Mass Mail

I find it Appaling that we have stooped to a level that we are sending in game mass mails that absolutely can not be deleted unless you clear the mailbox, or are FORCED to be directed to the web site by claiming the item attached to the mail in order to delete it. Wasn't the ascension system enough of a cash grab? Can we please, for the love of god, make this mail delete able without having to claim the gift? i really do not want to clear my mailbox, or be forced to a website in order to try to shove product i do not wish to purchase down my throat. this is bad business taste.

(For those that haven't received this mail yet, it popped into my mailbox when I zoned into Obulus Frontier.)

Agreed about the frustration of it not being able to be deleted, and calling the attachment a gift is very misleading.

With respect to the message itself, I tried to reply with the following (but replies aren't allowed, and wisely so, I suspect):


I sincerely hope the powers-that-be do not embrace this sales method any further. If they wish to continue using in-game mail for communication such as polls and the like, the mail needs to be able to be trusted; using it for sales undermines that trust.

I respectfully ask that you please reconsider using this method to drive sales.

People complain when the company doesn't do marketing. People complain when the company does marketing. *shrug*

Marketing needs to be aimed at people already not giving them money, and/or in a less forceful manor than ramming it down our throats.

Marketting is aimed at bringing people INTO the game.. not twisting players already in the game into spending even more money on.... stuff.

This is marketing the same way the "two hour" timeshare sales meeting is marketing.

It's not deleteable because of the attachment. Extract the attachment and you can delete it. As far as I know, all mail with attachments works that way, even player sent, as a safeguard against accidental deletion. When the browser window pops up, just close it out, then delete your mail.

Marketing is about making money.

even worse forcing us to go to that page when we don't want to on every single one of our alts so we can delete the mail.

there is marketing and there is marketing this is the Bad kind of marketing forcing people to go to a page so they can delet something out of their ingame mail so it don't clog up the mailbox.

Oh I wasn't suggesting it was a good idea. I was just pointing out that it wasn't unique coding for marketing and that you could get rid of it.

Meh, When they allow me to use my vet potions on Fallen Gate instead of buying them... I might think of caring what marketing is doing and spend a little more

I know but the Devs need to tell the bean counters that this is not the way to retain players.

You are right, all attachments work this way, but this isn't a true "attachment" or "gift" that can be received, so it's a bit misleading. There have also been systems that tend to become unstable or crash when trying to open a browser when playing (hopefully fewer now), so requiring every toon to do so just to delete the mail could be troublesome (hopefully not).

I admit that it's a novel way to sell to the playerbase, and I am all for helping to keep the game going. In this case, however, I think the mail system should be kept strictly for communication...we should be able to trust in-game mail that is sent to us from the development team, and using it for something like this might have the unfortunate side effect of diluting the impact of other mail from the team.

If you are going to pull this kind of stunt trying to sell stuff you probably will have the reverse effect. This might not be super annoying if you are playing a couple of toons but when you get to have to clear every single toon it is extremely annoying.
The clear_mailbox option saves some time but you either have to check your mail to make sure you aren't dumping real mail or just delete and hope. Stupid idea. What's next? Postage due using DBG cash to look at mail?

I just wish the Gateway to Adventure Pack gave you items that were claimable per character, instead of per account. I'd buy one if I could claim the items on all 9 of my characters on Fallen Gate. I'm not going to buy it for just one of them and there's no way I'm buying it nine times.

Marketing? Marketing is informing you they are offering something. Not forcing you to go to the sales website whether you want the item or not.

No one is forcing you to click on the item. Just leave it there. It's not hurting anything. If you really don't like it I think there is a / command that clears out all your mail, including this one.

Heh! I thought this was an interesting, if, yeah, infuriating topic, but I figured it was just on the TLE servers, especially Fallen Gate...nope! Logged in to one of my old-timey vet toons on an old-timey server, and boom, there it was. Sonuva-- Yeah, going to the stupid website (with all the pitfalls that could entail) to be able to delete it from one toon, or seven toons, is bad enough, but for those of us with -- oh, let's just say, more than seven toons -- it WILL take up most of my available playing time. >:-(

Marketing, my dear Dude, consists primarily of ADVERTISING, which this game and its Powers have always been strangely reluctant to do ("We don't want just anyone being able to play our game..." Really?). World of Warcraft, which came out roughly at the same time as EQ2, very rapidly got 10-100x the amount of players we've ever had here (even pre-Pro7, the Game Killer) due to saturation marketing, and making SURE their name was everywhere, not just in gaming magazines or one big ol' ad run at theaters only. TV ads. Online ads. BILLBOARDS. Making their monthly game cards available to everyone from 7-11 and Target to gaming stores, etc. (probably anywhere any fillable cards were sold as well, for all I know) and telling the people manning the counters what they were for. When I would go into Target to pick one up for EQ2, back in the days when they were still available (are they? Haven't looked for so long), the clerk had no idea what I was talking about ("SOE? Everquest?" "It's a game like World of Warcraft." "OH! Oh yeah, we have tons of those, over there in the gaming card stuff, those sell real well. Good luck finding yours!"). That is not the way to get people to your game. :-/

Irritating the current crop of paying customers is not the way to keep them.

Uwk

Game cards are no longer available. And I totally hear you about the alts... let's just say I have something like eight sets of crafters...