Funcom Turns To Blackmail

Former subscribers to Funcom's Age of Conan are reporting that the company has changed its recruiting tactics. Instead of luring former players back with higher XP, in-game items and other bonuses, Funcom has relegated itself to straight up blackmail.

[Go Gaming Giant]

Got the same email, but the funny thing is Im pretty sure my character was well over level 20.

[Myze]

Not that I would ever go back to the game, but I don't see how this is "blackmail." It takes like 4-5 hours to get to level 20, hardly a deal breaker for an MMO character. At least that's about as long as it takes from what I can remember. The game was incredibly easy to level a character in.

[Mikeyy]

it's the priciple of it. World of warcraft doesnt delete charactors from your account, EVER.

You seriously did'nt see any problem with Funcom's new policy?

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

I see nothing wrong with it. They can do whatever they want as long as they adhere to the terms they set forth when you signed up.

However, I fail to see how you are going to gain customers this way. You will:

a) anger your previous customers
b) remove the opportunity for these players to return

In return, you might get a little boost in subscribers now. This seems like a bad management decision. Want to get them back, add new content and give past customers a month free play time with no strings attached. Once they are hooked, they will open their pocket book, invite more friends and likely to stay more loyal.

[Myze]

@2.1

First of all, maintaining characters costs money, money that Funcom doesn't have a lot of because this isn't WoW.

Second, and by far the most important part: If your character isn't over level 20, that means you never really played the game for any purpose or reasonable amount of time in the first place, and sure as hell have no intention of returning to the game.

This article is WAY overblown for something that is completely expected. The game is dying, and if it doesn't go to free-to-play, will probably be dead in about a year. Remember that Funcom could take the servers offline at anytime if they wanted to.

[Avery]

WORLD OF WARCRAFT® TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT
Blizzard Entertainment may, in its sole and absolute discretion, suspend or terminate your access to the Service and disable or delete the Account, if: [...]
(3) you use all of the allotted time that you have purchased to access World of Warcraft via a "World of Warcraft Game Card" or similar instrument

[Mikeyy]

WOW, that is an outrage.

[JeepGamer]

This isn't going to work because anyone who hasn't been playing doesn't care.

[Crimsoneer]

Seriously? If you're not playing, we're going to delete your character if you haven't put over 2 hours of work into it? This isn't blackmail, it's common sense.

This is the equivalent of deleting all chars under level 10 for WoW. Makes no difference to anybody actually interested in playing, other than making the service faster and of better quality.

[tdrules]

how dare they not have to put up with unused characters clogging up their servers

[Elven6]

I haven't gotten this email and my account rank out in late December, so I assume it must be for really old accounts? If that's the case, would those people actually return to the game? Perhaps they might with the expansions but still.

That title is very damning,

[Senden]

Very petty in my opinion, while you can say that it's not a big deal and that it's easy to level up, but at the end of the day it is a form of blackmail and the negatives of this ploy far far outweigh the positives in terms of the amount of people who will return.

To be honest though I will never trust funcom again anyway.. I remember buying the game on release, checking out the minimum specs and my comp met them easily.. go in game and I had so many issues, the only way I could realistically play the game was on the lowest settings which pretty much took away almost EVERY detail in the game and you was left with polygons so darn ugly, that some amiga 500 games looked better.

[Saryk]

I can careless, if they wanted, they could delete the 40+ characters, on my account.

[NotSoSilentBob]

They can do this as with any online game they(the dev/publisher) have the final say about anything and everything. They can give you 24 hrs notice and then cut the service and you are out of luck.

[Drac]

I'll have to check and see if I got the same email.

Simple reply will be
"Thank you dear Funcom for convincing me never to subscribe to any of your games in the future."

[Goldenarmz]

if i have a character/s under lvl 20..and its been MONTHS since i last played.. i think it safe to say im not coming back to the game. So i dont know why people are flippin out.. .if you play the game then you obviously are higher than lvl 20..... not getting the email because you are an active member so this whole article is moot. Makes no sense ppl flip out over nothing.

[ArmrdChaos]

Bugs, a$$hats, and the single player end game were all jokes that drove me away. If you have a need to play a game of this type then download DDO and play for free.

[Avery]

Most pay to play mmorpg's have this stated in their terms and conditions, Funcom is not alone in this. Warhammer, Vanguard, SOE, Turbine, Eve etc all say the same thing.

[AnotherGamerUser]

Who cares... obviously if you are not playing the game on a regular basis you dont care if your character is wiped out.

[The_Perverted_Ninja]

They can delete my character I'm never playing a funcom game again.