Repeating what I mentioned before, this post amounts to first world problems amidst a global pandemic. However, things like poor business practices need to be called out when deserved (and in this case, it is).
It’s safe to say that this continued INCOMPETENCE (this category tag here is dedicated to Gamigo) and UNPROFESSIONALISM is alive and well at Gamigo with their handling of ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained. I’m not taking part in this fresh start BS for Unchained (since the only way to send the proper signal is by voting with ones wallet), but have observed a constant stream of issues plaguing it’s March 25th launch with very little official communication (by this, I mean easily viewable official statements) by representatives above the community management pay grade. And even at that pay grade, there is a lack of engagement with the community providing timely public statements regarding the most frequently mentioned complaints (most which are posted repeatedly on their official Discord and essentially unacknowledged on their official forums since they only post official PR and maintenance announcements).
IMHO, companies who ignore their community platforms in this manner, should just shut them down (many gaming companies have relegated forums to the trashpile because it takes far more time for them to conduct proper communication or collection and parsing of feedback in that format even though it’s a far more conducive setup for that objective). It’s also my opinion that they should just eliminate the role of community manager because those folks are made to do everything else but that (by this, I am referring to actual meaningful engagement with the community and not just regurgitating stuff okayed by a higher level decision maker). And lets just say those folks making the key decisions for both ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained, are directly responsible for the ongoing INCOMPETENCE and UNPROFESSIONALISM. These higher level (management) folks would be terminated for cause at other companies (that’s a reason why they aren’t employed at more respectable companies to begin with).
Something as simple as streamlining the character slot expansion deal turned into this complex nightmare for some players who returned to play this fresh start, only to learn they needed to have purchased a character slot expansion ticket via diligence. While this information was spelled out in the FAQ, that FAQ took awhile to finally be released (the Unchained fresh start was announced on March 3rd and the FAQ was finally released on March 15th well after they began taking pre-orders). Had this rollout been better planned and not rushed (as opposed to the pants on fire approach the no-leadership team decided to take), important details like this would’ve been written in bold in the actual description for the preorder packs. Or how about THIS novel idea; include the expansion token with the pack with instructions to returning players to claim and use the token on an existing character in order to unlock the slots (new accounts don’t have to deal with this since it will have two available slots). Furthermore, the FAQ could’ve been essentially pre-written as has been customary in the past.
Not even the product manager/producer provided any early heads up about whether or not the Korean labor changes would be part of the update (meaning they are getting the build and patch notes while trying to deploy this to production without proper validation). And as it turned out, we got the revised labor system for better or worse (more on this later) with very little explanation of the actual change (it’s in the patch notes but you have to experience it via actual game play to see what a poorly designed revision it is in practice). Safe to say XL does not have any of their better designers assigned to ArcheAge (and Unchained) since most of those resources are dedicated to ArcheAge 2 (which NO ONE should be hyped for).
The fact that actual delivery of the paid product (gunslinger DLC for some or actual Unchained pre-order pack for others) has remained an issue for many since launch, is inexcusable. Until they determine the actual root cause, they should be disabling the ability to make purchases period (including disabling credit purchases) because there is a flaw in the system that needs to be resolved first. But no. They choose to allow those transactions to go through because that is more important than making sure the paying customers experience is issue free (plus they log a sale and can make it difficult to get any refund after the fact).
This is the definition of “fresh start gone wrong” level INCOMPETENCE. This is what happens when you rush a release (no matter how standard practice it seems). There are many posting in the official Discord regarding not being able to claim their packs, having items missing from the packs they bought, having no labor regen since launch, some players inadvertently receiving multiple copies of their packs, some players receiving old system mail for prior giveaways (with items that give them a huge progression advantage), and just general Glyph store (the web site shop) wonkiness. And yet despite these ongoing issues, you still have players looking to try to join this fresh start server. This is WHY these companies get away with their poor business practices (the gaming industry is one of the worst offenders because they know they have this captive audience of people who willingly put up with the BS no matter how loudly the complaints are).
Additionally, the update also resulted in many (myself included) missing cash shop decor items (since it seems like some of them were removed from the item database for this update) and rather than simply making a news post about it, prefer to have multitudes of individuals asking about their missing items. To date, the company has not posted an official statement nor provided any timeline as to when these items will be restored (my tickets have also not been responded to either). And then there is the issue with the new ArcheLife system (mainly affecting legacy ArcheAge players since it impacts how Patron subscribers can prepay their taxes as this new system prevents players from prepaying past their Patron end date). There seems to be a coding issue since some players have more than enough time left (beyond the 5 week prepay) and can’t prepay. Furthermore, some players on Unchained are experiencing this message.
A lot of this simply comes down to piss poor coding by XLGAMES. ArcheAge and especially Unchained, has some of the worst code logic period in its game client (these folks at XL take nearly ZERO pride in the crap code they flush out to their publishing partners). And Gamigo doesn’t help any by basically having nearly no validation process in place to QA these trash builds they are receiving. This time around, they didn’t even bother with the usual PTS (preview trial server and not public test server) and just did a YOLO style launch (which has been issue filled) where their own Glyph backend has been failing with delivery of purchased product. Additionally, one of the free to play EU ArcheAge servers has had stability issues that kept it offline for several days with nary an official posting on their own forum.
When it comes to Unchained, the entire Patron system must be a jury rigged hackjob disaster to make it work behind the scenes and is likely the culprit with why some players encounter labor regeneration issue on new accounts (and why some Unchained players are seeing the ArcheLife error message when trying to prepay taxes). That’s why the need for ridiculous suggestions to get things to possibly trigger (to get labor regen going or to get items delivered) which is just a tip of a larger iceberg of backend spaghetti code affecting those Glyph specific functionality.
Basically, this entirety of the server transfers, server mergers, and then fresh start announcements (all announced and implemented in a very short timeframe), points to very little planning, coordination, and communication, let alone actual testing to ensure there wouldn’t be this cascade of issues. They don’t even have the proper level of support to handle all of this either. All for what? To juice up Gamigo’s fiscal numbers for their shareholders (is what this is about) so that executives can get their nice fat bonuses (greed knows no bounds with many of these types).
Prior to acquiring Trion’s assets, Gamigo didn’t really deal with games that were subscription based or in the case of Unchained, buy to play. They tended to buy dead games that had a modicum of hardcores still playing and supporting them; most of these weren’t infrastructure intensive and could be tossed into the cloud (further reducing their operational costs). You can’t do that with ArcheAge (they tried when performing the data center move for the EU servers and had to undo that due to performance issues). You also need dedicated customer support (Gamigo tends to spread their CSR resources across all of their graveyard of games in their library). Gamigo’s executive “leadership” doesn’t care about the mess this leaves for their paying customers though. All they care about is milking this cow while they can. When they acquired Trion’s library, those titles (more specifically, ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained) had a material impact on Gamigo’s financials. And that’s all the companies executives give a damn about (and they are very aware they have this captive audience who will continue throwing money at this trainwreck of fresh start and server mergers).
March 31st UPDATE: The fresh start land rush has also been cancelled by a week until April 10th due to the labor generation issues that many are experiencing on the fresh start servers. Basically, this is yet another FAILED (for the players) fresh start that will end up dying off fairly quickly and need to be merged on an accelerated timeline. Again, it’s a failure for players and not Gamigo who are ticking the revenue increase box for their shareholders.
