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Mythic Decides Billing People Is Fun, Can’t Stop Doing It
Apr 9th
[EDIT 4/9 8:30p: Mythic made an official statement today explicitly taking responsibility and pledging to make right their error. This is far better than their earlier comments that I rail about below but it does make much of the rest of this post look unjustifiably whiny. Frankly, I'd rather look whiny and people get good CS then the reverse.]
This is pretty much the worst thing you can ever do as an MMO: abuse the trust your customers give you with their credit cards. Suffice to say that most people were only mildly amused.
Today, my bank notified me that Mythic entertainment had billed my credit card 44 times in a single day for $14.95, for a total of more than six hundred dollars. This was interesting since I don’t have 44 Warhammer accounts. Indeed, I cancelled my Warhammer subscription a few months ago.
Mythic’s official response has been: whoopsie.
We have confirmed with our vendor that players who have been charged multiple times for their subscriptions should start seeing a reversal of charges within 24-36 hours. We anticipate that once the charges have been reversed, any fees that have been incurred should be refunded as well. If after 36 hours, there are still incorrect charges or fees on your account, please follow these instructions:
- Please begin by contacting your financial institution and explain to them that you were incorrectly charged multiple times and, as a result, over drafted. Most financial institutions will reverse these charges
- If your financial institution is unable to remove these charges, you may contact our billing department by calling 650-628-1001 during our hours of operation, which are 10:00 AM EDT – 10:00 PM EDT, 7 days a week. Please have the phone and fax number of your financial institution ready when you call.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this issue may be causing our players. Please continue to watch the Herald in the coming days for further information regarding this issue.
Note what is missing from this:
* A clear-cut statement of responsibility and assurance this won’t happen again. As is standard operating procedure from the CYA manual, all that is offered here is an “apology for any *inconvenience* that *this issue* may be causing”. Because hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees (which, contrary to Mythic Rumor Control, banks do not reverse when you ask politely), you know, is a minor inconvenience – not “our mistake”, not “our issue”, just “this issue” – that can be addressed with a statement that refers to “an event” that, you know, just happened.
* Any sort of compensation to players for their financially damaging *inconvienience*. Because, I suppose, that would entail some statement of responsibility. For, you know, cleaning out your customer’s bank accounts. Instead of just, you know, assuming that just somehow *happened* by some unnamed *third party vendor*.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. And, you know, Flagship Studios isn’t around any more. There may be a connection. If you can’t even be trusted to collect just the money you’re supposed to… there may be some issues. Oh. Sorry. “this issue”.
Life In Wartime
Aug 4th
At Christmas, the company provided a catered meal for the CSRs who had to monitor an in-game event and work through the holiday. I don’t know if our bosses just ordered what they usually did, but the surplus of food made it seem like our department’s slow decline had gone unnoticed. There was enough food for an army, but only a handful of us were left. For weeks afterward, the break room fridge overflowed with unopened trays of leftover corn. It felt like an offering left to appease the layoff god. Maybe this delicious corn would sate his mighty hunger.
Warhammer Out For Macs
Jul 30th
As someone who has joined the Cult of Jobs wholeheartedly (and is typing this on a 2009 13″ Macbook Pro he takes everywhere) I approve!
This port, like most of EA’s offerings, uses Transgaming’s Cider emulation rather than being developed from the ground up for OSX like the World of Warcraft Mac client. Given that the Warhammer Mac client is 9.6 gigs, it may be a while before I find out how well it performs…
Marketing War Is Everywhere
Mar 24th
Blizzard can stop advertising in addons, but they can’t stop it on websites!
“Hey, I like games with orcs. This game has orcs! Sign me up!”
Because I’m Leet Like Karl Franz
Mar 12th
One of the cooler “Come Back To Our Game Please” emails I’ve seen comes from Mythic this morning.
That’s right, my rank 12 character is CRITICAL to the war effort!
The Other Hammer Falls
Mar 11th
Warhammer’s European distributor Goa announced the imminent closure of 20 servers. Interestingly, that leaves 23 European servers open compared to 16 in the US, indicating that the bulk of Warhammer’s subscribers may be in, well, the continent where Warhammer originated.
Mark Jacobs posted a “State of the Game” address today, which didn’t address the server closures but spoke more generally about his hopes for the game’s future.
The last six months have seen an awful lot of excitement and change here at the studio. We’ve launched another successful MMORPG but this time in the face of the worst economic conditions that most of us have ever seen. We’ve done some things that we are very proud of, some things we regret, and some things that we are very excited about going forward. As I’ve said about Mythic throughout the years, we are not perfect but we will always try our best to create great games.
However, he did address the closures in a post on the VNBoards:
Over the last few months we’ve been telling people to transfer off the lower population servers. Over this same amount of time people have been asking/telling/begging us to merge servers. So, now that almost all the people transferred off those servers, we’ve done just that. And of course, when we do that, some people here say “OMG Fail!”
As I’ve already said, if WAR was a PvE game, we wouldn’t have closed those servers but since WAR is RvR-centric, leaving those servers open with their current population would not be a good idea. While these servers have been low population for quite a while once we told people to transfer off of them their population dropped too low for an RvR-centric game.
Oh, and as an FYI, once again our number of paying subs in NA went up again yesterday as did our PCU (even with backing out the trial accounts). These are undeniable facts, not spin.
Hammer Falls On Warhammer Servers
Mar 10th
In case you didn’t get the hint the last time ‘voluntary’ ‘suggested’ ‘server transfers’ were announced, Mythic just announced that 40 of its 57 US/Oceanic servers are going away soon. For those of you who find math hard, that leaves 17 servers total (including 1 test server and 1 reserved for beta testers). No word yet on European servers (which account for another 43 servers and, like World of Warcraft, are effectively a different company for purposes of billing, server and community management).
It’s an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, you need a critical mass of players for a PvP-focused game – or for any MMO at all, really – to be at all fun. On the other hand, it’s really hard to spin this as in any way a mark of success when you are closing 2/3 of your servers. On the gripping hand, well, I suppose someone decided that there was a better use for all that hardware than keeping up servers everyone had already been encouraged to transfer off of and could no longer create characters on.
So, good news if you’re a current Warhammer player, good news if you’re a bitter ex-Warhammer player looking for axe-grinding grist, and good news if you’re another EA project that needs a server array. Those for whom this is bad news is left as an exercise for the curious reader.
Something For Everybody!
Mar 3rd
If you’re a “glass is half full” kinda guy: Warhammer Online released patch 1.2 today with a small paperback book worth of design tweaks and two new classes, the Slayer and the Choppa, melee DPS classes both similar in mechanics (berserker-style, hit things, do more damage, hit things too much take more damage).
If you’re a “glass is half empty” kinda gal: Warhammer Online finally released the two other classes that were dropped from the release schedule, still did not completely roll back the traditional last-minute XP nerf. But hey, you can complain about it now on the official forums! (note: currently down, hi Patch Day!).
If you’re a “glass is broken on the bar and stabbing at my neighbors” kind of person: Darkfall is up, sometimes. I think. The forums are down.
Warhammer Online Releases Big/Small Numbers
Feb 3rd
Embedded in EA’s quarterly report this afternoon:
Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio, ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.
The good news is that 300,000 is not a shabby subscriber level to be at — probably well ahead of such competitors as Age of Conan and City of Heroes.
The bad news is that they needed 500,000.
For the number two spot, Jacobs reasoned that “Warhammer” would need at least a half-million subscribers, which he guessed was close to what “Final Fantasy” and “EverQuest 2” have now. “Let’s just say north of half a million would mean we’re successful. Now how a far north? I wouldn’t mind being a little bit cold.”
Well, given the drop from 750K to 300K, I suspect there have been some particularly arctic moments. And given the general state of the economy – and of Electronic Arts - things will only get chillier.
The industry needs a hit from a company not named Blizzard, please.
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