When Allods Online announced their cash shop prices, the swath of complaints would have cut through solid steel. Now, as we all know (at least those who read the news service that carries the No Prisoners, No Mercy show – Virgin Worlds) Gpotato announced changes to their cash shop for Allods Online:
Dear Allods Community,
We are happy to announce that we will be making revisions to a majority of the Allods Online item shop. These changes will go live sometime during the week of March 1st.
We would also like to extend a thanks to all of our players who have submitted constructive feedback through email and the forums. The team has reviewed each one of the hundreds of submissions we’ve received. We’ve restructured the pricing based upon your feedback in conjunction with the data we’ve reviewed and communication with our developer. Consequently, we’ve revised pricing so that more people can participate in this feature of the game.
Thank you all for your constructive feedback and support. Please continue to send us your thoughts to allods_suggestions@gala-net.com, and we look forward to seeing you in the game!
Sincerely,
The Allods Team
As nebulous as the wording of the announcement is, this just may be good news for all of you Allods fans out there. On the other hand (see hand reaching out of toilet in the picture above) I wouldn’t exactly call this a matter of “being responsive” to the community. This is the same “Allods Team” that originally announced the drastic increase in prices was intentional, despite the general outcry. No doubt somewhere back in the home office, someone on the Allods Team that holds the purse strings saw the very real possibility of the game going down the toilet and decided that maybe…just maybe…they shouldn’t flush an otherwise great game down the toilet.
Thereby hangs a tale…
And thereby hangs a tale, as the immortal bard would have said. Imagine if you will you walk into a auto dealership, or perhaps even the home office in Detroit. You march in to the office of the president of General Motors – no appointment, no pleases, no “mother may I” and plop yourself down opposite that is, no doubt, an expansive desk so large that you could easily build a football stadium on it and still have room left over to subdivide lots.
Pointing out of what just may be a window with a view that shows the factory below it stretching out like a vast kingdom, You look the CEO dead in the eye and say the following…
“You see all those red cars down there, coming off the assembly line? I don’t care if you have already run 10 thousand of them off the assembly line, call them all back. I don’t like the slope of the roof and I want you to change it.”
No, of course, there is a very real possibility that you would have been arrested simply for trespassing. That is, of course, unless you happen to be the government representative that has been in charge of the last two bailouts of General Motors. Other than that, the only way you are likely to get off of the trespassing charge is by pleading not guilty by way of insanity - and the simple fact that you just suggested changing the design of a car after GM ran off 10 thousand of the same model means you just might win your case for mental instability.
Lets take it one step further, and closer to home.
Most people are acquainted with the term “buyer’s remorse”. For those of you who are not, that is when you buy something and find out shortly thereafter that the same item went on sale. In fact, there are many people who seem to enjoy buyers remorse because you often see the same people (and sometimes across the breakfast table on Sundays) looking through the advertisements trying to see if your recent purchase went on sale. Some retailers have become so conscious of this that they offer price guarantees.
Now imagine if you will that you have just purchased that shiny new computer. You know the one. That same computer you have had your eye on for the last month. Yes, thats the one…the one with speed that rivals a Cray supercomputer and more ram than the Sahara desert has grains of sand. You finally decided to break down (and believe me at the prices most retailers offer you would have had to have a breakdown) and you buy it. You take it, and the second mortgage that was necessary to buy it home. The next Sunday you are in the mood for some angst and you purposefully go looking to see if it is on sale. The results of your search show that in the ensuing week since your purchase, the pace of technology being what it is, your brand new computer, your brand new expensive computer has been replaced by a pocket calculator with more computing power. Later that day finds you marching into the office of the store manager demanding a refund…
Only to be told that the reason you got the computer at such a “reasonable” price to begin with was that it was on sale. Now you realize at this point that the whole reason your shiny new computer, which is now more useful as a boat anchor, was that the unscrupulous store manager was trying to unload them because he knew that in one weeks time they would be worth a load of dingo dung. Now in the real world, if the purchase really did cost the same as a second mortgage, and the retailer under such circumstances refused to refund your money, he would soon find himself charged with fraud by the local attorney generals office so fast it would set land speed records. In more reasonable circumstances you simply found the computer that you bought for $900 dollars went on sale the next week for $850 dollars and there are a good many retailers that would give you store credit for the difference.
But make the same demand on a nation wide basis?
Well you can just kiss that demand goodbye before the words even leave your mouth me bucko, because the result would then be “business is business.” But what if the same demand where made of a game publisher (assuming that publisher doesn’t have the name Activision in it anywhere and isn’t headed up by Mr. Bobby Kotick). Lets say…oh, I don’t know, lets just pull a name out of the air and say “Atari”. The good folks at Atari know that they are in turn owned by what is (at least in many estimates) a French company that just happens to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the world. Now they know that the people who own their company didn’t get to be the largest manufacturer of video games in the entire world by putting up with low profit margins. Needing to make a few more dollars to reimburse what was no doubt a very expensive game to produce they decided to have a sale, and as a result offer sixty days of free game time along with it.
If this where any other industry other than the video game industry this would no doubt be considered par for the course. But if there is one thing that the Allods debacle has given us that is that when players really do speak their mind as one and demand that changes be made they will be made…for better or for worse.
But what if Atari didn’t back down? What if all those Star Trek Online players out there decided to raise so much hell that Satan himself would have decided he didn’t like the competition? What if they simply decided to say “O.K. everyone out of the pool” and pull the plug on the game? Never happen? Think about the game “Gods and Heroes” that was already in closed beta and being developed by Perpetual Entertainment – you know those people who were originally developing Star Trek Online – Perpetual Entertainment pulled the plug.
I am happy that companies like Cryptic listen to thier target market; and that they are doing no matter what some detractors may say. It’s great that game developers take action on when demands are made. But it can go to far, because game developement by committee doesn’t work when most of the “committeed members” don’t work for the developer.
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather