Into the Weekend - Official

Hi all!
With Rubi-Ka 2019 entering its first weekend, I wanted to touch base with everyone real quick about the launch, your response, known issues, wait times, and community content.

It’s only been a few days, but it’s been a wild ride so far. On Wednesday, we sprung open the gates to Rubi-Ka 2019 - our take on a fresh-start server which you probably already know about if you’re reading this.

(And if not, hey, we have a new server for current and new members to start with staged level caps, no expansions, and a fresh economy!)

So, the soft launch of the server went great and the response has been overwhelming - there’s a ton of people wanting to get in on the new server, which is AWESOME…but it also means a ton of customer support requests are piling in, resulting in longer wait times for everyone.

Support is working to address as many of your issues as quickly possible in the order received; ultimately, our resources are limited and we’re only human, so it will take longer to receive a response or solution than you (or we) would like. We apologize for the wait and thank you for your patience while we churn through your requests!

Hot Issues:

In addition to the launch of RK2019, we’ve deployed a couple patches to fix some issues that popped up. The main things to highlight are that the Pioneer Backback from the new March 2019 offer is now claimable (and is NODROP, since that was asked about a bunch), and all claims from said offer should now be available on both Live and RK2019.

As mentioned above, there’s a lot of tickets coming in, and due to wait times, some players are asking in other channels (forums, discord chat, social media) about what’s going on. We’re aware that some of you are encountering issues with making your payments, account access, choosing the right offer (or getting the offer bonuses at all) and are working to resolve each issue on a case-by-case basis as they come up.

We can’t resolve billing issues in chat or on the forums - they HAVE to go through our email ticket system to be resolved. You can submit said email ticket here:

I know the wait time sucks and you want to get in to play your fresh character! We want you in the game and playing too! And we’re working on that.

Community:

Some people have approached me with questions about how we plan to approach community engagement and how you’ll ‘steer this ship’, as we put it. We already made a small adjustment to our plan based on community feedback - we were originally planning to put the cap at 15 but later decided on 20 after it looked like a lot of people were ready to move up a bit further. We’ll see how the cap at 20 goes over the weekend and adapt from there.

On Polls: Polls are a thing we’ll do down the line; one thing to keep in mind about polls is that they engage a fraction of a fraction; the already-engaged and usually vocal minority are the ones that are active on forums/social media in the first place. They may not necessarily represent the playerbase as a whole, so while poll data can be effective as a supplement to our metrics for making decisions, it cannot be the sole way we make decisions. I hope that makes sense.

On AO Streams: At this point, it should be no secret that I am not a skilled Anarchy Online player, to say the least. I will continue to stream Anarchy Online and I will continue to be mediocre at it, and I’m okay with that.

Hopefully I’ll get better at it!

Every Wednesday, we stream at 1:00 PM EST for one of the “Live” games we manage at the Durham, NC studio: Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and Secret World Legends. These streams should not be expected to contain info dumps, big reveals, and such (unless otherwise explicitly stated) - they are intended as social experiences where I get to hang out and chat with y’all, do giveaways, and hope that you feel appreciated for participating. If that doesn’t vibe with you, you are more than welcome to point your browser elsewhere. I won’t be hurt (much). :slight_smile:

Things were pretty hectic at the office this week and we hope to stabilize soon. Thanks again for all your support, feedback, and @'s on Discord. :stuck_out_tongue:

Have an awesome weekend, and keep your local trolls (aka me) fed.

Cheers,
Andy B (aka Odonoptera) :adnyplz:

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First

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Thanks for the new server and the interaction with us on the forums and discord and the streams! It’s heart-warming to see AO get so much love again. :blush::heart:

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Thx too man! Makes me happy :blush:
Keep IT up and have a Nice weekend

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Thanks for the good work. The new server is something many have wanted and it is much appreciated.

Shrugging off criticism and concerns with “They’re a vocal minority and may not represent the community” isn’t great way to address issues.
If you put some issues in “that’s just a vocal minority” category and ignore them, while listening the community on others like level cap, that’s little better than not listening to community at all.

Edit; Not asking for every issue to be fixed, but at least some communication on why what players are asking is wrong or why it can’t be done.

remove level caps, took me less than 2 hours to level from 10 to 20

Feed me more ? :wink:

Level caps are keeping the players together in playing. There are not that many in the larger scope of things; and without a cap it would very soon be really thin.

in the long run that will be imposible anyways. because even after one month of relesease there are still those who start from lvl 1 and others are at tl 5. so just remove caps now and get rid of the feeling of playing some like trial version of full game.

It is impossible in the long run. But it has not been a week yet. And the raising the level cap slowly keeps a majority of players in the same range. If it were removed it would split into 2 or 3 groups very fast.

Hey Andy, glad you took the time to address some of the concerns and questions we have raised. We appreciate it. There has been a long stretch of time here where our concerns would have been flat out ignored and the direction wouldn’t have been changed or heard no matter what the community said.

Community:

Some people have approached me with questions about how we plan to approach community engagement and how you’ll ‘steer this ship’, as we put it. We already made a small adjustment to our plan based on community feedback - we were originally planning to put the cap at 15 but later decided on 20 after it looked like a lot of people were ready to move up a bit further. We’ll see how the cap at 20 goes over the weekend and adapt from there.

I like changing the level cap from 15 to 20 instead. That’s a good decision imo. However I would have suggested a level progression more like 10->25->60->100->125->150->175->200 for froob levels. But I don’t think it matters too much. I rarely saw anyone in game complain about the level cap of 10. I was one of the people that wanted to stay at 10 longer, but most people I saw really weren’t bothered either way. There was a ton to do still at that level, but going to 20 wasn’t a huge deal. Those few people that were complaining about wanted to go to 20 were not experiencing the game. They had not spent the time farming, equipping, doing abmouth with a raid force of level 10s, etc. There was still a ton for them to do. But as I said, 10->20 so soon isn’t a huge deal.

On Polls: Polls are a thing we’ll do down the line; one thing to keep in mind about polls is that they engage a fraction of a fraction; the already-engaged and usually vocal minority are the ones that are active on forums/social media in the first place. They may not necessarily represent the playerbase as a whole, so while poll data can be effective as a supplement to our metrics for making decisions, it cannot be the sole way we make decisions. I hope that makes sense.

While I understand your reluctance to use polls as your sole source of community input, I think your “fraction of a fraction” is flawed. While yes, if you only used social media it would be a small fraction of players, and forums would be a slightly larger fraction, the real idea here was to use the ingame browser. You have the ability to pop windows up on login with the daily rewards, you could use the same system for people to “report in” when they are ready for the level cap to move up. Maybe move it up when 50%+ of the players have said they are ready? Not 100% sure of the semantics of it, but just a suggestion.

On AO Streams: At this point, it should be no secret that I am not a skilled Anarchy Online player, to say the least. I will continue to stream Anarchy Online and I will continue to be mediocre at it, and I’m okay with that.

It is not a secret you aren’t a skilled AO player. That’s okay. Nobody expects the community manager of Funcom to have the time to become a skilled AO player, its a fantastically complicated game that you can’t learn in an afternoon. By all means, learn the game and get better if you’d like. Or, just use the occasional stream to connect to the player base. That’s fine too. I’m happy to see Funcom giving AO some attention in any way. However, the issue is the stream was announced on facebook as “We’ll be streaming Anarchy Online for the first time in a long while today in just 30 minutes! Join our community managers as they play as well as talk a little about the upcoming 2019 server. See you then!” which led players to believe you would be answering a few unanswered questions. Maybe some new information. Maybe that’s our fault for that expectation, but we felt that expectation wasn’t met. I’d like to also take this time to apologize for the portion of the playerbase that wanted to shame you for your knowledge, or lack thereof, of the game. You don’t have to be good at the game to effectively bridge the communication gap between players and devs. We see that you are trying, and it’s some of the best effort AO has gotten in atleast the 10 years I have been around, and we are immensely appreciative.

Hopefully I’ll get better at it!

Every Wednesday, we stream at 1:00 PM EST for one of the “Live” games we manage at the Durham, NC studio: Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, and Secret World Legends. These streams should not be expected to contain info dumps, big reveals, and such (unless otherwise explicitly stated) - they are intended as social experiences where I get to hang out and chat with y’all, do giveaways, and hope that you feel appreciated for participating. If that doesn’t vibe with you, you are more than welcome to point your browser elsewhere. I won’t be hurt (much). :slight_smile:

Things were pretty hectic at the office this week and we hope to stabilize soon. Thanks again for all your support, feedback, and @'s on Discord. :stuck_out_tongue:

One of the biggest things I think could be improved right now is just more communication. Make a forums section if possible so you can make announcements, we can ask questions, you can do polls for feelers, etc. The communication is all over the place and not in a consistent place for us to even go to see what is going on. I found out the level cap went to 20 from word of mouth, then I saw it on facebook later. Still no official mention on the launcher or in game other than the small login yellow text a lot of people don’t get the chance to see because of chat. There needs to be more prominent announcements to try to reach more of the player base.

Thanks for taking the time Andy. The community appreciates your honesty and frankness in this post and we hope that continues as this server develops.

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thats just how it goes. basicly it is open world game were people are free to do what they want. i’ve seen a lot of people in game who are frustrated over level caps, and to me personally it is very awkward to be same level with so many people. I would say for soft start they should cap to max lvl 60

This.
Stating that those in polls and on forums are a vocal minority makes no sense, as those are the ones raising voices. Which ones are then the “vocal majority” that needs to be considered? Which ones are those who are supposedly neglected if attention is turned to the “vocal minority” and only “a fraction of a fraction”?

it does make sense. on the forums there are maybe 10 different individuals posting things and in game there are definitely more people. sure it is just small fraction of playerbase who uses forums.

Dear AndyB

I want to start off by thanking you, on the behalf of me and surely many others in this small and certainly special community, for the work you amongst others, are putting into this. You’ve created a rather positive impact on the game.
Many of my long gone friends are returning and the word is slowly spreading.
I’m sure you’ve noticed a huge influx in subscriptions. If we’re lucky, FC decides to put even more resources into AO after all this and that would be great.
The community is vivid and growing again, things that we enjoyed 10-15 years ago are now what the entire server[RK2019] has become to be.
There’s a super positive spirit in game, people are helpful and the community is flourishing. We’re all having tons of fun and that’s made possible because of you guys, no matter how poorly one would think it’s being managed. The key aspect of this whole thing should be having fun, and you’re providing just that.

Unfortunately though, amongst all of us having fun, there are those who can’t help to look at this in a long-term perspective, and there are some alarming issues at the moment which has raised a lot of thought within some parts of the community.
Many of the players will just shrug it off and say “well, the point is to have fun”. Then there are those of us who realize the danger of having that attitude.

The problem at this point isn’t whether you know the game or not. It’s ok to be in the learning phase, especially when you take upon a project like this with next to zero knowledge about the game. You’re a professional and you will get into it rather quickly, I’m sure of it as are the most of us.
That’s not the problem here, but rather how there seems to be a lack of consideration to what’s factoring into currently dividing and neglecting a highly anticipating playerbase.
The communication and lack of planning at this point is what concerns many people, and the questions raised regarding this matter are not being put into perspective, seemingly.

The argument you make and the reasons in which it’s based is completely contradictive and counter-productive - it doesn’t make any sense.
Those who are voicing opinions and those who participate in polls/surveys are obviously those who should, assuming the server is at least SOMEWHAT community driven, be the ones to dictate with the help of you, which direction the server and its development should take.

Those who participate in polls and surveys are obviously representing the playerbase, who else would it be? Those who sit in silence and just play the game? Are those the ones you’re taking into consideration? You can’t have an opinion if you don’t allow for one to be voiced, while neglecting the platforms you can use for surveying the opinions, with the argument that it’s only a fraction of a fraction.

In conclusion, your argument to the whole research of public opinion matter is contradictive and a step in the wrong direction, I would think. You have all the means to efficiently seek the opinion of the players in a smooth and including way. You have the launcher, neat forums and all the social media platforms. Making a survey takes an hour and no matter how you put it, those platforms are in fact the only sources for community opinions.

On a side note, it has now become obvious that you do in fact take community feedback somewhat seriously since you actually addressed some of the questions and critique raised. That itself sets a new level of trust towards you and your colleagues.
It’s stepping in the right direction and it’s very appreciated when someone of your position steps up and actually addresses the criticism.
Keep up the good work. I respect your effort and I hope to see more coming out of this.

Thanks for the work and effort you have put into it thus far. This is great fun and I’m sure it will only get better.

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Who said anything about using the forums only? The entire argument towards community management was the lack of using social media platforms and email surveying that’s available to them. No one ever said anything about using the forums only. Not AndyB, nor those questioning him.

Ok, here’s where I’m probably going to get slammed by people for my take on level caps…

While I have also experienced a little frustration at capping out quickly, I think taking it slow is 100% the right thing to do. Primarily because otherwise we’ll be at cap within 2 months and it’s essentially just a 2nd server without froobs. We’ve already seen 6-boxes, so no doubt the economy will get hit sooner or later anyway. So here’s why I think it’s the right thing.

The people saying they’ve already capped out and have nothing left to do, probably haven’t covered all the bases - and if they have then their complaint is valid. For me, I hit 20 and went “hmmm… now what?” and put myself a little list together (in no particular order):

  1. Max out my tokenboard by running missions
  2. Get a better weapon
  3. Get maxed out newcomer armour
  4. Get ql30 implants in all slots
  5. Get all the composite nanos and any profession specific nanos I can self (MP, so plenty)
  6. Start farming / putting creds together for stuff I’ll be able to use over the next 10 levels

Only then would I say I’ve “run out of things to do” and even then I could be helping out orgmates in achieving the above. Even then, how many people only have 1 toon per account? Pretty sure most of us have plenty of alts and, on the off-chance this server stays around long-term, it’s worth investing time in a blitzer, tradeskiller or maybe a buff monkey.

Overall I’m loving the new server and any frustrations I have had so far have only benefitted the strength of my toon anyway. Will everyone see it this way or agree with the above? Absolutely not. But to me having a character I can be proud of that’s also of use to the people around me is a big win.

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This has been a dream come true for me, personally. You’ll notice I even stopped nagging y’all on Facebook for AO2 :wink:

There are people running around, grouping, recruiting, chatting, showing off their accomplishments, running missions… It’s not quite like it was back in the day, but it’s close enough to be paradise for be.

I only wish y’all would keep this server “classic”, i.e. pre-Shadowlands. This would help differentiate this server from the main server as well and justify it’s potential long term existence. :wink:

I know I’d be happy to keep paying and playing in a classic environment.

Regardless of how it all turns out, thank you for this much at least. It’s so good to be home.

Not to forget, although it might be a temporary beneficial thing in the grand scheme is the sided shoulderpads to start wearing at 30.
But great list, I think as an old player that have returned for this, that the rk2019 server if done right is a really good way to teach new players about important parts of progression. And keeping level cap not only forces a large group together. It will show new people or people with little knowledge what can be done with twinking at low levels.