Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "Amberwave;520830"

Bought diamonds with my credit card and got hit with a $2.50 international fee.

Were you using a US credit card (issued by a US bank)?
Were you buying diamonds for a US server?

Quoted from "regentego;520882"

Well because Americans don't spend enough on this game, Frogster US made a Terrible mistake years ago by not initiating IP blocks on non Frogster countries. We have mass amounts of foreign players who can't buy diamonds even if they wanted to. Its a strategic business move if were not buying alot of diamonds why do anything special for North America, we just need to all accept that we will get the same sales as EU. For a long time people bragged "I'm f2p, you're stupid gor buying diamonds" back then I fought that type of belief and those people. Well welcome to the endgame of f2p gone wild.

I wouldn't keep FA open either, they tried their absolute best to get people excited and buy diamonds, but at the end of the day frogster America didn't fail us, you f2p failed them. Keep it up though and give frogster EU the ability to say "you know were barely making enough to pay for the servers"

I know alot of you don't like to hear reality of business, to us its a game to them its a business investment, and gameforge is not known for keeping games that are not profiting. Yeah ask the F2P Mythos players. I've been saying these things before FA was closed, but what do I know I've only run a few multi million dollar business. I've only closed down four unprofitable branches, and I've only bought out a few bankrupt companies.

Accept how it is now, spend money if you want change, don't spend there will be an even more drastic change coming.

I hear you... I have run or managed businesses working retail, wholesale, and restaurant/bar... The issue I see with stating it as above is that the "blame" (causality) is placed on the consumer when we both know it is up to the business to provide a product and terms that people want to buy into.

Lets go with a bar example. Say, you opened a bar with the concept that people could have all the well drinks they want but have to pay for top shelf liquor. Now, this bar, unsurprisingly, takes off. The biggest problem is that it is way to busy. There are people willing to pay but they can't get to the bar as much as they want. There are people that don't mind waiting but are broke. So these folks work out a deal and start trading 2 well drinks for a top shelf.

From the point of the bar, this is horrible. You have people just sitting in line over and over and you are giving out well drinks hand over fist and selling no more top shelf than you have capacity to serve anyway. What to do? You can say that this is absolutely banned but, yea good luck on that one... It seems crazy to just close this insanely popular club... All these people are here, after all so the concept must be working! If you are Frogster, you do 2 things... First, you crank the price of top shelf drinks. Customers do explain this to a degree and, up to a point it is still a good value when factor in the trades with other customers so that everyone gets what they want.

However, the other thing you do is start charging for mixers and ice (possibly the glass too). Now customers are starting to get ticked. They start realizing that they are now paying for every drink unless they want a neat drink in their hands (which no one does). People start leaving... What to do now? How 'bout cutting overhead? If you get rid of the bartenders and just put in some automatic dispensers that can serve a couple premeasured drinks. This is very efficient but now the variety of cocktails plummets. People leave...

Hmmm... not much left to cut... You can water down the booze.... and you may do that here and there but it is against code and you don't want to push it too much and loose your license for your other bars. Well, you go back to your revenue stream and jack up your top shelf prices even higher and reduce the number of mixers your carry so you can get a better deal on those that you still have. The problem is that it now costs more to get a drink at your bar, trading included and customers get a sub-par drink and feel nickel and dimmed for the ice and glass "options". Mean while a new, "normal", bar is opening across the street but it is 5 stories tall and has greeters, hosts, and plenty of attractive bartenders to make sure no one has to wait for their reasonably priced drink.

In a panic, you decide you are going to have a big party to "thank" customers and get them excited again about your *free* drinks. You have some giant problems though. First, there is really no money in the budget to throw this party. Second, all the staff to have a party is long gone. So you decide to charge a cover and record some friends giving a greeting and play it on the TV's in the bar. The customers, who were expecting a great comeback are disappointed and feeling both ripped off and justified as they head over to the new bar.

*Now* can you blame the customer for leaving? They were ungrateful after all! You just wanted to give away free drinks (an possibly get rich on the side). There were the "good" customers, after all, that paid for their drinks. Problem is that, because it took so long to get a drink, they wouldn't have been there without the people waiting in line for them. Besides, they behaved like customers should... they just wanted the most fun evening out with the best drinks they could get for their money.

The problem, as it turns out was with your concept. Your plan depends on you giving out a product that you can't cover the loss on. Because of your inability to see the problems that would arise and take steps to deal with the troubles that would result, patrons felt that they were treated unfairly. Ultimately, the steps you took to turn things around just made it worse as even basic service suffered. You can say that people weren't fair and abused the system, but the simple truth is that, in the final analysis, people would rather get a good drink at a good price from a good bartender who is there if something is wrong. It was a great idea to give away cheap booze to get people in the door but there were so many conditions and hoops that it just wasn't worth it. But you can say that the problem is with the customers, the ice, the bartenders, or even the booze (people clearly wanted the booze!). The problem was that your idea was untenable at best and your choices, while arguably logical at the time, did nothing to save it.

Sales are bad, that is just simple Now they do a great job with giving us Diamond sales but they lack having things in the item shop worth buying. Right now its people buy diamonds from the sales but nothing good in item shop means they keep the diamonds and don't buy more because they are waiting for something good to come in item shop.

Also Item shop sales do not last a long time, some people miss them because night job or they go out. A sale that only lasts 5 hrs or so is missed by a great amount of players making it so even less diamonds are used. The less diamonds used the less reason to buy more.

Right now nothing is on sale, so when a diamond seller trys to sell his diamonds to others no one buys. Nothing to get. So this player now keeps his diamonds and waits. If he could use them, then he has a reason to buy more diamonds to sell for later or use.

I might not pay with real money but i have took a lot of diamonds out of the game.

Quoted from "regentego;520882"

Well because Americans don't spend enough on this game, Frogster US made a Terrible mistake years ago by not initiating IP blocks on non Frogster countries. We have mass amounts of foreign players who can't buy diamonds even if they wanted to. Its a strategic business move if were not buying alot of diamonds why do anything special for North America, we just need to all accept that we will get the same sales as EU. For a long time people bragged "I'm f2p, you're stupid gor buying diamonds" back then I fought that type of belief and those people. Well welcome to the endgame of f2p gone wild.

I wouldn't keep FA open either, they tried their absolute best to get people excited and buy diamonds, but at the end of the day frogster America didn't fail us, you f2p failed them. Keep it up though and give frogster EU the ability to say "you know were barely making enough to pay for the servers"

I know alot of you don't like to hear reality of business, to us its a game to them its a business investment, and gameforge is not known for keeping games that are not profiting. Yeah ask the F2P Mythos players. I've been saying these things before FA was closed, but what do I know I've only run a few multi million dollar business. I've only closed down four unprofitable branches, and I've only bought out a few bankrupt companies.

Accept how it is now, spend money if you want change, don't spend there will be an even more drastic change coming.

Ebi, I beleive that you got it wrong from beginning. IIRC it was already discussed on forum that FA actually was positive in business, and FEU was the one that did not make much of profit. (with all sales they had since they took over, we can see why) It was discussed just before they announced FA end and numbers are posted publicly.

Rest assured, they are still making money, and they cut man power almost in half. (so we wait a week longer for our issues - who cares) If that was not the case, we would probably already been playing some other game, or even RoM that is not hosted by Frogster. (apparantly not something you should mention here)

F2P folks are esential for this business model, but wrong overpriced CS is what really is killing this game.

C'mon, 20 bucks for mount in game in the time when other games are lowering monthly fees/prices?! They will sell some, but just imagine if the priced it 199 how many they would sell. As those are not tangable goods, what difference does it make for them how they priced it?

It's their choice to milk those with most of RL money in game, and we can either accept it or just stop buying DIAS (like many already have done so) and turn into F2P no because we choose so, but because Frogster want us to do so.

I did purchase DIAS couple of months ago, still have some to renew bags/bank slots. WIll not purchase them again, and if in time this runs out I can't afford couple thousands of zeevox for gold, I will just shrink inventory, and stay F2P.

At least I can say I tried to reason with frogster sales/makeeting, but we all know how much reasoning with them helps. (all your comments will be forwarded.... )

No, I don't like to spend money to change game, they should change game to make me wanting to spend money first!

First off to the whole bar analogy, well drinks are your biggest profit. A bottle of well vodka is $7, at an ounce and a quarter per drink, worth cup and mixer costs is .23 cents. Top shell is not nearly as profitable as well.

Romage, frogster showed strong 3rd quarter profits, we don't know what the other quarters looked like. We are in a catch 22. Why do I want to spend money on a poorly managed company, however if we don't we could go EOL.

More importantly I don't believe anyone should be f2p, no one should work for free ever. But that's just my opinion, welfare users who have no intentions of getting off it should be moved to camps and forgotten about. Yeah im very compassionate.

I logged into a EU server this afternoon, attempting to get a preview on our tonight's sale. Their cash shop is quite different than ours. They have packages we do not. We have some items that they do not. Some of our items are in one category, whereas that same item in their CS is in a different category. It really does not LOOK like it is run by the same individuals, but maybe they are just really slow at the 'equalization'

I find it odd someone where believes no one should be free to play yet they are playing a game that supports free players

Quoted from "regentego;520934"

First off to the whole bar analogy, well drinks are your biggest profit. A bottle of well vodka is $7, at an ounce and a quarter per drink, worth cup and mixer costs is .23 cents. Top shell is not nearly as profitable as well.

Romage, frogster showed strong 3rd quarter profits, we don't know what the other quarters looked like. We are in a catch 22. Why do I want to spend money on a poorly managed company, however if we don't we could go EOL.

More importantly I don't believe anyone should be f2p, no one should work for free ever. But that's just my opinion, welfare users who have no intentions of getting off it should be moved to camps and forgotten about. Yeah im very compassionate.

I'm well aware of this... It is exactly the point. Before F2P all MMOs were subscription based... What they have done is take what was that foundation (think well liquor or the wine program in a fine dining rest.) and made it free. Instead they charge the equivalent of $50.00 for a Grey Goose rocks. Of course most people won't pay it and the model seems crazy but they do get a percentage. There is no drink minimum but you only get to sit on empty kegs in a room @ twice fire code... The analogy holds.

Quoted from "kingzamorak;520961"

I find it odd someone where believes no one should be free to play yet they are playing a game that supports free players

You think this game supports free players. No it supports free players that are supported by paying players. You can't get a +16 weapon without someone at sometime buying those jewels. This game is a free market capitalist society. You will not get anything without someone paying, AH armor has to be unbound. At some point in the game you will need diamonds, and each new chapter pushes a greater dependency on diamonds.

Why diamond sellers don't use this to their advantage is beyond me, but pray the diamond sellers never organize and come to the realization that without them there is no way a F2P is going to get to endgame. Not to mention with CS price increases diamond prices should be going up as the diamond supply will be limited to fewer transactions.

Quoted from "regentego;520965"

You think this game supports free players. No it supports free players that are supported by paying players. You can't get a +16 weapon without someone at sometime buying those jewels. This game is a free market capitalist society. You will not get anything without someone paying, AH armor has to be unbound. At some point in the game you will need diamonds, and each new chapter pushes a greater dependency on diamonds.

Why diamond sellers don't use this to their advantage is beyond me, but pray the diamond sellers never organize and come to the realization that without them there is no way a F2P is going to get to endgame. Not to mention with CS price increases diamond prices should be going up as the diamond supply will be limited to fewer transactions.

This.

Can anyone that's new to this game from chapt 3 or 4 believe that there was once a point when this game was cheap? People ran around in greens and whites, +6, with only green X stats on their gear. This is what end game used to be, back when purples didn't drop clean (so people didn't stat them up without being rich enough for cleaners and that made clean yellows rare), and +6 was the highest we could go.

In those days you could be successful just buying puries and the occasional + stones

It's pointless to worry about who spends more, EU or NA. It doesn't really matter at all tbh. The big problem is the pricing overall, EU and NA both suffer over pricing equally.

They are making this game to expensive for the quality once you reach the content around level 60 on both continents. We are talking about tweaking lvl 60 gear sets and above. Players.....the paying players have been saying this for well over a year and all that has been done is to increase prices on the most desired items, runes come to mind here.
I have spent my share on this game, and I still like logging in as RL allows, but to pay the amount needed to make a character that can compete in Siege with any degree of fun, or move forward with instances has far out weighed the value the game holds at that level now.

As exciting as it is to see a new chapter coming out content wise, the cost doesn't justify aiming for that content for a very large percentage of the population. I myself, will be hanging up my staff and sitting in the back as F2P player when the new shiny chapter 5 comes out. The reason is it would be far more entertaining and finacially realistic to start another game then to fork out hundreds of dollars again on diamonds to make up some new gear to watch it become outdated so very quickly.
The sales team has not listened to the calls for a more realistic pricing template for the CS and it will become the end of the end gamers as more and more refuse to spend that much on this game. If they want to make this game last they need to get the cost to make end game gear around a couple hundred dollars at most. Then they can make this game survive another couple of chapters or longer. If they continue the path they are on currently, the price to make end game gear will continue to rise and it is completely possible it will reach thousands of dollars, and no game is worth that.

Keep the prices in check and affordable, and players will continue to spend. Continue the current path and Frogster will price themselves out of the market and the end gamers will go the way of the dinosaur.

I really wish the sales would be handled by the old team or someone new because whoever is doing it now sucks.

I'd really like to know if they've made more money with these flash sales for diamonds and items than they did before when they gave people all weekend or just more time in general. I don't believe it's working because all it's doing it limiting the time when people would make these purchases.

I mean, it's not hard to go to the forums and just read page 1 of the section to find out what people are wanting to see if the CS. I remember a time when more than once the CS was stocked with a specific item ONLY because it was requested on the forums by a large number of people. With the number of people expecting some kind of EXP bonus and the number of threads and posts regarding the issue, it should have been a no-brainer for SOMEONE to realize, "hey, we've been selling these daily tickets for a while now and the people want it. Let's go ahead and do double(or triple) EXP for our birthday." Yet, it appears the sales staff is completely to what the people want.

I've been kinda suspicious about the whole situation as well. It seems harder to get issues resolved and not much seems to get people interested in the game. I'm seeing more and more people quit for one reason or another and the game seems to have gotten stale. I've been kinda lazy about leveling because I was expecting some kind of EXP bonus for the 3rd birthday but I've pretty much given up on this idea. I haven't bought many diamonds lately because the amounts in the diamond packages seem to have gone down (except the $99 package). I'm beginning to agree with the others who say they're just gonna milk this for what they can then close the doors.

And on the CS timer issue, I've always thought that showed how little they cared since the old US Sales Team rarely used timers and would actually just remove the old item and put new ones in the next day. Did people get extra time to buy some items? Yeah but did it really hurt anything?

Quoted from "regentego;520882"

Well because Americans don't spend enough on this game, Frogster US made a Terrible mistake years ago by not initiating IP blocks on non Frogster countries. We have mass amounts of foreign players who can't buy diamonds even if they wanted to. Its a strategic business move if were not buying alot of diamonds why do anything special for North America, we just need to all accept that we will get the same sales as EU. For a long time people bragged "I'm f2p, you're stupid gor buying diamonds" back then I fought that type of belief and those people. Well welcome to the endgame of f2p gone wild.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. You might be a millionaire in real life, but f2p owns you in this game. An Frogster will make nice amounts of cash since people like you will sell diamonds to buy gear.

Quoted from "wipemaster;521014"

Yadda, yadda, yadda. You might be a millionaire in real life, but f2p owns your ass in this game. An Frogster will make nice amounts of cash since people like you will sell diamonds to buy gear.

So you're saying that all endgamers are F2P only? Really?

So we have to thank F2P for hyper inflation that hit all servers?!

I was paying customer, but I am forced to become F2P because of comments like this as well because of bad frog management...

Quoted from "RoMage;521119"

I am forced to become F2P because of comments like this

So comments like this did you good as they helped you save some cash.

Quoted from "wipemaster;521014"

Yadda, yadda, yadda. You might be a millionaire in real life, but f2p owns you in this game. An Frogster will make nice amounts of cash since people like you will sell diamonds to buy gear.

That isn't true. o.O

As an End-gamer on Grimdal, I was the only one who was f2p.

Everyone else actually used $ from their pockets.

It seems in EU they have different standards... I heard that polish players (wonder if wipemaster is one of them) are all F2P and are holding most of resources, dictate prices etc. Most of my friends from EU stopped playing RoM because of overpriced CS and AH prices. (just hard to keep up with game)