Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
You are generalising a bit. There are different views about it on both side of the question. For example I personally don't care about the cosmetics and mounts or whatever early buyers got. Good for them. Still I think it can be seen as FOMO for some people as much as the limited "1+1 free" tactic in the supermarkets.
Furthermore, there are still multiple people denying the fact that the tactic used is a FOMO tactic. The FOMO tactic is not up for debate. You cannot have the CEO of the company state this:
And not consider it FOMO marketing.
I have already admitted previously that the use a the term "Emotional Manipulation" was a little far, so we'll move on from that. But to have people come in here and call people entitled is just annoying, and for every post that I see the word "entitled" in, is one person that I just simply ignore because they clearly haven't read the entire thread.
My issue with the store DOES NOT stem from my inability to not purchase things that are using a FOMO tactic, especially as, so far, I have not supported this game in any monetary way, unless ofc you take that one guys statement from above that equates my time to money, then I've probably put in about as much money as someone who's bought every cosmetic, with nothing to show for it.
My issue with the store stems solely from a perspective of whether or not it is healthy for the game. I simply believe it is not healthy for the game. Take a step back and look at this website with fresh eyes. The whole thing looks like a scam. In fact, the number of people who I've had to convince to dig deeper into the mechanics of the game after I told them about it is a very high percentage. The entire website looks like some indie devs trying to make a quick buck then run.
Games live and die by first impressions.
There is little to no information readily available about the game, but there is a shiny store where you can spend loads of money to support something you have no idea about. You go through about 10 paragraphs of text, mind you, not even large paragraphs, about the game and then get met with a "Get Early Access" button. Classic money grab for a game that will never finish.
We are all pretty well informed in terms of what we expect from this game, but realistically I'm not talking about the store for us as a community. I'm talking about the store as it looks to people who are NEW to the community and haven't done a lot of investigation. It looks bad.
I took one look at this, and was like: "Hell no!"
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/home
If I did not have someone under the age of 14 in my family, I would have had no idea WTF that is.
It tries to sell me a "Battlepass", and there is a small trailer button (occasionally) on the screen.
I will agree that there is a problem with the website, where there could be more information about the game and what to expect, but It is not that far behind its different than its immediate peers
https://crowfall.com/en-US/
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/
As far as I know, AOC was not trying to do a huge marketing push on their own. It looks like thelazypeon made a viral video covering the game, and intrepid decided to ride that wave. I keep my ears pretty close to the ground when it comes to new MMOs coming out and AOC flew under my radar up until that point. I think the website is a place holder, and will get better once before launch.
With the influx of NEW people following the game in the community there should have been a corresponding effort to make the website more robust and professional. Right now we are living off Youtube videos, a discord, and a wiki. Still, that would not silence the debate on the monthly cosmetics.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
They have confirmed they'll update the website after Alpha 1 (the one with NDA). So you are indeed correct.
Back to the topic of the thread:
I'll not go any further into this whole debate as I still stick to my opinion, and repeating the same points over and over is useless. People want what they want.
I can but hope this will just rid us of what I consider toxic people in the community.
People who demand things of the devs, or the game, because of their, objectively, irrational feelings.
People who try to impose their view on the matter on others, and use incorrect and false psychological / psychiatric terms to justify their inabilities to deal with a NO.
You do realize that the onus of becoming informed on a potential purchasing decision lies entirely on your own shoulders right? If a new person DOESN'T do much or any investigation before purchasing then clearly the money wasn't worth much to them OR they have vastly greater personal issues to address around common sense. In either case, given the wealth of information that IS available, neither case are the dev's problem.
As for FoMo.... it wasn't invented yesterday, last year, or even decades ago - it isn't some new predatory marketing method. That someone labeled a common human emotional phenomena with a catchy acronym doesn't change that. So please stop suggesting that the developers have somehow hopped on the bandwagon of new and evil marketing methods. Holiday sales, boxing day sales... two examples of marketing techniques that have been around for decades that serve precisely the same function as what you refer to as FoMo marketing - act now or lose out.
You don't get to do every silly thing you want to in life. FoMo is part of that and people have learned to deal with it for literally decades, so let's stop pretending that FoMo or FoMo marketing didn't exist until the word was used back in 2002.
In other words, you are now saying what I said three pages ago - the issue with with people that haven't gone out to get accurate information on the game.
Most of us here on these forums would agree with that, there is no upper limit on how easy it should be for new players to get what ever information they want on the game. With that however, it needs to be remembered that most people that have just discovered this game aren't usually interested in learning details about it right away.
Either way, this is an issue of ease of access to I formation, it has nothing at all to do with FOMO and nothing at all to do with the store. Basically, it is a totally different issue, though at least with this one it is a real issue rather than an imagined one.
Yeah it's a super toxic way to approach this discussion when people do that, I think. Also, talk about how they are completely missing the point...
Anyway, from the livestream today, it really sounded like Steven understood and took to heart the objections to the daily login rewards proposal. This, in my mind, supports the first posts in this thread about how the current cash shop fomo tactics probably don't come from malicious intent or anything. I still think they are bad for the game overall though, in terms of both player retention and new acquisition, which is my main objection.