why does it matter? i mean no one is forced to give them their money right?\

i mean if it’s making money it must be ok!

it’s like viral marketting.


why does it matter if mrs stay at home mom internet user gets paid to post on reddit and blogs endorusing products for money or free product?


why does it matter if someone who calls themselves a critic makes vlogs and streams that they present as reviews with their honest opinions take money and product from the companies who make the products they show to show those products at all?


why does it matter if a beta leak site half the leaks are written by people paid to write those leaks that show the game favourably?


why does it matter if a reddit for a game has people getting paid to write on them saying the game is amazing and exactly like the hype machine says it is when it’s not like that at all?


why does it matter if a reddit has game company employees as mods? or a fansite? why does it matter if the company asks a fansite mod to remove or ban certain thread types and the fansite is all to happy to comply?

why does it matter if a journalist at a mainstream newspaper or tv station simply reports what the government or a special interest group tells/pays them to rather than investigating and reporting a record of facts?


why does it matter if someone who wants to get a job at ncsoft becomes admin at aionsource and moderates threads and creates his own that have controlled lines of discussion that feed into the advertising even if they have no relation to anything within the realm of possible reality, giving himself credit for leading the fan hype, then getting a job at ncsoft, then coming back to claim it’s the most amazing company ever and his boss who everyone is making fun of for being clueless and otu fo touch with the game she’s talking about and how she’s really playing and claims that the title in ncsoft’s own video of her talking is incorrect and her job/title is really something other than being presented?

what does it matter if a former ncsoft employee regularly posts on mmo blogs attacking people who post simple facts with sources on a personal basis that doesn’t fit the narrative he’s decided should be the “Real” story. what if you post somethin that is obviously true, and he disputes it with the basis of his former employment with the company to back him up, and the mod/blogger backs him up on that basis, even though a 2 minute google search shows that person is plainly out of touch with reality, adn the source being that company’s own page?

what does it matter if someone who can afford to spend a fraction of their fortune to fully fund their commerical for profit product development instead exploits nostalgic fans for money that he won’t have to pay back or pay a cut of the profits to, pulling money from projects that might otherwise not get funded at all without that money?

what does it matter if a company says they respect consumers and will never ever do something for 5 years then do it at the first convient opportunity then tell you it’s not what it is and even if it was they would never do it again.


what would it matter if EA’s staff moderated r/games? what would it matter if anet staff could dicate to gw2g what should be deleted and banned for? what wouldi tmatter if ncsoft or gf had people ont heir payroll with mod status on AS? what would it matter if wildstar fansites trade dev posts for being dictated what is allowed to be argued over and what is not? what does it matter if a single guy rushes to gain control by creating subreddits fansites and irc chans for new games as soon as they are announced while controlling the narrative on those places to act more as advertising than places of actual discussion in order to get a job or as part of his job as a viral marketter?

what would it matter if zenimax or carbine read our discussions about their games in this forum and asked curse or snoozle to shut it down and in exchange they would get cbt access or keys or an exclsuive of some kind or an injection of ad money or prizes to give away.


why would any of that matter? who cares? what’s basic ethics? profit first amrite? wag the dog and the pesos will follow. if you don’t like it you’re just jelly because you didn’t think of it first or can’t make money doing the same things.

rift was fun for the wpvp from around level 25-40 for the first month. then the wpvp dried up for the most part and those last 10 levels were largely dry and tedious. add in that they kept nerfing the interesting classes/specs because of the preceonptions of wow clone raiders and eq vets that were stuck on conventions of their limited fantasy game/lore experience, on top of buffing already strong classes while nerfing weaker classes merely due to forum qq zergs, all while catering exlsuively to the wow clone raider demographic on endgame with endless new raids that were progressively gated longer nad longer and favouring guilds that were both large and had a substantial number of people who rushed through everything asap within the first couple weeks the game was launched.

i loved giving feedback about how trion might keep my guild in game by making the gates less tedious and unforgiving, only to be told by zerg guild members that “with only 100 raiders in our 2k man guild, we can plevel preople to 50 in 3days and get them into the latest raid the minute they hit 50 and have them geared in a week, mmo’s are not for you, gtfo and go back to wow” which was such a common response on their forums, and all too welcomed by trion as demonstrated by catering to and advertising these guilds in numerous ways, wether through guild based gold sinks or activties.

ofc at some point they realized that the reason people were leaving the game was because there was little more than raids for them to do at endgame, and started adding content that was suitable for the small group and solo player, but it was too little too late, and apparently they then reversed direction on that and went back to catering to their fickle as always wow clone raiders that still remained hoping that increasing the gates to viability and content even more would retain those players, ultimately culminating in the far too slow and tedious SL leveling content that was big on buzzwords and gimmicks but low on fun.

now rift it seems is so far off from it’s original premises that had everyone excited back in early 2011 that w/e parts of it weren’t heavily derivitive have long since been removed in favour of out smorgesborging wow in every form and function. but like every other game in the genre that tries to out wow wow, it doesn’t do it as well, and doing so in a market that even the best wow of the wows, wow itself, is losing it’s appeal, being wow while shoehorning in the latest fad of whsimical features is a failed strategy not only for rift, but for the other games that adopted that feedback from the tiny but extremely vocal crowd that voices them and is now at the forefront of who devs are betting on to feed their box sales without retention as success tories metric we now enjoy.

ofc rift f2p will have a big surge of players and revenue, just like almost every other f2p conversion out there. and it will be hailed as a success for players and the devs and industry alike. as it always is. but as they say, easy come, easy go.

kickstarter has been a hot topic not just when it coems to games, wether it’s wealthy “celebs” like marc jacobs and peter molyneux and zach braff usign them as hype tools, or kevin smith saying “this is not for people like me”

article on massively today questions about game effecting backer perks

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/05/17/the-daily-grind-do-kickstarter-perks-put-you-off-from-mmos/

RSI who is making star citizen the 4x twitch space game (which is what a lot of eveplayers wanted/thought STO was going to be hilariously) is retroactively adding life time insurance to ships bought through backers, which if it’s insurance like insurance in eve, gives quit eth eeconomic advantage to backers.

but further investigation shows that this is the tip of the ice berg of paying to win for backers. spend $125 now and get a top of the line ship, and so on.

at this point i’ve earmarked $40 of my next paycheque for some pay2win goodness. those more expensive packages are looking mighty enticing though, with top of th eline trading vessels and dogfighters up for grabs, each with life time insruance giving clear economic advantages that will affect both the market and any guild war machine for pvp in the mmo version of the game.

there are ofc, people arguing that this isn’t pay 2 win at all, because like our friend blackorchid, paying to win means paying money that give an otherwise unobtainable through gameplay pvp combat advantage. ofc he seems to think that gw2 isn’t pay 2 win despite top teir wvw guilds routinely dumping cash into gems to buy and dump absurd amounts of siege on the field regularly.

and ofc we all know that gw2’s cash shop is just convience right? and obviously it’s easy in that context to pretend that havign a top of the line ship with heavily mitigated death penalty for life is just convience…

because i mean it’s not as if wars in eve were ever won by draining enemy corps dry of their isk by killing their expensive ships with cheap/free ship swarms right?

oh wait.


anyways some pretty good discussion threads in the comments ranging from pay 2win  backer perks to why people like marc jacobs should be ashamed of utilizing kickstarter.

once upon a time eve didn’t hide it’s loading screens and no one pretended it was open world. the fact it’s a series of boxes was obvious to everyone and no one denied it.

once upon a time wow vanilla’s maps were considered small in comparison, and the zones claustorphobic with their mountainous borders and choked transition points.

once upon a time, in the average mmo, you could pick a direction and run for hours.

i’m a tester in a game right now that for a change is doign an actual beta. the game is in an early stage and it’s pretty obvious to me, and somethign the devs have been relatively open about, is that they needed testing done before they can progress, but being a small studio with a small budget can’t afford paid testers and can’t allocate man hours to do it themselves.

ofc players who are tasked with doing some actual testing for a change are confused. because by and large betas are for the charade of lettign players feel involved and lettingn them think they are contributing by testing a product which is for the most part what it’s going to be at launch.

Read More