Frogster responds to TERA fan backlash

The recent announcement by Bluehole Studios and Frogster Online Gaming that the latter had secured the European publishing rights to TERA brought about something akin to an outcry from portions of the forthcoming fantasy MMORPG's community. While it wasn't quite millions of voices crying out in terror (and then being suddenly silenced), there were a few indignant threads on the various TERA fan sites. Why the brouhaha?

Apparently some fans have experienced everything from perceived shoddy customer service, to forum "censorship," to the wanton slaughter of helpless kittens in previous Frogster-published titles (the largest of which is free-to-play behemoth Runes of Magic). Frogster director of product management Daniel Ulrich has since extended an olive branch in the form of a post on the official TERA forums, laying out the first of what will be several rounds of Q&A posts over the next few days.

Check out the thread for some answers to your burning TERA questions, including free-to-play vs. pay-to-play, support team specifics, and server hardware.

Reader Comments (34)

Such high hopes fr this game but the article states froggy will NOT be in charge of the NA version, thats awesome, as an ex runes player I will never play another game run by them the service is terrible and all they care about is dumping more content and not fixing the crap thats been broken forever.
chances are as aggressive as frog is the EU players may see more content then NA but most likely the NA version will be more polished lol. whew crises diverted!! (for now)

I'm pretty sure Bluehole will still be solely in charge of content. Frogster is just taking care of servers and regional customer service basically. There's no way the developing studio would give any other study rights to create content.

yes I agree and your probably right but you also have to take in account alot of the other games that are global with area restricted servers some are farther along on content then others and at varying degrees of polish so somehow these companies are getting content out for their respective areas ahead of others.

I wish i could remember some examples but sheesh i go through f2p games like candy and can barely remember what i played last month lol.
heck I can remember the diff between europe and na versionsof the cash shop when RoM started here and also dont forget RoM is even older in korea (under a diff name if i remember correctly

(might be wrong about the korean ver of RoM but I was sure it it was out for awhile under a diff name there b4 we saw it)

The reason for the varying degree of polish and being further a long than others is most likely due to the hardware of the servers for one and bugs arising from code being lost in transfer from one place to the other. I'm not a programmer so I don't know much about that but I do know the problems that occur when the host studio sends data to the contracted studio like Frogster, but you would have to ask someone with that kind of knowledge for specifics.

As far as the lack of being on the same page so to speak as far as builds, this was answered in the Q and A. Usually contracted studios get data for new builds after it's been done, then they have to put it onto their servers and push it to the players. While they are doing this the host studio at this point already has their stuff ready to go so they go ahead and push it earlier than the contracted studio. I'm pretty drunk right now but I'm also pretty sure I explained that right =P

Oh yeah but in the Q and A the community guy talked about NA, EU and all other regions pushing builds at the same time so no one is left behind.

Oh, I didn't see the part about an intentional difference in content. Sometimes studios will change certain content (especially items) when dealing with different cultures. This is especially true when dealing with Asian markets vs. Western ones. Though this is still done by the host studio at the request of the contracted studio. The contracted studio still doesn't have the authority to change content without the host studios permission in any case I've seen.

"Apparently some fans have experienced everything from perceived shoddy customer service, to forum "censorship," to the wanton slaughter of helpless kittens in previous Frogster-published titles (the largest of which is free-to-play behemoth Runes of Magic)."

I have to ask, and maybe it's just in this case for you Jef, but it seems like anytime negative customer reaction is reported on, it's done so in a sort of mocking way, as if the claims are always completely exaggerated or ridiculous. Are there ever occasions when you feel the outcry is justified? Or, is it a general philosophy that these are just games and shouldn't be taken seriously? I'm just curious.

I've noticed this kind of us against them attitude in many areas of business. The people on the "inside" often seem to see anyone on the "outside", the customers for instance, as being generally unreasonable in their expectations.

Bloggers/reviewers/etc won't generally pan a developer/publisher because they don't want their access revoked in the future. This is a case of self-preservation at the expense of mocking certain potential readers.

I will say that the outcry on the official Tera forums seemed to be led by a few loudmouths posting every few minutes in a copy-and-paste style. Just glad Frogster won't affect me personally either way but I wish our Euro gamers luck with them.

If the US servers doesn't have an IP ban on Europe then Frogster will truly suffer. These days separating the US from the EU or vice versa is a bad idea.

I for one will not play any game frogster is involved in because of their crappy customer service.

The primary concern is due to the fact that Frogster doesn't support any/very many pay-to-play titles. Free to play titles have crap for customer service, and that's fine, because they're free.

Frogster won't know how to do customer service for TERA, because it's pay-to-play.

My experience with Frogster...they could care less what players want or think.One of the reasons I won't have anything to do with them.

Way to make the fans sound like a bunch of assholes with your lead in...

Weird didn't I make a post about this in the other thread.

If I was Bluehole studios I would be very careful at what happened with Spellborn NL, although this was Acclaim as well. Frogster held the hopes of many players with its redevelopment of this superb game, never listen to the people who played it and never supported them. It the end killing them.

What is even up with Acclaim these days?

Friends, fear not the typed word on the iternet! As it always has many meanings. For those that think lettuce is a required vegetable on a sandwich or burger there are always those that say or read things a totally different way............Frogster is indeed in a bad light when it comes to service and common sense, we can only hope..NAY CHILDREN, PRAY, that things work out.

..........now, lettuce bow our heads.

On a serious note, the frogster alliance has killed this game before it s released, at least for me as i wont even take the time to buy a box and even check it out. A trial is also out of the question.

I wonder just what damage control they will try, dissasociation? Say they have a different publisher but keep frogster in the background?

This goes to show folks in real time how entirely out of touch with subs or potential subs these suits are, what a blunder.

I got a malware warning from Chrome on one of the Frogster sites I visited when signing up for Runes of Magic. Apparently their banner ad provider was "incompetent" or "unethical" at that time. (Where's a "shhh" smiley when you need one?)

to be a bit harsh: im kinda glad that those who played previous titles published by frogster, seem to leave out TERA now. I generally don't like f2p communities ;)

Looking forward to a good game, totally not interested in the publisher, and no - i never needed a GM or any kind of service in my ten years of mmo-gaming ...

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Frogster responds to TERA fan backlash

Reader Comments (34)

Posted: Jul 20th 2010 8:23PM Thrasher said

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