WGs Courtyard - Your voices have no power here (Forum)

[Yosha_AtaIante]

Have you ever thought about why the last week's rise in topics criticizing WG went as smooth as it did? Some of the topics that came out were of repetitive nature, nearly every post basically holding the same message. Sharing of news about articles and overall agreement that WG effed it up. 

We have all types of approaches and anchors for discussion and the majority in the forums and spreading into outer media agree with one another. But what most of you are forgetting about is what happened in the NA forums and... that this place you are posting and sharing ideas on how to get back at WG is the EU Forums. 

 

Now no action has been taken yet to censor this criticism. One would think WG likes to do that. Others might think WG finally starts "listening" (one might dream of it). But what if I told you that WG wants you to do exactly what you do. What if WG would even serve you free drinks and cake of your choice while you rage and critizise in their courtyard? 

Behind the servers are guns pointing at the tables..

WG has control here and therefore control of the information and things discussed. And since this control exists it suits them just well that you have your way with words exactly here. 

 

If WG started closing more topics and went to town on us they would have every right to do so as they pleased. But this would lead to the forum migrating to outside sources of discussion, powerful anti WG ideas being discussed in places where WG does not have control and where people could rage without any restraints that WG puts on them. But forum users are doing it here instead.

 

The forum never was a highly influencial place. And there were times where WG didn't understand that yet and censored more actively and were more sensitive to negative criticism. Now they literally invite the criticism to happen here. If it happens here... it happens less elsewhere where it could have a bigger effect. 

 

 

Let's check for example the Forums of the popular MMORPG Final Fantasy 14.

That game and it's developers have a great reputation with the devs never displaying any ill will or PR Desaster towards their playerbase. The devs are very forthcoming and listen and sometimes even Obey outright to the community HOWEVER their forums are hypersensitive to criticism and toxicity/ memes. One can get a ban there if even their sneeze sounds like slight criticism. They do it to keep toxicity and negativity out of the community. 

 

WG does the complete opposite. WG keeps the toxicity, negativity and criticism alive and active on purpose in their forums so that it not touch the 80% majority of players who play and pay for the game uninterrupted. WG wants you to rage and create topics here insulting them and their playerbase and make you show WG all your ideas of how to best boycott them without silencing you. 

 

They are listening to you.... but not to your favor but to their own. They invite you to post in this forum about your bad experiences instead of outside where you could touch their precious players(payers) with your "toxicity". 

Think about the energy you waste posting in here, instead use it to talk about WG outside of his forum. 

 

 

Go to the new articles on WG, write into the comments. Write to PEGI, raise awareness in your discord, create a new subreddit free from WG support. Try to take attention from bigger youtubers. 

 

The feeling of people agreeing with you in this forum gives you a feeling of "we are all in this together" but you are in this together with WG and they want to get as close as possible before they had enough and close it all up :) 

[CptBarney]

Nah, we will keep going. Not only to raise awareness, but also as the first step to changing this industry as whole along with the blizzard disaster. We have to start somewhere, theres a lot of places now talking about wargaming in pretty dim view, and the company has also been investigated for money laundering as well (big no, no).

 

We know they won't listen, thats why we do things that will make them do so. (sending messages at the start of battle in-game and in the chat places, sending reports to news outlets and other forums, sending reports to governments and age restriction organisations that will clamp down on some of the things they do, stop spending money and time on the game etc).

 

I could go on, but this is just the first step. I seriously doubt it will get better for them here on out and i dont mean in few weeks either. It's also about standards and principles as well two things which are seriously missing in pretty every country on this planet in some, most or almost all ways possible.

 

Yeah, we can go to NA forums and the Asia forums to spread the word, but other actions need to be taken as well. Theres probably been 10+ articles on this now, quite a few youtubers (we need those outside of wargaming really). Quite a lot of people who are streamers that have quit (although they should stop promoting the game good or bad regardless.).

 

It's just baby steps, can't ramp this up from 0-1000, need to go slow, gather the hard evidence. Then slap them when its right and/or wait for them to fail big time.

[Mad_Dog_Dante]

Interesting read. The only sources WG will pay attention to are: news articles read by investors, news artciles published by major gamewebsites, news articles read by lawyers and sources read by regulators. That's it. Those sources can be made aware by pushing the narrative slowly towards their direction, and it has to start somewhere. And it did. Just keep pushing.

[Ungrim_Baraz]

And hence because of these reassons:

 

Quoting myself from another post

 

2 hours ago, Ungrim_Baraz said:

I encourage everybody to go to their local administrations and file a complaint against WarGaming for anti-consumer practices.

 

Also, and this is quick and effective: Go to www.pegi.info /  contact and file a complaint agains Worl of Warships demanding for its pegi rating to be changed from 7 to 18 on account of the in game gambling with real world money.

 

BR

 

If you are not happy with the current status (that should be obvious...) then take exteranl actions!

[CptBarney]

Now if this https://www.randrlife.co.uk/all-financial-operations-of-wargaming-llc-in-the-eu-can-be-seized-as-a-result-of-close-cooperation-with-b-efekt-a-s-and-globalmoney-companies/ 

Gets worse then yeah, cus global money got fined i think, which would make mainstream media news pretty quickly.

 

And the last 2 articles seem to have a 2 month gap between them so it remains if we will see anything more on it really.

[Prophecy82]

I always thought the forum is a mixture of rare information gathering + group therapy session with the WG-Staff acting as "Beppo the Clown" to scream and poke at. 

 

Im totally fine with that. 

[HidesHisFace]

I always say that in cases of companies like that... Wallet speaks far louder than any outrage.

[Andrewbassg]

1 minute ago, HidesHisFace said:

I always say that in cases of companies like that... Wallet speaks far louder than any outrage.

That in the case of a company, which actually depends on that. In case of Weegee.....hmm....

[CptBarney]

1 minute ago, Andrewbassg said:

That in the case of a company, which actually depends on that. In case of Weegee.....hmm....

Nah they need it, their entire company is based around games and the development of them if they lose those rights then good luck really. World of tanks and ships are the only thing really going of them atm, everything else has been either too unimportant to reach wider audiences, cancelled, shite or abandoned.

 

I just hope they don't get swallowed up by bloody stillfront or embracer. 

[Ungrim_Baraz]

12 minutes ago, HidesHisFace said:

I always say that in cases of companies like that... Wallet speaks far louder than any outrage.

WG is not interested on YOUR wallet. They already assume it is closed (and it better be). WoWs bases its revenue on scamming newcomers before they grow experienced enough and close their wallets, like you claim. Hence if the active committed community closes the wallet... so what... as long as WG can keep scamming newbies...

 

We are not their customers, we are just remmnants of what they needed time ago to jumpstart the player churning machine. They do not need us anymore, neither our wallets, so closing them is irrelevant (but they better be closed of course)

The only thing WG cares about is player turnaround: Get new ones, milk them, and by all means discourage player rettention in order to make room in the servers for new ones to keep the cycle going.

So... Clsoe your wallet, for sure, but that is not enough. You gotta raise external awareness to decrease the inflow of newbies. For a start: Go to pegi and complain about the pegi 7 rating and demand it to be changed to pegi18

[Andrewbassg]

1 minute ago, CptBarney said:

Nah they need it, their entire company is based around games and the development of them if they lose those rights then good luck really. World of tanks and ships are the only thing really going of them atm, everything else has been either too unimportant to reach wider audiences, cancelled, shite or abandoned.

Yeah, but dat doesn't mean jack if there are alt means of income. And their attitude towards the game and the players is entirely congruent with that. You milk the cow, but you also give her food and make sure that she is comfy. Whereupon Weeegee...  lulz....  

 

 

Btw....

 

 

 

 

 

[Hugh_Ruka]

Who's the developer of FF14 ?

[ShuggieHamster]

the game plan seems to be "let them rage til they burn out". problem is while it is a controlled burn here, its spreading.

PEGI might be a butt boy for the games companies, but state and national legislators are getting angry emails about child gambling. PEGI needs to respond.

REDDIT might be on fire and isolated, but games journos are desperate for content

youtube might fiddle the algorithms but a search for wows content will throw up a shoit storm of ex-CCs ripping weegee 

 

I think the fire has spread enough that weegee might have to take more notice than they have ever done before. it still might burn out, but those execs are going to feel more heat than they have before.

[Loonsbro]

The thing that you all apear to forget is that the vast majority of the player base is not on the forums or on Reddit, they dont watch YouTube channels and will be totally unaware of the current situation with the CC's.

 

WG dont bother policing the forums with an iron rod because we are a very small percentage of their player base whether we are voical in our distain of them or not! As the reach of the forums will never extend any further why bother spending the time, the effort and the money having it policed in that way. yes they will stop you posting abusive comments of any nature but again thats because the PR that allowing comments like that would generate would be negative and would probably reach a much wider main stream audiance. 

 

So by all means rage away here, Reddit, FB, Twatter or any other of the other un-social media outlets you can find it will have little or no affect as it will reach a very small percentage of the player's and an even smaller percentage of the people it does reach will actually care enough to do anything. At the moment they are getting a little bit of negative publicity but its free pubicity and thats the best sort for any company, give it a week, two at most and everyone will have forgotten about.

 

 

[Imsali]

I still don't get how can anyone get so upset with a game dev to go into all sort of activism. If I hated it this much, I'd simply walk away from the game.

Now we are into the 5th (?) day of continuous outrage, and the more time it goes on, the more ridiculous it gets.

 

And I particularly think that all the ex-CCs who lead the charge with daily content about it and monetize the outrage to the max should grow a spine at last - but they won't, they will every happily continue to make a living of the game whose devs are worse than Taliban.

[Andrewbassg]

18 minutes ago, Loonsbro said:

The thing that you all apear to forget is that the vast majority of the player base is not on the forums or on Reddit, they dont watch YouTube channels and will be totally unaware of the current situation with the CC's.

Idk about that. the last lovely Twitch transmission had about 40 k viewers aaand....it wasn't pretty. 

18 minutes ago, Loonsbro said:

WG dont bother policing the forums with an iron rod 

 

Ouch...... Eu always was much more heavily moderated then NA. Since Hapa is gone....things start to change a bit over there too... 

[Miragetank90]

In my opinion *gulps beer*

This whole situation sucks more than anything that has ever sucked before, like, seriously *adjusts lawn chair*

 

Also this courtyard kinda stinks and my beer is not cold enough.

[arttuperkunas]

1 hour ago, Yosha_nai said:

stuff

This is one of those "change my mind posts", isn't it? :P As in, something that most of us actually agree with. I mean, I certainly agree with this assessment. But it doesn't stop me from posting on this forum and acting externally. I suppose there might be someone new and naive enough not to understand, but the writing is on the wall for most of us who have been around.

[The_Chiv]

WG does not care about your feeling. WG doesnt care about your opinion, educated or not. WG does not care about your loyalty and devotion to the game. The only thing WG gives a damn about is your money.

 

Lets review a few basic things.

 

Johan De Witt. Tech tree ship bundle had 72 chances to get the Johan. Each bundle is 1k. At worst you would pay 72k doubloons to get the Johan De Witt. That is $256 USD or 5 Tirpitz. Most however were able to get it for far less. 2 to 3 Tirpitz seemed to be the average for a non premium t9 ship.

 

Then you have xmas loot boxes where you had a short list you had to complete before you could even have a chance to get any of the rare ships in the pool. Seeing as the drop rates have never been published the amount you would have to spend to even hope to have a chance at getting a rare ship were obscene. Seriously Genshin Impact is more forgiving in terms of drop rates.

 

Summer Sale 2021. Get containers. RNG containers with no listed drop rate. So if you actually go through the whole process trying to earn that premium t9 ship you will spend $450 usd to get a t9, a t7 and chances at black reskin ships and a few perm camos and a ton of fluff stuff that holds virtually little to no value to the community as a whole.

 

Puerto Rico. Spend 240 USD to get this t10 ship or grind 180+hrs in one of the most oppressive grinding schemes ever invented . The goal of this oppressive grinding scheme was to frustrate people during the holiday season and make them spend money. I mean why suffer when you can pay us to complete the rest. 

 

MISSOURI. Ship taken away for a listed reason not involving economics. Now Economics being removed from the ship thus turning it into a worse IOWA. Being offered in a bundle scheme similar to Johan Dewitt. Thus possibly paying 256 USD to get it, or Jumping through a bunch of hoops and grinding to earn the privilege of buying a non premium ship at premium ship pricing.

 

WG does not care about you, only your money. Everything they do is to get more and more of it while providing less and less to you the consumer. The solution may seem simple, Stop giving them money, but you need to do more. You need to educate others. You need to get those who do not come to forums, who do not read reddit, and read dev blogs to understand what is being done to them. WG thrives on the ignorance of its community. Its time we the community remove that ignorance. 

 

Complaining in the forums does nothing as it is damn near an echo chamber. If we have any hope of forcing change in this game and saving our community then we need to take these complaints to regulatory agencies as well as in the games chat. 

 

If WG does not wish to change, well we have alternatives coming soon and then it will be too late for them.

[RepSrb]

not true , there is ZERO mention of any of this on Russian wows forum, 0 !

 

 

https://forum.worldofwarships.ru/forum/214-обсуждение-world-of-warships/?

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://forum.worldofwarships.ru/forum/214-%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-world-of-warships/?

[Chips_uk]

As per the matchmaking thread, letting the forum posts be made not only semi-contains most people's anger here, it gives them a place to run out of steam... you unload, and then continue playing (maybe after a few days break). If you couldn't vent here you'd go elsewhere already pointed out. That'd be worse.

 

Rest assured, WG have seen how this plays out with previous instances - they've certainly had enough over the last 2 years. They have the spreadsheet of how it impacted their revenues. They've got data about how many players there are, what percentage of players end up spending money, what percentage end up spending the majority of the money, and what percentage of each type visit here. They can probably correlate to drop offs after each incident (and how many were paying players), and how long they lasted or if it was permanent. They can offset against new players and the usual conversion of free to paying players. Given twitch loot boxes, they can probably correlate twitch viewers to accounts and spending habits etc too (correlate purchases to releases featured in streams and by which streamer). 

 

Basically they already know the financial impact of cockups and can offset that against financial impact of removing a revenue stream (e.g. lootboxes) because of forum based vocal minority outcry. They certainly wouldn't yank such a stream of revenue without having something to replace it would they.

 

This dictates their responses and actions.

 

Clearly the impact is less than taking the sort of action people are hoping to see. 

 

So unless something dramatic happens and this continues to gain momentum or see bigger impacts, I imagine in a week or two they'll put the Missouri on general sale, and then continue on as normal. Because history shows... they can.

 

Really wish it'd change, but if the cc's who've left still play the game and stream it then what's really being protested? What are they really standing against? Just how the cc's are treated? I doubt that'd really cause much outcry with the vast majority of the player base who don't watch them. Probably something WG count on.

[Miscommunication_dept]

[Gvozdika]

Yeah.... the trouble with your analogy is that the fire is big enough to be visible from outside the courtyard.

 

'Aggressive monetisation' is driving prominent players away from World of Warships | PC Gamer

 

I don't think stuff like the CV Rework or Pay-to-Rico really made much impact - certainly not to anyone outside of the main core of playerbase. This is a bit different and has a bit more inertia behind it. Particular bonus points for the margin ads for the other game in the article.... (giggles in an immature fashion). 

 

[Panocek]

10 minutes ago, Gvozdika said:

Yeah.... the trouble with your analogy is that the fire is big enough to be visible from outside the courtyard.

 

'Aggressive monetisation' is driving prominent players away from World of Warships | PC Gamer

 

I don't think stuff like the CV Rework or Pay-to-Rico really made much impact - certainly not to anyone outside of the main core of playerbase. This is a bit different and has a bit more inertia behind it. Particular bonus points for the margin ads for the other game in the article.... (giggles in an immature fashion). 

 

Ah yes, replace one shipshow with another

[CptBarney]

4 minutes ago, Panocek said:

Ah yes, replace one shipshow with another

lol.