Offer Wall Update

[Mockduck]

Works for me! I wasn't planning to engage in this third-party activity to begin with, but it's nice to see this response.

FYI - for people wondering where PlaySpan sits in this picture, they provide the back end for the DDO Store (and the DDO game time cards). So, not directly tied to the Offer Wall, other than the transfer of the points. At least I think that's how it works.

[Hambo]

In a way, this was Turbine zerging idiotically into action, and the players giving them the dungeon alarm treatment.

I wonder how they like it.

Nice analogy!!! +1 for you!

The only difference is with DA there aren't any Kobolds telling the other alerted mobs "screenshot or it didn't happen"

[Ethias]

Glad that this got taken care of...

[Wyrmnax]

You want more revenue? Pay for advertising. Feel like your product isn't worth advertising? Improve your product.

Do you realize this is one of the bigger issues on the Turbine vs Atari lawsuit?

[rest]

Sorry, I should be more clear. The comment I was responding to said that when the thread was closed, a ton of posts were deleted (3+ pages). I didn't delete any when I closed the thread but I did remove that particular post earlier in the morning (as well as one other. Those are the only two posts I've removed today).

Clearly, the company is acutely aware of the feedback from the player base (as well as reacting to it) so flooding the principals with emails about it doesn't accomplish anything but wasting everyone's time. Posts encouraging it will be removed!

But flooding the players' e-mail with spam is acceptable? Gotcha. Thx Meghan

[Raiderone]

Glad to hear DDO has taken down the Offer Wall. I personally had no interest in it.

I dont believe in getting anything for Free...cause nothing is ever for Free.

Still want the Removal TAB for CC Information in My Accounts. More for my FTP Account.

[Kindoki]

Thank you. Faith restored, and improved.

...if I was doing something that I knew I should not be doing, I stopped doing it, and I always made a quick relinquishment. You see, that's the easy way. Tapering off is long and hard. And if I was not doing something that I knew I should be doing, I got busy on that.

Peace Pilgrim

[Pfold]

Do you realize this is one of the bigger issues on the Turbine vs Atari lawsuit?

I didn't know there was one. Not to be beligerent but it seems to me that if you pay for a license to use a name you should be able to advertise your product with said name otherwise you need better lawyers and/or decision makers in the company.

Beyond that, being that Turbine holds multiple licenses, they can push to advertise Turbine. It doesn't have to be directly tied to any of their products. That would get 'around' any issue of license agreement.

The amount of time, effort and money spent on this brainchild could have easily been spent to fix or alleviate the lag issues in the game.

[zorander6]

First off thank you for removing this, however it will be a while before you can restore my trust.

[Fenrisulven6]

And is Turbine still in bed with SuperScam? Do we all need to get shots?

Sever all ties with SuperRewards. Then we'll accept that Turbine made a mistake in good faith.

[smatt]

A little bit of background:

They dug a deep one with this... I simply can't understand how this went through this far without anybody in the braintrust thinking.... Um, maybe getting hooked up with Superscammers isn't such a good idea considering.... That's what bothers me the most... We all make mistakes... I made MANY in business.... In fact probably just about everyday..... But wow, just wow on this one.... less than 1 hour od simple esearch on SuperRewards would've shown them the downsides...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032302846.html

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2..._F2P_Games.php

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/12/fac...cy-offers-game

http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/04...-games-offers/


And there's lots more info out there about how Gaming comapanies are using such things for moentizination.. Now if you do a quik read, they seem to be postive articles... But if you REALLY read them, you see deep down inside how scam-centric they realyl are. What it's all about etc... They claim to be cleaning themselves up, but the ugly stuff still slips through, and by the time they get around to removing it..... Well how many people get screwed over.


There's this picture painted that gaming companies HAVE to go this way to stay in the game.... Bad sales pitch...... No they don't....... It means they have to be SMART, and not GREEDY....

Here's the hype BS that roped them in,.....

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/s...,1233961.shtml

Here's the likely program they signed up for

http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/...ze-free-goods/

And the bad....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...03005570D8.DTL

Do a little searching there's lots more bad out there...


And a little deeper into how it all REALLY works... Which they freely admit. Now it seems like good business on the face of it... Turbine was looking at what couldv'e been a decent amount of revnue while "Helping" their gaming customers, and Adknowledge (SuperRewards) were looking at a much more profitable amount of revenue....

http://www.consumerelectronicsnet.co....jsp?id=803998

Just some food for thought on how this came about....

[Wickednisse]

First I would like to say 'Awesome Job!' to Turbine for stepping up and resolving the issues with the offer wall. As stated here in this post many times - it takes guts to admit you've screwed up, you did that and you have resolved the issue. THANK YOU. I would also like to thank Gol for being determined in his cause and alerting everyone. Yes it was something a Turbine staff member should have done before the offer was even made public but I will address that later on, Turbine - give this man a job.

Second, I can appreciate the fact that Turbine is trying to make profit on a largely Free To Play game. 90% of the players that I've come across are Free To Play with no intention of purchasing points nor ever giving Turbine one cent. Turbine has to accomodate for this player base by trying to find new ways of income. You can download the game for free, so there is no profit to be made from game sales when new expansions are released (WoW wants to charge you a tidy sum of $40 and up for each of their expansions, add the $15 a month fee that is NOT optional and there you have a nice profit from a large player base.) because the majority of the player base want everything for nothing. I am a VIP, and while there were some issues with receiving my monthly points for April, I can appreciate the fact that the Premium and VIP crowd are what support the new content but I do not think that we cover a large portion of their player base. Turbine is trying to compensate for that, and help out those who are to cheap or financially unable with earning Turbine points. Sure it could have been done through a different avenue, and I'm sure Turbine regrets making the decision to go with the 'Wall O' Scammer Terror' but some of you are acting as though you have never made a mistake. They admitted it and have done their best to resolve the issue and ease everyone's mind.

I, for one, enjoy the game and am grown up enough to let sleeping dogs lie and move on. The people who are now wanting to critique every little banner ad and such need to move on. Stop slamming a company for trying to be a profitable company and find another MMORPG to float your boat. This is a very clean MMORPG - I do not see the monetary spam that pollutes alot of other games, I have yet to see any bots (personally a first for me in this genre), nor hacks. Their competitors could learn ALOT from them in that area.

[Preist]

Thanks for doing the right thing....and thanks for fessing up. You mitigate some lost favor with your response!

[Sutekx]

I am glad I missed it, so Turbine decided to get a partnership with SuperRewards, which technically will spam you for each avenue of a survey you fill out where there might be a chance for a reward if you screen shot every step you do. It could have been worse, it could have been OfferMedia or whatever the name of the 3rd major company that is out there who does surveys for points. Same people who do MySpace and Facebook games and have horrid returns and poor customer service. I am glad Turbine has stepped away from this since it does cause a lot of people to become angry for the lack of returns, not to mention the horror stories I have seen with those who decided to get The Video Professor, among others from those companies and not get any returns, and I will say some people have a tendency to miss the fine print of other charges if they don't contact such and such within a limited time frame or get charged over $XXX amount of money.

Those companies are pretty bad when you fight tooth and nail for points only to get a canned response back as they close the ticket without the issue being resolved with proof. I just feel for those who have done the offers so far when the wall was up, I really feel for them.

[Sirea]

Overall it was a poor user experience that was not up to our standards, and for this we apologize.

At least we got an apology.

At least I had the sense to never go to the offer wall, actually I heard about it first through all the negative feedback before I even saw the official post, so that probably helped. It sucks for the people who did and had/have to dig out from the spam and malware because they dared to trust a link given to them by a company they trusted.

Good thing we have players like Gol and Jasimine that can apply their IT knowledge to help out the playerbase.

But, Turbine acted swiftly, and actually listened to us. The damage was done, but at least now they have a chance to earn back some of the trust and integrity they lost.

Looks like maybe I won't be canceling next week. Good, I have an arcane archer to cap/gear out and a wizard to TR.

[Ethias]

But flooding the players' e-mail with spam is acceptable? Gotcha. Thx Meghan

pretty sure the fact they took down the wall, don't plan on bringing it back up, responded to our concerns very rapidly (for a gaming company), and keep trying to assure us things are okay mean that the spam was not intended and nor do they think it is acceptable...

Turbine screwed up big on this one, but at least they took the right steps to try to fix it.

[DreadDormammu]

But flooding the players' e-mail with spam is acceptable? Gotcha. Thx Meghan

On a first name basis, huh? Is it that level of familiarity that gives you the right to act like a jerk on the forum?

[Kaganfindel]

I play LOTRO a lot more than DDO (obviously), but I was real glad to see Turbine's prompt response to the customer outcry. Even though the customers can cry "wolf" quite a bit, give Turbine credit for not just treating this as "wolf", and actually doing something about it.

Also, let's give Patience a lot of credit for being very professional during a hard crunch. I don't think anyone denies things got a little ugly, but it is being resolved. Qaplah!

Let's be fair, though. It's really hard to dismiss a cry of wolf when you're presented with a dead sheep, a sample of lupine saliva taken from the dead sheep's wounds and a security camera image of the sheep being torn apart by freakin' wolves. And when you boil it down, the apology still only amounts to, "sorry you didn't like it."

Thanks again, Gol, for investigating this for other players on a volunteer basis. You did work in your own time that Turbine's players should be able to expect them to do internally before exposing them to these sorts of things.

[Ganolyn]

Clearly, the company is acutely aware of the feedback from the player base (as well as reacting to it) so flooding the principals with emails about it doesn't accomplish anything but wasting everyone's time. Posts encouraging it will be removed!

Translation: We are already up to our necks in "bleep" because of this so please don't encourage the Devil to go charging around in his speed boat...

[Pwesiela]

Thank you very much for the elimination of this abomination.

For the record, however. I am in favor of finding partnerships with legitimate third party entities who will pay Turbine for referring customers to them (without the exposure of personal information). I'm thinking like first time subscribers to Netflix who say "Not only do we give you a great deal on movies, but we'll also pay for some TP to be sent your way!" Have that third party and Turbine exchange the information confidentially (transaction numbers linked to Turbine accounts on Turbine's end only) and I think many of our issues can be resolved.