Message from the MPQ Team About Recent Server Issues (8/5)

Unknown

Possibly the most entertaining "Sorry the servers went down" thread I have ever read.

Unknown

I'd like to know who is going to do this "investigating". I think we would all like a recording of the meeting with these investigators too, so that we could all share the experience of them laughing in his face. (I mean, you know, if they weren't entirely hypothetical people in a situation that will never even happen.)

Unknown

Ralstonator wrote:

I'd like to know who is going to do this "investigating". I think we would all like a recording of the meeting with these investigators too, so that we could all share the experience of them laughing in his face. (I mean, you know, if they weren't entirely hypothetical people in a situation that will never even happen.)

I've hired a classic 1920s hardliner private eye to handle the case. He keeps two magnums in his desk. One's a gun, and he keeps it loaded. The other's a bottle, and it keeps him loaded.

Unknown

Rico Dredd wrote:

Go start a lawsuit. Sue D3. They'll laugh at you. Oh, and good luck finding a lawyer for that. One who won't just take the case to take your money, that is, because you'll have to pay him no matter whether you win or lose, sadly there are plenty of lawyers about who do just that - but then again, it really serves some people right. And then you can sue your lawyer (who, in your openion, doesn't know a thing about law anyway because it's open to interpretation). Hint: That rarely works out well for the claimant.

*giggle* clearly you have no idea just how litigious the US legal system is...sadly you probably could find a lawyers to take the case

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

It's been a month since I have asked for a compensation because of the sudden drop of the Iso price (which is your online currency), and I had no response whatsoever, even though I brought the case to Google (and you were Carbon Copied). The amount lost for me in the devaluation is 2,300 € (2 thousand 3 hundred). It's not a ridiculous amount.

This is the line I'm trying to work out. So you purchased 2,300 € in Iso-8 right before the increase in the amount that was given in the packs through the store? Considering $100 is the highest you can purchase in the U.S. where does that compare to the amount you've quoted?

I guess theoretically you purchased all of the Iso right near the end of June it would make sense to give you the difference. But if you've been buying Iso the whole time they really don't have to give you more because they've changed it since that was the given price at the time.

To make an example that hopefully makes more sense let's look at a more comparable example. If I own an arcade that specifically uses tokens instead of currency and I charge $1 for four (4) tokens and after being open for eight months decide to up the amount handed out for each $1 to six (6) tokens. Even if you could prove that you've spent $100 in tokens I wouldn't have to give you 50 tokens for free because I've recently changed the policy.

But we can't really consider Iso an actual online currency because even though it can "buy" things (boosts, levels, standard token packs) we can't trade it for Hero Points and we can't exchange it with other players. All of the Iso you have is yours and your alone and can't be given, traded, or even stolen from you.

Unknown

doloriel wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

It's been a month since I have asked for a compensation because of the sudden drop of the Iso price (which is your online currency), and I had no response whatsoever, even though I brought the case to Google (and you were Carbon Copied). The amount lost for me in the devaluation is 2,300 € (2 thousand 3 hundred). It's not a ridiculous amount.

This is the line I'm trying to work out. So you purchased 2,300 € in Iso-8 right before the increase in the amount that was given in the packs through the store? Considering $100 is the highest you can purchase in the U.S. where does that compare to the amount you've quoted?

I guess theoretically you purchased all of the Iso right near the end of June it would make sense to give you the difference. But if you've been buying Iso the whole time they really don't have to give you more because they've changed it since that was the given price at the time.

To make an example that hopefully makes more sense let's look at a more comparable example. If I own an arcade that specifically uses tokens instead of currency and I charge $1 for four (4) tokens and after being open for eight months decide to up the amount handed out for each $1 to six (6) tokens. Even if you could prove that you've spent $100 in tokens I wouldn't have to give you 50 tokens for free because I've recently changed the policy.

But we can't really consider Iso an actual online currency because even though it can "buy" things (boosts, levels, standard token packs) we can't trade it for Hero Points and we can't exchange it with other players. All of the Iso you have is yours and your alone and can't be given, traded, or even stolen from you.

The key part of what he said is

arktos1971 wrote:

The amount lost for me in the devaluation is 2,300 € (2 thousand 3 hundred).

The ISO was devalued by 50%. He's saying that 50% of what he spent was lost to the devaluation. He's saying he spent €4,600 (roughly $6,200 USD) on ISO-8 before the devaluation hit, and he wants to be compensated 2,418,000 ISO-8 for the fact that he paid €4,600 for 2,418,000 ISO-8 when he could have waited and paid €4,600 for 4,836,000 ISO-8.

Demiurge stole 2,418,000 ISO-8 from him when they changed the prices, man!

Unknown

Fidsah : so that your figures are calculated correctly :

50000 Iso was 89,99 €. The price in $ is not the same as € when you convert € in $.

Unknown

Technically if you want to view it that way it would be 3,627,000 ISO-8 he would've received but I see the point. Which just leads to my other question of when did the purchase actually occur? Because if all of the purchases were back April 13 the day he joined the forum then at the time they were fairly valued. And if I'm remembering correctly it's been a widely spread point that before the ISO-8 was boosted in the store most people truly felt it wasn't worth the cost and to not purchase it at all.

Unknown

I see Iso literally as DLC. The ISO enhances your experience, like playing some other game with a rocket launcher you spent 5 bucks to unlock would enhance that game experience. Is DLC not allowed to be reduced in price ever? Every physical game ever devalues over time, why should FTP and its associated in app purchases be immune to the same phenomenon and always always charge the same prices for all time?

I feel bad for you, it stings when you shell out for something only to have the price drop on you suddenly. It also sucks if you drop money into a slot machine winning nothing, and the guy just after you wins a jackpot. Terrible timing, sucky feeling, doesn't mean you deserve to get anything back, sorry. If they do give you back anything it is purely from a customer service perspective and not from a legal one. How confident are you in their CS department doing whatever it takes to make things right by you out of the good of their hearts?

Unknown

Before I got bashed, my main point was : the roster has some value (considering you take MPQ as a sort of TCG), and the all thing is an investment.

Considering the amounts invested (because at that point it is an investment), then part of the investment is lost overnight, with no explanation.

The only explanation is that the price was probably too high before.

Hasbro/WotC have the same problem with collectors' investments, and they do not reprint some cards for fear they could be sued. Because the value would drop overnight.

As long as no one can possibly earn all of the Iso required to max a roster, there could be something to find out.

But there are indeed, as Rico said, contracts to be read, and see it in the customer's point of view. The main problem is not only "sale/not sale"...

I'll go into details and eventually tell the guys who are interested (the ones who have spent a lot of money) what I have found out.

I feel sorry for the guys who are just happy that I lost so much money because of the price drop.

Unknown

I fully admit that I haven't followed this whole conversation. However, I wanted to drop my 2 cents in (and ironically it's probably not even worth that).

arktos1971 wrote:

Hasbro/WotC have the same problem with collectors' investments, and they do not reprint some cards for fear they could be sued. Because the value would drop overnight.

I want to nitpick this particular point. The official stance (and what we can tell as collectors and players) is that they are very careful about how they manage their current mainstream tournament formats. That is their primary concern when reprinting cards. They have certainly committed to never reprint certain cards from before they knew what the heck they were doing (e.g. power 9, Library of Alexandria, Bazaar of Baghdad, etc.). But any card after Mercadian Masques is fair game and they have shown no fear in reprinting cards that are fundamental to the current tournament formats (and specifically standard and modern).

A great example of this was shock lands, which plummeted in value after they were reprinted in the recent Rav block (they lost ~75% of their value). And Mark Rosewater has strongly implied that the fetch lands will be re-printed in 2015 (I fully plan on dumping my fetches while they're still worth ~$80).

arktos1971 wrote:

Before I got bashed, my main point was : the roster has some value (considering you take MPQ as a sort of TCG), and the all thing is an investment.

Considering the amounts invested (because at that point it is an investment), then part of the investment is lost overnight, with no explanation.

Your roster has value from a playability point of view. For it to have value beside that would imply that it could be traded, sold or otherwise transferred. As it is, I think that losing money due to price valuations and changes to it certainly sucks. However, every buyer makes a conscious decision that what they are buying and what they are getting out of that purchase is worth a certain amount to them. I have never bought ISO b/c I can't justify the costs in my mind. However, other players have looked at that cost and said, "it's worth it to me".

Every time I purchase a computer, I know that it has zero resale value and that a month after I purchase it, it's value will have plummeted. I liken the ISO comparison more to the laptop than to a physical good with some intrinsic resale value.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Hasbro/WotC have the same problem with collectors' investments, and they do not reprint some cards for fear they could be sued. Because the value would drop overnight.

They can't be sued if the price of something they once created loses value on a third party market. The entire premise of this idea would prevent anyone from ever losing money on the stock market as a result of the actions of a specific company. If Microsoft announced they were shutting down their OS and gaming divisions, you'd see the stock price evaporate overnight. But just because I bought some stock from someone else two years ago doesn't mean I have any sort of legal recourse with Microsoft for devaluing the investment I made with a third party.

That's how third party investments work. WotC would have no legal responsibility anywhere in the world but France (apparently) for the value of a Black Lotus if they suddenly discovered a warehouse full of em, and crashed the market by selling millions of Alpha/Beta Black Lotus cards for ten cents each.

In other news, though, the film noir private eye I hired with ISO-8 is currently tracking the culprits of the Great ISO Heist to somewhere around the warehouse district. He might be onto the Demiurge/WotC ISO-8/Black Lotus conspiracy.

HailMary

arktos1971 wrote:

Before I got bashed, my main point was : the roster has some value (considering you take MPQ as a sort of TCG), and the all thing is an investment.

Considering the amounts invested (because at that point it is an investment), then part of the investment is lost overnight, with no explanation.

The only explanation is that the price was probably too high before.

So now it's an investment, not a currency. Okey-dokey, we can play that game, too. Almost all investments involve downside risk. A company's shareholders can't simply sue the company for more free stock when the stock price drops 50%.

arktos1971 wrote:

Hasbro/WotC have the same problem with collectors' investments, and they do not reprint some cards for fear they could be sued. Because the value would drop overnight.

Even beyond preceding rebuttals of your specific claim about Hasbro/WotC, you're saying Iso is just like cards that can actually be bought and sold in a bilateral market? I remember someone here emphasizing that "it can't be traded" and how it's not something "that can fluctuate in a stock exchange." That must not have been you, because--wait, never mind, that was you. Well... this is awkward.

Unknown

Pretty much the only way would be trying to convince a court you were legally incapable of contracting by the time you were buying the iso. ... Since pretty much everybody seems to think you have to be nuts to spend that much money on iso, this strategy might actually work. (Where's the innocent-looking smiley with the halo when you need it?)

No, seriously. i get what you're saying. I get that it annoys the tiny kitten out of you that you could have waited and gotten a lot more for your money (again, how you spend your own money is your own concern and none of mine); I spent around 20 € on hero points shortly before the sale and rolled my eyes at my timing when the sale came up (and then I used the opportunity and got a Stark Salary, which will last me long enough that it comes down to less than 10 € a month if I calculated that correctly, and I rubbed my hands after all). I get your point. The trouble is that I see very little legal grounds for it. Of course the price was too high from a subjective perspective, it still is, IMO. But that's the thing with civil law, we're free to conclude contracts about pretty much anything we like (unless it is, as the Latin rule goes, contra bonos mores). Of course your roster is an investment with a certain value to you (my roster has a value to me too), but the trouble is, unlike those Hasbro cards your roster can't be traded for a certain value among collectors, and therefore the value exists for you alone.

eris-wtga wrote:

*giggle* clearly you have no idea just how litigious the US legal system is...sadly you probably could find a lawyers to take the case

You could find plenty of lawyers for it here too. Greed is universal. As is clients' gullibility, sadly, especially if they think they're right and the entire world is wrong.
We sometimes pity those clients who just can't take the hint and keep stuffing money down their lawyers' gaping maws. Sometimes we do feel obliged to inform the bar association (though I suspect they don't do very much about it really... I could tell you quite a few not so pretty facts about the bar association, but this is beside the point and not really fitting with the funny popcorn-y direction this thread has taken). Sometimes we're just unprofessional like that and laugh our heads off at them after the case is closed, because sometimes they just deserve it, and when we write that last part of the verdict that deals with who bears the costs, we may snicker to ourselves as we do the math. (But that's reserved for those who annoyed the kitten out of me during proceedings with their behaviour. I can be a bad person in private, but I'm not a bad person when it comes to the law and its application.)
(Yep, I never said I was a lawyer, or did I? )

Go ahead, Arktos, do your research. And good luck with that. Yes, I mean that in earnest; despite what you might think, I'm not the kind of person who points and laughs when someone loses a lot of money (and I've seen plenty of people before court who lost a lot of money, very frequently through their own pigheadedness and stupidity, and I did not laugh at them either... oh well, maybe a little in some special cases, to be honest ). I'll just urge you to be careful. In my opinion, there is no legal ground for your claim (I know, that sucks, it always does, the law does not always feel fair to us). You may find someone who disagrees, because, as they say, "two jurists makes three opinions". Just be careful, because, like I said, not all lawyers are decent folks. Some will tell you what you want to hear, only to take your money.

Unknown

I would feel too bad, there is a reason why the word Schadenfreude exists (aah them crazy Germans)

Unknown

Just my 2 cents, if they had raised the price of ISO, would you have offered to give some of your purchase back?

If not, then why should you expect to be given more after the fact?

Unknown

Ok, now that we are out of mockery, here is part of my point :

If you can make it possible to accept X thousands of $ from a video game, you need to be responsible towards the people who spent the money in it. We all know they don't care less about their customers, and that is not right. And that should change. I am sick to get slaps in my face. Yet, I don't want to quit. I should not be the one to quit because they don't make their jobs.

You can't legally say "because this is Free to Play game" we owe you nothing : no explanation, no compensation, nothing... No, that is not correct. I am paying to play the game, and in return, I expect a decent service, which is :

- preserve the possibility for me to be competitive (by delivering the new covers that I won in a reasonable given time),
- preserve the investment I made by throwing money into the game.

I took D3P's game seriously, invested in it, they owe me some kind of service in return. It's true I think of it as an investment because I've been a long time CCG collector, and in this world (MTG at least), you never lose your investment, because WotC makes sure "most" of your investments are safe. Depends on what you are buying of course.

All that would seem "normal" to you if it was any kind of service you are familiar with.

About Hasbro/WotC : there is truly a legal issue, and they are scared to death about it. Is it a "good" fear ? I can't tell.

Don't worry, I can now make the difference between a "good" lawyer and a bad one. I've used them many times in the last years.

If I get some kind of compensation, it will also be for the good of all of us, not just me.

They are totally disrespectful of us, and this is not normal. As long as money is involved, we have rights. And I'll see what can be done.

Unknown

arktos1971, sweety (please read in a calm soothing voice, as it is intended), sorry to say but you didn't make an investment, you made a purchase. A purchase at a mutually agreed upon price. If you didnt agree to it you wouldnt have paid it. Sadly you where probably one of only a few who did, so they decided to change the price. And that sucks for you, but you agreed to the price at the time of purchase, you got the iOS you paid for so you did get what you paid for.

The power we have as consumers is the power of our dollars. If you don't feel you you have gotten your money's worth, you stop buying that product or service. You did feel you where getting something or you wouldnt have kept buying. If enough people feel the same and do the same them business ether needs to change what they are doing (which is probably why they price change happened) or they fail.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

I took D3P's game seriously, invested in it, they owe me some kind of service in return. It's true I think of it as an investment because I've been a long time CCG collector, and in this world (MTG at least), you never lose your investment, because WotC makes sure "most" of your investments are safe. Depends on what you are buying of course.

No, at no point did you make any investments. You paid for a service that you received under the terms and conditions of the sale you agreed to. In this world, in MTG, you CAN lose your investment, if the market decides that the value of your piece of paper is lower today than it was yesterday. This is how everything works. The service you received was the ISO you collected and used. You agreed to the price that was there and didn't have a problem until much later.

But seriously, you need to realize that the service you paid for WAS delivered, you DID use it, and it was not an investment, since it has no continued or redeemable value.

arktos1971 wrote:

About Hasbro/WotC : there is truly a legal issue, and they are scared to death about it. Is it a "good" fear ? I can't tell.

There's no legal issue. You're mistaken. They own the rights to their property and can do what they see fit with it. IF someone paid $10,000 for a single card on eBay, and the next day they re-released it and the resale value of the card that guy bought dropped to absolutely nothing, they have no legal liability for his loss. That was his poor investment, negotiated with a third party.

arktos1971 wrote:

Don't worry, I can now make the difference between a "good" lawyer and a bad one.

I'm pretty sure this is also a no, if you think you've got a case in this matter.

arktos1971 wrote:

As long as money is involved, we have rights. And I'll see what can be done.

Nope, also not the case. I'll point out the difference between Class A and Class B stocks as a common and ready example.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

If I get some kind of compensation, it will also be for the good of all of us, not just me.

That's funny, because if your fantasy lawsuit actually happened the way you're imagining it to, then it would open the doors to the destruction of the company and game, and all of our work and money would have been entirely wasted, all thanks to you.