*this is a copy of the text sent to funcoms customer support in reguards to AO, I am currious as to the communities views either for or against.*
I am sure this is not the first of these letters you have received, and (sadly) it will more than likely not be the last. I hope you read this rather then simply disregarding it and paying the comments no heed. I want to start out by saying that after my last session I had to log out and leave for a while before I could sit down and right this letter in a calm fashion. I also want to point out that rather then assuming that I am a hot head to get upset over a video game, you should consider that I understand it is a game and nothing more and knowing that I was able to become frustrated to the point that I had to physically walk away to calm down to the point that I could write this letter in an appropriate tone. With that in mind I would like to address a number of issues concerning the game that I know are not new that need to be addressed and not addressed in the future, not as soon as possible, but immediately. I will explain the event that caused the frustration tonight to use as an example. I had traded an item to a friend who receive the item, as I proceeded to logout the server for the zone we were in crashed. When both of us had reconnected, we found that neither of us had the item in question (in this case a backpack with items within, nothing major or rare however still items). We petitioned and as happens every time that this or similar events occur, the Arks that respond tell us ‘sorry nothing we can do, sorry for you loss, sorry but nothing will be done’, basically ‘too bad for you….’. Now I have been around AO since the Beta (account name: Morhawke) and since day one have had for the majority of the time, two accounts running. In week 2 of launch we formed a guild, and became the biggest of AO for a long time, then even during the mass exodus of players you suffered around the 12.5 patch (and the release of DAoC), I defended this game, and stayed loyal. After awhile I even managed to bring back all those of my friends that had left, and soon I once again led the largest guild in the game (including both servers). I truly like AO, it has the workings to be the best MMORPG out, but you sell yourself short. Even now, when my guild has broken into smaller ones, I and a few of my friends still stay loyal and play. Yet again and again you (as FC and your policies) make us question why we are.
Your old response to why items could not be reimbursed was “we have no way to track these items”, now many players may believe that and you can convince a few more of them that do know better, still, if you (again as FC) should have had the ability to track items from day 1. If you did not, them I apologize for this, but you hired some lame admin for your DB. Baring that, assuming that admin were incompetent and could not track items then, you let it slip that you now can. This being that you noticed an exploit with credits in the game and were able to track these credits, this is no different (if not harder) then tracking the items. If your reason is the man power: hire more people. So now you simply tell us you WILL not replace items lost. Ok, now lets review why you have this policy. Simply put to try and prevent exploiters. Fine I can accept that, however this is not what you are doing now. What you are doing is stating that you (again as FC) do not care about the players, as long as they are willing to pump your bank account full of money every month then you don’t care. You count on most people consider the time they have invested in a game more important then not getting items back, etc. In all honesty, WHO CARES if someone gets and extra gun, you can log the reimbursement and if said player asks for another 10min later, say no, tell him to get bent.
And reimbursement of items is not the only time this message of FC vs players is coming across. I understand the game should be challenging, otherwise its no fun to play, but repetition is not challenge, and that is what it boils down to. If I log on and play for 3 hours, and do to a bug loose the item or xp that I had gained in that 3 hours, I may as well not have played, because I have no recourse, it is all lost forever, all I can do it repeat myself and that simply is a waste of time. I could accept some things not being replaced, item lost do to my client disconnecting while the server was up or things like I dropped it on the ground and it faded, fine, those are not your fault. However when I loose things do to no wrong doing on my part, IE your server crashed, then those need to be returned. Sadly you do return items, it seems to only select players, maybe these were unauthorized or whatnot, however they have occurred. And before you state that your servers are infallible I want to point out that once during the first few months of the game, zoned into a mission area only to land on an ERROR message. Literally I was standing on big red letters: ERROR. Now though this is now amusing and I had and may still have screenshots of this, it is an example of someone taking the time to code the fact I could stand on an ERROR message rather then taking the time to fix the original problem.
I understand that many people are asking for more content and story, and I too would like these, however what FC needs to do is address basics first, give players back items lost to bugs, (this is something that should have been in place at the beginning), though I doubt this will ever be done, rebalance the mobs to the players, there is no reason mobs that are based on pc classes should be set up under different rules, maybe specialized but not different. This would allow you to remove the band-aid fixes on pvp that you had to make. (again I doubt this will ever be done but it would be nice) it would also make many more of the items in the game viable, and thus remove the need to push the OE rules. (hmm, what a concept, a balanced game. Sorry but a little sarcasm is not unwarranted).
The prevailing attitude that you (again as FC) are projecting is two-fold: First and foremost is you seem (and I may have said this already but it bears repeating) to think this game is FC vs the Players. Well its not, you may not see it that way, or you may not realize that you are projecting this, but you are. You worry about players leveling too fast, however if you had finished the game (or had competent people in place to provide content) then people reaching max level should not be a problem. Yes it should be a challenge to get there, and believe me it is, however it should not be a labor to do so. That is what we are paying for. No, I do not want to be able to kill one mob and go to lv200, but I think a few months worth of moderate playing should get me there, yet it doesn’t. Some of this is caused by imbalance in the systems of mobs vs players, however the prevailing reason is the repetition of regaining what is loss do to bugs that is not being reimbursed. The second attitude is there, though either ignored, not recognized or intentional, and that is the holding euro players above us (and possibly other countries) players. Though this may seem a shallow comment, believe me it is not. As I said before, I ran at what was at one time the largest guild IN THE GAME, on either server. We constantly mailed in news, were involved in many events, considering our players were spread out across most time zones, at one time you could not log on and not find at least one or more members of the guild on, the guild ran 24/7. yet through all of it, no matter the stance the guild took politically within the game, we were ignored. Never, and I mean NEVER were we mentioned in any news, or event summaries. Now I wonder when I write in that I will be breaking up my guild, will that make your game news? To add to this, I have many friends that are euro players and have had many occasion, they are treated and acknowledged whilst those of us here in the States, get ignored. Perhaps this is a personal issue, mayhap you should have or should still open a US server (much like your German one), maybe just simple screening would work. On this I can once again only offer suggestions.
What it comes to is this: though my accounts are not much in the way of the income your game generates, it still counts. And as I have watched and listened, more and more people have taken the same opinion as those stated here. Sooner or later those little accounts that pay for this game will dwindle and sadly with them this game. AO was to run a four year story arc, I honestly can tell you that unless you make some changes, and I don’t mean more band-aid temp fixes, you will not come close to that 4 years. And it will be a sad day when you shut down the servers, because this game has so much potential and so little of it is recognized. Sadder still is that it would take little effort on your part to change things, yet you choose to be self righteous and assume no wrong doing, how sad, how sad indeed.
Morhawke, aka Etrigan (guild leader of the Order of Corporate Templars)
*we will win this race others have only run*
