The lack of regional pricing for the Founder’s Packs on South America makes absolutely no sense, but an overpriced pack won’t have a permanent effect on the game so I can mostly ignore it, however what really makes me worried is the lack of regional pricing on the Lost Ark store itself.
The average wages in Latin America are much lower compared to the USA, so there will be very few players wanting to pay in US Dollars for any stuff from the Lost Ark store. That means Blue Crystals will be INSANELY expensive, so there won’t be a “trickle down” effect where non-paying players can acquire crystals with their gold, like how it happens with other servers.
Moreover, with fewer “wales” in the region, and with the bulk of players refusing to pay so much money for non-wale stuff like skins, mounts, character boots etc, I can guarantee that the revenue generated from the South American server will be pitiful.
When that happens, what will Amazon do? Will they take a loss and keep the server running, or would they shut it down? And if they shut it down, would players get free character transfers to the US server, or would players lose all their progress?
This complete silence from Amazon about their business strategy for the South American server is truly shocking considering we are just two months away from the release of the game.
What are you expecting for? South America server won’t get a special treatment, unless you wanna see the whole world playing on South America servers.
Imo, you should already be glad they added South America to the playable regions as you wans’t planned and I bet they wouldn’t have done it if they could think it is worthless.
By that logic, everyone would be playing on RU (since it is much cheaper than KR). Anyways, they can make prices lower by using regional pricing (as discussed above) so that only people from South America get the respective lower prices. But, as I said, there are pros and cons to this.
His point of concern is very reasonable, man. Just because he brought it up does not mean he’s not thankful that he can play. lol.
I am not begging. I am suggesting stuff and discussing pros and cons. I even said it might be a bad idea. But it is already happening. I was asking to make it happen for more people that need it if it’s gonna happen anyways.
so if I am unable to afford stuff in this game = the one reasonable solution is for me to go play on Russia with a VPN which might get me banned? I could even set my region on steam to Turkey and use a vpn and get the game founder packs for much cheaper - is that a solution as well in your mind? Honestly, man, you are awful to chat with. All of your posts are either misinformation or spreading negativity
Don’t forget that we pay 1€ for 1$ because we (well in France) have 20% VAT. That VAT is the reason we pay more than Americans. We even pay less than what we should with the tax.
No world wide online game with micro-transactions will use regional pricing. Look at magic the gathering arena, or similar games that are really expensive to play, even for americans / europeans. Most people in third world countries will never be able to play those competitively. The revenue comes from the first world countries, and “excluded” people are F2P players, which is better than nothing - popularity, streams, players at every hours, …
RU/JP don’t have regional prices. They have different, IP locked, publishers and have one country. It’s not the same as having regional prices.
If the game is not world wide, there is more often than not regional pricing. No one - save a few crazies - not from south america will play there to pay less, for the same reasons that no one will play in RU/KR after NA/EU releases.
They can absolutely do regional royal crystal prices as well as region locked founder packs cd keys if south america gets its own region and servers. I’d even say it’s in Amazon best interests.
The issue with regional pricing, and having many regions, is the split of the player base. This can hurt the game a lot. That’s why turkey will probably not have its own region, as well as eastern europe.
I don’t consider myself entitled to regional prices, but without it the South American server is simply doomed to fail because the bulk of players will not want to pay so much money for “non-wale” things like character boots or mounts offered in the store, and the very few wales in the region won’t be enough to generate enough revenue to justify the operational cost of the server.
If Amazon and Smilegate had put a minimum effort into publishing the game in South America, they would have created a restriction where items purchased in one region wouldn’t be able to be used in another, thus removing the possibility of cheap crystals bought in the South American server being sent to US or EU servers, but unfortunately they never implemented that.
If at least I had a confirmation that free character transfers would be offered in case a server is shut down I would be less concerned about the lack of regional pricing, but the possibility of Amazon just closing an unprofitable server without granting character transfers is very real.
South American server? I know they opened up access to more countries, regions but I don’t recall them announcing additional servers dedicated to SA or OCE
If it could be done in Turkey, that is one country in one Region (shares the same server with a lot of other countries), why it can’t be done with an entire Region (South America)?
That’s why I am asking for Regional Prices for a while, after the account of our server(SA), because our currency(BRL = Brazilian Real) is almost six times less valuable than USD.
But it’s kinda comforting that only people with serious lack in financial and economy education are having these problems with premium packages in F2P games… still hoping the rest of country is doing reasonably well.
It’s time for people to realize that asking for regional prices isn’t for founder pack, stop with this crap, please.
When the game is released, people want to put money in the game to buy royal crystal too, and at this time founders pack isn’t available anymore.
The asking for regional prices is a long-term asking, not a founder pack request.
from time to time some people want to buy a royal crystal and with this disparity of currency, many people probably will leave the game, since, with actual prices in NA Server without regional prices, NA server is 3 times more expensive than the Russian server, at least for Brazilians.
Well, every single thread is talking about Founder’s pack almost exclusively (OP included btw). So I can’t agree with “it’s always about regional pricing of royal crystals”.
I can’t agree with your proposal of more IP blocking, IP banning and over all regional policing you are proposing any more then regional pricing. But that’s just my take on it. For me internet neutrality and equality should have had precense over all of that.
Russian server prices… if that was ever the case why would anyone (like really anyone) play on NA/EU if they could get their avatars in RU cheaper and that’d be the decisive thing?
on the other hand… outside the shop… your time is of same value as rich US whale time, so if anything you will also get 6x more value for your time in game. So it won’t feel that bad IMO.
@Elenoe is right, I am talking about the Founder’s pack, because I kind of expect and hope there will be no regional pricing for the ingame shop (cause there are so many problems that could occur with that).
Having said that, I do agree it really sucks for countries whose average income is super low. If they do decide to add regional pricing ingame; I would of course argue this should be added for as many countries as possible.
So I’m pretty much asking for regional pricing wherever AGS decides to implement it
Whether they should implement it or not; I don’t know. Probably not; unless they find a very good way of doing it.
I know I will not be spending much on the game if it’s not implemented , cause I can’t afford it. But at the end of the day, it is fundamentally a f2p play and I’m ok with that
