A classic game revived in China backfires
Several days ago, Shanda published some screen captures which the players sadly found to include class restrictions and commercial stores … the RMB will dominate everything … if a player has cash, he can purchase equipment to upgrade without having to go through the trouble to combat monsters …
The players decided to call for a boycott. They established Baidu forums and QQ groups to protest the “false advertising” by Shanda to “take advantage of their feelings.” Some of the leaders even called for the players to block the entrances to the various cities at 2pm, August 28 when the game officially opened.
At one entrance, more than 40 characters stood still. They wore cloth dresses and cloth shoes and stood shoulder to shoulder. Other players cannot enter. Two hours later, more than 2,000 people entered the chat room. Meanwhile, several thousand people were blocking the gates of the various cities in the game.
The link is a screenshot-heavy post detailing the story of what happened when the game Hot-Blooded Legend was revived as an RMT-heavy title called The Legend Returns. It was met with protests… the page has two different accounts of the event, here’s a snippet from the other:
The reason why this mass incident occurred was that the new version of Legend was over-commercialized and quite inconsistent with their advertising claim that the “original flavor” would be preserved. In previous versions of the game, victories and social rank depend on persistence. As long as the player is “hardworking” and is brave and strong in combating monsters, he can get promoted in rank and obtain more equipment. In fact, he can proceed to have “romance” and even “marriage” in a life of leisure.
11 Responses to “A classic game revived in China backfires”
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Good for them! It’s fantastic to see players working together like to protest 🙂
I think they just lacked subtlety. Blizzard has gone from free online play and content patches (with Diablo 2) to the $15/month model and has steadily added extras to the basic WoW package.
– you can buy boxes of collectible card game boosters until you get your Swift Spectral Tiger mount. Over the years they have added more and more in-game items to the card games. I strongly suspect that very few of the cards sold are actually used to play the card game with.
– you can pay to move to a better server.
– you can pay to change faction.
– you can pay to change name.
– you can pay to re-customise your character.
– you can buy hats, t-shirts, ringtones, mousemats in the Blizzard Store.
So there’s been an increasing amount of extra revenue.
In other games like EQ2 even more RMT has been added on top of the basic sub model. You can buy furniture, you can opt to play on a server where you can buy gold.
There clearly is a point at which players will crack. Darren from Common Sense Gamer was furious recently over the issue of ÂŁ10 for a horse.
http://commonsensegamer.com/?p=1387
It’s a matter of the games industry trying to subtly increase the amount players pay while giving the appearance of great value. Also I suspect a matter of letting your competitors take the risks. In China for instance other RMT games makers will know not to go as far as Shanda did, especially using a title people already know.
Players will react badly to radical pricing changes in a title that is just a continuation of a series. I would hate paying a sub for Diablo 3 because it’s pretty much the same as Diablo 2 which made plenty of money on box sales. It’s not completely logical as I’ve cheerfully subbed to WoW for years but nevertheless it’s how a lot of people would feel.
Depressing to see that Chinese players are both as foul-mouthed as Western players, and have a similar lack of perspective. I can’t imagine any change to the structure of a video game that would justify this reaction. Really depressing. Just play something else, it’s not like there’s a shortage of choice.
If you’re willing to go to a protest about purely in-game issues, it’s a pretty strong sign that, for whatever reason, other forms of entertainment aren’t apples-to-apples supplemental goods. Ask any protester in the United States, “Why don’t you just go to Canada?”
This is an issue with the move to micro-transactions from subscriptions, not RMT. We need to distinguish between the business model using micro-transactions and, it seems, moving away from a subscription model and the RMT/gold farming/player commerce debate which is largely unrelated.
The slippery slope here is the introduction of for sale items which are not available by other means in the game: eBay has made sure that everything else in a game can be bought and sold for real cash.
One thing I didn’t see mentioned is whether Legend was re-launched as a subscription based game or a free to play game. I have a serious problem with subscription based games that start selling pixel crack, but can’t see how anyone can complain with a free to play game that uses that model.
Actually, I see the issue as the distinction between paying for accessory services (name changes, etc.) and paying for direct character advancement. The latter is far more rancorous for a host of reasons, at least under general MMO circumstances. (See also the experiment some theme parks had with selling higher-priced “Fast Passes” that allowed one to evade lines. Also see Guild Wars as an example of successful integration of pay-for-advancement, recognizing the sigificant differences between their game model and most MMO models).
Like @PlayNoEvil, I thus also see it as distinct from the not-directly-related issue of RMT.
Sounds like a fable for the socio-economic bubble China is finding itself at the brink of.
Peter- the only difference is whether someone has to actually perform the “virtual” work before the customer can buy it.
Using the theme park metaphor buying an advanced character off of eBay would be like swapping places in line on a ride with someone I payed to stand in it for me. So the express ticket at the theme park cuts out the bother of having someone physically wait in the line, like offering advanced characters bypasses the need for someone else to build up a character.
Of course people who do it the hard way are going to resent those who do it the easy way, but as long as it’s going to happen, why shouldn’t the company profit from it?
From the gamers point of view, the only way I see around this is to play non item-based games that don’t require significant advancement to be competitive. I’d like to think the buying and selling of items will at some point spell the end of pixel-crack games, but I doubt it.
@Corwin,
Not making any the judgement call myself, just stating that it’s generally considered more rancorous by players for a number of reasons (thus, you know, the protests). But to answer your rhetorical question anyway, because the profit gained from the happy, higher paying customers may be outweighed by the profit lost from resentful, lower-paying but more numerous customers.
In that sense it is a question of what business strategy the company wishes to pursue, as both are certainly viable (EQ, after all, has been splitting the difference since the days of the gated-community premium servers, and on into EQ2’s selling-allowed servers).
Plus, keep in mind it’s not buying a levelled character off of E-Bay, it’s buying one factory-direct. It’s not paying someone to stand in line for you, it’s slipping money to the doorman to get in ahead of the line. The difference is, it’s not that someone did the work, but that no work was done at all. Which, in the context of a game about hard work paying off (player perception, anyway), goes directly against the heart of the game.
Further, “We’re going to treat you better because you have money” is quickly seen as “We’re going to treat you worse because you don’t“. The E-Bay sale is not an official endorsement of privilege.
I’d just say the lines quickly blur, and personally I detest the idea of people being able to buy virtual goods off of eBay as much as I detest the idea of them buying it directly from the company.
Heck, I hate the whole idea of selling expansion packs to a player base that’s already paying a subscription and that’s been going on since the start.
Ultimately it’s just another business decision of weighing what approach will result in more profit and in the end the market will decide.
We’re going to see more and more “free games” that derive their income from the sale of items, experiences, and upgrades. In fact, as of yesterday, Dungeons & Dragons Online just went to this model. If the experience of playing the game is fun, and purchasing the items only makes it more fun … seems like a win-win to me. The difference is that I wouldn’t go in to such a game with an expectation to compete evenly against other players, but to just enjoy the game content.
Legend got in trouble because the former player base came in with certain expectations that weren’t realized.