Slashdot Mirror
DDO's Turbine Partners With Notorious SuperRewards
Zarrot writes "In the next step for their Free 2 Play model, Turbine Entertainment, publisher of Dungeon and Dragons: Online, Lord of the Rings: Online, and Asheron's Call, has partnered with notorious 'lead generation company' SuperRewards. Initial testing by forum users shows that just accessing the page without clicking on any offers sends the user's email and game login in clear text to SuperRewards. Reports of new spam and fresh malware infections on test systems are already being reported on the company's forums. Is the Zynga business model the future of Internet gaming?"
I bet it will be great with their new Viking MMO
So what you're trying to say is, Turbine chose to get double the gold reward from the quest by gaining 3 evil alignment points? Who wouldn't do that in their shoes?
Signatures are the new names.
The post says straight up that simply viewing the target Offer Wall sends your info out.
Did these idiot devs not even consider that Firefox does URL prefetching and they are, due to the prefetching of their sell-my-information-to-the-devil-wall page, selling information of people who didn't even view the wall but simply viewed a page that links to their offer wall?
This is shady at best and criminal at worst.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Pfft, who are you trying to kid?
Assassins Creed 2 sold, and it has probably the worst DRM ever.
What makes you think people will give a monkeys flying shit about some website collecting information?
People do that crap all the time on Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. (perhaps not so much the 3rd if it doesn't get a buyer)
People simply don't give a damn about their privacy online, they'd happily comply with posting all their personal information just to get a free bloody iPod for crying out loud...
All the more reason for Computer Licences IMO.
Idiots being let on computers has ruined Computing for all of us. It is going to take decades to fix all this awful mess we are in now.
I think you are wrong... The initial success of Wow was for a large part due to being at the right place at the right time, after that simple momentum took over. People play WoW because their friends play WoW. That is how it works for all sites or software with a strong social element; it's not quite winner-takes-all but a single dominating entity does tend to emerge.
Attempts to copy WoW or trying to copy WoW's success is almost certainly doomed. I remember the attempt to bring the by far most successful MMO of the time (Lineage) from Korea to the West and making it the most succesful one here has resulted in failure, for the same reasons. What worked then and there is not so likely to succeed in displacing the current market leaders here and now. That doesn't mean people should or will stop developing MMOs altogether, they can and will still be profitable to operate without beating WoW's subscription numbers. But if you are aiming to beat WoW, prepare for disappointment.
Developing and running an MMO is a very expensive and complex proposition, and the returns may not be all that good. Quick buck artists are not going to turn to MMOs even with the lure of WoW's $1 billion + revenue; they know they are not likely to make even a fraction of that with a lot of work. Emulating Zynga's model seems a much more fertile field, it is still new enough for early players to make a killing with far less effort, so I expect this business model to gain a foothold in the near future. I am sad to see a decent company like Turbine partnering with these scumbags, but I expect more of them may fall if the revenue is large enough.
The good news is that, at least here in the Netherlands and Europe, regulators are increasingly becoming wary of such scams. The most notorious and lucrative ones foisting expensive SMS subscriptions on unsuspecting kids are already being addressed effectively, and privacy watchdogs take a dim view of teasing information from unwary visitors. Consumers are becoming increasingly wary of these scams as well, and I expect this wariness to increase sharply as these scams become more prevalent, and more people get stung by them. The Zynga business model is one that will gain a foothold in the near future, but I expect it to be a short-lived success.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Not necessarily. It seems to me like diming and quartering the users is what's winning outside of the WoW world.
There are a _lot_ of games which live by selling in-game items for RL cash these days. It has the carrot of being theoretically free to play if you don't want to pay, and you even get a lot of leaway with the quality. People are quick to point out that it's free, even when they run into problems. And you don't need all that many people who go crazy with the purchases to more than make up for those who don't. There are people who spend thousands on having the top mounts, and the top extra enhancements on their PvP gear, and if you don't get them with the PvP, you get them when they get kicked out of endgame raids for not having enough +damage on their sword or +block on their shield.
And the model is sadly expanding even to paid subscription MMOs.
E.g., last time I tried EQ2, Sony was already selling a metric buttload of stuff for real currency for it, on top of needing a full subscription, and needing the Station Access expensive subscription if you want more than 4 character slots (total, not per server!), and having to buy the extra mini-expansion packs to get your extra class powers, and so on.
E.g., STO, much as I love the game otherwise, it's starting to bother me that by now half the playable races can only be bought for "cryptic points" (read: RL money.) And so are any character slots above 3 (4 if you bought lifetime subscription) which isn't enough even to play all 3 classes on both Fed and Klingon sides. And a few more things, not all of them cosmetic. And that bonuses for buying collectors' editions and whatnot include stuff like a purple quality bridge officer, or the only point defense system in the game.
Heck, even in single player games these days, it's getting to the point where half the content is available only by paying extra, even from day one. We're no longer even talking about expansion packs developped later, but stuff that was planned from the word "go" to be removed from the actual game and sold separately for real cash. E.g., The Sims 3 launched from day zero with more content for sale for extra money on their site, than got shipped with the game. E.g., racing games which ship with hardly any tracks _or_ cars, but you can buy the actual tracks or cars for extra cash.
Sorry, it seems to me like that's the real direction that the gaming industry is taking, not the direction of spending as much money and manpower as WoW did.
I guess I can't even blame them. You could spend years polishing a game, hiring people who can do at least the elementary maths to balance it, filling it with more content than the competition... and it still may or may not be a dud. Or you can just quarter and dime the players. Hmm. I can see why the latter is more popular.
But I can't say I like it one bit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You can't establish a star-trek movie wave (alternating good and bad with odd/even iterations) with only two sample points.
Given just two points, what you can plot from them is a line, and in this case it is a line plummeting downwards.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Damn that is kinda shady. Oh well, I've been needing to clear of some space on the old hard drive, & that's a really good reason for DDO to go.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Due to the outcry from their customers, Turbine has taken the Offer Wall down while they sort out the issues that arose due to the half-assed broken way they implemented this lame idea.
I am probably part of the target audience they hoped to attract when they went free to play - someone who hadn't played an MMO before, who had played a bit of pen and paper way back when, and who has disposable income that they are willing to spend if the game is fun enough. So far, it has worked well - I have spent $200 on the game in the past five months on my account and my son's account.
I don't want to deal with a company that I cannot trust, or leave my credit card information in their hands. I absolutely do NOT trust lowlife criminal scum like SuperRewards, and by extension, I do not trust any company that has any dealings with them whatsoever. That means you, Turbine.
I know better than to take any of those offers, but Turbine royally screwed up in their implementation. Even viewing the list of offers on the Turbine site meant that my email address and account name for login was likely transmitted to those parasitic bottom-feeders.
I'll still be playing the game as I bought a ton of content that I have yet to explore, but I will be getting Turbine to remove my credit card info from their billing system if this isn't fixed, and a formal apology issued to their customers by next week. I seriously love this game - it is a ton of fun, many of the players are older, and I don't have to worry about most forms of griefing or PvP emphasis that has kept me away from the entire MMO genre so far. I get to explore instanced dungeons in a small group, and have only explored less than a quarter of the content.
Time to turn the heat up to eleven - DDO players haven't killed it for good yet, or received a formal apology for this privacy breach. Group seppuku by the PHBs who thought up this scheme would be an entirely acceptable response at this time, and would go a long ways towards restoring confidence in the company.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
You do know that the Zynga model is pushing scams on your customers right? It's abusing the naive and defenceless in society. Nothing wrong with micropayments, but Zynga is unadulterated evil ... is your sig just for show and are you a sociopath?
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/06/zynga-scamville-mark-pinkus-faceboo/
I highly doubt you are right. You've got three problems with that logic:
1) Just because something can't reach WoW's level doesn't mean it isn't successful. You don't have to take over the world to have a business worth doing. You just have to make a non-trivial amount of profit. There are plenty of other MMOs out there that have enough players to continue to operate, and develop new expansions. Everquest 1 and 2 are still running and releasing expansions, Eve Online, City of Heros, Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online, etc etc. WoW is by far the biggest, that doesn't mean it is the only profitable one.
2) That Lineage didn't do all that well doesn't mean that WoW is unbeatable, it means that Lineage is a game that doesn't appeal to the US market all that much. You might notice that it's Metacritic rating is 65%, as opposed to WoW's 93%. Metacritic gives you a good aggregate of how US reviews feel about something. You have to remember that different cultures like different kinds of games. You can see this quite well in US vs Japanese RPGs. The style of games like Baldur's Gate or Ultima are extremely different from something like Final Fantasy or Fire Emblem. So just because the game is wildly successful in Korea doesn't mean it'll do that well in the US. Baldur's Gate was massive in the US and bombed in Japan, despite Japan being big on RPGs.
3) MMO players seem to be more than willing to try new games. Startrek Online had a million subscribers on day one. That is damn near 10% of WoW's player base and way more than WoW had out of the gate. Doesn't look like they managed to maintain that number, which isn't surprising because the game isn't great. However it seems clear that MMO players are more than willing to give a new game a shot, and would likely keep playing it if they were enjoying it.
Really what is needed to start beating WoW is a game that is as good as WoW. The game is extremely engaging, and very friendly to new players. It is an exceedingly well designed game. That is why it got so many players. It got people like me who like the idea of MMOs but found that they were way too hardcore (I tried EQ1 and wanted to like it but couldn't). It got people who'd never played MMOs before because they were too complicated. It got people who played other MMOs but were fed up because they felt like work. It gathered all types because it was well made.
As such another well made, mass appeal game could probably unseat it. However, that doesn't have to happen. You can settle for a smaller part of the market and still make plenty of money. Eve Online never tried to compete with WoW. Eve is hard, it is hostile, it has very different gameplay and so on. It appeals to a hardcore demographic. Not nearly so many of those, you aren't going to get the WoW numbers, but there are enough to pay the bills, keep the devs employed making new content, and generate a healthy profit.
Not everyone can be the mass market company, not everyone tries to be. The niche market can make you plenty of money. You won't find B&W speakers in Best Buy or Sears. They aren't a brand you find in many homes. None the less they've made a long, successful business out of selling to a niche market. As an even more niche example take SVS, that you find in no stores as they are Internet only. For years the only thing they sold was large subs that look like hot water heaters. However that too has been enough to make them money.
Does anyone else have an advertisement for DDO looming large in the upper right corner of Slashdot? Targeted advertising is creepy....
I think mixing subscription play with micropayments is sort of double dipping that players won't appreciate.
It's not so much that as that it slowly erodes the actual gameplay, let alone the immersion. I play this game, and ever since they've added an item shop, people are wandering around Ancient Korea with sunglasses, because they can charge for them (useless item, pure decoration) in the item shop. The idea was that this wouldn't affect gameplay, but of course, it creates games all its own -- there's now an official runway competition to decide whose avatar has the best style, which inevitably entails lots of item-shop items. They've also recently (and kind of inevitably) introduced things which directly affect gameplay, like extra storage for crafting items...
Now, the problem is, I don't know if this actually makes a difference in the business sense. I mean, as a player, I absolutely appreciate what you're doing, but I'm also going to keep playing Nexus because of all the stuff I have there, and the community I'm involved with -- basically, because of network effect and a strange sort of lock-in that all MMOs inherently have.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Obvious to who? There have been regular updates to DDO on schedule since going free to play, and their revenue went up by 500% since going free to play. The number of subscribers has doubled, and I don't think that even includes the pay-to-play people such as me, who spend as much or more each month on buying content packs as a subscriber would. As long as they keep releasing content, they'll keep the revenue stream alive from people like me.
{princess bride}Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.{/princess bride}
Don't think so. But then, why look for real numbers when you can just spout FUD and pull stuff out of your ass.
You might not have heard, but brick and mortar games stores already have a few nails in the coffin, and could soon go the way of the arcade, the video store, and the buggy whip manufacturer. Ever heard of Steam?
Just by viewing a page on a Turbine site, DDO players have confirmed (by inspecting packets) that the account name and email address were transmitted from the "Offer Wall" page. Add the pre-fetching comment here, and you might be able to see the problem. Sure, my password and credit card were not transmitted, and I only browse with NoScript, but I am probably not representative of the most vulnerable portions of the player base.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
...and now that I have your attention let me explain that.
Look, Turbine is a company. They exist to make profit and along the way they incur costs (taxes, hardware, bandwidth, employees). Finding new ways to monetize their product is the right and proper thing for them to do and, as a customer of their products, I wish them all the success in the world in that endeavor.
The Offer Wall wasn't actually all that bad of an idea on the face of it... they offered a way for F2P players to get something that many, in these hard economic times, may not have even been able to do on their own... get some quick item store points with out laying out RL coin and doing so in a way that they didn't have to toy with game mechanics. Having said that... they were pretty stupid in the implementation.
They clearly didn't understand the 'rewards marketing' industry they chose to rely on enough to find a competent partner (if they existed), they didn't put much time or effort into the solution... based on a complete read of the forums it looks very slapped together (an assumption on my part, not having seen it first hand), and they didn't give their customers much credit for thinking very deeply about these sorts of things (and given the complexity of the game, they clearly misunderstand their customers).
As for me and my wife... we came to DDO because we are short on funds now-a-days and they provide a cheap way to be entertained without resorting to something like TV. We really like their game and the implementation (I'm an old AD&D player... so had to get use to it). We've even bought adventure packs from them. We'll give them a pass on this... that doesn't mean they will get a pass forever if they keep doing stupid stuff or if it's dramatic enough (as I'm sure some takers of their offer might feel). If they continue to fail to respect their customer base repeatedly they will fail themselves.... as well they should.
In the meantime, I hope they've learned their lesson from this fiasco... and continue to provide a great game.
I wonder if Brad McQuaid wakes up some days and kicks himself repeatedly.
All EQ had to do to be WoW was to be a teensy bit easier. But they fell in love with the 1% of hardcore players and repeatedly screwed over the 99% of customers who couldn't afford to play 14 hour chunks.
Don't get me wrong- I thought WoW was too easy when it started but that difficulty level was where the money was.
Gawd EQ was hard with corpse runs, losing ALL your gear, losing a week's play worth of EXP in an hour if things went badly, the "ubers" owning the top end of the game with some zones you might never see (I got one trip into mischief before it was redone), 3 week respawn cycles, weekday afternoon spawn times, FEAR. It was hard- it was cool if you had a certain attitude but over time it became clear unless you were retired, wealthy, or a student, you would have a hard time keeping up with the 50 hour a week play schedule.
Still- I saw everything up to just shy of Crystallos at which point my right hand blew out and I was done.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This... does not make sense.
Yay me!
Turbine has announced that they are dropping the wall, and they also apologized to their players.
That only took a day or so from when the Offer Wall was introduced, which is reasonably fast by corporate standards.
Thanks Turbine, for listening to the players, and for the apology. You make a great game, and I hope to continue playing it well into the future.
Full text of the announcement:
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious