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  1. #1

    Beta Emails: The WoW model and customer service in 2016.

    Back in 2004/2005, a tiny little game called World of Warcraft launched. Both closed beta and open beta were complete debacles. Launch itself was a mess likewise.

    Game developers have been trying to replicate its launch for every title since.

    This paradox comes from a principle of human psychology: The more scarce a resource, the more sought after it becomes in the human mind. By intentionally botching the launch of a game, the game company hopes to fool its customers into thinking that they have a highly prized, exclusive piece of software. The book/textbook "Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion" has a chapter on this phenomenon and is pretty difficult to refute.

    I'm not saying that Ubisoft is guilty of this(though I'm sure we could be better judges of that if we had access to internal documents), but the incentive is there and I have a lot of trouble believing that any one of their departments was so incompetant that they were unable to anticipate the level of hype that their marketing department successfully created. Typically speaking, one should assume incompetance before malice, but seeing as the former is nearly ruled out and the company stands to gain a great deal from the latter...
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  2. #2
    I believe that there is a strong legal case for breach of implied warranty and either negligent or malicious behavior on the part of Ubisoft. 0-60$ might not seem like much, but given the amount of people that they have intentionally defrauded, their actions are significantly harmful as that they should be punished.
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  3. #3
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    Oh. This again.

    Lawsuit against entertainment?

    Good luck.
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  4. #4
    There is a case, friend. It isn't worth anyone's time to actually go through with it, considering the amount of money involved, but what the company has done is fraudulent, dishonest, and distasteful. If this is how they deal with a simple closed beta, imagine how launch will be...
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  5. #5
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    That's how big projects launch.

    They don't. It's never smooth. It's never 100% right. It's like this in almost every industry.

    You haven't actually explained what the problem is. You only made comparisons with other hiccups and are trying to spin it as intentional fraud. It's as much as can be possible gathered from frustrating ambiguity in every post you make. "Ubisoft did this". What exactly?

    It's like you are passively aggressively saying that they went "hey guys, lets make this game suck just for funsies, bet that will be fun for everyone involved".

    For Ubisoft and Massive this line of work is what earns them money and what puts food on their tables. As any other business, the amount of money they get depends on trust (the basis of any good business). Pretty damn sure they wouldn't intentionally do anything that would jeopardise their ability to earn money, and/or intentionally do anything to ruin trust.

    This is relatively obvious to everyone. From this, what's to say you are not applying social engineering and mob consensus to simply grow mistrust towards Massive?
    You are arguably just as fraudulent, dishonest and distasteful.

    And I am not saying this as a fanboi. As an introvert, this kind of BS doesn't fly with me, I see it everyday - how people try to spin their agenda.

    Go troll for chaos elsewhere. Try the Star Wars: Battlefront forums. There is more people to be baited.
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  6. #6
    I skip steps in logic quite a bit; I assume everyone has a basic understanding of relevant details. This obviously not being the case, I will explain myself. My main problem with the company's behaviour stems from their supposedly "guaranteed" access to beta with preorder. This claim was on and with marketing and sales paraphernalia(obviously not exclusively for testing purposes given its context). Those that preordered the game, have found themselves deprived of the fruits of that promise. Even if the company finds some way to remedy the situation, it will in all likelihood be a token and unsatisfactory gesture.

    My thesis in this particular forum, is that the company benefits from this practice in much the same way that Bugatti and Ferrari benefit from the limited manufacture of the Veyron and Enzo. Limited availability breeds coveting and desire. I link it to world of Warcraft because that example cannot possibly have been overlooked by any marketing department, let alone the company employing them. It's a simple law of economics really, with limited supply, demand increases. The caveat being, that in some cases, when the limited supply subsides, the heightened demand doesn't dissipate as quickly as it should, providing a company with ill gotten(in the case of a fraudulent guarantee/warranty) profit.

    If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. No need to jump straight to personal attacks.

    With love,
    -PHD
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  7. #7
    I had amended my title to better reflect the context of the document, but that change doesn't appear until one accesses the meat of it and by that point no one retreads over the title. I can't say that I would either. Sorry for the inconveince.
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  8. #8
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    1) Many people have outlined, on these forums no less, that you could get access to the Beta by Pre-Ordering and then cancelling.For this reason I think there is no doubt that the actual number of people with Beta access probably doesn't correspond with the actual real number of active pre-orders, and in fact the former is higher, hence the lack of Beta access.

    2) With this exploit possible, nobody actually committed to the transaction under pressure of limited supply, which is the basis of your argument of intentional fraud - fool people into believing they will get access to the Beta by pre-ordering, but not keeping the suppliers' end of the bargain with the justification that "hey there are no beta slots sorry".

    Considering how the Beta access has been exploited, I don't see how your reasoning of intentional fraud is compelling. Only that it perpetuates the villainization of a party by claiming that Massive/Ubisoft intentionally deprived people of promised Beta access.

    In simpler words, it's not fair to hold them accountable for not anticipating the Pre-order exploit and saying it was their marketing department that should have relied on a completely unrelated case study to make the right decision. You spun the entire thing around intentional malice, falling back on the WoW case, but failed to identify that getting Beta access cost 0$ and didn't force people to commit to the pre-order, which failed the intended Beta access contract, with the consumer at fault waaaay before Ubisoft could fail to deliver.

    And what does Ubisoft do? They let some of the Beta-access exploiters in without singling them out and telling them "Nope".

    I suppose this isn't surprising. This entire generation focuses on looking for ways to victimise themselves and blame everyone around them.
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  9. #9
    I believe that it IS fair to hold them responsible for allowing the exploit in the first place and furthermore that any company that has sufficient resources (I think that Ubisoft qualifies in this case) should have anticipated the rationalish actions of humans and implemented an accountability system to thwart the 'low-hanging fruit' exploit. It certainly wouldn't be that difficult to design a system that canceled beta access if someone canceled a pre-order. Likewise, it isn't that difficult to conceive of the exploit in the first place. As stated before, it is typically more likely that harm is caused by incompetance/negligence rather than malice, but good faith only goes so far... If there was more than four-five people working on this beta launch, certainly someone should have anticipated it. Which brings me back to my point...

    In solidarity,
    -PHD
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  10. #10
    sandpants's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by PerryHDelisle Go to original post
    I believe that it IS fair to hold them responsible for allowing the exploit in the first place and furthermore that any company that has sufficient resources (I think that Ubisoft qualifies in this case) should have anticipated the rationalish actions of humans and implemented an accountability system to thwart the 'low-hanging fruit' exploit. It certainly wouldn't be that difficult to design a system that canceled beta access if someone canceled a pre-order. Likewise, it isn't that difficult to conceive of the exploit in the first place. As stated before, it is typically more likely that harm is caused by incompetance/negligence rather than malice, but good faith only goes so far... If there was more than four-five people working on this beta launch, certainly someone should have anticipated it. Which brings me back to my point...

    In solidarity,
    -PHD
    What makes you so sure it wasn't the distributor at fault? Their software and their infrastructure? People have identified that it didn't work everywhere. Only some retailers.
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