I do, I really do. For the most part, readers know what’s up. Even amidst the flames, angry comments, and the occasional mistruth, readers know how to read an article that we put up on our site. Furthermore, most readers understand that we (Massively.com) like to take a neutral tone with our news stories. Even when our opinion as a staff swings the other way, we’ll put out a story that will more or less recite facts and leave the speculation up to readers. Of course we put in the occasional joke and light commentary, but we’re about making sure the facts get across as facts.
So, this e-mail that we got in our inboxes this morning from the site’s comment box made most of us burst out laughing. This is from a man who read our follow-up to the Allods Online cash shop story… the follow up that confirmed that Gala-Net wasn’t interested in changing their absurd pricing structure.
I was reading the Allods forums, and someone posted a link to your site to read a story about the Cash Shop debacle. I must admit, I’m a MMORPG.com reader, and had never been to massively.com.
The link I clicked went straight to the homepage rather than the original story about Allods [cash shop.] Then I see the new story on the front page which was the biggest example of corporate shilling I’ve ever seen from a site like yours. The response from gPotato did even address the concern. ZERO complaints have been made about ‘the lack of communication’. The community believes the prices are fucking ridiculous. Nobody cares that they didn’t formally announce the shop was opening.
Your use of phrases like “the player feedback wasn’t exactly positive” and “take a look at the entire official response for more on how the Allods team hopes to rectify the situation” is sad to say the least.
Although these companies pay you to advertise on your site, the players are the ones that visit your site which ultimately determines how much you make from your ads. Your front page recant of your previous story when no recant was called for makes it obvious to me that you care as much about the gamer as gPotato.
So, the reason this is funny… is today is the first and last day I will be visiting your site. (Clicked 0 ads while here). It looks like there could be good content, but unfortunately, the first thing I read is garbage.. and so I don’t have high hopes for the rest of your site.
Keep it ‘profitable’ joystiq & massively.com!
Angry much? I guess the part of this e-mail that I find funny is that he quotes two lines that show a negative tone rather than a positive one (“wasn’t exactly positive” and “hopes to rectify the situation”) and he basically sees only what he wants to see. Those two lines are pretty much opinion dead, more recitation of what happened in the Allods than any commentary on the situation.
For those of you who may not now, Allods Online, a game that we had been generally looking forward to, undid much of their hype by revealing absolutely insane prices on their cash shop items. Some of their “microtransactions” are reaching upwards of 10 dollars, with a 6 slot bag space increase going for 20 dollars. The prices are, without a doubt, horrid. If this is still an issue next week, it’s getting the Anti-Aliased treatment, most likely.
But, back to the topic at hand, this is obviously a man who didn’t try to read our content. Because if he did, he would have found my intensely unhappy comment down in the comments section. I rarely drop my opinion on a company down in the comments section, as I like to save it for my opinion column, but this is one where I thought the quote Gala-Net sent to us was completely absurd. They didn’t even try to answer our questions, and I think many of our readers noticed that. What, with us getting, “We love Massively.com!” from the associate producer when we asked him to comment on the situation. Yeah, that totally answered the question…
But, hey, he thinks we’re all about the advertising and milking moolah from game companies. That’s cool. He reads MMORPG.com, so he doesn’t have to read us. It’s not like MMORPG.com wraps their homepage in ads or anything…
Oh. Whoops. Sorry dude…
(All <3s to MMORPG.com and the nice people that I know there. Was just trying to point out the inherent stupidity of trying to accuse gaming websites of taking “advertising bribes.” We all run ads. We all run ads for games. Gee, I wonder why gaming websites run ads for games?)
Experience Curve 