This is probably long after everyone else has seen it, but I just resubbed to EVE (couldn’t even remember how to fly my damn ship!) and I fell in love with the intro video when you start the game.

I played a bit of Allods last night, but had little patience with the things that I’ve previously ignored: the Russian players insisting on filling zone chat with Cyrillic, the sad little boys with potty mouths, the scarcity of quest items or mobs. Tonight it bothered me, and honestly it’s because of the whole cash shop issue – it’s tarnished my love of the game that they created, and that is a shame. I logged after fifteen minutes or so, and watched a movie instead.

I don’t have a problem with sensible microtransactions. I’ve paid Blizzard for innumerable server transfers, name changes, faction transfers, etc. I bought the Pandaren pet for a gift this Christmas. I would have paid for several of the extremely cool looking mounts in Runes of Magic – the price wasn’t bad for a mount, and they were gorgeous. Cash shops that offer potions for increased XP wouldn’t bother me. Epic gear would, along with potions that wildly increased your stats – that creates an unlevel playing field. Fear of Death in Allods would cost you an extraordinary amount over a month if you were doing instances (which evidently are difficult to do with no deaths). If you can’t afford the perfume, you have a several hour downtime while you wait for your stats to come back. This would make endgame PvE content impossible.

In the end, it’s about respect. The attitude of “we’re going to sit back and see what kind of response there is to these prices” is disrespectful. I am not an idiot, nor am I some cash cow that will happily cough up an estimated $50-$70 per month to play your game. There is no game in the world that would be worth that, AAA titles included. I certainly won’t pay it for Allods.

This kind of article doesn’t help. It’s not about bags. I could care less if there are convenience or vanity items in the shop with astronomical prices, which the devs have put there just to see if anyone buys them. It affects my gameplay not in the slightest. Sitting out for a couple of hours after a death, however, does. Surely that would be obvious to anyone.

All of this makes me think of Aion, actually. Goodwill is invaluable for any business, and it is especially important to MMOs. I loved Aion so much, and if they fixed the gameplay/grind issues I would be resubscribed in a flash. If I didn’t hate NCSoft so much. They had zero respect for their players. For ages they gave goldsellers free rein, and there are probably areas populated only by botters to this very day. Anything they did to Aion would be coloured (for me) by the bad feeling that I have for the company.

Boo sucks to gPotato. Shame on you.

Wow, so many blog posts today about the Allods Online cash shop fiasco. They have to fix this – I can’t imagine that anyone not totally insane would have thought that this was a good idea. It’s such a good, such a promising game…please don’t get greedy and ruin it before I’ve had a chance to see endgame!

I have no problems with a sensible cash shop for a f2p game. As Potshot said about Runes of Magic:  After a very brief evening exploring this game, I can say that regardless of whether I expected to play more than a casual month in this game, I’d be willing to throw down for the FREAKING $10 HORSE.  Hell, I feel like sending those guys $10 just because they made a game that didn’t piss me off and make me feel like they stole precious time from my life never to be recovered (let alone the box price…).  Seriously, horse = Alexander Hamilton = Truth. Amen.

Commentary and explanation about the Allods cash shop storm:

Keen and Graev: Bringing you up to speed on Allods Online’s Launch Debacle

Bio Break: Blog Rage vs. The Army of Allods

Heartless Gamer: Forget about the Allods Online cash shop, this is dumb for any business model

West Karana: Allods Online: Workers of the World

Please, don’t piss me off. Don’t throw away all of that good will engendered by your very fun and polished game due to insanity/greed/stupidity. Don’t make me leave. :(

I had a lot of fun this weekend in Allods. I’d started characters on the Empire side (loving very much the clockwork-doll look of Arisen), but due to friends playing on League, and also being less impressed by the starting area on the Empire side, I deleted every one and switched to League. Sunshine and meadows for me, thank you.  :)

There are some very cool kind of post-revolution Russian shops and things. All signs are in Russian. That didn’t bother me, but the griefers speaking in Russian kind of did. (A post to come on how trying to ruin a fairly nice general chat channel is equivalent to griefing, and how we should never forget that we are all representatives of our respective countries.)

After doing Dead Soul (the first kind of mini-boss on League side), we left for the city on a stunning ship, sailing through the Astral. As the silhouette of the city came into view, I admit I was squeeing…just a little bit.  :)

It’s the mark of success in a f2p game that you can have that feeling. That “omg, that is so cool!” squee feeling. Applause to Allods Online.

All in all, a very fun weekend.

Last night I had an Allods Online night, again playing on the US servers. Throughout most of Europe and the UK, Americans are viewed as being stupid, uneducated, obnoxious. That stereotype is strengthened by television news and reality shows, where any American interviewed has to have a Southern accent and be spouting nonsense about God, guns or George Bush. It offends me, since obviously we’re not all like that – MOST of us are not like that. But unfortunately, American kids who play MMOs don’t do their country’s reputation any favours.

There was an amazing, long conversation in general chat that started with religion, and then went on to cover politics, history and so on. It was funny, intelligent, literate, and quite often not very politically correct. I was quite enjoying reading chat as it scrolled by, which is quite an unusual occurence for me. In most games, I tend to disable any general chat or trade channel chat due to the level of asshattedness. But this was wonderful.

And then the kids started coming on.

“wtf u guyz talkin about?”

“your all faggots!”

“Go back to WoW and talk about that”

It was all over at that point. All of the mature players moved on to whatever they were doing, ignoring general chat again as usual – the conversation was over.

I hate kids.

As I wrote in an earlier post, although I honestly have a lot of fun in Star Trek, it’s mainly been making me homesick for EVE. I freely admit that there won’t be any nice missions – it’s not really that kind of game. And yes, there will be a lot of reading while I travel from gate to gate. But there’s a lot that I haven’t seen, and am giving it another shot.

In part, I admit, because I really want to continue Kitsune & Kawaii, as that was just getting started and I had several more episodes half-done. I want to continue her adventures, and see who she turns into.

So, into the black again…hopefully as not such a terrible noob this time. :)