Article in OC Register - Hark!?!?! Do they hear us?

[Pixiecatt]

This is a followup on the article that appeared last week in the OC register bout K2....

I'm sure many of you wrote to the columnist and expressed your opinions and feelings just like I did.

I just received the following email from the columnist himself:

Hi, all --

Thanks for all your comments on K2 and Knight Online. The company says it
will respond to the criticisms in a follow-up meeting, but hasn't scheduled
it yet.
In the meantime, I wrote up your criticisms in my "Morning Eye" blog, which
is at blogs.ocregister.com/morningeye. You're all invited to add comments
there.

I still hope to do a follow-up article for the newspaper. In preparation
for that, could you folks please help me find Knight Online players who
live or work in Orange County, Calif.? (We're a regional newspaper, so I'd
want to include their comments in addition to some of yours for elsewhere
in the world.)

All the best,

Colin Stewart
Columnist
Marketplace Department
Orange County Register
625 North Grand Ave.
Santa Ana, CA 92701-4347

Further, I went ahead and checked the website and found the following:

November 17, 2006
Online cheating outrages Knight Online gamers
In the eyes of Irvine online game company K2 Network, "game players – and not game developers – are king," as I wrote in the article "Play for free, pay for extras" on Nov. 7.

But in the eyes of many K2 players, that statement is:

• "the funniest statement I have read in a long time";
• "false information";
• contradicted by "hundreds if not thousands of angry gamers that do not feel that they have been put first at all";
• hilariously inaccurate -- "I could not hold in the laughter."

Players' barrage of criticism focused primarily on complaints that K2 has spoiled their enjoyment of the Knight Online game by not controlling cheaters. Executives at K2 Network said they would like to meet with me to discuss their efforts to control cheating, but they did not have an immediate reply to the players' criticisms.

K2 customers' complaints have been serious enough that the Better Business Bureau has given the company an "F" rating.

That score means that BBB raters "strongly question the company’s reliability."

In Knight Online, a major problem is that the game is "overrun with cheaters," as one player describes the situation.

"I personally have reported people to customer service for violating the game's Terms of Service Contract, and nothing was done, even though proof was provided of wrong doing. The same thing is occuring with those that use 3rd party programs to gain an advantage in this game. Hundreds of screen shots and videos have been taken of people cheating, yet those that violate the TOS are still there week after week," says another.

A further problem that some players cited is that Knight Online is very popular in Turkey, which means that English-speaking players cannot communicate with many of the other people playing the game. Communication is important in Knight Online, because it is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Hacking and cheating are problems that by no means are limited to K2 Networks.

In September, the operators of the multiplayer game Second Life reported that hackers had broken into their databases and gained access to 650,000 player names, addresses and passwords. In October, Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine said it banned 76,000 accounts for cheating in its popular World of Warcraft game.

Comments anyone?

[festo]

K2 will respond to this with there usual "we are working on it" "we have banned xx accounts" All you had to do is show the editor previous responses from BBB they will be exactly the same. Also the response you get from customer support tickets

[faze]

k2's gonna be doing some damage control.

expect outright lies and half truths in their efforts.

[Pixiecatt]

Originally posted by faze
k2's gonna be doing some damage control.

expect outright lies and half truths in their efforts.

We could always hope that they actually "hear" us as the players....

yea right....keep dreaming huh?

[festo]

They wudnt listen to there own GM's never mind the players

[Pixiecatt]

Just sent this note back to the columnist....

Dear Mr. Stewart...

Thank you for responding back in regards to the article about K2. We the legitimate players appreciate it.

Should this meeting with the company ever come to fruition, please ask them the following questions. Because to be honest, we are getting sick and tired of them giving us half truths or no truths at all or they tell us they are going to do something and it either doesn't happen or if it does happen...its many months down the road.

While you are interviewing them, please ask the following questions because we the players really want to know. No lies, no bs, the truth....

When a major bug happens in the game, why does it take K2 so long to patch it?
When there are major problems in the game such as what we are dealing with now with the koxpers, the hackers and the cheaters, why is it taking K2 so long to take care of the problem?
Why can't k2 just be honest with its players instead of feeding us a bunch of hooey. We are getting sick and tired of them telling us stuff, getting our hopes up only to be dashed when nothing is done. If they can't do something right away, they need to let us know! Every day more and more people are getting disgusted with the way this game is going and every day they loose more and more legitimate players.
Just how does K2 run their company? We would really like to know. Where are the support people, the gms that are supposed to be in the game, the people we can turn to for help when needed?


You wanted to see how disgruntled we are:

Take a visit to the following web sites and see how many threads there are of people announcing they are quitting, or how upset they are with the cheating etc. or just how many upset players there are in the game in general.

www.ko4life.com
http://s11.invisionfree.com/knightonlinera...nking/index.php

and last but not least...the Knight Online forums themselves..

http://forum.knightonlineworld.com/forum_en/index.php

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. I've been a player of Knight Online for almost 2 years.

[minkofdoom]

wow...nice :mellow:

[Aluzion]

I think this might be the turning point for K2.

They might actually do something for a change when newspaper bash them looks good on the fukers 2.

[Private]

need to point out that the companys website www.k2networks.com or we congradulates there staff members (we his name is) for winning some award or nomination for security when infact this games website has been twice hacked and exploited publicly and mass ammmount of users charecters were exposssed .

and my freind olyarch has a freind in cali that plays or played ko and filed complaints with some state buisness in cali and this was a week before staff changes at k2 came clearly had something to do with him would make a nice newspappa article im still trying to get back in contact with some of the producers at G4

[FatM4n]

K2 is is so ful of bullsit, im fed up with their lies

[schrotti]

K2 knows about this topic already waiting to see what they gonna do..

[Pixiecatt]

Originally posted by schrotti
K2 knows about this topic already waiting to see what they gonna do..

My suggestion? Start bombarding that columnist with emails. The more emails he gets, the more he's likely to bombard k2 with questions.

[wraith86]

ask him to ask why gold prem is 25$ a month and theres little or no support given to these users and about the missing trina pieces which they failed to restore (had to send a CS ticket everyday for a month to get mine, my friends took 56+ days) and why they fail to realize the scrolls dissapearing when you die needs to be fixed and the skillbar bug is still here and has been since the ROFD release

[lutz]

Hey, he quoted me! O.o

Where did you find that post in ocregister?

[Lawless]

Yeah you cant beat the media for use as leverage to handle a situatuion. This is a good thing. Kinda akin to Ranking blowing the lids off of some of the corruption early on. But the downside is that if things do get bad enough KO could very well go poof, if from a buisiness standpoint its not worth the criticism in media. K2 can simply find another flagship title to reamin in buisiness if KO beacomes too much of a problem for them.