Product director letter mmmmh

zidlef

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 12:39am

Ok so

Product Director Letter Runes of Magic

Quoted

Quoted

Hello Rommunity,

My name is Steffen and I am Product Director of Runes of Magic.

Following the recent announcement we published on the forum regarding the shutdown of some of our services, wenoticed that many of you got confused or worried about the future of Runes of Magic and I would like to make things clearer.

First off, and to kill any rumor that may have arisen I would like to state clearly that Runes of Magic is in no case going to be shutdown anytime soon. It is actually quite the opposite, I’ll come back on this later.

It is true that we have moved away from the chapter division that was setup during the early years of the game as we now feel pretty comfortable with thenumber of features and are sure that Runes of Magic is now one of the, if not the, most comprehensive Free-to-Play MMORPGs available. It is more mature today than we would have ever imagined four years ago when we launched it, and there is no reason to stick to a chapter structure if the upcoming improvements will not bring huge features.

For the game will still be updated on a regular basis with corrections and patches brought whenever available. The game developer, our long-time partnerRunewaker Entertainment is still working hard on the game and we will keep on delivering the latest game version to players all over the world.

Score for More and the browser version
of Runes of Magic were great features perhaps a bit early for their
time, sadly they never lived up to the expectation we had for them. They
were used by a minority of players but still required a lot of manpower
and resources that wouldn’t be invested in the game itself and we
reached a point where we believed that keeping them would eventually be
detrimental for most of the community. Shutting these services down
hasn’t been an easy decision for us, but we strongly think that in the
long term the client version will benefit from it as our team can now

focus on new projects for the game.

Among the upcoming projects for the game we are now on the verge of expanding our activities with Runes of Magic. At the end of last year, we started a new server in Germany, and currently new territories are being assessed. That’s right, we are actually going to launch Runes of Magic in new countries, with new languages included, which means new players to play with, ensuring a constant activity in Taborea.

You also noticed a few departures and arrivals in the Community Management team, this was due to some structural changes here at Gameforge, but the transition is now complete and no further modifications are currently planned.

Finally I’d like to stress how great the game Runes ofMagic is, we are all very proud of working on this amazingMMORPG thatredefined quality Free to Play games four years ago and still boasts an unmatched amount of features. With its dozen of awards, the press hasn’t missedit. And with your 8 million accounts, you, the community, have proven us right about fighting for it.

On behalf of the whole Runes of Magic team, I would like to thank you for your loyalty and wish you more than ever to enjoy your adventures in Taborea.

Ok so a few answers that need answering :
Define anytime soon? could mean 1 month, 3 month, a year, 2 years??

Who is this Stephen person? never heard of him

New servers really? more players really?

8M accounts loll, ok guys 8M divided by at least 5, since everyone needs 5 accounts at least, so a lot less than you are advertizing. Plus the accounts that people left here and never came back too, all the banned accounts. So don't kid yourselves, really not 8M active accounts.

This game could be so much more than it is, lower IS prices, give us more diamonds for our real money spent and then you will see a lot more people here playing this awesome game. Stop raising prices all over the game, permanently get rid of those dupers, hackers for good and not 30 day crappy bans. I've work hard to get my crafting to level 80, gathering and planting, we don't even get a title for it ;-(

If you ever do let go of the game, would be nice that you would sell it to another publisher to take care of it ;-) Not closing it down without warning and destroying all data like it was done on other games you guys managed ;-(

TYVM

K/P/S/M/W 98/98/98/98/98
Disturbed guild leader on mithras :thumbsup:

BTW i do live under a bridge, i am Green, i can dish it out as good as i get
There are no better server than Reni, best place to be!!!!!

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sertet

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 1:12am

Don't care who he is but actual communication from up top for once. I will give thanks for that. More of this is good.

Opening servers in new regions... Bad idea. You can barely manage the existing servers and can't draw players. Focus on the manpower issues that already exist before worrying about opening up to new markets. Build upon the community because that is what will retain and draw players.

Zid is right about the accounts. How many of those are sitting idle and were used in a promotion. I would be highly shocked if there were more than 10k unique players that are active. Saying 8 million accounts is like boasting about twitter followers you bought. The press has missed it because the duping, hacking, and stolen accounts didn't even cause a blip on any news source. Those are major issues and no one outside of the community is even aware of it's existence.

And a minor nitpick, you may have the most features out of all other games, but you also have the one of the crashiest mmos.

A real sysadmin knows how to change the time.
If you make the same mistake while trying to make up for the previous one, you are doing something wrong.

As much as I'd love to say I offer consulting services, the scope of things broken is too large.

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Stickingit

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 2:11am

what the hell?

I would drape myself in velvet if it was socially acceptable.

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ruisen2000

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 5:12am

When the higher ups tell you "Don't worry guys, everything is perfectly fine!", thats when I start to feel a bit nervous... :p

I agree with Sertet that I'd be happy to see more communication like this. Though all the praises for the game aren't really necessary, since I don't think people would appreciate hearing about how good the game is doing while they watch accounts getting hacked daily and dupers blowing up server economies. Those pretty praises would be excellent for advertisement for the game.

Noblewarrior
lv 98/98/89/60 M/W/P/K
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This post has been edited 5 times, last edit by "ruisen2000" (Jul 20th 2013, 9:57am)

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Mamn00n

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 6:53am

:shit:

Username: Mamnoony

Regardless of what you deem possible, you will Reap what you Sow.
:monster:

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Dkjester

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 7:32am

LOl Rui, that is exactly what I thought. We have said many times we thought the game was going to get shut down and it was mums the word from Frogster/GF... Now it is something brought up ONCE, in ONE thread, that didn't even get that many posts.... and they RUSH to do a full press release type thing on it. That does shock and worry me. My response to this person is then this:

Then can you promise us that any money we spend on the game in the next 1 year will be refunded if the game is shut down? Are you THAT confident the game will stay up and running?

Just really shocking to me that they dove on this so fast.

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Asphodelix

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 10:53am

Ive spent way to much money on this game for it to close down and been worrying about that with the hackers earlier glad its not i cant find a game i like as much and its not for lack of trying lol :lol:

M/D/R/W 92/83/50/50

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YomanROM

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 3:46pm

the part about rom not going away anytime soon was worded in an ... unfortunate way (y'know, business man speech etc bla). But they actually mean it.

In the german feedback thread we had a reply from this fella here, Phelan (link to his short introduction on EN so you know who the hell he is :p):

Quoted from "Phelan"

Quoted

Das ist mal sehr unglücklich formuliert.

In der Tat. Wir investieren gerade sehr viel in RoM, zu keinem Zeitpunkt hat auch nur irgendwer daran gedacht, den Betrieb von RoM einzustellen. Wenn ihr euch den ganzen Text durchlest, sollte das eigentlich auch klar sein. Wir wollen hier offen sein. Keiner kann sicher sein, dass wir rom auch noch in 5, 10 oder 20 Jahren betreiben werden, aber derzeit steht das schlicht nicht zur Debatte. Es ist eine Sache, Features einzustellen, die nicht den gewünschten Erfolg brachten. Auch nicht erfolgreiche Spiele wird kein Publisher unbegrenzt weiter betreiben, aber RoM IST ein äusserst erfolgreiches Spiel, und es hat noch einiges an Potential.

S4M und Kalaydo. Wie gesagt sind wir dabei, die Spiele, die bislang in Berlin betrieben wurden, hier in Karlsruhe zu integrieren. Neben personeller Änderungen ist da auch einiges im technischen Bereich zu tun. Berlin war weitgehend autark, mit eigener Infrastruktur. S4M und Kalaydo wurden für die in Berlin betriebenen Datenbanken entwickelt. Ein Umzug da (was in weiten Teilen einer kompletten Neuentwicklung entsprochen hätte) wäre extrem aufwändig gewesen, und würde unter anderem genau die Ressourcen binden, die sich zum Beispiel um das Dupe Problem kümmern können. Oder darum, RoM endlich auch so zu intgrieren, dass es auf unserem Portal http://gameforge.com integriert werden kann.

google for the unpatient while i try to improve it:

google machine translation

Quoted

Indeed. We are currently investing heavily in RoM, at no time has anyone even thought to cease operation of RoM. If you do durchlest the whole text, which actually should be clear. We want to be open here. No one can be sure that we will still operate in rome 5, 10 or 20 years, but is currently not the simple to the debate. It is one thing to suspend features that do not achieve the desired result. Not successful games will not operate indefinitely publisher, but RoM IS a very successful game, and it still has a lot of potential.

S4M and Kalaydo. As I said we are going to the games, which were previously operated in Berlin to integrate here in Karlsruhe. In addition to personnel changes there is also plenty to do in the technical field. Berlin was largely self-sufficient, with its own infrastructure. S4M and Kalaydo were developed for the Berlin-driven databases. A move there (which would have corresponded in large parts of a complete new development) would have been extremely costly, and would just bind, among other resources that can take care of, for example, the dupe problem. Or about RoM finally intgrieren also so that it can be integrated on our website [url]http://gameforge.com [/ url].

------

[] stuff is from me.

too hot for proper thinking right now, still should be better than google.

user quote:
"This was worded very... unfortunate"
phelan:
Yes, indeed. We are actually investing a lot [money (and resources implied, he didnt specify)] in RoM at the moment, at no time anybody has thought of discontinuing/canceling RoM. If you read through the whole text this actually should be clear. We want to be transparent [lit.: open] in this case: nobody can guarantee[be sure] that we will be running RoM in 5, 10 or 20 years in the future, but right now this is not even up to debate at all. It's one thing to cancel/discontinue features that were not as successful as we hoped them to be, and of course no publisher would continue to run unsuccessful games indefinitely, but RoM IS an extremely successful game and it has a lot potential [for more].

S4M[Score for More] and Kalydo[the browser version]: As was said already we're currently in the process of integrating all the games[RoM,TERA,Aion,RaiderZ...] that were run from Berlin here in Karlsruhe. In addition to personell changes there is also a lot of work on the technical side because Berlin was working largely independent and with their own infrastructure. S4M and Kalydo were made for the databases that ran in Berlin, porting it all to Karlsruhe [IT infrastructure] would've been an enormous amount of work (equal to rewriting most of it from scratch) and would clog up exactly the resources that are capable of tending to the dupe problems. Or even just finally integrating RoM in such a way that it can be properly integrated on our portal http://www.gameforge.com .

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "YomanROM" (Jul 20th 2013, 4:14pm)

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lemony2

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 4:02pm

one thing about the post that makes me laugh (besides the spacing errors which makes me wonder if it was copy'd and pasted) is

Quoted

Score for More and the browser version

of Runes of Magic were great features perhaps a bit early for their

time, sadly they never lived up to the expectation

Every Single Guildmate I Have Ever Had Would Have LOVED to Participate In Score For More, not giving us the opportunity to participate in that was, RoMs loss, and ours, because we saw the other servers being allowed an opportunity that we could not have as a bias Against US... it show'd a lack of treating all players in a fair manner, and i think left us with the expectations that fair treatment would not be something forthcoming

I Would Have Loved to try the browser version! i find that my browser runs browser games! and they are Fun, and less Laggy, seem to use less processing than a/some client based platform....

you publicized those features to the wrong public :/ on your own head be it

Quoted

This post by "Yrcanos" (Today, 11:12am) has been deleted by the author himself (Today, 11:13am) with the following reason: Don't mind me - I'm just being stupid.

im curious, and not curious all at the same time.... i need moar caffine

98/98/61 osha p/k/r
overheard in guildchat: "Its RoM if you're not lagging, you've crashed" "from your lips to frog's ears"

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YomanROM

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 4:17pm

i added a post from Phelan above who clarified a bit on the stuff in the letter. Click on his name to see who he is.

And believe me, the browser version was not that good - at all.

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timthum

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 4:31pm

agreed Yoman the browser version was not that good
and niether was sfm

Zymologist wl/ch/m/p
Matronmalice p/s/m
Ceviche wl/ch

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YomanROM

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 4:38pm

s4m would have been really good if it had worked properly, diamonds or not - but when you add characters and never gain any points from the activities so your status never upgrades and you cannot even access all the stuff despite doing whats needed to do, or not getting points for the daily quests (so a lot of people were never able to reach Royal Black) ... etc. i can understand why they called both the browser version and s4m giant resource hogs

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Lemonater

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 5:07pm

How be those problems different from the game problems, Yoman?

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DivineTouche

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 10:28pm

The whole situation with the dupping hacking was not dealt with and showed new players as myself how unprofessional ROM is. I have played other MMO's and players all tend to complain about support and downtimes for bugs, But if they have played ROM they would never complain again. Lack of interest to help players and NO GM in servers to handle breaking of all rules set forth when you register to play has become A immense disapoitment to me and so many I met here! AS much as I luv this tiny MMO and want to stay I find myself looking else where in hopes of a MMO that willl deal with issuies instead of being ignored while servers are being subjected to the nastyness Of some people ON a daily basis without anyone to deal with it!!! NO ONe cares for excuses just results. Heres hoping ... I dont get DEleted AS that would prove my point and say you leave we dont care !

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Dkjester

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Saturday, July 20th 2013, 10:42pm

That is the one thing I will learn about MMOs from this one, is I probably will never see as bad customer support and bug fixes. I too used to complain, and now I wont ever again for other companies. On other game forums, when people complain, I tell them to play this game and then see if they want to complain. Worst part is, people on those games have played this one and quickly tell me I am right.

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zidlef

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Sunday, July 21st 2013, 4:38am

TYVM Yoman for clarifying that letter, as usual you got my vote ;-)

K/P/S/M/W 98/98/98/98/98
Disturbed guild leader on mithras :thumbsup:

BTW i do live under a bridge, i am Green, i can dish it out as good as i get
There are no better server than Reni, best place to be!!!!!

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Bakken

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Sunday, July 21st 2013, 6:43am

Nothing on the hacks/dupes/gold/dias?

Wow... just wow...

Runes of Magic - Siege war video

Everybody Needs a Ninja

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ruisen2000

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Sunday, July 21st 2013, 9:05am

Quoted from "YomanROM"

And believe me, the browser version was not that good - at all.

Agreed. Not surprised that they closed it, pretty much every patch would break the browser for weeks. Though it did have less lag and lack of download, which was nice.

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Kikosi 98/50/60 Wl/Ch/M
the fail clothie tank~

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diamondmaker

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Thursday, August 22nd 2013, 3:23am

Well it sounds to me that end is near

(

Runes of magic :rocketlauncher:

Under massive attacks...

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aardvark3

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Thursday, August 22nd 2013, 4:00am

It is good to hear from management. It would have been even better if they had said something specific about what is going on.

We need to hear about the in game problems that have been identified to them many times and soon.

Things like class balances, broken quests and quest lines, siege etc. we need to know what is being done and if these are ever going to be addressed and if so when.

The players are in a holding pattern with this game they want to stay and play but they need to know when something is going to happen and the longer they have to wait to find that out the more that leave. The more they are kept in the dark about what is going on the fewer there will be.

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