Friday, August 10, 2012

That's The Way To Do It! : SoE




Proper explanation.

Proper reasons.

Full disclosure.

Advance notice.

Can we please get this flagged as Best Practice?
Posted by at 11:27 PM
Labels: , ,

11 comments:

  1. floschAugust 11, 2012 at 7:53 AM

    I agree wholeheartedly. Even thought this means I misgambled. I bought a large amount of points a couple of months ago (and incidentally, stopped playing shortly thereafter - why does investment and losing interest seem to be connected for me so often?). They first removed the chance to pay for subscriptions via points, which I missed until it was too late.

    Yesterday, I went through an "update ALL THE GAMES!" cycle and saw the advert, but sadly not this information. So I went and bought Age of Discovery, normal edition. Considering this, might have as well bought the Collector's edition; after all, what am I going to do with the points now? Not that I even blame SOE, with the way Turbine does these things, I was aware that it was a bit of a gamble. And I got some nice expansions and (if I remember correctly) even two or three months of subscriptions really cheap, so I'm not bitter. Maybe I'll just go and liquidize parts of it for plat. Once I know how the conversion into the currency for our new ProSiebenSat1 overlords will work, and provided they still allow that.

    Speaking of which, their information policy on that still could use some improvement, can't it? Is the last information really from two months ago saying "we'll transfer within the next two months"? I feel like I missed something there. This is one of the contributing reasons I don't play EQ2 at the moment, the looming feeling of uncertainness.

    Do you know what the current status on that is?

    ReplyDelete
  2. BhagpussAugust 11, 2012 at 9:27 AM

    No, I don't and it's very annoying. The exact opposite of the behavior I was praising here, in fact.

    Mrs Bhagpuss and I are temporarily shielded from the PSS1 thing on our Station Access accounts, which remain with SoE until PSS1 have enough Sony MMOs up and running to offer an equivalent (doesn't look like that will be this year) but we both have some of our most-significant EQ2 characters on free Silver accounts so those will transfer to PSS1.

    The information-flow on that has been appalling ever since the first announcement. Whether the incredibly long-drawn-out transfer process is down to SoE, PSS1 or the complexities of negotiation between the two of them I neither know nor care. Whatever the reason there's no excuse for the perpetual lack of updates. There should be regular updates (I'd say it should be weekly but monthly would be an absolute bare minimum) even if the update consists of "nothing to tell you, nothing has changed sicne last update".

    ReplyDelete
  3. floschAugust 12, 2012 at 6:53 AM

    Alright, so at least it's no me. It's just annoying.

    I guess I'll just watch your blog, because I'm sure you'll pick it up when you hear anything about it. That will probably work a lot better than trying to get some information directly from SOE.

    ReplyDelete
  4. floschAugust 12, 2012 at 6:57 AM

    Oh, also, I've seen that you added my blog to your roll. Thank you for that! I think you took the wrong link, though. That's the "stub" on wordpress that I abandoned last year, 3 weeks into my blogging experiment. The current address is http://randomwaypoint.fajs.de and the feed is http://randomwaypoint.fajs.de/feed/atom/ (not sure how this works with blogspot).

    Feel free to delete this comment afterwards, it just was the easiest way to contact you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BhagpussAugust 12, 2012 at 6:02 PM

    Oops! Sorry about that! I thought you were quiet :P

    Corrected now!

    ReplyDelete
  6. floschAugust 12, 2012 at 9:11 PM

    Indeed I was quiet from mid-May to mid-July, but I pulled myself together and started again. :)

    Just out of curiosity: Do you have any idea what would happen if you went from Station Access to "normal" EQ2 subscription at a later date? Probably not, considering the non-communication policy by SOE, but seeing how the F2P deal for Vanguard doesn't appeal to me all that much (but I'd still like to see whether it leads to more people playing), I'm considering signing up for Station access for a month or three; and if that would shield me from the whole transition, that would be a considerate bonus, keeping in mind that SOE already lost my personal and billing date once, and not losing it a second time when, inevitably (looking at their track record) PSS1 loses it again, would be a bonus...

    (I should really sign up for a hypotaxis detox.)

    ReplyDelete
  7. BhagpussAugust 13, 2012 at 2:39 PM

    I think you're too late. The SoE Account page won't accept new Station Access purchases from I.P. addresses within the PSS1 contract area. Existing ones can be maintained for now but if they're cancelled (or even if a payment is missed in error) they cannot be re-instated.

    I'm slightly concerned because I'm due a new credit card just around one of my renewal dates and I've had a payment missed because of that before. If it happens this time, that's me out. And when PSS1 finally get their act together sufficiently to offer their own version of Access, that's it - we will be forced to transfer to that.

    That said, I can't say I'm that bothered. SOE's record on keeping data safe is hardly a shining example and I already made an Allaplaya account to play Argo (no money changes hands there, of course). So long as PSS1 come up with either Gametime Cards or a PayPal option I can live with it.

    I won't have a choice if I want to play EQNext, anyway, and I'm certainly not missing that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. floschAugust 13, 2012 at 4:58 PM

    Hm, the IP address range I could easily work around, but I'm pretty sure having a German billing address on my credit card would be the end of that try. It doesn't seem worth the hassle. Though, if I understand you correctly, that also means that Station Access just got a lot less interesting for European players that have EQ2 in their rotation. Shame.

    ReplyDelete
  9. floschAugust 14, 2012 at 12:16 PM

    Oh wait, I just realized there are probably still EQ expansions I can buy with the SC. Why oh why didn't I think of that over the weekend? Still, I might grab them tonight, though I'm not sure I'll ever get to a point where I can use them. Not sure what else I would spend the bulk of my cash on anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  10. BhagpussAugust 14, 2012 at 1:59 PM

    Hmm that's a good point. I have three I could buy still I think. But as you say, when would I use them?

    ReplyDelete
  11. floschAugust 14, 2012 at 4:46 PM

    Well, I just looked it up. Veil of Alaris costs 3999 SC, and I have more than 11500 left. As far as I understand it, that would cover all the intermediate expansions that I'm missing, too (Seeds of Destruction, Underfoot, and House of Thule), and still leave me with lots of SC.

    I'm considering it. I'm in no rush now, the 50% off offer has expired, and I got time until 29 August to decide.

    ReplyDelete

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