A company called GameForge is the publisher of Tera in Europe. Oddly, they are going through a server merge too. I guess the the Tera population is collapsing worldwide. And they are screwing their users too. Apparently even worse than Enmasse here in NA.
Notice how they talk about character slots. Empty slots on the least populated- by your characters / slots – servers are just tossed out. So, apparently if you have server toons / slots as follows:
5 characters and Open 3 slots on Bahaar, 6 characters and Open 2 slots on Mystel, then you LOSE 3 characters and 3 Open slots.
And Unlike Enmasse, Gameforge did not give you a gift of 8 free slots to make up for some of your loss. Not sure where Enmasse came up with 8, maybe that’s the total number of GIFT slots that have been given over the years as new classes were introduced.
How is this not THEFT?
I think this amounts to THEFT of characters and slots and possibly bank slots and any wardrobe / mounts / etc items that you have purchased and lost in the process. And those can amount to quite a lot of real money spent over the years of playing this game.
The only thing they mention is character slots. Not the loss of virtual goods due to character loss. If you purchased any of open slots before August 8, 2018 are just stolen from you.
If those slots have been saved from the Slot Giveaways that have occurred in the past when new classes were introduced, then those SLOTS ARE STOLEN FROM YOU, along with the work you put into them and the materials / items you have gathered or purchased.
Why do these game companies think it is OK to Steal your stuff? Why would I continue to invest any money in a game in the future when my previous investments – time and especially money that I have paid to support their game – are stolen from me?
Gambling and Privacy Issues are a Problem, But not Theft?
The EUÂ has recently been all up in the face of Social Media companies, and every website on the planet, about their Privacy Rules. And all up in the face of game companies about their Loot Boxes that on some esoteric interpretation sounds like gambling to them.
What I want to know is: When is the EU or some other Government body going to get all up in the face of game companies that Steal Your Stuff out of laziness?
- If I bought it from the game company, IT’S MINE, whether or not it is VIRTUAL.
- If you gave it to me as part of some promotion or other reason, whenever it was you did that, IT’S MINE.
- And if you take stuff from me that’s MINE, then that’s STEALING, even if your game is FREE TO PLAY.
- Whether you are doing some server merge or not, if you take it away, then it’s STEALING.
- Why laziness? Because you were too lazy to move the character slots intelligently, to merge the bank slots and give me as many character and bank slots on the new server as the sum of all the slots I’m using on all the servers. Not hard work. Just some extra work.
How is it ok to STEAL my Virtual STUFF?
Don’t tell me that the servers can’t handle the load. The reason that the merge is happening is that the companies can’t afford to run more servers because folks aren’t playing the game, and paying for it. And why are we going to pay more next month when they stole what we already paid for?
It’s processors and memory and network that cost money, not a few TB of hard drive space. That’s so close to free that it makes no difference in a bottom line.
How is this not THEFT? And why do I want to support a company that steals from me?
Of course they have put phrases in their Terms of Service that allows them to do this:
Of course they do. But I don’t have to spend money on games that use this as a out to treat me badly and steal from me. Especially when there is no good reason for it. It’s one thing to have the TOS language to prevent lawsuits in the case of accidental loss of stuff, or eventual shut down. Basically what this says is that you can’t take your assets off and build a new game or be a creditor when they go bankrupt. Ok. Point taken.
But they have used this language to be lazy and toss out our stuff in the merge because it was “inconvenient” to code to keep it. More bank slots and more character slots in the Marching Army character selection screen.
This laziness will not save them. They have treated their customers badly. And they and we know it.
Update: 23 Sept 2018 – Keeping all an account’s characters is even easier than I thought. The code was already there to allow as many as you want. When you pass 8 characters, the Marching Army Character Selection Interface just adds pages of eight characters each. So, they could have easily allowed 60 or more characters without re-coding that interface.
Why all the nonsense. Why not just keep everyone’s characters, and add up the bank slots too instead of keeping only – whatever? – the most on any server? No clue. No reason to take stuff from folks at all.
I didn’t lose anything apparently. Except some slots of merged servers. I only used as many of the 8 Gifted Character Slots as I needed to, so I have some left over.
:ww
Windy Weather 