A classic game revived in China backfires

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Sep 052009
 

Several days ago, Shanda published some screen captures which the players sadly found to include class restrictions and commercial stores … the RMB will dominate everything … if a player has cash, he can purchase equipment to upgrade without having to go through the trouble to combat monsters …

The players decided to call for a boycott.  They established Baidu forums and QQ groups to protest the “false advertising” by Shanda to “take advantage of their feelings.”  Some of the leaders even called for the players to block the entrances to the various cities at 2pm, August 28 when the game officially opened.

At one entrance, more than 40 characters stood still.  They wore cloth dresses and cloth shoes and stood shoulder to shoulder.  Other players cannot enter.  Two hours later, more than 2,000 people entered the chat room.  Meanwhile, several thousand people were blocking the gates of the various cities in the game.

EastSouthWestNorth: The Legend Returns

The link is a screenshot-heavy post detailing the story of what happened when the game Hot-Blooded Legend was revived as an RMT-heavy title called The Legend Returns. It was met with protests… the page has two different accounts of the event, here’s a snippet from the other:

The reason why this mass incident occurred was that the new version of Legend was over-commercialized and quite inconsistent with their advertising claim that the “original flavor” would be preserved.  In previous versions of the game, victories and social rank depend on persistence.  As long as the player is “hardworking” and is brave and strong in combating monsters, he can get promoted in rank and obtain more equipment.  In fact, he can proceed to have “romance” and even “marriage” in a life of leisure.

May 212008
 
  • The Hernandez case in Florida, where IGE is being sued for damaging the WoW gameplay experience, is trying seeking class certification. This was always their intent, so I suppose really, I am just pointing out that the slow gears continue to grind on.
  • In other legal news, a Legend of Mir 2 player is suing Shanda, trying to get monetary damages for the value of the in-game items that they lost due to some sort of technical glitch. In other words, a “virtual property” case. The player had been buying these items, and Massively did the math, working out that the guy had spent almost $30,000.
  • SmallWorlds is about to launch — basically, it lets you make isometric multiplayer apartments and embed them on pages and link them. They are apparently planning on lots of Hollywood tie-ins. It will be interesting to see how this goes, given the similarities to Whirled, which has not set the world on fire yet despite being very cool. Using the “open big” estimation method and eyeballing their curve using the numbers they report on the site, they look to be on track to peak around 20-30,000 users unless they manage to crack another market or go viral. Naturally, we’re watching all this kind of closely since Metaplace bears some similarities to both of these.