Runes of Magic US / AU

I'll try to keep as constructive as I can, and i do hope that this will be forwarded to the marketing team, or whoever their bosses are (however slight that chance might be), about the various bad decisions that the marketing team made, from my perspective as a progressing player.


- Not offering what is wanted (Non Permanent IS items): There are many items that have been asked for dozens of times, such as 30% speed mount potions, cactus pet, permanent ABL's, etc. that are not being offered. Some of which have never been offered, or were offered more than half a year ago. I just can't see how it would benefit Frogster to not offer items that players want to buy, especially items that are not permanently in the Item Shop. Diamonds that would otherwise have been spent will not be spent. Also sends a clear "we don't listen to your feedback" message.


- Ruby Shop: I don't see how tripleing the price of almost everything in the ruby shop, and making all sale items give 0 rubies will do anything except anger the players. It won't make players spend more diamonds - since rubies cannot be bought with diamonds, many ruby shop items cannot be bought with diamonds, and a large portion of the items that the players need from the IS are only available during sales (Runes, +12/+16 jewels, ABL's, etc.), or are only offered at a reasonable price during sales. No extra diamonds spent, much more angry customers.


- Lack of Double Diamonds: While the new IS changes seemed a good idea, it soon turned into a whole pile of disappointment. "This game is too expensive" is suggested everywhere back in Ch IV, and in response, the sales team replaces the 110% diamond sales with the 50% diamond sales? I'm not sure which part of "This game is too expensive" that they don't understand. While the price of some items have been adjusted (ex. Puri packs) in accordance, many others, like Random Extractors, ABL's, are still the same price. Same Diamond price + less diamonds for the same amount of money = More expensive items.

From what I've seen, a lot of people will simplely wait months for that occational double diamond. $$ that would otherwise have been spent in between will no longer be spent. This also causes lack of diamond sellers in game. The extra diamonds that would have been spent by f2p will also be unspent now. Inflation triggered by too much gold chasing too few diamonds will also drive players away = loss of potential customers.


-Perfect Jewel Drought: Starving everyone of perfect jewels is just... Its almost impossible to get to +6 w/o perfects, annoying to get to +12 w/o perfects, and very expensive to get to +16 w/o perfects. Only few people have the 200 dollars per month to dump into this game to afford all the jewels failing. People who are already at endgame are looking at cleaning out old gear and restatting = no +jewel spent, no rune drillers spent.

For people like me who aren't, I'll just try to get by with +5 gear instead of +11 gear. If I can't get +16 for my necklace and rings, well, I'll just keep using my super outdated old one then. No puri/+jewel/rune drillers/golden hammers spent. Horray.


-REALLY bad Sales: I'll bring up the tier 3 runes for 299 rubies up again. Sales like these just really show the marketing team's COMPLETE absense of understanding of this game. T3 runes are junk. 299 rubies is almost an impossible amount of rubies to get now. If there were grocery 2 stores side by side, in 1 store, the first thing you see if them selling old, worthless junk for $300 each, and the other offering a nice deal on milk and eggs,which store that you'll enter? The one selling worthless junk sends a clear "No nice deals here" message. Not something that you want your customers to think.


-Poor Sale Timing: I've seen lots of sales that are timed really poorly. It makes sense to sell daily resets during double XP, because people will need lots of daily resets during those periods of times. But more often than not, daily resets are not offered during double XP, and instead are offered when people complain able the lack of double XP.

Megaphones being offered on sale more often than normal back when somebody was getting illegal access to many people's accounts, and using the victim's diamonds to buy Megaphones and spam goldselling messages was simplely bad timing.

Another example is back when many people's storage chests were going missing, and they were not given their chests and its contents back at that time. Its was causing an uproar, and the marketing team starts giving dozens of sales on storage chests in the IS. lol.


-Lack of Options for Everyone: Rune sales is a good example of this. X runes cost $7 each during double diamonds. Not everyone can afford this huge cost. While VIII runes are not what the people that can afford X rune needs. Having seperate sales for the 2 just doesn't make sense, since neither are available permanently in the Item Shop. If you have only X runes, you'll miss out on all the customers that can only afford VIII, while if you have only VIII on sale, you'll miss out on all the people who can afford X runes. Both should be on the same sale so that everyone can get what they need.

I think Frogster really needs to take marketing more seriously. The bar needs to be raised for the requirements for this job, because hiring people that often seems to have no clue about what they are doing will really hurt your profits.

Quoted from "dexhunterz;568799"

How about this thing they do. It's called ADVERTISING. The sites I usually visit, I constantly see other mmo's in this genre being advertised. Why have I never seen a Runes of Magic advertisement? Noobz.

While i agree that this game needs much more advertising than it gets now, i didn't mention it in my thread because that was beyond the scope of the intended topic, which was just on the marketing team. If all the major issues with this game had to be mentioned, I'd have to write an essey that would dwarf anything that Fan has ever written, which wouldn't be nice to read lol.

Quoted from "squirrlee;568860"

Yes...they keep the prices where they are because people keep paying. I quit paying back when "The Mighty Shield" came out and even back then it was expensive.......now it's insane expensive and double diamonds are a rare thing now. I would have thought people would have called it quits considering the lack of double dias alone.

And of course the question is, DO people keep paying? With the lack of diamond sellers now ocmpared to before, I'm inclined to say no, but without real data it's impossible to really so one or the other.

Quoted from "Dkjester;568886"

i have said it before and ill say it yet again. In hopes some may read it before it gets deleted.

The game looks like it is taking a turn for "get as much money out of it while we can" phase. I can only think in hopes to have Tera become Frogsters number 1 cash maker. They are not a non profit organization and they will come up with ways to keep the game making the money they are used to. When if finally ceases to be profitable they can close up shop, saving all the operating costs and move those resources to another game without having to hire new employees.

It is even better for them that they have an IRON CLAD EULA which pretty much makes it that if they do this there is no legal ramification any of us can take. Legally if they close up shop.... all the money we put into is poof, gone. They have nothing to lose by making the sales heavy handed towards them. Their other game has launched and is pulling revenue.

The house always wins.

Imo, proper markating (as well as advertising, etc.) will keep RoM extremely profitable. I'm making the renewable resource arguement. RoM is a renewable resource of wealth if Frog is willing to manage it properly.

Quoted from "Blkkntdave;568929"

Here's the thing, we can QQ all day long on the forums but when it comes down to it, they will do whatever they want. It doesn't matter what the paying customers want, its what they want. What they want is what they do, so in short....

THEY DON'T GIVE A RATS AZZ what we the players want!!

NUFF SAID!!!!

sigh, so true.
One could always try to kick them out of their stupidity though...

And at above posts, if people stopped playing and paying, one of the arguements in an old thread was that Gameforge will just pull the plug. They're not going to think "oh hey, people are boycotting over their marketing team, so lets get a new one!" They'll think "Hmm, this game is not making sufficient profits, lets close it down then".

And same here maomiai. As soon as siege ends half my guild pretty much logs off lol.