you even to pay to post on their forums

Scolioz

I tried posting there and it says I need to give them at least $5 to their fund raiser  lol

Xarko

You cant post on official Swtor forums unless you are a subscriber, not that uncommon.

Elsabolts

Come On Man, Lord British need another space flight.

Aron_Swordmaster

DMKano said:

Many games are the same way - its to avoid the people who never played trolling.

Also its an easy way to hold players accountable, as a you could do game bans for forum misbehavior.

Actually, the original reason they claimed they were doing it was to stop spam bots who were taking over their forums.

In reality they were pre-disposed to doing so because it also brought in more money for them. They've constantly been on the verge of bankruptcy because of horrendous budgeting, and they've pulled numerous little tricks to squeeze every last dollar.

Like if you're  a backer and pledged to get the paperback of the novel, you get one with 4 chapters missing and have to buy a second copy now for the complete one. And then they expanded it to 2 further books, and said that wasn't in the Kickstarter rewards, so you wouldn't get those at all.

Like how they slowly removed parts of the pledges if you didn't raise your backing (or commit to it by Direct Debit) by arbitrary cut off dates; so even if you were there at Kickstarter as a First Responder, if you raised your pledge to Artisan after the Fall Expiry date, you no longer unlocked Episodes 2-3. Even though those are digital rewards and cost nothing to give.

And the physical rewards, that will?  Originally part of the Kickstarter, they later said you had to pay the international postage for those in advance. Just, you know, give us the $15 here and now. Which they've also since spent.  And they've not even begun to produce the actual rewards yet.  So when they put up the SeedInvest declaring they only had $600k left, and spent $300k a month... they hadn't budgeted for the rewards or posting them either. Didn't even list those commitments in the financial analysis.

How about when they started charging for account services? It was a $25 token at least if you want them to merge accounts or swap rewards between them.

And then there's locking off Global Chat in game to high end backers only as a saleable advantage.

And what about...

... in context, complaining about also nickle and $5-ring people for posting privileges probably wasn't that innocent either, was it?

GeezerGamer

Why is this an issue?
Game forums are for paying customers.
As they should be.

blorpykins

I think comparing SotA to what AAA studios do for their games is laughable.  Even Star Citizen lets people post without buying the game... you just have to create an account.

BitterClinger

Guild Wars 2 is the same way. No forum access for Free players. Frankly, I actually think this is the way it should be for all MMO games, except for maybe a technical support or 'help' section.

blorpykins

SedrynTyros said:

blorpykins said:

I think comparing SotA to what AAA studios do for their games is laughable.  Even Star Citizen lets people post without buying the game... you just have to create an account.

Isn't that what you're doing when you criticize SotA?  Comparing it to what other studios do?

This is Portalarium's Executive Conference Room.


This is one of WoW's office buildings.


Not really a fair comparison, is it.

Kyleran

Many indie devs have backer only forums, not an unusual practice for even smaller firms.

If you aren't a customer why should they care what you think?

blorpykins

Kyleran said:

Many indie devs have backer only forums, not an unusual practice for even smaller firms.

If you aren't a customer why should they care what you think?

I don't think there's a canned answer for a question like that.  Putting their official forums behind a paywall just forces curious gamers with questions to go elsewhere for the information... reddit, steam, google, here...

Even Star Citizen will allow players to ask questions in an area designed for newbs - no purchase necessary, just create an account and ask away.

Portalarium has two publishers now, and they themselves have recently been funded to become an independent publisher.  They've been launched for more than a year; seems like it would be in their best interests to make an effort for outreach of some kind.  They have a paid community manager on staff, I suppose if they wanted to communicate with new players they'd make it easier to do.  Maybe they don't want to talk to people until they spend money - the paywall does go a long way in establishing precedent should someone choose to buy their way through the paywall.

Buccaneer

I thought this was mostly an industry standard.
At least it's not like Pantheon were you have to sub to the forums.

Slapshot1188

Kyleran said:

Many indie devs have backer only forums, not an unusual practice for even smaller firms.

If you aren't a customer why should they care what you think?

True, and there is nothing wrong with it from an ethical standpoint.  I do wonder if it's beneficial though.  After all, how many people are going to pay $5 to ask their question as opposed to going to sites like MMORPG.COM

Surely not the only reason for their struggling population but I do not think this helps them attract new players.

Octagon7711

As long as I can view the forums it's all good because it allows me to get a better feel for the game and how the Devs manage it.

Herase

In it's self it's not a problem, but based on Aron's post, it seems this is an on going saga of "hey guys buy/donate/pledge and get X and Y" then "We made changes. Surprise. You may need to pay again for Y"