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Thread: Paying Customer's Views

  1. #11

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    Yes, finally a response to player concerns. Thank you very much Dawnseeker.

    Please don't merge server 57! ;-)

  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    We try to give compensation when service outages are extreme and out of the ordinary. It is simply not feasible to give out compensation to every player, every time something happens to them. Once again, we focus on the large issues and the fact that we have given out compensation on numerous occasions speaks to the fact that we do care about our players and that our goal is to make you all happy.
    You would make a lot of people on server N4 happy by simply doing what was asked and providing the 3 days of no upkeep that were due people who had the items remaining.

    Here is why the "nobody got an unfair advantage" line is not a valid reason for declining to provide customer satisfaction. This will be "long"-ish, but it is because I want to spell it out very succinctly.

    As I said in another post, in this very forum, all of the individual servers are listed as a child node from the top parent node, "Evony Community". That fact in and of itself means that people from each and every server are considered part of a larger "community". Another word for that community would be "customers". I am a customer. Someone playing on server 1 is a customer. Someone playing on server 33 is a customer. Someone playing on any other server is also a customer. Those of us on N4 are customers, just like everyone else.

    Server merges entitle customers to 3 days of no troop upkeep. People on servers that are not going through merges are not entitled to the 3 days until such time as they go through a merge. Customers on servers that were merged both before N4 and after N4 were entitled to 3 days from the server merge. The 3 days ran separately from other no upkeep promotions. When the Milk and Cookies and New Years Party Spirit promotions ran, no other servers were being merged, with the single exception of server N4, which was merged during the Milk and Cookies promotion.

    I have been a paying customer. I made a few smaller transactions, but then I spent money on the 15-week Premium Rewards. I had no issues with those transactions. The coins and any other items were delivered as outlined in the promotional material. Due to unemployment, I could not afford to spend more money on the more recent promotions.

    That said, many on servers 15 and 16 did spend money. Part of the promotion was that they could give a gift of no upkeep for 24 hours to their alliance members and/or up to 20 friends. I personally received either 12 or 13 of these. That means that just within my alliance, $360-$390 of accounted for spending happened. I do know that we had people that were joining my alliance before the merge was announced, but after the promotion happened. A couple of the purchases thus were repeats by the host or other generous people who announced that they wanted to make sure everyone was covered for the 5 days.

    Yes, the people making the purchase did receive items and coins, but part of the promotion was one of "the spirit of giving" to others. As such, I can tell you that several people I have chatted with have felt that if they knew there was going to be a server merge and 3 days of Milk and Cookies were going to be overlapped / nullified by the server merge, they would have been less inclined to make the purchase.

    As for other servers, again, we are all customers. No, we were not "competing against" the other servers, but customers do indeed expect to and deserve to be treated the same. You are correct that everyone on servers 15 and 16 (N4) were treated equally, but as I said, people on other servers are customers, just like we are customers.

    Further, especially given the recent Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, stating that because an entire group of people had been equally disenfranchised does not make it right. If all [insert a specific minority group of choice here] were equally disenfranchised, while other racial groups were treated differently / better, that would not be justification for the poor treatment of the previously specified minority group. Any organization that did something like that would be publicly hounded by the news media.

    So, in closing, I'd ask that you reconsider the viewpoint that you have in regards to paying customers on server N4, customers who spent money at least in part due to a "spirit of giving" offer that your company initiated.

    Thank you.

  3. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    Fair points, all.

    Let me begin by disclaiming. Evony is a startup company and the game itself is less than a year old. We're also getting started with a wildly popular massively-multiplayer online game, whereas most gaming companies with anywhere near our number of users got started in the days before internet gaming, and certainly before the explosion of MMOs. Not only that, but we weren't prepared for just how popular Evony would be. I mean we knew it was great, but we didn't know just how many people would agree and just how quickly! This puts us "behind the 8-ball" in terms of staffing, both for customer service and bug reports.


    (TLDR version: I love cake).
    I take back pretty much all I have said. Thank you for this response.


  4. #14
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    A little ways north of Montreal, Quebec.
    Posts
    5,233

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    Fair points, all.

    Let me begin by disclaiming. Evony is a startup company and the game itself is less than a year old. We're also getting started with a wildly popular massively-multiplayer online game, whereas most gaming companies with anywhere near our number of users got started in the days before internet gaming, and certainly before the explosion of MMOs. Not only that, but we weren't prepared for just how popular Evony would be. I mean we knew it was great, but we didn't know just how many people would agree and just how quickly! This puts us "behind the 8-ball" in terms of staffing, both for customer service and bug reports.

    We're actually very pleased that our players have such high expectations of us. Players in many fly-by-night games would just accept bugs and poor service without much thought before moving on to the next game. We're glad that our players tend to see us as a serious, customer-oriented operation and that they make demands on us accordingly.

    I assure you that our goal is to meet that demand, and -- more than that -- to exceed player expectations.

    You're right that we have been delinquent in some areas, but I promise it is not for lack of trying. We have been slow to respond to some in-game issues, but much of that is because they will be resolved or become irrelevant in Age II. Yes, I'm talking about Age II again, but its a big deal and players will find a lot of bugs and other issues resolved when Age II is released.

    This is another reason that certain issues may be put on the back burner for right now. As a startup company we simply don't have the staff to dedicate to hunting down every bug and resolving every problem that arises. We try to fight fires as they come and deal with major issues. Sometimes that means some of the small things get lost in the shuffle. We know that nothing seems small when it is happening to you and we are constantly working to improve and expand our service. I would like all of our players to feel that they matter and are taken care of.

    We try to give compensation when service outages are extreme and out of the ordinary. It is simply not feasible to give out compensation to every player, every time something happens to them. Once again, we focus on the large issues and the fact that we have given out compensation on numerous occasions speaks to the fact that we do care about our players and that our goal is to make you all happy.

    If players violate the game rules, they will be banned. We have banned very few accounts on the first violation, hoping that a warning suspension will serve to let players know that we're on to them and that they should modify their behavior. If they continue to cheat, we have to ban them, both to make sure that future threats are taken seriously, and to protect the players who don't cheat.

    On the forums we welcome free speech and -- yes! -- criticism as long as the tone is not incendiary and the forum rules are followed. You may not like all the rules, but they are there for a reason and we constantly struggle to toe the line between freedom and limitations. You may be surprised to learn that discussions on whether or not to delete a thread or issue an infraction are frequent in the moderator chat channel. We want to give players as much freedom as possible within the framework of the rules that have been establish to promote this game.

    It would not be in any company's interest to allow speech on its forums which is likely to be harmful to its revenue. Microsoft won't allow you to go to its forums and write about how terrible Windows 7 is and demand that everyone reading the post should return the software for a refund. Neither will we allow such posts on our forums. Allowing such posts would not only be bad business, but it would be bad for our players. Bad business means less revenue, which means less staff and less production.

    That said, we invite honest criticism and open debate as long as the tone is proper. If things turn into flamefests, they will be shut down. That's just how things go around here.

    Our customers do have a strong voice in the community. Much of what we do is based on player feedback. Most of what we do isn't. Its not because we don't value feedback, but because the developers have a creative vision for the game that is both awesome and successful. You're not being ignored, but a game developed solely by the players would be pretty boring. Players love what we've done and we want to build on that success by incorporating your ideas into our vision. Its a team effort and, in many ways, every player is part of that team.

    Icer, you're well-spoken and intelligent. I would love to hear your ideas. I would love to hear anyone's thoughtful ideas. Bring it on! I promise you, we read this stuff!

    (TLDR version: I love cake).

    This post will be a reference for a good time to come. Well done Boss!


    P.S.: I like pie.

  5. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lazzzzzzzzalicious! View Post
    I take back pretty much all I have said. Thank you for this response.
    I'm in a more "wait and see" mode. I defended the company for suspending / banning botters and stood up to those making excuses for why they felt their time was more important than my time. I'd hope that shows I'm a fair person and am objective and willing to defend them when I think they are doing the right thing. I'm going to hope that I'm not given another brush off and just told "well, everyone was treated the same, and you are not competing against other servers" like what has happened up to this point.

  6. #16

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    to dawnseeker,
    i know your company is trying hard to resolve issue ....but nothing in this world is perfect ....and to accept i am not perfect is half work done ...now my question on passing all concern to evony age 2 ...which according to THAlIN is releasing very soon ....could you guys be more practical in fixing a period of release and dont hide your time mismanagement behind "very soon " word.
    according to you evony age 2 will solve most of the issue age 1 has ...but will it be release earlier enough some good players say goodbye forever to evony ??? and yes i am a PAYING customer.

  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    Players in many fly-by-night games would just accept bugs and poor service without much thought before moving on to the next game.
    They have to realize its a fly by night company first


    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    It would not be in any company's interest to allow speech on its forums which is likely to be harmful to its revenue. Microsoft won't allow you to go to its forums and write about how terrible Windows 7 is and demand that everyone reading the post should return the software for a refund. Neither will we allow such posts on our forums. Allowing such posts would not only be bad business, but it would be bad for our players. Bad business means less revenue, which means less staff and less production.
    Actually that is exactly what Microsoft does if you go to the Microsoft support forums and read about Vista and it's problems you will see that they take no measure to remove the multitude of negative customer reactions. Of course they haven't always been this way they tried the iron fist approach to negative press and criticism back with Millennium by ignoring customer response, deleting of negative posts in their support forums and by lawsuits (there was a time if you spoke out against Microsoft in a public way that the odds of you personally or your ISP receiving a cease and desist order). Now I will never be a champion for Microsoft but the fact remains this is from a company that is the victim of probably the worst case of consumer theft in human history (i.e their products being stolen) somehow they still seem to still value their customer base and don't consider disabling 25% of their products on a whim because the numbers say that 25% of their products are pirated (which is roughly the same thing as a gaming company suspending any account that averages more then 12 hours online per day for example).

    I'm not saying they wouldn't like to do that, I am saying they couldn't do that because public outcry would be disastrous and devastating to their bottom line and Microsoft actually has to worry about being around in a year and still relying on that customer base.

    Most Internet companies learned long ago that trying to control the flow of information is fruitless, when a company or individual tries to control that information be it by threats of lawsuits, false accusations or the simple deletion of posts all that is accomplished is that you give credence to the detractors and you alienate those people who were either on the fence or just didn't care.

    On a side note I find it absolutely hilarious that Microsoft was used as an example.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    ...but because the developers have a creative vision for the game that is both awesome and successful.
    We must have different definitions of what developers are... my definition of a developer would be someone who creates and or improves the source code of a software product, what's Evony's definition?

  8. #18

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    Ok Evony, It is Friday and my account isn't back up yet. I'm a paying customer but the longer you take the more entrenched I am getting in another game I found.

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Midlands UK
    Posts
    21

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    As someone recently joined the game - still not out of BP, I am very reluctant currently to part with any money after reading the forums.

    The main reason is that my husband and children are playing this game too, the fact that we may all be banned for simply using the same computer / having accounts on the same server is rediculous.

    Why on earth would we want to part with any money to a company that does not want us to play together?
    I have a Master.. and he is significantly better then you..

  10. #20

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    Dawnseeker,

    You reply was very good. However, what I don't understand is.. if you guys came up so quickly and are having a hard time with staffing, how is it you have time to create more games? Is that not going to put an even bigger burden on you and your staff? can you imagine having to reply in three or four times this many threads?

    I am not saying this to be sarcastic, and certainly not taking shots. It is just a legitimate concern I would think. I have not payed as much as a lot of people on this server like Icer412, but I have put more money into this game over the past couple months than it would cost me to play a game like Warcraft etc. You will not find any posts on here about me complaining of the lag problems, and I don't whine about the little things. However, there are some things being posted that I agree need to be changed or tweaked.

    And seeing an answer of things like "will be fixed in age II"(paraphrase) don't really excite me, cause I have put a lot of time and money into building what I have now. I know I didn't have to pay, as it is a "free" game, but if people like me didn't pay, it wouldn't be free, and I believe your hard work creating the game is more than worth paying for.

    I understand games progress into newer versions, but this game hasn't even been out that long. It would just be nice to feel justified in paying for what I got. People who don't feel that way are less likely to move on to your next versions.

    I like this game a lot, I'm an in the majority when I say that I am completely addicted to it.

    swany(HunglikeHorse in server 90)

    PS: if you guys just tweaked the food system so it wasn't a full time job to feed troops, you would never see me on this board again, well at least not in this light.

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