How Mail.Ru Group Kills AAA-Class MMO Games

A bit of background

In the market of the gaming industry in the field of MMORPG (mass online games with elements of role-playing gameplay) in recent years there has been an obvious crisis of the genre. Most MMORPGs that have entered the market in the past two years have failed (to put it mildly) and were in demand by a small number of users. On this bleak background for gamers all over the world, a ray of hope flickered lonely - the ArcheAge (AA) project, which the South Korean company XLGames (XLG) undertook to develop under the leadership of Jake Song , the creator of Lineage II MMORPG, which is legendary for all generations of gamers of the whole world.

The South Korean release of the project showed to all gamers that the project really has considerable potential, as it offers the player a huge choice of possibilities and various actions: from simple gathering of resources and growing beets in the fields, to large-scale battles on land and at sea.

In January 2013, it became known that the Russian-language version of AA for Russia and the CIS countries was undertaken to localize the Russian company Mail.Ru Group. This news caused an ambiguous reaction among the ru-community: on the one hand, it’s a joy that in the massively expected project they will soon be able to play in Russian, on the other hand, there are concerns: the localization company has won a bad game among gamers reputation of a company that does not reckon with the interests of the community and is ready for the sake of gaining any unpopular actions. Representatives of the company were quick to appease the negative moods of the community, vowing to make every effort to localize the AA project to fully meet the interests of the gaming audience, as they understand the full scale and significance of the project for the gaming audience.

What happened in the end

On September 28, at the presentation of the Russian version of AA, Mail.Ru Group presented to the assembled representatives of the gaming community (journalists from leading gaming portals, heads of leading Russian guilds) a “new economic model” that plunged all those gathered, and then the whole gaming community (to put it mildly) in state of deep shock.
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Why - it will become clear if you just fluently familiarize yourself with the principle of this model.

The scheme is as follows: rubles - crystals - arches (the new main game currency created by the Mail.Ru Group craftsmen).
All (!) Of the main game actions for trading, or payment, from now on, players were offered to exercise through arches, and in fact for the real currency of the Russian Federation - rubles. From now on, the players were offered: in order to carry out a bargain at a game auction, pay a fee from it, or pay a tax on gaming property, buy crystals for rubles in rubles , exchange them for arches, and then pay for arrays . That is, game values ​​in such a scheme acquire real value, expressed in rubles (and considerable). And this is despite the fact that in the Russian Federation there is still no statutory (or prohibited) conversion of real rubles into game pixels and their turnover. But the indignation of the players caused not only the fact that they were faced with the fact of paying for almost every game action with real money, but also the fact that the entire game model, tied in the original AA version, as is customary in the MMORPG on the game currency - “gold”, is henceforth made it almost useless not only this game currency, and most of the game content based on it.

For example, it has become completely pointless to produce and transport trade packs, engaging on the way in fierce battles with opposing players, since they have completely lost their value.

Actions and counteractions

Ru-community (to the best of its abilities and capabilities) responded with a decisive struggle for its obviously crudely trampled interests.

A petition was written - an appeal to the AA developers at XLGames with a request to influence their partners in Russia - the Mail.Ru Group company and convince them to return to one of the original versions of the game (p2p or f2p, but in the original - without arches).

In a short time, in just a few days, the petition has already collected more than 8,000 signatures from both Russian gamers and gamers from around the world. Moreover, the essence of what is happening with the AA project in Russia, reflected in the petition, caused a strong negative reaction from gamers in Europe and America (in their gaming forums), who also expect AA to be localized for themselves, for which Trion has taken it.

Mail.Ru Group replied that it began to negotiate with the resources on which the link to the petition was posted with a request to remove it.

At the official AA.mail.ru forum, users expressed their indignation through avatars: a “dollar” sign, or mourning ribbon, or two carnations was placed on AA symbols.

The administration of the official forum responded with a “ban” of users with similar avatars, but realizing that this has already become widespread for some time it has turned off the avatars function for all users of the forum.

On October 5, at Igromir, where Mail.Ru Group is going to present its version of the AA project with a “new economic model,” the ru-community decided to hold a flash mob - assign two cloves to the ru-AA booth.

What repressive-punitive actions the Mail.Ru Group administration will answer to this is still unknown ...

Links to the most significant materials on this topic:

• petition
• air with clan leaders
• broadcast with mail.ru managers
• Concrete on the new model from mmozg
• Theme from Europeans

Thanks to the players and the community GoHa.ru

UPD 10/09/2013
aa.mail.ru/news/91845.html - Today's news that we heard.
Either they are trying to distract, or indeed a riot was a success.

UDP 10/10/2013
vimeo.com/76588622
Enchanting interview with the producer of the game