Hello,
Welcome to my topic regarding the naming situation and the importance of a name exchange service. Firstly, I would like to begin by breaking down my topic into segments to make it easier for readers and staff to see where my thoughts are coming from. I hope these criticisms provide you with much lessons for future endeavors and feedback for the immediate reality.
1. Sloppy Head-start and Mismanagement (Misinformation and Backpedaling)
2. The Importance of Name Exchanges and its Effect on Community Longevity
3. In Need of Better Customer Service with Actual Powers
4. My Personal Experiences as a Founder and Path to Uninstallation
5. Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Let’s begin,
⦁ Sloppy Head-start and Mismanagement (Misinformation and Backpedaling)
The head-start was such a headache-inducing event. To the point that I may have had an anxiety attack. I believe that the issues with the head-start could have been prevented if unpacking occurred during pre-load phase (and if preload was placed several days before head-start, not just by one day). The game would be launchable but servers inaccessible. That way, on head-start, players can simply start up their games and wait at the server selection screen (Seagulls Online). This would have provided an even-playing ground for name securitization. Rewinding back a bit, there was also confusion that head-start may be delayed due to Steam, that even moderators on Reddit and the Discord server aligned with this information before it was later tagged misleading. It shows that communication between staff is lackluster.
The head-start was unfair because after a few minutes into launch, the Steam servers started choking up on the unpacking process (would have been avoided if unpacking was done earlier during pre-load). I understand that this was on Steam’s part and not Amazon but the lack of foresight by both parties is inexcusable, especially with companies with years of experience and millions or even billions in infrastructure. That small percentage of players that were able to enter the servers within the first few minutes hoarded names. Aside from pitting players against each other with their luck in entering the first few minutes, this unfair environment also created a competition of players’ internet speed and hardware speed during the unpacking process. Name reservation or name securitization should have been a separate event to avoid this unfair environment or just have us wait at the server selection screen rather than the Steam library screen. Which, the play button didn’t even go green (or blue) unless you restarted the client.
This is comparable to a scenario on Black Friday. Suppose that a store opens its doors to the rush of consumers. And after a minute or two, the poor layout of barricades and crowd-control measures at the door broke down and obstructed the path into the building, preventing any more people from entering. However, the small minority that did manage to enter, were able to shop freely and buy as many items without restrictions, which scalpers will take advantage of.
Not only this, but the days after head-start with the decision to close servers from new characters, segregated the communities from non-founders and founders. This created a panic to buy founders packs among those originally non-founders that wanted to play with their friends. Was this just a scheme to make a quick buck? This decision was later reversed but it was partially too late for some as players had already resided in their chosen servers. This further complicated and stratified the micro-communities across the regions. The EU situation is also a huge mess that I won’t talk about.
Back to the naming situation. I truly don’t know what to believe. At first upon waiting for head start, it was said that the name release policy was manual release only. Then some people started saying 120 days after a name or character was deleted. Then it was further clarified by staff that characters below level 10 are released immediately and anything above is released 60 days after. However, people who deleted their characters below level 10, had to wait for hours, causing panic. Or players who were level 20 or above, say that their name was immediately released. So what is actually true here? That is why there should be a need for immediate release or direct name exchanges to prevent such experimentation because names hold immense personal value to their respective owners. Something of high value shouldn’t be experimented with among players or neglected by staff.
⦁ The Importance of Name Exchanges and its Effect on Community Longevity
With no real naming reservation period prior to the launch, it was evident that a naming crisis would ensue. With questions being projected from every direction, and no “solid” policy or rather, draconian policies that forces players to wait an unreasonable amount of time. Name exchange services should exist as it is integral to the health of players and their communities. From all the support agents I’ve spoken to, they do say “…it is possible to perform a name exchange, but not at this current time…” and I asked why it is not possible at this current time. They simply reply, “…it is a difficult task.” So, they do not deny that name exchanges are within their grasp but simply refuse to do it because, “it’s too hard,” essentially. And then post a link to the statement that I must wait 60 days.
Name exchanges exist in many other games. Some games may not be so willing to commit such services but with MMORPGs, it is an essential service. A large number of players probably won’t care about names and will settle with what they got but also, the other half of the population do care about names to the point that it’s a deal breaker. It is a stressful situation when you’re just playing with placeholders or temporary names because you expect to use something that was once taken (being held by the 60-day policy) and you may have this fear that someone may take it after 60 days. Creating a stressful environment ruins the longevity of the population and game health. In marketing, friction in the sales funnel is the one factor you must reduce to increase your conversion rate. Example would be in digital marketing, the goal is to reduce the bounce rate by optimizing your website. If the friction is high, people are going to leave.
A name exchange service would be a safe and formal way of conducting the transaction between characters of one account or two accounts if both parties agree to the exchange, consuming two name change tickets.
⦁ In Need of Better Customer Service with Actual Powers
I have been speaking with Amazon Games Support, almost everyday since Day 1 of head-start about the need for name exchanges. And from what I’ve seen, across the many agents I have come across, really have no proper training or powers. So why do they exist if they cannot provide a service that we cannot do ourselves? A lot of the agents always refer me to something they found on the forums and link me to the topic. It’s as if they are paid to do research on the forums, pulling up topics than to actually help you with your problems. Support exists because they can help us with issues we cannot resolve ourselves.
Also, many agents come off rude and share no sympathy with the user. There is no de-escalation training and no thoughtfulness put forth into their words. If you are just there to get paid to copy-and-paste a script while offering no actual human element to customer service or no real solution (sounding robotic), then why do you work in customer service? Go work in manufacturing or something that is not client-facing. I actually had an argument with one of the agents because they kept beating-around-the-bush on providing real answers and then dehumanized my experience by downplaying my issue. Amazon proclaims to aim for being the “Best Customer-Centric Company in the World”. After such events, I did not feel it was the “…best customer-centric company”. Far from it.
⦁ My Personal Experiences as a Founder and Path to Uninstallation
I purchased all founders packs and the vanquisher starter pack later on. This doesn’t make me any better than anyone else but it does show the financial commitment I was willing to make for this game. Upon head-start, I was part of that large percentage that didn’t make it within the first minute or so. I sat there, watching Asmongold’s Twitch stream on my second monitor as we almost synchronously pressed our download buttons on our Steam clients, even restarting the Steam application and such.
After an hour of anxious waiting and looking at Twitter updates, unpacking finally started and by the time I had reached the character selection screen, my name was taken. I was outraged–not because of someone taking my name but by the unfairness in how the launch was handled that made it difficult to secure a name. I was also deeply saddened, to the point of such great denial that I sat there for two hours, repeatedly clicking away at the Create button and pressing enter on the prompt, “Name already Taken”, in hopes that maybe someone made a mistake and would delete that character. No luck. So, I settled with a variant of my name (accented i) for the time being, which made me angry every time I looked at it because it made me feel fake, a clone, not genuine. My home server was Avesta and I literally went out of my way to create a character on every NA server to locate the person who took my name to offer a name exchange. Eventually locating them on Azena. Due to their inactivity, I waited several days for a reply to appear in the mailing system. Over several exchanges of letters, it was unsuccessful due to the risk that such an exchange would carry.
After monitoring their item level over several days, it was apparent that activity wasn’t as often. So why do you have the name if you’re not going to play? I took my time leveling up and managed to pass them. I work full-time and juggle homework with my master’s program and progress slowly through the game as I read and watch everything. But still somehow surpassed them in item level and it upsets me that my name is being used by someone who may be treating it as an alt or not as a devoted player.
I have no problem with queues or lag or any of the other server issues. Those are natural occurrences for high-volume traffic. But it should have been foreseen–especially with a world that still exists in a pandemic era, online traffic and duration of stay has increased almost triple since that of 2019. We saw a huge increase in gaming in 2020 with the rise of Nintendo Switch purchases more than ever as people stay at home or the trending Among Us game in the second half of 2020. That effect still continues with increased unemployment (the Great Resignation), high inflation (CPI hitting 7.5% high since 1982), new variants of COVID-19, and more, forcing people to work-from-home.
The seemingly useless customer service that does nothing but research the forums for answers because they don’t have the answers themselves and lack any true power; the lack of training with customer service agents; the constant confusion, draconian, and backpedaling from management on naming policies; and ultimately, the lack of name exchange services and my failure to secure my name due to a sloppy head-start that provided an unfair competition among players during the naming scramble. After almost reaching 600 item level, I uninstalled the game. I don’t care about wasting my founder’s pack or crystalline aura that runs on for many months to come. The name has more value to me than all of those combined.
⦁ Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Names are an essential part of the human condition. It is our identity, a description of who we are or who we want to be. Names redefine us or consolidate us–in the immediate sense or within history. Names carry deep personal, cultural, familial, or historical connections. They hold definitions of belonging to communities, ethnic groups, interest-groups, political or socio-economic groups, affiliation with teams, or cities and states, or nations and alliances, regions and continents, or even worlds.
Like that of William the Conqueror of Normandy as we remember him today, who conquered Anglo-Saxon Britannia, was formerly known as William the Bastard, an illegitimate son. Now, I am not comparing something as grand as imperial conquest titles to a game, but as we see with history, names play an important role in shaping our world and perception–even that of our virtual worlds and communities like on video games–whether they are streamers or the best tank/healer in NA or whatever.
It is harrowing that Amazon Game Studios neglect such a critical part of the human condition, putting it on the backburner to be resolved for later. The constant misinformation and backpedaling on the naming policy generates no trust between customers and the company. What should I believe exactly? 60 days is a ridiculous amount of time. With how fast-paced our lives are now-a-days in the Information and Digital Age, that two months duration, a lot of things can happen. A blood-test can come out faster than this or a normal COVID-19 test, not a rapid-test. Why 60 days? With seemingly instantaneous technology by our side, it is no excuse to say that things should take a while unless it requires arduous manual labor when manual labor is limited. If that was the case, why is manpower limited during a game launch? It should have been applied to the forecast as part of the demand and labor management planning process.
I have written many academic papers the past year for my Master’s Program, researching the effects of the pandemic on manufacturing, international trade and supply chains, and the general business world. And there is really no excuse to blame the lack of technology or tools to help elevate this game as Amazon should have already invested in these tools. In fact, the demand for digital infrastructure and remote services across companies skyrocketed in 2020 and 2021 as corporate leaders and staff saw the ever growing importance of digital adoption to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. We can see this with tech stocks on the NASDAQ rising to overvalued prices over the course of 2020-2021.
This is part of the ongoing case-study of contingency planning or disruption management in the business world. This applies to everything–from cloud services to lean manufacturing. The digital adoption exploded in 2020 to replace a neglected and aging business sector. With Amazon being a multi-trillion dollar company, were you part of this movement? I would believe so because your Q4 earnings report exceeded expectations, raising your stock value of nearly 20% on February 3, 2022. Being part of FAANG, you carried the weight of the market as Facebook (Meta) fell after poor earnings. For a launch of a large-scale game, it should have been part of this disruption management and contingency planning movement.
I really do want to play Lost Ark. From what I have experienced so far, I could feel the passion that SmileGate has put forth into the game with the Battle at the Glorious Wall or when you’re fighting that giant demon atop the tower in that level 30 dungeon of finding the tomb of the Leuterran King. The countless little islands with their cute little stories and designs such as Tortoyk’s storyline with the Mokokos–towering chickens walking in unison or ladybugs with players sitting atop them, zipping along the village. Or the visually stunning dungeons like when you’re fighting Brelshaza in Rohendel as reality bent to her will. It was all so cute, eye-striking, and refreshing to see such a vibrant world that you could sail in. It was truly a unique and fun experience that I will remember dearly.
However, due to Amazon and unfortunate events of name securitization, I must leave. Amazon has an interesting history, with half of its life making no profit because it believed in reinvesting its profits to better the company. After all those reinvested dollars, those years are long gone as Jeff Bezos has moved onto Blue Origin. Amazon’s growth into a giant, has clouded its once humble goal and vision. And I can only fear for Lost Ark’s demise in the West. Is Amazon still seeking to better itself or just milking things now like Disney?
As a final gesture, in an effort to return to Lost Ark, I would like to, once again, reach out to the individual who took my name on Azena as I am willing to start over and renegotiate the name exchange. I am not going to message you in-game because I already uninstalled the game. I apologize for getting upset as I was already in emotional distress and making you feel uncomfortable about the endeavor as it is risky. But the name truly has immense personal value to me that you probably won’t understand. Without it, I won’t play the game. Therefore, I am willing to start over if you have any conditions that would make you feel more comfortable about this name exchange. If you are viewing this post, then you know who you are, please contact me.