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Black Friday sales

Willie B. Gone

Active Member
I am curious! Does anybody know of a reason that Inno has excluded Beta from their "black Friday" sales? With the prices that they are charging for some of the items I can see why they might - they are expensive!! I am thinking that this just might be a technical error and maybe I should report it to them and see if it can be duplicated ?? ( Please mail my diamonds to my main account so I can save them for a future event !!) Or could it be that they are afraid that once we see the prices that we will rise up and bankrupt these tyrants?? Takes a lot of darn gall to give to some what you take from others, citizens of the worlds unite!! Let us throw off the yoke of oppression and demand our opportunity to be fleeced with the rest of the Elvenar kingdoms! Who do these people think they are ? Politicians maybe ? Let us show them with 1 voice - or this thread that we want to be offered the same usurious deals that have defied both logic and common sense !! Make your voice heard here and let them know that we intend to knick knack. paddywhack and give the dogs a bone until we are afforded the same luxury that other worlds are given !! Please note in the attached pic that where there should be at least 3 offers that I have a void instead
 

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Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
Beta gets none of the deals that the Live servers get, Black Friday or diamond sales or expansion sales, none of it. Everyone is supposed to be on an equal footing that way.
 

SoggyShorts

Well-Known Member
Topics with totally no connection.
You're asking about flash sales, not allowing to buy diamonds. Here on Beta we never have them, I think we're lucky getting the Elvenar Birthday Gifts :p
I think they're very much related. Inno is super greedy to make players pay on Beta for diamonds and not give them any deals. Some players here are excellent bug-catchers to the point where they should be employees, but can't even get a 10% off sale? Greedy, and ungrateful.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
I think they're very much related. Inno is super greedy to make players pay on Beta for diamonds and not give them any deals. Some players here are excellent bug-catchers to the point where they should be employees, but can't even get a 10% off sale? Greedy, and ungrateful.
They might have done this to discourage players for using beta as a main server.
Imagine you have to pay on all servers for stuff, but get it all for free on beta, where would many players gravitate to?

I remember another game where you got 100.000 gems to get your city up te speed to test something, then the test server was whiped as an alternative
 

Laurelin-Beta

Well-Known Member
I have no idea whether this also applies to others here (? probably?) but I've been a Beta tester for a few other games over the years, and the ONLY way in which they operated their Beta Servers was to wipe them every single time any test was started - with the usual reason being in order to create a fresh (and as bug-free as possible) environment for each new piece of content being tested. And not only did none of those gaming companies allow the purchase of premium currency on their Beta Servers - they actually gave it away, in unlimited amounts, together with whatever [free] in-game currency the game(s) featured, so that Beta players could test both the F2P and Premium-based playstyles without incurring any personal expense. After all, free Beta testers are doing any gaming company a favour, not the other way round, with free and knowledgeable Beta testers - i.e. long-term players - being the most useful kind of testers around.

Another feature of those other Beta Servers was the copying of advanced characters [in this game's case it would be Cities, of course] from the Live to Beta environment, complete with all their gear - as was the fast and free auto-levelling and/or de-levelling of characters on the Beta Server, as well as the [free] provision of any and all in-game items/abilities the players might want to use with those characters.

This is all done, obviously, in the name of giving Beta players a genuine, realistic testing ability, at all levels of the game, without the usual time (and/or expense, where premium content is involved) required to level-up characters, which could take many months or even years.

Another Beta testing requirement was signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement, so that the Beta testers could assess ALL of the incoming new content, including the underlying game mechanics (something which Inno jealously guards, for a reason known only to itself), and thus base their testing upon knowledge rather than guesswork. Those Beta tests also featured much direct interaction between the game's developers - themselves - and the players posting comments, analyses, and suggestions on the related Beta Forums (which were also covered by the NDAs).

And finally, no Beta test in which I was involved lasted for less than six months (bearing in mind that minor bug-fixes and/or trivial in-game alterations don't usually even require Beta-testing) - since less time than this doesn't, in most cases, really provide long enough for players to generate credible analyses/critiques of significant proposed new content. NB: 'significant' new content, as I understand it, would be something along the lines of the Tournament changes (from both last year and this year), new Events, or new Chapter releases.

Of course, the 'catch', if you see it as such (and I didn't, personally) was that no characters created on, or copied to, any of those Beta Servers could be transferred or copied back to the Live environment, and nor could anything those characters had acquired in the Beta environment (character levels, items, premium or any other currency - none of it). The characters and everything they 'owned' disappeared when the Beta Servers were wiped.

But then again, those gaming companies obviously had a rather different idea from InnoGames when it comes to what purpose(s) a Beta Server should serve... but still, seeing as Inno does treat its Beta Server more like an 'early Live Server' than anything else, I agree with @SoggyShorts - the least they could do, if they're going to allow the purchase of premium currency and the permanent existence of Cities and Fellowships on the Server, including operating competitive rankings systems just as on Live (in effect, putting the Beta Server on a footing largely indistinguishable from Live), would be to offer generous Diamond discounts, and equally generous promotional offers of all kinds (at the very least, the same as those offered on Live Servers), to the Beta players who give their time for free... even if all Inno seem interested in receiving from those players is, indeed, more on the level of bug/text error reports than the more in-depth content analysis/commentary which most gaming houses also normally hope their Beta players will provide.

All that said... being me, I'll probably still write various lengthy analytical posts here, as and when I can think of something to say...! :D
 

SoggyShorts

Well-Known Member
Imagine you have to pay on all servers for stuff, but get it all for free on beta, where would many players gravitate to?
...
then the test server was wiped
Exactly. Normal Beta servers get wiped. That's no longer possible since they took so much money from beta players.

I see 2 ethical options
1. Free diamonds, but your beta city gets reset occasionally like normal beta servers
2. The same sales as live

The current system with all the costs of Live with none of the benefits is pure greed. Only delusional players who think they might have an impact on how the game develops stay here.
 

Willie B. Gone

Active Member
I had hoped that the cyber Monday sale would be extended to Beta players as well as to the live players. When I started this game I was told that the best ( and the only) things to spend your diamonds on was the Magic Academy, the Builders Hut and Expansions. So far Inno has not managed to disabuse me of this perception. So while my diamond count keeps going up, my hopes for this keep going down. Well Maybe they can incorporate this into either next years event - or maybe surprise us with an early Christmas sale? Not going to hold my breath on either though
 
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