My Pound of Flesh...

[HannibalCane]

***Update: I requested a refund from Wargaming for the 6,000 doubloons I spent on the 1st booster because they changed the rules on buying boosters in the middle of the event. I'd purchased it believing I could get second one if I needed it. Their response was a canned answer saying they can't refund doubloons after a certain date, which is a different issue. They changed the rules during the event and they never stated you would not be able to buy boosters after a certain date.***

 

 

Well, my quest for the Puerto Rico is over. After a massive grind with a premium account time, lack of sleep and being bored to tears playing co-op, I have completed 8 free boosters (Long Term- Contracts) and 1 pay booster (Head of Enterprise) for a total of 9 boosters. My reward, everything except for the Puerto Rico. I figured out a few days ago that even if I finished the 6^th directive (will I could have easily done), I would still be 35 ship building tokens (I did every daily mission) short of the PR. I spent what tokens I had on the last free booster to get to a total of 8 to make sure I at least got the coal and the steel.

 

I have no doubt Wargaming did this intentionally. Imaging putting in all this hard work and not getting the ship because you cannot earn 35 ship building tokens. In past directives, the later ones gave more ship reward points, but not in the Puerto Rico grind. They give exactly the same. The booster increase in price to 350 shipbuilding tokens, but the later stages still only give 300 of them.

 

Since I bought the first booster, I naively assumed I could buy the second, since it still showed available for 8,000 doubloons. Somebody was nice enough to gift me some Christmas containers and I purchase a few more to make up the difference. When I moused over it, the booster icon lit up and told me I did not have enough doubloons, which meant if I had enough doubloons I could purchase it. Once I got the extra doubloons and tried to click on it, it told me it was unavailable. It should been clearly stated that boosters were only available up to to a certain date and reiterated in the ship building section. The icon should not have lit up when moused over.

 

I read through New Years notes at least 3 times and never saw anything about boosters not being available. Of course, I could have missed it. There was a lot of information and I want to play, not read through the events over and over so I don’t miss one little detail.

 

So here I am, no Puerto Rico. Of course people will say, but you got all that coal and steel. I have such a small amount of steel I couldn’t buy a tug boat and 10,000 coal is roughly 5 days of daily missions. I didn’t do the grind for coal and steel, or even the Gorizia, which is at best an average ship and will sit in port most of the time. I did the grind to get the Puerto Rico- which coincidentally, Wargaming itself made the point of the massive grind.

 

I’m sure some fan boys will chime in and say you should have used the calculators or spent more time doing the math. Well, I don’t play the game to spend time looking over spreadsheets, constantly reading the forums, etc. I play the game to have fun. That is not fun to me and the calculators were all about boosting up front and said nothing about not being able to buy boosters towards the end if you needed them. There is plenty of evidence for anyone willing to look the Wargaming completely misrepresented the event. If they hadn’t, they would not have give out refunds.

 

I did the event on the test server and read Wargaming’s posts which made it seem like the grind would be a harder than the Benham, but not impossible for somebody with a job. The amount of hours people had to put in to get it free was ludicrous, as evidenced by the extremely low number of players that qualified for the Hall of Fame.

 

This event is extremely disheartening and tops off a really crappy holiday season for me. The grind made me like the game a lot less. It also changed my perception of Wargaming from a friendly to adversarial one.

 

I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh. You turned a positive, supportive customer who recommended the game to all his friends, to somebody who won’t recommend it to anyone. I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh, you earned it.

 

 

[ExploratorOne]

Wow, one free booster away.  Painful...

It would have worked so much better if they had been clear at the very beginning that Gorizia (and progress rewards) was the real freebie and PR was only for the hard core dedicated players.  I hope when it is released in another form, they will find a way to give credit for the progress during this event.  I am pretty confident the NA staff are probably working on something like this, but the question is whether it will make it up the chain.

(DISCLAIMER:  I bought two boosters, used the WG spreadsheet to determine I needed to do the Dailies and three Directives and my PR finished a few hours ago.  In spite of that, it was a very stressful event.)

[HannibalCane]

Yes, but I think they did it intentionally. Sad really.

 

[Capt_Ahab1776]

Maybe the next grind won't be as harsh. Hope not anyways. I wonder if the grinds for the Benham and Hill, French DD's, and Italian cruisers yielded more free via grind ships than WoW had intended? 

[ExploratorOne]

1 minute ago, KristopherKringle said:

Yes, but I think they did it intentionally. Sad really.

 

 

[HannibalCane]

3 minutes ago, ExploratorOne said:

 

So basically, you can do another grind. Yeah!!!

[Taichunger]

This fiasco is going to be studied in B-schools as a case study in how not to treat customers.

[ExploratorOne]

1 minute ago, KristopherKringle said:

So basically, you can do another grind. Yeah!!!

Doubt it will be a grind.  Probably Coal (or Steel).  I would hope not Steel because that will just inflame a number of players that do not work towards earning Steel.

[Diesel_Thunder]

7 minutes ago, ExploratorOne said:

Doubt it will be a grind.  Probably Coal (or Steel).  I would hope not Steel because that will just inflame a number of players that do not work towards earning Steel.

Or those in a clan not active enough to field teams in Clan Battles.

28 minutes ago, KristopherKringle said:

This event is extremely disheartening and tops off a really crappy holiday season for me. The grind made me like the game a lot less. It also changed my perception of Wargaming from a friendly to adversarial one.

 

 

I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh. You turned a positive, supportive customer who recommended the game to all his friends, to somebody who won’t recommend it to anyone. I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh, you earned it.

Yeah, my opinion of WG has definitely shifted, and not in a positive way either.

[ExploratorOne]

Just now, Diesel_Thunder said:

Or those in a clan not active enough to field teams in Clan Battles.

Yep, all of my Steel has come from events and it takes forever to build up.  Especially since I am no longer thrilled with the regular Ranked battles.  Managed to get Black and now have enough to get Flint.  Debating on whether to wait the year it will probably take to get the additional 3.5K Steel to get Neustrashimi instead.

[Kizarvexis]

27 minutes ago, KristopherKringle said:

Well, my quest for the Puerto Rico is over. After a massive grind with a premium account time, lack of sleep and being bored to tears playing co-op, I have completed 8 free boosters (Long Term- Contracts) and 1 pay booster (Head of Enterprise) for a total of 9 boosters. My reward, everything except for the Puerto Rico. I figured out a few days ago that even if I finished the 6^th directive (will I could have easily done), I would still be 35 ship building tokens (I did every daily mission) short of the PR. I spent what tokens I had on the last free booster to get to a total of 8 to make sure I at least got the coal and the steel.

 

I have no doubt Wargaming did this intentionally. Imaging putting in all this hard work and not getting the ship because you cannot earn 35 ship building tokens. In past directives, the later ones gave more ship reward points, but not in the Puerto Rico grind. They give exactly the same. The booster increase in price to 350 shipbuilding tokens, but the later stages still only give 300 of them.

 

Since I bought the first booster, I naively assumed I could buy the second, since it still showed available for 8,000 doubloons. Somebody was nice enough to gift me some Christmas containers and I purchase a few more to make up the difference. When I moused over it, the booster icon lit up and told me I did not have enough doubloons, which meant if I had enough doubloons I could purchase it. Once I got the extra doubloons and tried to click on it, it told me it was unavailable. It should been clearly stated that boosters were only available up to to a certain date and reiterated in the ship building section. The icon should not have lit up when moused over.

 

I read through New Years notes at least 3 times and never saw anything about boosters not being available. Of course, I could have missed it. There was a lot of information and I want to play, not read through the events over and over so I don’t miss one little detail.

 

So here I am, no Puerto Rico. Of course people will say, but you got all that coal and steel. I have such a small amount of steel I couldn’t buy a tug boat and 10,000 coal is roughly 5 days of daily missions. I didn’t do the grind for coal and steel, or even the Gorizia, which is at best an average ship and will sit in port most of the time. I did the grind to get the Puerto Rico- which coincidentally, Wargaming itself made the point of the massive grind.

 

I’m sure some fan boys will chime in and say you should have used the calculators or spent more time doing the math. Well, I don’t play the game to spend time looking over spreadsheets, constantly reading the forums, etc. I play the game to have fun. That is not fun to me and the calculators were all about boosting up front and said nothing about not being able to buy boosters towards the end if you needed them. There is plenty of evidence for anyone willing to look the Wargaming completely misrepresented the event. If they hadn’t, they would not have give out refunds.

 

I did the event on the test server and read Wargaming’s posts which made it seem like the grind would be a harder than the Benham, but not impossible for somebody with a job. The amount of hours people had to put in to get it free was ludicrous, as evidenced by the extremely low number of players that qualified for the Hall of Fame.

 

This event is extremely disheartening and tops off a really crappy holiday season for me. The grind made me like the game a lot less. It also changed my perception of Wargaming from a friendly to adversarial one.

 

I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh. You turned a positive, supportive customer who recommended the game to all his friends, to somebody who won’t recommend it to anyone. I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh, you earned it.

No, WG should have provided a calculator BEFORE the patch dropped so people could see what they could expect. WG dug themselves a huge PR whole and lost tons of goodwill with this messed PR event.

[Playbuoy]

44 minutes ago, KristopherKringle said:

You turned a positive, supportive customer who recommended the game to all his friends, to somebody who won’t recommend it to anyone.

+1. I am equally disgusted. The whole event was designed in a very non-transparent way. it should have been plain from the beginning what level of grinding and doublon investment was required to get the PR. 

[Kemi337]

57 minutes ago, KristopherKringle said:

Well, my quest for the Puerto Rico is over. After a massive grind with a premium account time, lack of sleep and being bored to tears playing co-op, I have completed 8 free boosters (Long Term- Contracts) and 1 pay booster (Head of Enterprise) for a total of 9 boosters. My reward, everything except for the Puerto Rico. I figured out a few days ago that even if I finished the 6^th directive (will I could have easily done), I would still be 35 ship building tokens (I did every daily mission) short of the PR. I spent what tokens I had on the last free booster to get to a total of 8 to make sure I at least got the coal and the steel.

 

I have no doubt Wargaming did this intentionally. Imaging putting in all this hard work and not getting the ship because you cannot earn 35 ship building tokens. In past directives, the later ones gave more ship reward points, but not in the Puerto Rico grind. They give exactly the same. The booster increase in price to 350 shipbuilding tokens, but the later stages still only give 300 of them.

 

Since I bought the first booster, I naively assumed I could buy the second, since it still showed available for 8,000 doubloons. Somebody was nice enough to gift me some Christmas containers and I purchase a few more to make up the difference. When I moused over it, the booster icon lit up and told me I did not have enough doubloons, which meant if I had enough doubloons I could purchase it. Once I got the extra doubloons and tried to click on it, it told me it was unavailable. It should been clearly stated that boosters were only available up to to a certain date and reiterated in the ship building section. The icon should not have lit up when moused over.

 

I read through New Years notes at least 3 times and never saw anything about boosters not being available. Of course, I could have missed it. There was a lot of information and I want to play, not read through the events over and over so I don’t miss one little detail.

 

So here I am, no Puerto Rico. Of course people will say, but you got all that coal and steel. I have such a small amount of steel I couldn’t buy a tug boat and 10,000 coal is roughly 5 days of daily missions. I didn’t do the grind for coal and steel, or even the Gorizia, which is at best an average ship and will sit in port most of the time. I did the grind to get the Puerto Rico- which coincidentally, Wargaming itself made the point of the massive grind.

 

I’m sure some fan boys will chime in and say you should have used the calculators or spent more time doing the math. Well, I don’t play the game to spend time looking over spreadsheets, constantly reading the forums, etc. I play the game to have fun. That is not fun to me and the calculators were all about boosting up front and said nothing about not being able to buy boosters towards the end if you needed them. There is plenty of evidence for anyone willing to look the Wargaming completely misrepresented the event. If they hadn’t, they would not have give out refunds.

 

I did the event on the test server and read Wargaming’s posts which made it seem like the grind would be a harder than the Benham, but not impossible for somebody with a job. The amount of hours people had to put in to get it free was ludicrous, as evidenced by the extremely low number of players that qualified for the Hall of Fame.

 

This event is extremely disheartening and tops off a really crappy holiday season for me. The grind made me like the game a lot less. It also changed my perception of Wargaming from a friendly to adversarial one.

 

I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh. You turned a positive, supportive customer who recommended the game to all his friends, to somebody who won’t recommend it to anyone. I hope you enjoy your pound of flesh, you earned it.

As of right now there are only 74 players in the hall of fame, and technically that doesn't even guarantee they could have gotten the ship for free if they were slow at doing it.
Even if the small handful of people such as myself and @Kingpin61 who didn't need Dir 7 are included - there are probably less than 100 people who were able to earn it for free.

The boosters expiring at the opening of the 7th directive was done intentionally so someone in your position would need to pay 15K to finish the ship instead of the 8K from that booster, or even as low as 6K if you were that close having not bought any.

Completely predatory from the start.

[HannibalCane]

They said they disabled the boosters so people wouldn't feel cheated. Obviously another lie. I don't know how they can live with themselves. I would feel like such a piece of crap for treating people this way. No different than people who rob the elderly with robocalls. Same mentality.

 

[Intricate_Process]

In business it is very easy to "cut your nose off to spite your face" and that is what WG is doing.  Growing this game long-term is more important than short-term profits.  On the other hand WG knows whatever they do the money continues to come in so, to them it's like why change?

[Capt_JollyRoger]

Can we have the events back like the Marblehead one where all you had to do was spell a name of a ship?

 

These grinds are getting out of hand.

[KAPTAIN_KAOS_OBERMEISTER]

What WGing has done is to simply solidify the fact that "what they say" can NEVER be trusted. WGing has cemented within a great number of it's customers minds that they are liars and deceivers. WGing's responses to the event have in my mind illustrated the character of it's management as dismissive and condescending with statements which sounded to me like "If we loose players we will simply get new players..." So WGing if that was your intention... message received.                      

 

[HannibalCane]

48 minutes ago, KAPTAIN_KAOS_OBERMEISTER said:

What WGing has done is to simply solidify the fact that "what they say" can NEVER be trusted. WGing has cemented within a great number of it's customers minds that they are liars and deceivers. WGing's responses to the event have in my mind illustrated the character of it's management as dismissive and condescending with statements which sounded to me like "If we loose players we will simply get new players..." So WGing if that was your intention... message received.                      

 

I would agree. I don't trust them any more. I will take everything they say now with a large grain of salt.

 

[Lert]

1 hour ago, JollyRoger6969 said:

Can we have the events back like the Marblehead one where all you had to do was spell a name of a ship?

Even then you got the Marblehead even if you didn't complete the spelling but showed sufficient effort.

Would be nice if WG extends the same courtesy to people who managed 35 out of 36 stages. But then, that would suck for the people who did 34 ...

[LadyAnesjka]

This break my heart.

 

I am so sorry to hear this.

[HannibalCane]

Thanks, I appreciate the support.

1 minute ago, LadyAnesjka said:

This break my heart.

 

I am so sorry to hear this.

 

[SidTheBlade]

I think the OP is very reasonable and measured in the post. I agree, the overall residual impression I have is a slight loathing and contempt for WG staff.

I feel that they must have contempt for me, because of who I am, and what I choose to do. I feel that they have a culture of predatory dishonesty towards the player base.

Naturally, this impression causes me to feel reciprocal feelings towards them, as a group of people. 

No way would I recommend this game, or this company, with this culture, to anyone.

I look forward to alternatives coming to market, and have made the firm decision to make no further purchases from WG.

It is a matter of personal pride, at this point. These people manifestly hold me in contempt.

What sort of person I am, to give them my business?

[Asym_KS]

3 hours ago, KristopherKringle said:

Yes, but I think they did it intentionally. Sad really.

You couldn't make this sale outline up!!!    I talked to a e-Marketing professor I know who teaches in the video game creation degree program and he thought I was joking !!!  Till, when he came over for Christmas, I showed him.....   I bet he'll use some of this event this semester after some additional research.......  Speechless he was and baffled.....'Why would they........" 

No, it wasn't ever considered doable.....   Compulsive behavior players will spend and do, no matter what the cost....  Those 20-25% are whom this event was designed for.....  Hard cash right up and a grind that might just be considered "clinically compulsive".....  Oh yes, they thought this out; not only for the 20% but, the "other die hards" that would try and................................fail (cha ching !)    In terms of Retention, this event gets an "F"......   In terms of revenue generation at a minimal cost, they get an A-........because the whales "just spent they way through" and the Purple kind-of-guys spent and ground.......  What 72 players in the Hall of Fame now?  Wow........I never got through Directive 4......about half way.  And, who the heck wants to spend a cent on an average CA anyway???  Wow.  Expect more of these sales events this year....

[HannibalCane]

11 minutes ago, Asym_KS said:

You couldn't make this sale outline up!!!    I talked to a e-Marketing professor I know who teaches in the video game creation degree program and he thought I was joking !!!  Till, when he came over for Christmas, I showed him.....   I bet he'll use some of this event this semester after some additional research.......  Speechless he was and baffled.....'Why would they........" 

No, it wasn't ever considered doable.....   Compulsive behavior players will spend and do, no matter what the cost....  Those 20-25% are whom this event was designed for.....  Hard cash right up and a grind that might just be considered "clinically compulsive".....  Oh yes, they thought this out; not only for the 20% but, the "other die hards" that would try and................................fail (cha ching !)    In terms of Retention, this event gets an "F"......   In terms of revenue generation at a minimal cost, they get an A-........because the whales "just spent they way through" and the Purple kind-of-guys spent and ground.......  What 72 players in the Hall of Fame now?  Wow........I never got through Directive 4......about half way.  And, who the heck wants to spend a cent on an average CA anyway???  Wow.  Expect more of these sales events this year....

Yep. I guess people in Russia never heard the story of the Goose with the Golden Eggs.

[slowpoke_2]

3 hours ago, 0NutsNBolts0 said:

In business it is very easy to "cut your nose off to spite your face" and that is what WG is doing.  Growing this game long-term is more important than short-term profits.  On the other hand WG knows whatever they do the money continues to come in so, to them it's like why change?

The funny thing is, they’ve not maximized their profits either. Since the marginal cost of anything ingame is exactly zero, no need to maximize prices to increase profit margin on the sales. They’re so far down the cost demand scale that they’re hurting their bottom line. 
 

I had planed to spend about $30 on wows over the holidays and thought maybe boost for the PR, but prices were so high, for no reason, that I spent nothing. If it was some physical good you might argue they can’t afford to sell it at a lower price, but its not. Reality is this left such a bad taste in my mouth i didn’t spend anything on Blitz either, and i usually do there, because you can get decent tier premiums  there for about $20. If they can explain how the development of an iOS and android os cross platform game costs so much less than a single windows platform, i’d be interested in hearing it. 

Oh well they’ve never listened to help on this concept before, its gotten to the point of farce where they’ve left so much profit because of their ego driving the costs.