The past couple of months have not been kind to Mythic Entertainment, with an uncomfortable double-header of a huge billing fiasco followed by the closure of the Mythic Store. The billing especially produced a great deal of outrage from players, understandably concerned about their account security as well as the potential impact on their bank accounts. Even reversing the charges didn’t leave everyone completely mollified — but Mythic has put in the effort to try and not just apologize and reverse the error, but help regain the trust and goodwill of the players.
Both Warhammer Online and Dark Age of Camelot players will receive two items of their choice on all current and future characters, with Warhammer Online mailing out tokens and Dark Age of Camelot simply allowing you to talk to a Royal Accountant. The items include dyes, decorations, temporary disguises, and other fun toys for players to help recover from the aftershocks. On the off chance that you didn’t receive the items and were billed multiple times, the team at Mythic has a specific appeals process to ensure correct delivery. As bad as the error was, it’s good to see that players will be compensated nicely for as long as they keep playing.
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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last two weeks, you’ve undoubtedly heard the gnashing of teeth that erupted due to Warhammer Online’s recent billing issues. Today, Mythic Entertainment’s Studio Executive Producer, Jeff Hickman, sat down and wrote a very honest apology letter regarding the recent issues, including the steps they’ve taken to correct them.
Caused by a now-solved system issue, the Warhammer Online billing error caused multiple charges to show up on the statements of many subscribers (and previous subscribers). The fixes were rolled out on April 13th, and they believe they have now resolved all outstanding issues with banks and credit issuers that may have occurred. While most banks did remove any fees that had been incurred due to the incorrect billing, Hickman notes that EA has agreed to pay all charges for any others whose banking institutions are refusing to remove fees due to their error.
Also, as a way to apologize to players, and in an attempt to earn back some good will from their player base, Mythic is offering players a bonus of 100% experience and renown when fighting enemies and monsters for the next two weeks. They’re also adding in a vendor who will carry an assortment of special items for players — from mounts and disguises onwards. Each player will be mailed two tokens, and will be allowed to choose what they like best from the available goodies. Coupled with their new systems to ensure this never occurs again, Mythic certainly is working hard to make sure their community is happy. How this will all play out among their numbers we’ll have to wait and see.
Castres Warhammer Online
Warhammer Online’s 1.3.4 patch has gone live as of today is coming soon. The update includes a torrent of changes with a primary focus on streamlining Scenarios — the game’s beloved-yet-flawed open-ended PvE encounters easy-to-access PvP instances — and City Sieges. These changes are aimed at pleasing the game’s community, who’ve been giving plenty of feedback to Mythic.
The original problem with Scenarios were a matter of player population. If you didn’t have enough people to complete a 5 or 10-person start a Scenario, well, you were waiting in queue forever. Hopefully, the issue of achieving “critical mass” should all be in the past with the 1.3.4 patch. While new weapon rewards are being added to Scenarios, not everything is making the cut. Less popular Scenarios have been removed, although Mythic is promising that some will return in special weekend events.
Read more…
Castres Warhammer Online
When you are playing your favorite MMO, how much do you think about what goes on behind the scenes? If your interest goes beyond general gameplay and lies within the actual nuts and bolts of how it all works, Gamasutra has a feature that will fascinate you.
“Restless Entities Never Sleep” is a feature that takes a close look behind the scenes of Warhammer Online, exploring the multiple complicated processes that keep the game up and running. The feature explores the basics of how the servers keep the game up and running and what exactly they do, and continues with excerpts from a previous interview with Online Technical Director Andrew Mann. They also cover the challenges of trying to maintain the servers and minimize downtime, as well as improvements planned (or hoped for) down the road.
As a few readers noted, it’s an Intel-sponsored feature and it shows a bit, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting to the tech-minded out there. The full feature can be found here.
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