EU-Belstrom players will be receiving a compensation pack via in-game mail for the 72+hour downtime they endured.
ArchePass downtime compensation is also planned once this weeks maintenance is completed.
This really should be 3 claims in order to cover this coming week as well since we already know that that the ArchePass won’t be enabled until a build for it is made available on PTS where they mentioned on the November 8th live stream, they wanted feedback on it. The apologists who are giving Gamigo (again, I am specifically referring to the former Trion staff who were retained and handling ArcheAge/ArcheAge Unchained at Gamigo now) really aren’t doing the game a favor by not holding this team accountable for their ongoing incompetence.
This PTS with the revised ArchePass (once it is deployed), needs to be put through an actual testing phase that lasts no shorter than 5 weeks. Why that long? Because of the logistics involved with 3 different time regions (the community management team collecting and organizing that feedback are in Berlin, production (publisher facing) is in the US, and actual development is in South Korea. Feedback also needs to be translated. Any builds from XLGAMES needs to be validated by Gamigo before releasing onto their PTS environment. All of this can easily consume an entire week. And if there are major issues, then you need a lot more time to have these ironed out.
The proof will be in the actions that the executive producer (Khrolan) takes for this schedule. If they are serious about properly fixing this core system, there should be nothing less than a one month testing schedule. If this team enacts the same sort of rush that they have always been doing since their Trion days, it is going to be proof to me that it’s all talk. The build(s) also need to be tested without any Fluffy commands in order to properly assess the flow of the revised ArchePass. Since players may not want to invest time away from the live version, simply provide some sort of cosmetic incentive that can be redeemed on ones live account when hitting certain milestones on the PTS.
This all could’ve been avoided with an actual sane testing schedule (not the bogus 2 week one which had nearly no time to allow for proper feedback and proper addressing by XLGAMES) that was announced shortly after they announced Unchained. They have a small window of making it (the ArchePass system) right so it is all on Khrolan and his team to make the right decision.
November 13th Update: The ArchePass compensation was implemented and seems to be issue free. Gamigo also pulled back (for simplicity sakes) on the original criteria which was that only accounts with characters that were level 40+ as of October 28th, would be eligible to claim it (that was the criteria for the website grant performed on November 1st which ended up failing).
Instead, the packs can only be opened with a level 40+ character. Which means that anyone can purchase the game for the next week (until the next maintenance) to at least claim the first two packs before it changes into just one claim after next weeks maintenance.
