been neglected).
On the developer side, XLGAMES seriously takes almost zero pride in the shoddy code they are putting out by dumping this garbage/bug littered mess onto a live service (and in the case of Unchained, a paid to play product) while on the publishing side, the ArcheAge team at Gamigo has gone into radio silence, ostrich with head stuck in the sand, heads shoved up their ass mode (there literally is no post launch roadmap; hell, even Neowiz Bless Studio did a far better job with their Korean producer providing updates via producers letters regarding Bless Online even though it was known that it was an ongoing train wreck which wouldn’t last due to the inherent underlying technical issues which they were never able to resolve. Simply put, it looks like they are just calling it a wrap and dialing it in. Just stating they know about these issues and have forwarded it to XLGAMES is no longer acceptable. I mean I know the community management team is going through the motions and doing what they can do (taking and collating the feedback) but the roadblock exists higher up the chain and across the ocean. It still should not take 3 months of known (from the limited time the pre-launch PTS was online) issues to be addressed.
Gamigo themselves are taking a very myopic stance on the initial launch “success” where they “raked” in $5 million. What I didn’t really cover in that other entry was the fact that this was purely revenue; we don’t really know the actual breakdown when it comes to expenses (licensing for this version as well as costs involved with the launch) to determine how much actual profit they made. What is going to be abundantly clear is they won’t be trumpeting this same level of success in their subsequent quarters as I don’t believe they have any sustainable sell through nor is the premium track of the 3 non-basic ArchePass tracks compelling enough to spend 1500 credits per track to unlock each season (the free to play model with Patron and APEX was probably more lucrative prior to Unchained from a recurring revenue point of view). They have fixed operational costs which will begin to drag on the company if they cannot get enough existing players in Unchained to continuously spend money (as I mentioned, they got my initial purchase and that will be it considering how poorly this has been handled by both publisher and developer; I would’ve cut them more slack if there weren’t any former Trion personnel managing the game).
They (Gamigo) no longer even care about the impact this all has on “word of mouth advertising”; my original stance of staying far away from this still stands (they would need to fire all of the former Trion personnel to make me even reconsider recommending this, and that would still be with caveats attached) even if many of those original launch issues are no longer relevant due to players quitting over the past two months (alleviating the queue issues). The ongoing unaddressed bugs with the game (many which were prevalent in the pre-launch PTS build as well as ones known for over an year like the disappearing larders), are what makes being able to recommend this with a straight face, difficult to do – because funding the careless unprofessional incompetence displayed by both developer and publisher is something which should not be made standard practice. Those of us who already purchased it can’t undo it (I also don’t believe in abusing charge backs unless absolutely warranted and in this case, it isn’t since even though the product is buggy, it is functional and playable for the most part).
Their inability to deliver solutions in a timely manner is problematic though. Support tickets are still in the month+ long range (unacceptable at this juncture) and they are still “working” on getting the first diligence/labor recharger claim out (that was originally handled via their web flow and failed to work properly/exploited by some). They haven’t rolled it out yet because the excuse given is they need to make sure it “works properly”. But it really shouldn’t be taking this long if they had competent personnel working on all facets (on the publisher side). In this case, they need to modify the scripts that have been used for these claims.
With ArcheAge, there are two parts; the credits (which are account wide) and the virtual items that are character based. While they did mention we’d be able to claim another pack, I am pretty sure they did not mean the credits portion (only the digital items). It might seem to be straightforward (to just exclude that part of the code) IF they had competent personnel (the ex-Trion staff are proving they aren’t). This isn’t like their other compensation scripts since this one has to take in account the pack the player originally bought. So there is at least one critical database lookup that needs to be performed; again, straightforward IF they had at least one competent database and script peon. I’ve personally written both batch and interactive (forms based) database apps that handled similar querying and transaction processing so I know that it’s not exactly rocket science to code (because coding has never been my forte when I worked full time in IT, but I still was able to write a robust system).
I know the amount (of diligence tokens and labor rechargers) is trivial now that the ArchePass is operational (even if buggy) but it’s still the principle that they offered this early on; they should be committed to fulfilling that obligation. Plus they recently gave out 3 boosters per account as compensation of sorts due to the downtime which allowed many to complete all 3 non-basic passes on at least one character (which further trivializes the original compensation). I do believe there was an ulterior motive behind these boosters though since it directly contradicts the stance that Tinen took regarding the weekly claims which they went with (below from November when the ArchePass was brought back online).
He stated it was just a “small stipend of diligence to keep the economy moving as needed”. Well this booster compensation just blasted a hole in his original statement because it then flooded the economy with far too much diligence as well as honor (from 18K worth of honor potions from the equipment pass). You can purchase “wrapped” items from the diligence shop which can be traded (like the bunny mounts) and trade honor (you buy wrapped lunagems for 7K honor which can also be traded). So after the boosters, most players are now running around with bunny mounts, price for them dropped by over 50 gold, and the arbitrage for 7K honor went from around 150-160 gold, to 95 gold.
And this was all after a small group of players originally complained about the original upfront 300 diligence compensation they were planning on doing where instead, we got 45 coins per week (which ended up being way below what could be earned in a week with the revised pass that was brought back online). Nothing adds up which is why I believe there were ulterior motives; that is to try and trivialize the initial compensation (hoping most players will forget about it) and to spur credit sales since players knew they could get 3 premium passes completed with all of the rewards (that is 4500 credits or approximately $30). Even if only 10K players bought $30 worth of credits, that is $300K in additive revenue. For Gamigo, this sort of numbers (which likely was not common prior to acquiring Trion’s assets) is highly material (and I am pretty sure the active player base across both regions is still far north of 75K where there was likely more than 10K accounts that purchased credits that may have felt compelled to take advantage of the 3 easy completions).
Basically, Gamigo is heading into “minimal effort” mode where existing front line personnel are going to have to make do with what resources they have (even though they have advertisements for support positions, that is probably to replace those who quit the company for better pastures). The PR mouthpiece (Khrolan) in the meantime has to earn his paycheck overseeing the rest of the former Trion library, the new shooter they are publishing, and also the rest of Gamigo’s graveyard library. He made bank for his bosses and likely got himself a decent bonus to boot (quality nor professionalism doesn’t matter as can be seen with the live product).
Basically, the only time players should expect some better “feel good” news is when the team will be under the gun to deliver better numbers (to get existing players to spend money). And we’re heading into that 3-6 month post launch period right now. The only way to send a clear signal that their unprofessional handling of the game is unacceptable (at this point, it doesn’t really matter if it’s XLGAMES bug ridden code and Gamigo’s poor handling of test validating and qualifying these builds for live deployment and the support side being ill equipped to handle the ticket load resulting from all of these issues – from the average customers perspective, they don’t care who is at fault), is to not spend any money (which unfortunately is a herculean task in the game industry to get the point across to players that their continuation of spending money with these companies once they’ve exhibited the inability to handle it properly, only perpetuates their poor business practices).
With ArcheAge Unchained’s business model, it is much easier to send a signal since it killed off the symbiotic relationship which existed between Patron (required to own property and everything built on top of it) and APEX (moreso when taken into the cycle of fresh starts and launch packs associated with them). I previously wrote about that in more detail regarding the challenges they face with this buy to play business model. Short term numbers (revenues, unit sales, profits) versus longer term customer satisfaction (and thus longer term loyalty which translates into longer term sales to these customers) has been par for the course in the game industry since they have conditioned this customer base, to the practices which they engage in (and many, myself included, end up being “fooled” over and over again by not just simply turning away and saying “thanks but no thanks” (even if it is an attempt at giving the benefit of the doubt).
This is why going forward (on a more general note beyond just these Korean MMO’s), I am off the pre-launch/pre-order wagon (the game industry abuses this to their advantage where they have shown their inability to deliver at launch). I’m not even going to give Blizzard Entertainment the “benefit of the doubt” with Diablo IV (because my gut instinct reading the second systems design blog is that they have the wrong group of designers handling the game; it’s why I have not been bothering with getting involved with any meaningful feedback). With regards to the subject matter with ArcheAge Unchained, both publisher (Gamigo) and developer (XLGAMES) are so under water with the issues, that it’s just better to expect them to not address anything in a timely manner (or not address them at all).
