SOE Living Legacy Promotion Striking the Right Chord? June 4, 2008
Posted by Kendricke in Everquest 2.Tags: Living Legacy, Veterans, John Smedley
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It doesn’t take very long to find a few choice words regarding SOE’s new “Living Legacy” promotion from existing customers:
“But wait a second, what about those loyal customers, who never left. Or what about those people who subscribed last month, or the month before, still ‘recently’ returning.” - Stargace, MMO Quests
“In a stroke of a pen, SOE signed away any reason at all to explore or try difficult dungeons.” - Tipa, West Karana
“Yeah, I sound bitter. I do think the Living Legacy program is fantastic, but I cannot for the life of me see why they didn’t include rewards for those who are currently playing Everquest II.” - Jaye, Journeys with Jaye
Even on the official forums, it doesn’t take long to find more than a couple of long time customers who feel left out:
Qupe: “Let me get this straight: Loyal and existing subscribers who chose to CONTINUE playing (and paying for) Everquest 2 get absolutely nothing via this promotion?”
Auroz: “Ditto to the fact that it just plain sucks that people who have QUIT or people who ‘recruit’ for this company get rewarded and the people who have been playing the enjoying the game actively with no cancellations.. get snubbed.”
Lunah: “After all this time I am to be punished and not get the ingame items or game time that people who gave up on eq2 are getting?? And yes before you ask I find it an insult that the loyal customers are being slighted with this.”
Striothia: “As a loyal paying member of EQ2 since its launch (even the months I didn’t play) this is yet again another kick in the pants to loyal customers. Its not that your trying to get back customers, its not even that your using in game items to do so. Its that these items will now be completely exclusive to returnees that your customers that have stuck with you all the way will never have obtainable.”
I could certainly continue with dozens more similar posts, but I think we all get the point here: a not-insignificant number of some of SOE’s most loyal customers are feeling left out in the cold.
For those of you unaware, SOE’s Living Legacy promotion is the largest marketing push in years, targeted at former or new players for both Everquest and Everquest II. If you’ve ever logged in to create an account for either game at any point in the past nine years and that account was not active as of April 30 of this year, you should probably try to see if you’re able to log in.
If so, you’ve got access to 2 months of free game time, the ability to start up the subscription again and gain access to every expansion for free, an exclusive (read: not available to current customers) discount on the next expansion, and a ton of in-game items - some of which are exclusive to this promotion, which is the biggest point of contention for many of those players who are piping up.
You see, there isn’t any part of this promotion targeted to existing, long time customers that isn’t also available to the newcomers or returnees. Oh sure, there’s a hefty calender of events planned out in both games, but every one of those events is available to every player - even the ones playing through their Living Legacy free time.
So, what’s all the hubbub about then? Is it because players want fluff pets and items? Well, yes and no. On the surface, that might be the case, but realistically, the real reason is one of recognition and customer appreciation.
You see, Everquest II’s come a long way since it’s less than stellar early days. It’s weathered the storm and put out some pretty solid expansions throughout the years, but it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Debacle upon debacle seem destined to plague the studio (more so than most studios, it would seem) and most of the blame gets heaped high upon the shoulders of president John Smedley, who’s even admitted in the past to mistakes regarding a failure to listen to his own players.
So I can’t help but wonder if such public revelations are truly indicative of a company who has learned from the past, or if it’s simply another case of history doomed to repeat. I can’t imagine a company willfully or intentionally alienating some of their most loyal customers, especially a company built firmly upon the back of subscription business models.
Certainly, I don’t expect to see a huge influx of cancellations over this promotion, but is that really the point?
I’m truly glad to see SOE moving on marketing. If there’s anything SOE seems to do horribly, it’s marketing their existing games. In a world where you can’t swing a dead cat without smacking over a World of Warcraft display, I can’t tell you the last time I saw more than one or two retail boxes for Rise of Kunark (or even Echoes of Faydwer) on any store shelves (and I practically live in gaming stores, mind you).
So yes, absolutely I love the idea of marketing to old players. I love the idea of plying them high with goodies. I think it’s about the best damned idea ever to throw free game time and expansions at them.
I just don’t think you need to ignore the players that have been there with you through thick and thin to do so. These are your evangelists. These are your true core players. These are the people who shouldn’t be taken for granted. These are the players that studio execs should go to bed thanking in their nighttime prayers. These are the players who skew the churn numbers. These are the bread and butter players of a studio’s playerbase.
Telling them that they can’t access, in any way, a selection of rewards strictly because they’ve been such good customers is like finding out you won’t be getting a promotion and raise at work just because you’re too valuable where you are now. It stinks when it happens at the office and it stinks when it happens in your games.
It’s not how you show those players you appreciate them, at the very least. That is to say, it shouldn’t be.
Mmmm… while obviously I agree with you mostly, the Defiant armor in EQ that is given to returnees is also available as drops from any mob in any zone. And the returnees only get three pieces, so they will need to form or join groups to get more.
My objection is mostly that this armor completely unbalances the low level game. And it replaces a lot of the items that gave craftspeople items in high demand — now better items come off diseased rats. Suddenly, their work is largely pointless. EQ1 gear doesn’t get replaced as often as in EQ2 or WoW, but that’s over with. Now everyone has to get the Defiant armor, and it is tiered, so once you get it and level up some, you have to start over.
This whole thing wasn’t a bad idea, but it was extremely short-sighted.
Except, Tipa, that the economy is such in EverQuest that the low level items that craftspeople create are priced out of the range of anybody starting anew. Finding something in the bazaar for a low level character that is worth buying and that is under, say, 100 plat, is a pretty futile task.
As for SOE’s strategy Kendricke, it is straight from the playbook of all the cell phone companies. It may not sit well, but it isn’t exactly some bizarro world tactic either.
I am going to have to disagree with you Wilhelm. My cell phone company rewards me for being a loyal customer every couple of years with a $100 rebate on a new phone. Sure that is the same deal they are giving new customers, but as a current customer I get to use it every 2 years as well. This often leads to a new free or very cheap phone depending on the number of features I want it to have.
Also the current Veteran rewards really aren’t designed to target loyal customers, they are designed to reward players that started the game close to launch. It doesn’t matter if someone took a 3 year break in the middle, they still get all the veteran rewards you would if you both started on the same day.
It seems like adding any missing expansions and the 5.00 discount on the next expansion could easily have been offered to all players, not just unscribed players. I can understand not offering your current players free time as that would kill all subscription profit for a couple of months, but at the very least it seems like they should have done something for the long time players. Otherwise the message you are sending is your players should quit, so that they can get free time a few months down the road.
I called up my cable company recently when I found out they were running a promotion for new subscribers. I’ve been with them for over 5 years now, and they currently provide my phone, broadband, and HDTV. Within 15 minutes of picking up the phone, I had 80 new channels, some free pay per view vouchers, and I’m now paying $12 less per month for the next year.
Recently my local grocery co-op started to run a “member loyalty” program. I got to upgrade my standard brown membership card for a new blue card that gives me slightly deeper discounts on prepared foods, an additional general service discount I can use once every 2 months, a new bumper sticker to show off my newfound “uberness” (I proudly display it) and some other little gifts (they had a bit of a 30 year celebration a couple weeks ago to kick this off). In addition, they’re offering a special reduced price for new members right now, and they supplied me with a handful of “guest passes” which I can give out to family and friends to come in and use for single trips to the co-op with full member benefits. (Read the “lettuce” column for more on this).
My fiance recently decided to upgrade her phone with her current cell phone provider. She called up and found out that she couldn’t get the new customer discount and she had another 8 months to wait before she could get the official discount. She pointed out that she’d been with this company for 6 years. After a short conversation, she was directed to a store near our house where she was able to choose any phone in the store as if she were a new customer, provided she was willing to sign on for another 2 years. Not only did they get her business, but I cancelled my own carrier to switch to her plan (her company gave me an even deeper discount when they realized that I’d be nailed by a cancellation fee - I picked up a smart phone for $20).
In a world with dozens of subscription MMO choices (and more releasing all the time), you risk a lot by alienating any significant selection of your playerbase - especially the most loyal customers that have been with you the longest.
Jeez, unclench will ya?
If you bothered to read the announcements, this is the first of many promotions they’re running over the summer. So there’s probably going to be goodies for the people currently playing.
Sheesh.
Xevan, I’m going to bet that your cell phone company offers promotions now and again that are better than your $100 off a new phone deal. Heck, I picked up the paper and found one in the business section right this very minute. Maybe it isn’t your cell phone company though.
Kendricke, I noticed in two of your examples you had to call up the vendor to get your bennie. (i.e. not everybody got it automatically, which seems to be the standard you are holding SOE to) I take it that you called up SOE customer service and asked them for the same deal and were told no. I mean, you’ve got two consecutive posts on the subject, so you care enough to invest the time. (Sarcasm off, I’d honestly like to hear what customer service would say.)
Oh, and Xevan, does your cell phone company lock you into another two year contract if you take them up on their $100 off offer? Just curious.
I realize other players may be upset over the discounts or free time/expansions. I’m not even discussing those rewards. I’m discussing actual in-game pets, titles, and other rewards that have no method of acquisition other than through having a cancelled account.
Do I personally care that I can’t have a fae drake following me around? No, but enough of my members do care that it gains my attention. More to the point, I’ll admit that the very principle of the idea irks me.
Imagine if the iPhone had been available exclusively to new or returning customers to AT&T, but that existing customers could not acquire the phone at all - not by spending more, or by calling up customer service. I mean, what if the only way to get the phone was if you were not a customer in the first place.
Though a pet drake or title is arguably not as cool as an iPhone, I’d prefer to let that particular valuation be assigned by individual players. If someone really wants a pet drake and finds that the only way they could have that particular reward was if they were NOT a subscribing member as of April 30, then I can imagine they’d be pretty miffed about that particular circumstance.
…and no, I didn’t want SOE to automatically hand out the rewards, either. I have no problem with offering in-game quests or allowing players to use microtransactions to pick up these rewards (though I’m fairly certain I’d be in a minority regarding the RMT option). The fact remains that there is NO available option to long time players to acquire either these rewards or the discounts.
Yes, my members contacted SOE to find out about alternate means of acquiring the rewards or discounts. SOE CS has informed them that because they were subscribers as of April 30, there is nothing they can/will do for them.
It’s not as if SOE is tossing those types of players a bone, either. This promotion is geared, nearly exclusively, toward rewarding players who left the game. The incentives here are reserved for those who left the game - for whatever reason - and had not yet returned on their own. All the talk of upcoming free content or events within the game is largely smoke and mirrors. It’s like saying that Guild Halls were a part of this promotion - not that they’d been promised for some time now already (or listed on the original release box as a feature, either).
[...] Kendricke, in his second post on the subject of this latest round of unfairness from SOE, wondered if SOE had learned from its [...]
Wilhelm: Yes, they do require a new two year contract, and yes there are probably better deals if I switched to a different Cell Phone company. My point isn’t that the company is giving me the best deal that I could get, it is that they are at least making an effort to reward me for being a long time customer by giving me a somewhat similar deal to what they are giving new customers. If I didn’t like the 100 dollar deal, my contract has expired with them, and I could always cancel and go to a different provider. However I like my company, and I feel the prices are pretty good in comparison to the service charges from the other companies in the area. In the same manner, I like EQ2 and enjoy playing with the friends I have made there, but they aren’t making much of an effort to at least cut us in on part of offered rewards. Obviously loyality doesn’t mean much to them, so why shouldn’t I cancel EQ2 and go pick up AoC like everyone else seems to be doing?
@ Xeavn-
Do it.
I did.
Xevan: So, your cell phone company gives out better deals to new customers, but you’re happy with the service you do get. But when it comes to EQ2, the situation changes. I mean, you do get events and rewards and special items for playing. But now you’re talking about going to AoC.
I’m trying to follow how your happiness with the game is tainted by this offer, aggressive though it may be. I did not by Kingdom of the Sky, but got it free when I bought Echoes of Faydwer. Does that irk you as well?
Kendricke: Hey, if you were subscribed during Brew Day, or any other EQ2 event, you got to do the quests and get the goodies, and no money I can offer up today will get me any of those items either, and such items do not always return for the next years event. Reward for being subscribed?
But, frankly, in keeping with the long standing SOE tradition of clarity, the description and fine print available online does not indicate to me whether that iPhone comparable item (to some, if not all), the Cloak of the Void is only for people who participate in this promotion or not. It says it was created “exclusively for the upcoming expansion,” but whether it is a for returnees, pre-orders, digital orders, or anybody who buys the next expansion is unclear to me. (And the statements of any given customer service agent have proven in the past to be guesses at best until something is in writing on the main site.)
So there is still hope for that item at least. And since that is your key point, there is perhaps some chance that you’ll be happy, right?
(If you know somebody who wants some really exclusive items, I have some stuff stowed away made from recipes no longer available in game. I’ll sell them, but not cheap! I think I still have a couple of pieces of rubicite armor in EQ as well.)
Wilhelm: Much like my cell phone company, EQ2 is providing a service to me for the money I am paying them. I get access to thier games for a month, and in return they get my station account fee. Unlike my cell phone company I am getting no loyalty incentives. Not even reduced ones. Sure they can use expanded features of that service (ingame quests and events) as a loyalty incentive, but I have seen nothing that indicates that they intend to do so. Every thing that is being created for the current population is also available to this new population who isn’t paying too.
Do you know any cell phone companies that will give you thier latest phone and a couple of months free service in hopes that at the end of it, you will sign up? I don’t. Which is why you getting Kingdom of Sky with the Echoes of Faydwer expansion doesn’t bother me. You still had to buy EoF, and they just included KoS in the price. It also was not the latest expansion at that point, and so in my mind it wasn’t worth much. I am not mad that I had to buy RoK, nine months ago. In part I payed so that I would have access to it for those nine months that poeple getting it free now don’t have. I am mainly mad that my wife’s account which doesn’t currently have RoK flagged on it, didn’t get it flagged because she was kind enough to be currently subscribed.
Now I don’t really intend to stop playing EQ2 over this issue at the moment, but I think the marketing team needs to realize that several long time players aren’t happy with many aspects of this promotion, and some players will and have quit over it. In the long run does the promotion gain EQ2 more players when the free time is over than it lost by alienating long time players.
While you’ve all made valid points with your comparisons, keep in mind that cellphones and games are significantly different types of products. One difference is that phone service is more necessary than entertainment. For another, individual aesthetic tastes and desires are more relevant with games, whereas many (though certainly not all) phone services are objectively beneficial.
The services are definitely analogous. Just be careful not to stretch the analogy too far.
“Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”
I understand the comments. However:
1. This isn’t new. As a long time SW:G player, I am more than familiar with people getting things I would never receive, because I was a vet. And no, it’s never awesome stuff. But because I bought each expansion as it came out, I didn’t get the pet you get for buying them all at once. Etc.
But really, I don’t care so much.
2. SOE could fix this in a number of ways. Are the bennies tradeable? Granted, now you have issues with abusing the system for cash, but a vet has a ton of plat. Drop some on a player that needs it, get your fae drake.
Also, make those part of the vets rewards. Make one of the 2 year choices “New player gift pack” which gives you all the stuff, so you have a choice.
Oh, and they have actually done something for the loyal customers:
THEY GAVE YOU A GAME TO PLAY!
I am guilty of this too, but the whole point is that we’re playing the game. In theory, we’re enjoying it. So that’s our service. Everything else is just your whipped topping of choice….
Not that I don’t do just the same thing. But I try to remind myself of it too….
They gave me a game to play? The last I checked, that’s not a reward, that’s the basic minimum service I’d expect for the monthly payment I fork over. That’s a transaction, not a reward.
I may as well call up my power company and thank them for the gift of light and television. Nevermind the ever escalating bill they send me every month - I should be thankful that they even provide me power to begin with.
In all seriousness, I do enjoy the game. I also enjoy the fact that there are players coming back to try out the game. I wasn’t aware that either of these issues was up for debate. Was there any possible doubt on either point?
In fact, I’ve yet to find a single person criticizing this program that is against the concept of bringing back former players. I’m wholly at a loss to find one single player who feels the program could have done differently or better who also hates the idea of more players on the servers. Not one!
This idea that players have to either completely love the promotion or they automatically stand against it entirely is simply absurd.
Moorgard, very apt analogy and the loyal son was also rather upset, tool. I never could get the whole moral of that tale.
But… growing up, I did experience a certain attempt to buy my affection when my brother went off to college and my parents were left with me.. who they mostly neglected and ignored for the previous 17 years (except to tell me how much of a disappointment I was because I wasn’t my brother).. I got a car for it, Can’t really say it worked, though, I didn’t respect them any more for them suddenly trying to buy what they’d never cultivated before and were confused on how to approach.
Ya know, with the level of non-marketing SOE has done in the past, it is kinda the same thing. The customers they should have cultivated in the past they’re now trying to buy with buckets of stuff. I doubt too many of those they’re trying to reach respect the offer (there are a lot of people looking at the proximity of the timing, too, to a certain product release even if it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with a calendar date).
I personally felt this was the last straw for me, and I canceled.
I was on the fence of keeping 2 scrips going…EQ2 and AoC.
But, my guild started to slowly whittle away from people leaving or playing something else…
Then this little number happens…and after paying 40 bucks for Rise of Kunark, and hating that zone, and never playing, and feeling I did not get my moneys worth…and then throwing the freebies at older customers who left the game…
Well, I am now an avid AoC player.
What a dumb argument about this Living Legacy stuff, and a bunch of cry baby foot stomping. I posted my thoughts on my blog a couple of days ago. Let it die already.
Anything to help the game get some new life. At least they are doing something.
I laughed reading Moorgard’s quote. And Rijacki: the moral of that story had little to do with justice; it was simply about unconditional love.
Ultimately there should be a loyalty reward, but nothing extravagant. I don’t lose anything by seeing old faces again.
I wasn’t aware that marketing promotions were about unconditional love. I should make a note to give big hugs and sloppy kisses to all the marketing and PR folks at FanFaire then.
Start with whoever will be wearing the Antonia Bayle costume, I know I would.