Formal Letter to SE about RMT situation.

[tocsin]

This is frankly starting to go from mere indifference to actual trolling on SE's part. The letters from the producer came out, and despite RMT being on every single page of the questions, it was still not addressed. I now view this as SE literally trolling the community, purposely leaving the RMT up just to spite us.

I cancelled my pre-order today, and I encourage others to do so. SE clearly no longer deserves our money, and I feel dirty even paying my subscription to them.

[Morbid]

This is frankly starting to go from mere indifference to actual trolling on SE's part. The letters from the producer came out, and despite RMT being on every single page of the questions, it was still not addressed. I now view this as SE literally trolling the community, purposely leaving the RMT up just to spite us.

I cancelled my pre-order today, and I encourage others to do so. SE clearly no longer deserves our money, and I feel dirty even paying my subscription to them.

Although it sucks you decided to cancel your preorder I do understand. I tend to stay away from preordering all together now just for the fact of how gaming has become in general. The RMT spam has not made me consider NOT getting the expansion or maintaining my subscription but it definitely keeps me from any additional (optional) subscription items.

And that possibly is one reason why SE seems so lackluster to handle this RMT situation. Players are still playing, it would honestly take a mass exodus for Square to take this seriously as it deserves and sadly your one cancellation does nil to Square Enixs' bottom line.

[Niwashi]

And that possibly is one reason why SE seems so lackluster to handle this RMT situation. Players are still playing, it would honestly take a mass exodus for Square to take this seriously as it deserves and sadly your one cancellation does nil to Square Enixs' bottom line.

One cancellation won't mean much to them, but we've heard about quite a few new players who tried out the game and were turned off from it due to the RMT spam.

Of course, there's no good way to measure how many purchases and subscriptions SE could otherwise have gotten but didn't. But consider that the ones we hear of are only the tiny few who (1) try the game at the urging of a friend, or at least have a friend who plays it (2) realize it's the RMT that makes the game "not fun" rather than just deciding it's not fun (as not everyone puts much thought into the reasons behind why they do or don't like something) (3) explains to their friend that it's the RMT keeping them from continuing the game (4) their friend is someone who actually comes to these forums (5) their friend decides to post about the fact that they wouldn't get the game due to RMT and (6) that post is in this or another thread that you or I have actually read (as I doubt any of us can keep up with most of what gets posted).

Only the minuscule percentage of lost potential that comes from players who meet all of those (mostly rare) conditions turn into cases where we'll actually see something along the lines of "my friend was going to get this game, but as soon as he saw all the RMT spam he decided it's not worth putting up with that, so now he won't." Yet I've seen variations on that statement expressed quite a few times from different people. Extrapolating from several cases being such a tiny proportion of the issue, it's pretty clear that SE is already losing tens of thousands of purchases and subscriptions. That's most certainly hitting their bottom line whether they'll acknowledge that fact or not.

Existing players have more invested in the game than new people just checking it out for the first time. So there aren't likely to be nearly as many players who will quit or (as in Tocsin's case) cancel an order due to the RMT situation as there are new players who choose not to get this game for that reason.

But consider the people who resort to staying in /busy status most of the time they're online. Or even players who just have a less social environment due to all the other people who are doing so. An MMO that doesn't have much social interaction is less engaging than one that does. So, even though the game aspects may be good, they're not as drawn into it as they might have been. So some days they just don't feel as much like playing. This gradually shifts into most days and they drift away, logging in less and less often until they decide it's not worth subscribing to a game they rarely play. This pattern happens to nearly all players in all games eventually, so people rarely give much thought to why it's happening sooner rather than later. But either constant harassment or social isolation to avoid that harassment are both factors that lead to time spent in-game being less fun. And that can speed up the drifting away pattern even in players who don't actually decide that that's why they're leaving.

So, yes, rage-quits over this issue or canceled purchases in protest to it are going to be quite rare, but between new players deciding not to get this game and existing players leaving the game sooner, SE is certainly losing money over this.

[Adire]

snip

I'm on my last 2 weeks of sub time myself. I'm planning on going on break until after Heavensward, seeing how the game is by then, then deciding whether or not to come back.

I am not spammed to hell and back like some people are by RMTs, but I do not condone the apathy being shown by SE on this matter as well as many other problems. The only way I will be back is if some of the problems, particularly RMTs are addressed, or if I get the urge to play enough that it overpowers my better judgement.

Money speaks louder than words to corporations after all.