f13.net

It's not huge, it's barely even significant, but it's a thought.  For that, I appreciate the move.  Creating a way for the many people without power to be able to return to the game in a few weeks and not have to chase their tails in a circle over where their stuff went to. 

Not big news, but was a nice enough gesture that I thought I'd pass it along.

Yeah, it's a small thing, but sometimes it's the small things that matter. Very cool.

Its a good idea its not like it costs them much to do it and its a decent thing to do for the player base. Its kinda hard to suspsend your account when you are living at the superdome.

kaid

This is pretty big, I think.  Anything that helps people who have lost everything to get back to some sort of normalcy is huge.

Didn't UO do something similar with 9/11?

They shut off housing decay and claimed it was because of 9/11.  Then they left it off for like a full year, because in reality it was just broken.

Far better than Blizzard's cockgobbling dogshit (http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-general/4671333.htm).

They must be too busy color-coordinating money hats to care.

At the least, though, Blizzard subscribers are generally used to them not caring.

Wow, that's pretty fucking lame of Blizzard.  People can't contact their relatives to tell them "Hey, I'm alive" but they're supposed to call Billing & Support to shut off their accounts.  Nice.

Yup that's fucking bullshit especially since Blizzard can easily search through their database and find the vast majority of the potentially affected Gulf coast accounts by city, area code, or ZIP code.

Edit: Actually Mythic/SquareEnix/etc. can all do this to so I guess it's not really fair to harsh on Blizzard alone (though of course they presumably have more Gulf Coast subscribers than all the rest of the combined).

Edit2: Took SOE off the above list (see below)

Edit3: Took NCsoft off the above list

Perhaps they're planning to make rafts out of hundred dollar bills and go rescue people.

(http://www.bay13.net/pics/desktop/morepictures/money.jpg)

Cash money beotch!

www.blizzard.com :

Help the Red Cross! - Ordinn on 9/1/05
Our heartfelt condolences go out to the individuals and families affected by Hurricane Katrina. We encourage everyone to assist the federal, state, and local organizations doing vital work on the ground by making a donation to the relief efforts. The Department of Homeland Security has asked that donations be made in the form of financial contributions, rather than supplies, which are difficult to get into the affected areas at this time. If you would like to make a donation to the relief efforts, please contact the American Red Cross: www.redcross.org; 1-800-HELP NOW (1-800-4357-669).

A better thing for a company with a gazillion subscribers would be to offer a deal: donate money to Red Cross or something through Blizzard, get a cool in-game item. It may not do anything, but just something that looks really, really damn cool, and you can only get it through this. I wonder how much money they could raise, even if the donation was like $10. Probably a lot.

Props, though, to Mythic for the good gestures.

I doubt anyone down there gives a shit right now.  May as well find out what Burger King is doing to help hurricane victims, and get all worked up over that.

Kudos to Mythic.

We have done the same for the 13,000+ players we have in the affected areas, and we have also suspended billing those people until they are able to log in again.

We also added a /donate to EQ2 that goes to the American Red Cross site. Yes, it uses the /pizza code. For players in other games, we ask that you please go here directly:

https://secure2.convio.net/arc/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1161

The situation there is very bad, as you know. Any amount would help.

Wow! You guys are awesome!  :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up: :thumbs_up:

A class move.  Thanks for the update and the link.

A very good move, Raph.

A lot of other companies seem content to link to charities.

Thumbs up to Mythic and Sony.  Dissapointed in Blizzard, since I would expect larger companies (for the MMOG service at least) to have an easier time bringing resources to bear to assist their crippled customers. 

I never thought I would see the day that I was glad something like that was implemented  :-D

Good to hear that some companies are sensitive to both the situation and their image. Apparently Blizzard is obllivious to both.

Ditto. Glad to know some good can come out of EQ2. /rimshot

Also, a big fuck you to Blizzard for responding to that post with "Have the homeless refugees call Blizzard on their non-existent magic fairy phones to keep us from charging their cards for a service we aren't rendering."

Foreskins.

It isn't so much about the service.  Far as I can tell, the DAoC people are still getting billed, but they won't lose in-game items because they can't get in to refresh them.  Sony won't bill them, partly (in order ?) to preserve in-game property.  It looks to be for all their games, btw, not just EQ2.  Really, the part that matters from a gamer POV isn't so much that you're going to get billed for $10-15, it's that you might lose stuff because you can't access your account.  I'm not that familiar with the economies in those other games, but I assume they are similar to UO where property is extremely valuable relative to most anything else you are likely to own.  What would really hurt isn't getting a $15 bill, it's finally getting some semblance of my life back together, log into my favorite game, and having lost stuff that took weeks or months of work to gather.

I don't think there's any refreshable content in WoW, and if not it's a somewhat moot point.  That was a somewhat assanine response by Blizzard (yeah, you can call us to cancel if you want), but certainly not intended that way.  Other games that lack refreshable content would be in the same boat.  Waiving monthly fees would be nice, but that's not really the real issue from the gamer POV.

If they have an item in their mailbox, it will be deleted if they don't take it out within a given period of time.  It's like 30 days if you haven't viewed the letter yet, 3 days (I believe) if you have.  Goes for gold, too.

Given the amount of monetary loss that the victims have suffered, I think that not getting a $15 bill actually DOES matter.

I agree.  Would be a nice gesture for other monthly subscription games follow your lead.     

Classy move by SOE. Glad to see them putting the important things in life as a priority.

Kudos to both SoE and Mythic for the classy moves here.

You are correct, that one is the bestest.

I think my outrage at Blizzard was just the callous, unthinking attitude that said, "Yeah, call us to cancel, bitches. Phone service? Who needs phone service? Just call us WITH YOUR MIND."

Glad to see somebody else has finally followed SOE's lead. I hope they are doing this retroactively since it's already been over a week now but otherwise good for NCsoft.

It's no surprise that Blizzard isn't following suit, and you can't really blame them, given their razor-thin margins and all.  :roll:

Ouch.

When did anyone say that a $15 bill DOESN'T matter? 

Roac did, more or less.  At least, his post caused Raph's response.


Alkiera

Yeah, *finger* to Blizzard. It would take them all of an afternoon to add a special donator-only pet to the game that you get for donating $20. Like a "Hurricane Naga" or something. A Murlock would be better, but that's already being used for Blizzcon. Even if only 10% of their players donated, that's still what, like $8,000,000? Even if only a small percentage of their players gave, it would still add up to a huge ammount by anyone's standards. Make it a semi-useful blue trinket for $50 and they could probably collect enough to rebuild New Orleans.

For those of you who play Warmachine, Iron Kingdoms, or just like the miniatures, Privateer Press is offering a special edition resculpted miniature of Vladimir Tzepesci for a $10 dollar donation. For those of you who use Vlad at all, it's an even greater deal because his original miniature blew goats. Privateer is donating 100% of the sales for the miniature and eating all production costs on the miniature, so every penny of the $10 goes to the Red Cross. Reaper is doing something similar but hasn't given many details yet.

FYI, saying that losing all your ingame stuff hurts more than a $15 monthly isn't to say that the bill doens't matter - it's just perspective.  If a $15 bill were too much for you, waiving the fee for one month isn't going to help a lot.  You won't be paying the next month, or the next, or the one after that either.  If $15 means that much, you will just cancel and be done with it.  For anyone who does intend to stay a customer (which freebies like this are geared toward), getting $15 isn't a big deal because they've already committed themselves to it - its losing dozens or hundreds of hours of work, which is by far worth more than $15.

Or to put it another way, just because I say A < B does not mean A = 0.