Man, I just lol'd and deleted it. But I have exactly 2 characters I actively play at this point, so I wasn't really inconvenienced repeatedly.
People are irritated because the in-game mail is less marketing and more upselling or cross-selling. https://tinyurl.com/ya6udyy2 "Upselling is the practice of encouraging customers to purchase a comparable higher-end product than the one in question, while cross-selling invites customers to buy related or complementary items. Though often used interchangeably, both offer distinct benefits and can be effective in tandem. Upselling and cross-selling are mutually beneficial when done properly, providing maximum value to customers and increasing revenue without the recurring cost of many marketing channels." The "providing maximum value" seems to be lost on Daybreak's Marketing Department. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing.asp "Marketing are activities of a company associated with buying and selling a product or service. It includes advertising, selling and delivering products to people. People who work in marketing departments of companies try to get the attention of target audiences by using slogans, packaging design, celebrity endorsements and general media exposure." Yes marketing does include upselling or cross-selling. "Marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them." But people are irritated because there is next to nothing being done to "acquire customers." Which would keep the game and company growing. And "providing maximum value" seems to be lost on Daybreak. http://archive.is/6KWqV "There are 111,672 level 100 characters that logged in since KA launched, minus the 5-10% who opt out. Pretty sure decorators and solo questers are keeping the lights on." Feldon I am guilty of mixing "characters" with "players". A "player" can have multiple "characters" and not the other way around. [back of napkin calculations with wild rounding] I've noticed in game (since 2005) and on forum, virtually every player has two characters. Excluding first year 'new car smell' players. At 2 characters per player, that's 100,000 (111,672) characters to 50,000 players. At $10 ($9.99) per month, that's $500,000 per month revenue. At $15 ($14.99) per month, that's $750,000 per month. Sounds cool, right? But I've also noticed that most players fill their six character slots with level 100's. I've got several dozen, paid, but let's not go there. Let's suppose that's the median number of level 100 characters per player. At 6 characters per player, that's 100,000 characters to 17,000 (16,667) players. At $10 per month that's $170,000 per month revenue. At $15 per month, that's $255,000 per month revenue. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Daybreak-Game-Company-Salaries-E973097.htm Senior Software Engineer - $118k-$237k Game Designer - $55k-$62k Senior Producer - $75k-186k Of course it get's better when you consider X number of characters/players are free to play. Although they did purchase Kunark Ascending, that averages out to about $3 a month. Skeleton crew, and expense indeed.
Thought provoking post. I wonder what amount each player spent on ascension research/Epic ability research. That is how you weed out the serious 100's and those that just exist. Would you mind searching through those 100k + characters and look at their spells and check back in? While you are at it search for the level 50's on FG and see how many unique accts were new subs and how many xp potions they purchased? While I am being a tad facetious it would be interesting to see the numbers. Obviously DBG has to be turning a little profit or quite frankly the game would sunset. All the crying about a harmless in-game advert seems blown out of proportion and as I stated earlier before, quite petty. If the company weren't making money we would not be playing the game we love. I support it in anyway I can. I would rather give a couple thousand dollars to a proven game over being a 1k donor to a game like Pantheon that will indeed have the same sort of micro transactions If and that is a big if it ever sees the light of day.
Strangely enough I knew a few people who decided to buy it. 1 that even wanted to buy it for more than one toon on the account if he could have. So success.
A good heuristic is 80/20 rule: 20% of the active players are generating 80% of micro transaction revenue. If the relationship is in the ballpark, then it would seem to make more sense to put marketing efforts into growing the active player base instead of trying to manipulate more sales out of a shrinking one. Odd way to go about making money, unless DBG execs have decided on a target date to shut her down, and are just extracting as much money from players in the mean time.
So, if you don't spend extra money to play the game you already spend money on you are not a serious player, you are just there to exist? You must be a dev or one of the investment bankers running the company. That statement makes pretty much everything you say irrelevant.
I can tell it is probably difficult for you to follow along with complex conversations so just go ahead and take things out of context to suit your own agenda. You should have quoted my whole post replying to the person who posted above me. Your inferiority complex is really shining through now. Good job.
Well, hopefully, Amazon Games will pick us up if Nova doesn't want us any more. They already have Smed there... ;-> Uwk
Just re-reading this thread again, and it dawned on me (finally): if the devs had basically repeated what they had in the Message of the Day, about "Go to the website and lookit all the stuff! " with NO "attachment," I don't think the resentment would be as great. They could have basically the exact same wording as in the current mail, without people running the risk of crashing by being forcibly punted over. Granted, we'd probably take one look at the mail and delete it anyway, but now we have to jump through an annoying hoop to get to the privilege of deleting it, and that stirs up resentment on top of "oh, looky, another official mail. Yawn" ennui. Like getting yet another "Sign up for this credit card today or be considered a pariah by all right-thinking people!" snail mail, opening the envelope to extract everything for the shredder (especially the bits about "Fill out this application here with your legal name! What will the neighbors think if you don't!"), and finding a set mousetrap within. You can still eventually get to the shredder-bait, but you have to go through the process of removing the darn other thing from your fingers first. :-/ Plus, for the few of us here who were intrigued by it, making it only one per account (seriously, devs? You don't want more than one character getting this? You don't want people shelling out $29.95 x7 [at least ;->] for all their toons [$209.65 total, btw]??) kind of killed any sales, too. :-/ Uwk
What amazes me is how this thread on the most mundane of topics has reached five pages. A thread discussing class balance, which is a much bigger issue, flames out on the second page. He'll, I don't think the waahfest that the post about the ethereals only being attained in experts has half this many posts. In the time that everyone took to complain on the forums over an in game mail you could've deleted it on every character you have get over it
That's because they keep locking the substantive threads about real topics. For example that one about the ethereal event being in experts has been locked in 3 or four other versions. One of them had some really telling numbers posted by Feldon about the low population of players that is able to complete many of the expert zones.
as has been explained there are some mails folks want to keep the /clear_mail command would delete those mails. They should have done what Uwkete-of-Crushbone suggested put it in the body to ask folks to look at hte website not force us to go there. we would not have been so upset if they'd done that.
Expressing displeasure with their mailing is nothing to lol about in my opinion. I hope DBG takes her paying customers more serious than some ppl here do. I pay every month and expect to not be bothered with advertising ingame. - in this case penetrant Advertising that redirects me somewhere - I pay to play and not to be botherted with such stuff. Launcher is ok but as soon as i am ingame i want to be in Norrath - nowhere else.
Most trial-versions of smartphone games mention there won`t be any more advertising if you buy the game - seems Daybreak can`t manage.
I don't know about your mailbox, but mine has things that I want to save, such as the last mail from a now deceased friend. The /clear_mailbox doesn't allow you to pick and choose what is removed, it is an all or nothing command. Granted, this is only for one character of mine, but the misleading attachment is still extremely annoying, and the only way to get rid of this misleading attachment is to endure the redirect or delete ALL of the mail...multiplied with all of my characters. I can say with certainty that, even if I were interested in the product being offered, this method of marketing is having the opposite effect.
