Friday, November 23, 2012

Good Bye G1, Hello T3Fun

So right now, basically everyone who plays Sword 2 on a general bases, knows that Sword 2 will once again, obtain the name of Granado Espada.

The past months in Sword 2 could be described with one word: rough.  The whole issue is no where really near Raidens fault since he is obliged not to release anything GamersFirst wants him to, so for the past months he really has had to handle a raging community through beating issues around the bush, and we really started to understand why as time was unfolding.

I think its very interesting that the title of G1 is GamersFirst, cause really, they did not put us, the gamer, first.  From what I understand, and it seems pretty clear to be true, they took funds that should have been invested into Sword 2 (a game they do not fully own or can do their own tweaks to such as games like APB) from my point of view, they misused funds and failed to keep up quotes when it came to Sword 2.  Through this lack of ability to fulfill criteria that IMC had placed upon them, the true people that G1 wrote a check to every month, IMC, was very displeased and saw no future for the contract between G1 and themselves for Sword 2.  Given that G1 wanted to completely be able to control Sword 2, like they can with APB, they still probably did not want to end up losing the contract.

Therefore, a new publisher had to fill the shoes that G1 left.  They have to please a community that has been through a bit of a rough road the past few months.  Lack of any information of any kind, no sign of any advancement of a patch and the inability for G1 to actually communicate with their players.  People started getting fed up with Raiden being the only individual who seemed to bridge that gap between player and G1.  People were more pissed that Raiden was unable to release any type of information regarding the future of Sword 2 / G1.  Its funny, those rumors that the "end of Sword 2" is actually true, given its not necessarily the END but its definitely a transformation.

As time went by, talks in other countries, mainly Korea, were spreading like wild fire.  From my "Intel", there was talks of a representative flying out to where IMC was to sign some papers.  Some people question if that really happened, well apparently if G1 is losing rights to Sword 2, then apparently it did.  The word of Sword 2 / G1 closing down and Orpesia , Bristia, Illier getting transferred to a new publisher, was on the rise.

A day or so later, Raiden made a post about how it was a great journey and the journey is now coming to an end and Sword 2 will then be transferred to T3Fun.

I will not get into how to transfer or my opinion on T3Fun, cause I have yet to form then cause I have never played under their banner.

That being said, no one is really that surprised, in a game type world, the past few months have been hell.  The downfall of G1 with Sword 2 probably happened a lot earlier then anyone can actually say, but knowing G1, they made sure nothing was to leak out to soon.  I laugh at how some games can treat their information as if its some "Area 51" type security.

In the end, its time to say good bye to G1, I try to just think of the good times before this dark doom occurred months ago.  I wish the new publisher, T3Fun, the best of luck in trying to recover whatever is left of the trust in the player base.  If I were to sit down with T3Fun and give them advice on the things that mean the most to individuals, it would be the following:

1. Communicate with your players, do not neglect them, bad news is better than no news.

2. Interact with the player base, bring back fun events, get AM / GMs whatever you wanna call them, bring them back into the game, run random events, and make it easier for this game to be F2P and not P2P.

3. Create a strong bridge between the players and the publisher; do not have only one forum admin to keep the entire population of Sword 2 acknowledged, treat us as if we are a genuine money supplier, which we are.

4. The player base is not stupid, make sure you know that because covering up bad information with a bunch of gold events, people tend to catch on, be up front with us, do not leave us out to dry, I think for those who pay (Gold) to play and for those who in general play the game and buy things FROM people who P2P, deserve a bit of respect and divinity.

5. Take into account of what the players want, not what you want.  A publisher just publishes a game, given they know more things that work and do not work then most players do, but that does not mean there are players out there with great ideas.  If the majority of individuals do not like something (one server merge) then take that into highly account and come back and present the public with valuable information on why we can not have multiple servers and what you plan to do to deal with the negative things that a one server can bring.

Those are just a few, main things that I would really wanna ask or basically suggest to our new, hopeful, publisher.