There is still excitement around the air-drops in H1Z1. Now the “culprit” speaks up.
In a pre-release stream from NGTZombies, Adam Clegg, one of the minds behind H1Z1, made the fateful statement that one could not buy weapons and ammunition for real money: “There are ZERO possibilities.”
To this statement, there has been loud criticism, because it indirectly worked through the air-drops in the early access of H1Z1. There are crates dropping with zombies and heavy equipment. These air-drops can be ordered for 5 dollars.
Clegg stated that he simply did not have these air-drops on his radar when he talked about “No weapons for money” in the stream, rather he meant only the cash shop and the direct opportunity to acquire weapons there.
In streams, one often talks a bit faster and not every word is 100% thought through; moreover, H1Z1 is a complex game with many systems.
Clegg apologized for this serious misunderstanding. He can understand that it was perceived as “He lied to us”; it was not his intention to deceive anyone.
In the fan video from January 16, the air-drop issue is further exacerbated by the fact that the zombies are probably buggy … early access after all …
The president of H1Z1, John Smedley, has offered players the option to receive a full refund until Monday.
Refunds – if you are upset about the airdrop P2W issue and want a refund email [email protected] and we will take care of you
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) January 16, 2015
This feels a bit like damage control at the moment. SOE is being fired upon from all sides, whether by YouTubers like Boogie2988 (better known as Francis) or by Forbes Magazine. Even German media like GameStar have no understanding for any “But we are still in early access” excuses. What SOE wanted to establish as a “We want to develop the game closely with fans” policy is being labeled through the air-drop issue as a “cheap cash grab” or “scam”.
The exact changes to the air-drops are as follows:
- The plane will be slowed to 53%.
- The crate will drop at only 80% speed
- The crate will no longer drop within a radius of 250m around the player, but in a radius of 700m
- The crate will drop so that no player is directly in the radius
- There must be at least 120 players on the server (that would be about 60% of the maximum players)
Clegg also provides exact statistics on what is in the air-drops in the reddit post. The weapons will now be substantially rarer.
20 dollars was probably the exact wrong price – either free or really expensive
Mein MMO says: Just looking at the reception of the early access shows how far apart the mood of the “core fans before release” is from that of the “fans after release”.
Before the release, the opinion of the small group of fans who accompanied the game: It doesn’t matter how far you are, let’s just play already. Just release it, it looks good enough in the streams. No one expects anything from an early access.
Now the mood of many gamers, who only became aware of the game, is more: How could they at Sony bring such a cheap, buggy thing to market, that’s outrageous and it’s a scam too?
Maybe this is the crux of an early access game? For the developers, it is a pre-alpha meant for absolute hardcore fans who desperately want to be part of it. In the eyes of the world, it is: A game for which you paid 20 euros and that should be fun now.
This seems to be an unfortunate price. If players had not paid anything, they would have seen it as an alpha. If SOE (like other free-to-play games) had offered an extremely expensive box, beyond 100 euros, with “exclusive alpha access” and numerous advantages for later, and clearly explained that only a very small group was being allowed in, the situation might have looked different. With this model, which has been heavily criticized, other games like ArcheAge have launched.
And even if there were major problems later, 12 hours after the start of the ArcheAge alpha, no one was talking about a huge catastrophe and a disaster.
