By John Walker on August 22nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm.
There really does seem to be a lot of confusion regarding the pricing of Warhammer Online. You’ll remember that a couple of weeks back the EU prices were announced, and we called them into question, noticing they were simply conversions of Euro into Pound, not only very odd numbers, but numbers well above the competition. We nagged at the UK PR, Indigo Pearl, and they eventually came back to us with new prices in line with what we’d expect. Well, madly, it doesn’t end there.
The set-up for WAR is messy. Mythic, who previously created long-running MMO Dark Age Of Camelot, had a relationship with French company GOA to host their games in Europe. That was confusing enough, published by a mixture of KOCH, Wanadoo and GOA. The same plans were in place for the early days of WAR, with GOA set up to handle the European market. And then EA arrived, bags of money in both hands, and bought Mythic. But with deals already done with GOA, the result appears to be (and good grief, we have no clue for certain) that EA are handling N. American territories, with GOA taking care of Europe, and the communications between the two seeming muddled. Now it seems there’s a breakdown within just the one territory.
This brings us to a forum post from yesterday by GOA’s Magnus Kjellström, the new Community Manager for Europe. He says,
Rumours about UK price cut
This is a big one, naturally. As far as I know, these rumours origin from a blogger (forgot which) who called EA to ask about the UK prices, only to be told that they were lower than those announced in our Press Release last week.As of now, the information we have at hand is those stated in named PR document. If there are any changes to the UK pricing, we will announce this. I’ve made enquiries about the truth behind these rumours, but I’m afraid I have nothing solid to go on so far.
This is peculiar news to us, as we were told by GOA’s PR representatives, Indigo Pearl (because it wasn’t complicated enough for them without introducing a 43rd company), the following:
“Please see below for the updated subs prices for WAR :
£8.99 per month
£25.17 for 3 months
£46.14 for 6 months
They could well be ameding the box price too but I will let you know.”
To double-stress, this announcement was preceeded by an Indigo Pearl email telling us,
“I’ve spoken to GOA about the prices and they’re going to review them for the UK and let me know Monday.”
Which would seem to imply that someone at GOA had said something, but apparently not told the GOA communications manager. Which wouldn’t seem a great plan. Perhaps there is a specific confusion between European and UK pricing, and that this distinction either isn’t understood by all, or simply doesn’t exist.
The moral of this story? Don’t be successful? I dunno. But flipping crikey, it seems WAR needs some sort of UN body to manage the various factions, allowing them to communicate with each other, before the game gets exclusively released for N64 in Mongolia. We have, of course, enquired to find out what on Earth is going on.
22/08/2008 at 13:35 CrashT says:
Warhammer the game of Fantasy Battle and Fiscal Irresponsibility..?
22/08/2008 at 13:36 Okami says:
Suits the Warhammer background: Everybody is fighting against everybody all of the time..
22/08/2008 at 14:07 Diogo Ribeiro says:
So, massive online RPG, massive offline puzzle game?
22/08/2008 at 14:08 Bobsy says:
“What’s that, stapler? No no, these are actual businessmen. They run companies.”
22/08/2008 at 14:12 Willem says:
Why do the prices in Britain have to be lower than those in the rest of Europe?
22/08/2008 at 14:17 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Willem: They have Big Brother. That alone is worthy of a discount.
22/08/2008 at 14:25 John Walker says:
It’s primarily because WoW costs £8.99 a month here, and it would be a special kind of madness to try and out-price their most obvious rival.
Also, it’s because at the stated prices, their boxed game would cost more than any other PC game on the market, which would seem very odd indeed.
22/08/2008 at 14:41 Swyyw says:
I never thought I’d say something like this, but I’d like EA to publish this game in Europe
22/08/2008 at 14:56 Naseer says:
Warhammer Online – the challenge is in the subscription.
The new tag line that.
22/08/2008 at 14:58 Arnulf says:
This does not bode well.
22/08/2008 at 15:01 Lacero says:
Looking at that thread the german newsletter says people who buy the Standard Edition get in the “Open Beta” but Magnus Kjellström has said in that thread they don’t.
This doesn’t look good.
22/08/2008 at 15:02 phil says:
You see? Pricing PC games just leads to confusion, distributing games through bit torrent, stuck on the front of magazines or in form of hidden tracks on 90′s dance compilations is the only way forward.
22/08/2008 at 15:04 Dexton says:
After following the game for a few months I have seen numerous complaints about the service for EU customers and alot of it seems to stem down to the main body behind WAR (EA Mythic) doing whatever they do for the US with minimal communication with their EU counterparts.
Either they need to work with the EU managers or they need to take over the EU themselves and stop dicking people around before the game has even been released. Considering that Games Workshop and the Warhammer IP has always been based in England, the mess they are making with the EU support is really disappointing.
22/08/2008 at 15:15 cullnean says:
GOA are buffoons as proved by DAOC
so it looks like i may as well try and get on the US servers
22/08/2008 at 15:51 Schtee says:
Wasn’t European DAoC like 2 expansion packs behind the US at one point? Mass rubbishness for Warhammer, if so.
22/08/2008 at 15:52 Nallen says:
no one f’ing knows! why can’t that be the pricing model? “yeah sorry guys, not a clue”
At least that way they’d all be saying the same unhelpful crap.
22/08/2008 at 16:12 Willem says:
John: That’s just it. Why does WoW cost less in Britain than in the rest of Europe?
22/08/2008 at 16:23 John Walker says:
For the same reason it costs nearly half as much in the US – the local economy. So far as I know.
22/08/2008 at 16:27 Willem says:
If we’re looking at currency, it’s $, € and £, in that order. So, I don’t get why the price would be US, UK, rest of Europe.
Unless it has nothing to do with currency. Then I just don’t get why the UK isn’t seen as a part of Europe.
22/08/2008 at 16:27 Beefeater says:
It’s a shame to say this because of the hard work that GOA’s community managers have overwhelmingly obviously put into their role, but GOA does has an image problem, because it has so far felt unresponsive to the EU community. The problem looks worse than it is because Mythic has been particularly good at communicating with the US community – but the problem is still real.
So why has GOA left the EU community feeling unloved and ill-informed? I’m honestly stumped, but here are a few possible reasons:
1. It’s because GOA is French and has a different working culture. All responses to the community need to be cleared with someone senior, who is only sometimes available. Alternatively, standard practice at GOA has not yet caught up with the culture of immediate response, and policy is to make statements de haut en bas at a time of the company’s choosing, not because some customer has asked a question. I think this ties into the point above – Mythic evidently understands the need to come back quickly to complaints or queries from its customer base, and GOA looks worse than it is because it’s not as good as Mythic. I should stress that this doesn’t reflect upon the community managers at all, but may say something about the importance the organisation as a whole attaches to community relations.
2. It’s because GOA doesn’t know the answers to the community’s questions (although if this is the case, they are not as good as they should be at stalling. Cf. Mythic or Stardock’s excellent community management in this regard). For US/overall points, perhaps Mythic isn’t communicating information to them well enough, as Dexton suggests. For EU-specific points – well, that’s scary. If GOA doesn’t know, who does? There’s got to be a story behind the flash website, for example, and the relatively unimpressive EU version of the WAR herald.
3. GOA as an organisation is bad at communicating information internally – the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Alternatively, responsibility isn’t clearly defined inside GOA, and individuals or departments have as a result to waste time working out whose problem each issue is.
There may be other reasons – anyone else got a clue? I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the GOA offices throughout: this is a mammoth undertaking for any company. Hell of a case study if it was made public.
22/08/2008 at 16:36 BrokenSymmetry says:
Why do there need to be separate operations for the US and Europe at all? I really like the Guild Wars setup much better, where (for some time now) you can freely move between all US, European, and Asian servers.
22/08/2008 at 17:00 arbitrary says:
Thansks for putting the events down in full, so at least we can now see what GOA come back with. Magnus did say he was waiting for confirmation – but I thought it was odd you got confirmation before the CMs.
22/08/2008 at 17:18 shon says:
In Pricing there is only WAR!
22/08/2008 at 17:25 no says:
$9 GDB is $18 USD. I won’t be spending $18/mo for an MMO when every other MMO is $15 or less. Especially on top of spending $55 for the game itself.
22/08/2008 at 17:31 Jocho says:
WAR is everywhere!
But, seriously, why can’t you just pay in Euro like the rest of non-Euro Europe? It’s not the 19th century any more, so Britain isn’t that Super Power it once was as far as I know.
22/08/2008 at 17:37 John Walker says:
Oh, believe me I don’t understand why the UK doesn’t have the Euro. Or why Europe is charged more than the UK for games. It’s all bonkers.
The point remains: WoW costs £8.99/m in the UK, and PC games cost £30-£35. So asking for over £10/m and just shy of £40 for the box is pretty poor marketing. Whether it’s fair on Europe or not.
The further point remains, GOA don’t seem to know which they’re doing.
22/08/2008 at 17:43 KingMob says:
It does seem that someone’s invented all these pricing factions and their squabbles for the purpose of explaining later why they’re shooting at each other on a tabletop.
What’s your favorite ridiculous explanation for why the Space Marines and Imperial Guard were in a fight?
ps. I hate Bright Wizards. Whenever I see one and their nasty forked beards I just want to smash ‘em. Grrr.
22/08/2008 at 17:55 iain morrison says:
John Walker,
The UK doesnt have the Euro as we are an independent country within the EU. we will not be moving over to the Euro any time soon.
Now we have the pricing issue thread, why dont Rockpapershotgun.com investigate the 2nd class treatment of EU players on the subject of SE pre-orders now not getting into open beta, even though, EA.store.com are offering this very deal along with Direct2Drive
22/08/2008 at 17:56 Janto says:
Hmm, I know GOA employees, and I have heard a certain amount of… cynicism over internal communications standards. So this mix up isn’t hugely surprising.
22/08/2008 at 17:59 Bahamut says:
Has this whole thing any influence on the other European prices or just UK?
22/08/2008 at 18:08 John Walker says:
Iain – The more I look into the WAR Europe business, the more bemused I am. I absolutely cannot fathom what they are doing with the open beta, and am further bemused that buying a pre-order doesn’t get you on it. Then that there’s no official forum, and that there’s no preview weekend… it’s not very impressive.
22/08/2008 at 18:10 Okami says:
The UK are part of the EU? You sure about that?
22/08/2008 at 18:24 Beefeater1980 says:
Okami – indeed we are in the EU, although one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
22/08/2008 at 18:53 Willem says:
John: £30-35? That’s €38-44. Most games tend to cost €50-55 (£40-44) on the high street. So, that plus the subscription cost. It’s obviously rather unfair and I have no reason why this is the case.
22/08/2008 at 18:56 Mark Stephenson says:
Not wanting to open up another can of worms like piracy or “WoW plyrs Ned 2 get LiVeS” but as a citizen of this septic isle who has worked and travelled through out the world and europe I have no idea why we don’t have the euro either?
There are far more intelligent people than me on both sides of the argument but all I know is whatever the nationalist sun reading fucktards are against … I am for.
Euro Euro go Go GO!
22/08/2008 at 19:00 The Hammer says:
@Willem: In the north-east of the UK at least, PC games are normally capped at 30 quid.
22/08/2008 at 19:03 Willem says:
That is a can of worms. Let’s not make this one of *those* threads.
But yes, hoorah for the Euro >_>
Edit: That’s even worse. ;_;
22/08/2008 at 19:11 OAB says:
Willem: I guess because companies want a better reason than FX rate fluctuation to change their price point.
22/08/2008 at 19:27 Quine says:
Businesses will always come up with the most complicated subscription models imaginable if you give them the chance. Presumably because they’ve spent all week finishing some pie charts showing a extra percent’s profit in Region A if they shaft them slightly less than Region B. As someone who’s had to code these increasingly-twisted pricing edifices into provisioning systems I’m not surprised about the Euro/UKP/USD thing at all.
I’ve heard a few tales (non-WAR-related) of multi-region publishing woe similar to the WAR fiasco as well- Region A is writing the game, and treats Region B as an afterthought. Both regions develop their own websites for cultural/political/language reasons, Region A forgets to include multi-currency/language/character-set handling into their backend systems, etc, etc.
Anyone know of any worldwide publishers that have a single body directly managing ‘regions’ without using parallel office/management structures?
22/08/2008 at 19:41 John Walker says:
Willem – I’m not sure what you’re point is. PC games just do cost £30 to £35 in the UK. Whatever they may cost in another country, that’s how much they cost here. If GOA were really to release WAR for £40, it would be the most expensive PC game on the shelves. That’s just how it is, no matter how much it might cost somewhere else.
22/08/2008 at 19:46 Willem says:
I’m not really talking about WAR anymore, but about all games. My point is that it’s kind of unfair and shit. But then, not really surprising.
22/08/2008 at 19:57 Azhrarn says:
Actually UK pricing lines up fairly well with dutch store prices. (although at the top end) most games cost around €45-49 here. With prices over €50 reserved for special editions or MS games. (yes they’re usually more expensive for some reason)
Subscription prices in the UK are probably a bit lower due to the previously much stronger position of the pound. Not to long ago 1 pound was over €1,50 making the 9 pound a month subscription pretty close to the EU default of €15 after conversion.
Since companies rarely change their pricing schemes to reflect the value of the local currencies a drop in the value of the pound would leave the effective price in the UK lower than in the rest of Europe, which is exactly what happened.
The US has this to an even larger degree. (with the dollar as weak as it is now)
22/08/2008 at 19:58 Willem says:
FFS Belgium, then. FFS.
22/08/2008 at 20:28 gro says:
Anyone know if GOA improved during the lifespan of daoc?
Cause during the short time i played they were totally clueless
22/08/2008 at 22:25 Paul S says:
It’s intensely annoying that to play a game that I’ve been looking forward to for years, I am put completely at the mercy of a pack of clueless arseheads. It’s ridiculous. The difference in customer support and simple quantity of information available between the US/Australia and Europe is shocking. Currently, the GOA excuse for the lack of an EU preview weekend is that they “were caught by the bed”. Which is laughable.
23/08/2008 at 01:11 arbitrary says:
GOA is a huge, unfunny joke. Everyone who played DAOC and kept his eyes open knows this.
It begins with the horrible, horrible translation which took years to actually get decent after release and continues with patches going live MONTHS later on the EU servers – which is STILL the case. US has 1.95 on live, EU 1.91.
Happy fucking birthday to everyone wanting to experience new content unspoiled while not cutting himself completely off from any forums.
It finally ends with a retarded petition system (read: none ingame but only using a website), seriously impossible work hours so that sometimes you KNEW shit didn’t work because it was weekend in France and they didn’t give a fuck about the servers being down and theeen, to the grand finale – hacked servers with some guy getting GM rights spawning raid mobs all over the RVR zones and GOA reacting by changing passwords of ALL accounts (so who knew WHAT exactly all leaked) and a lot of downtime, somewhen in 2003.
If stuff like this would happen today with Warhammer I really don’t want to see the shitstorm.
PS: Oh I forgot their absolutely, utterly, completely retarded billing system that cut you off from paying / doing anything at all to your payment options if you only closed the fucking browser and interrupted the input process – for up to and more than 24 fucking hours. AND THIS IS STILL THE CASE TODAY (at least so people tell me that still pay this bunch of crooks).
23/08/2008 at 10:32 Duoae says:
@Willem. It’s not just a factor of converting from one currency to another. The economy and affordability of items is a factor too. The price of bread isn’t the same in every country and it’s a basic staple… the value of a pound in the UK is variable depending on where you are in the country – the south is more expensive and the north is less so…. for no real reason other than that’s the way the country’s economy has evolved.
I’m all for staying as pounds sterling for our currency because quite frankly people couldn’t afford to live (it’s already expensive enough here) if we switched to euros (however convenient it would be) because of the massive price hikes that would take place and not be reflected in wages and thus result in a disparity of being able to afford items – as has been seen in other countries that have made the switch.
23/08/2008 at 11:03 Torn says:
What’s worse – and even more of an upcoming FusterCluck – is Magnus saying that “Open Beta access is not planned to be a part of the European SE Pre-Order offer.”
Now, the OFFICIAL EAStore and direct2drive.co.uk are selling EU Standard Edition pre-orders that include ‘open beta’ as well as in-game bonuses.
If there is no open-beta for EU SE pre-orders, or if there are only 55,000 keys total for this, how are the retailers and Mythic / GOA allowed to get away with this?
This goes against all sorts of trading standards EU laws, and unless GOA sorts this out (by inviting all the EU SE EAStore & d2d into open beta) there’ll be a lot of people left with no recourse but the offer of a full refund.
Scandalous. More info – read MagnusK’s postings on freddy’s forums
23/08/2008 at 17:04 Gorgeras says:
In Britain, if you sell a PC game for £35, it had better have good reviews or *it-will-NOT-sell*. Most consumers for the platform do not buy games at launch but wait and wait and wait for it to drop in price. It’s like a reverse auction: 30, can I get a 25? 22? 20? 15? SOLD to that man for £15!
No one does this like British PC gamers and no one does this like northern British PC gamers. Buying power includes the power to NOT buy. The Pound is strong, the Euro is not and never can be as strong as the Pound. Our Sterling is worth a lot, it’s worth even more when we aren’t actively using it.
Animosity between Britain and ‘the continent’ is strong, more so in the general population than it is the europhile political class. GoA were pissin in the wind before just because they’re part of a nationalised, non-competitive French telecoms company which has no incentive to do anything right. It’s even worse when they magnificiently live up to that stereotype.
I’m one of those that desperately wants to be a WAR player, but two years of GoA interpreting any criticism as if it were automatically unreasonable and invalid has taken it’s toll and arrived at the only outcome it can possibly lead to: they will fail to deliver on their oft-made but never-delivered promises. They will continually procrastinate. I’m going to see what I can do to play on the US servers.
In response to those that say they are going to play on US servers, GoA and their forum attack dogs paint a picture of US servers being dead during our natural playing hours because of the time-zone difference. It’s utter tosh which assumes that the people thinking about avoiding GoA’s service are somehow in a minority. If lots of people from Britain and Europe play on US servers, the timezone doesn’t matter. Right now, it’s the best possible outcome I can hope for and Mythic finally gets the message: we don’t want GoA.
23/08/2008 at 17:08 Gap Gen says:
Maybe sites like play.com have undercut competition so they have to charge less or lose business? Whatever the case, I probably won’t buy a new game for much more than £25, and you have to wonder who buys new games from the high street.
23/08/2008 at 17:18 Kieron Gillen says:
I admit, with all this, I’m tempted to play on US servers too.
KG
23/08/2008 at 18:14 Azhrarn says:
The pound at the moment, isn’t all that strong to be honest, it’s worth less now in euros than it has been in months.
So don’t count to much on your “strong” pound, because its relative value has been falling steadily for some time now.
23/08/2008 at 18:45 Paul S says:
Hmm. If someone were heartily pissed off at GOA, and wanted to avoid their nonsense, just how would said person go about getting onto the US servers?
23/08/2008 at 19:14 Gorgeras says:
Can’t be sure until after release. But unless EA-Mythic-GoA take deliberate steps to prevent it, it will be fairly straightforward to simply make a US account on Mythic’s WAR site and download a US client, either from Fileplanet or EA’s service.
And it doesn’t matter about the normal ups and downs of the money markets: the Euro will never be as strong as the Pound. There are a number of rather solid reasons for why this is the case, the main one being that the EU as an organisation is undemocratic, anti-competitive and intentionally obscure. The common market that was promised hasn’t happened because even the continental nations are just not suited to federalism like the American states are. Whilst the Dollar is worth almost the same in Florida as it is in Oklahoma, the Euro in Italy can often be worth a very different amount from the Euro in Ireland. Europe is not a mono-culture like the US, which is young and whilst having a diverse people, does not have diverse internal influences like Europe, which has nations almost a thousand years old.
23/08/2008 at 20:17 Beefeater1980 says:
Bumping Paul S’s question. If we want to throw in the towel and go US, how do we do that?
EDIT: missed Gorgeras’s answer. But I have a nasty sense there may be more to it than that.
Oh hell, may as well give GOA the benefit of the doubt for a couple of weeks. But if their apparent competence doesn’t improve, then knit me a Stars’n'Stripes and slap a Stetson on my head – I’ll be joining the Yanquis.
24/08/2008 at 11:29 OAB says:
Gorgeras: The Euro currently is stronger than than the pound, that’s just the way it is. If this will last, now that’s a different question.
24/08/2008 at 13:31 Gorgeras says:
I just checked; it isn’t. The Pound today is worth more than the Euro.
And this is AFTER Reuters reports a slump in the Pound’s worth because of recession fears. Whilst it’s theoretically possible for the Euro to overtake the Pound, it isn’t likely in practice because most EU countries don’t have as liberal business laws as Britain and those that do like Poland have their workers attracted to Britain.
24/08/2008 at 15:05 OAB says:
Gorgeras: That’s weight, not strength, the US Dollar, the Yen and the late DMark have never been worth more than one pound, but all have been stronger at some point. Put another way, the Turkish Lira didn’t get 1,000,000 times stronger when they dropped six zeros.
24/08/2008 at 16:18 Whizzo says:
Oh bugger I didn’t realise GOA was running this in Europe, after DAoC I want nothing more to do with them, I guess I better can my pre-order.
24/08/2008 at 19:27 Gorgeras says:
Now my head hurts.
From now on, all discussion on politics, EU corruption, markets, economic theory and semi-relevent Warhammer stuff shall continue….through the medium of dance.
02/09/2008 at 13:23 Aeuro says:
The question was posed: How to play on the US servers from Europe? The key is creating a Mythic master account and activating a US key on there, creating your WH login account at the same time. If WH is anything like DAoC, a Euro credit card will pay the monthly subs quite happily.
Sounds simple, but there are a couple of snags. You need to get a US game key, which means getting a US copy of the game. If you try the US Direct2Drive site, it’ll redirect you to the UK D2D site as soon as it sees your credit card billing address is not stateside (and it won’t accept Paypal for it either IIRC) and some US game retailer sites won’t even ship this particular game to Europe.
I’ve managed to get an international order from amazon.com (not .co.uk) accepted, together with the outrageous delivery charges. Only problem with this is that the Amazon.com open beta keys are fubar (I’m trying to get the issue resolved atm), although the early access key works and I have activated it ok.
Also, I imagine that the box won’t arrive for a couple of days after the live release date … so I will have a delay in getting my hands on the live release key. Still, Mythic mentioned (somewhere) that there would be a grace period of a few days to allow boxes to arrive.
Actually getting your hands on the US client, to download the game for open beta and early access is a simple (but long) matter of downloading the beta client torrent. From everything I have read, it should patch itself up to early access and then to release, at the appropriate times.
From my experience with DAoC, the last thing I want to do is play a game that forces me to deal with GOA in any way, shape, form, or fashion. So even if I actually did want to play on the Euro servers (for the better pings and timezone populations), I’d rather not play the game at all (or maybe have half my liver cut-out with a spoon) than have to deal with the incompetence and “laisse faire” that is GOA. As it is, most of my online gaming buddies are going to be on US servers, so hopefully I will be able to join them.
08/09/2008 at 14:53 Celestra says:
So what are the chances on EA taking over from GOA? Surely after the huge f*ck up of today, GOA are in breech of their contract to deliver what they promised, couldn’t EA step in and take control?
09/09/2008 at 13:10 Logan says:
After the failure of this magnitude by GOA, I have decided to play US version.
Already got hold of my US Beta Key, registered a master account, and now downloading the US version of WAR.
Hope others will see the light and do the same thing, if enough of us do it, someone might actually realize how bad things have got and do something about it.
09/09/2008 at 19:31 horribilus says:
I’m desperately trying to cancel my £38 I paid for the open beta.
Currently every e-mail I send is returned with “we didn’t take your money”. EA online store is where I bought it from, but they’re refusing to admit it and refusing to refund.
If I where you I’d have absolutely nothing to do with EA or GOA. You won’t get your login from GOA and you won’t get your money back from EA or whereever you got it from.
STAY AWAY, ITS ALL BAD
11/09/2008 at 13:08 Aeuro says:
Just to note that I did get the beta and headstart key issues resolved with Amazon.com and I started playing US pretty much at the same time as everyone else, whereas Euros were completely screwed over :(