September 06, 2012
Regarding opening DMS to the public (Original post.)
Hey everyone!
I wanted to make this thread regarding the recent decision to open DMS to the public. We made this decision because it was always our intent to one day have this area open for all Gaians to enjoy. The Bloodstone Amulets and Gems were head-start items to allow their owners to have first access, but not exclusive access, to this area. For 11 months, and 2 weeks, you had just that - first access, and we hope you enjoyed it!
At this point, we felt that enough time had passed and that finally opening the area to the public would be a good thing for the Gaia community. We had previously stated the following in an announcement from Sept. 2011: "But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently." We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!
Now, all of this said, we do understand why, if you happened to buy the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem within the past week, you might be upset that you didn't get a larger amount of time to explore this area before it became public. If, within the past week, you purchased either the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem from the marketplace for gold, or used Gaia cash to purchase either of these items from the cash shop, we'll remove the item from your inventory and refund you the gold or cash you paid for it. You'll need to file billing ticket through our Help Center, however, to have the issue addressed.
Hope this helps, and we hope that you can make even more new friends as they come into the area.
Take care and have a great evening!
Sisky
UPDATE:
I just posted this in the thread, but wanted to re-post it here so everyone was aware of my post!
Hey everyone!
As promised, I'm back in the thread today! It was probably a good thing I headed to bed when I did last night - I was beyond exhausted. If it is any consolation, I had weird dreams all night about my car breaking down and instead of being given a replacement vehicle to use in while the car was being fixed, I was given a giant scorpion the size of a car to ride around town. I have no idea WHAT motivated that dream... I digress.
Anyway, I have been reading through all the posts/threads and messages I've received about this issue. There a few things I want to say here:
- Regarding the complaints that not enough notice was given that DMS was being opened to the public, we agree that we could have done better on announcing this. We just got excited that it was now open, and thought since we has said before it would one day be made publicly available, that a fun surprise dev notice would be a good way to let everyone know. Sorry if this seemed random and out of the blue! From now on, we'll try our best to give at least 2 days notice that such changes are about to happen. This does not, of course, include any surprise features/changes that we want to be fun surprises for the community, in which case it makes no sense to make an advance notice! That would be silly!
- We've decided to revise our offer (made in the opening post) to refund anyone who purchased the Bloodstone Amulet or Gem from the marketplace/cash shop for gold/cash from one week to two weeks - yay! We feel that perhaps one week was too short a time period, so extending the refund period to two weeks will be better for the community. Also, if you had the amulet for more than two weeks, you probably had enough opportunity to use the item and try out the area!
- We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this
Hope this helps!
Sisky
UPDATED INFO: 9/10/2012
Hey everyone! Just want to clarify the amulet/gem refund policy, since some of you have filed tickets requesting refunds for the Bloodstone Amulets/Gems that you purchased in the marketplace/trades AFTER the dev notice and this thread were made. We're sorry, but the refunds are intended for those Gaians who purchased the amulet/gem for up to two weeks before the announcement was made/the refund was announced. We assumed this was pretty clear, but since some people are confused, we wanted to make sure to address this matter.
Hope this helps clarify things a bit!
Sisky