Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.war-historical (
More info?)
Frank,
> Ya know, if that had been made plain to me when I downloaded WitP, I
> would have had a different attitude about the whole thing.
Yeah, we need to make that more clear. FYI, I don't know when you had
this experience, but we have added more explanation to the store since
and I know that the 30 day limit is explained now.
> No mention was made about contacting Matrix, no mention was made
about
> having 30 days in case something went wrong. As a matter of fact, I'm
> pretty sure you're wrong about that one, seems like the people I
> downoladed from went out of their way to explain that I couldn't
> download more than once unless I paid the $5.
With respect, I know I'm right about that and that has always been the
case, but it was no doubt not explained clearly.
> My main beef with the manual is that I never could alt-tab out of
WitP
> because there was about a 50/50 chance that my map will be corrupted
> when I went back to the game. There's few things more annoying than
> an online manual that you can't look at while running the program.
I've never had that problem here - I can alt-tab all day long without
map corruption. As long as your video drivers are up to day, the other
thing you can try is running it in windowed mode by adding a "-w" to
the command line in the quick start shortcut.
> It's annoying in the way that the salesman at Best Buy was annoying
> when he offered me an $50 extended service plan on a $40 DVD player.
> My inital reaction was "Do they really think I'm that big of an
> idiot?". In other words, I find it insulting.
I don't think this is an issue we can really make an entirely right
decision on. We are bound by certain rules when dealing with Digital
River. One is that if we want our customers to have the _option_ to
download on their own after 30 days, DR requires a $5 charge. Again,
we don't see any of that and it's not something we can change. We felt
it was better to offer the option than not.
> The first was Dominions 2 (from shrapnel?). I log onto their
website,
> pay the list price, and it's in the mail to me. ... even came with a
> useful printed manual. No fuss, no hassles, no problems.
I've also bought that title from them, also had no problems. But I've
also "test bought" titles from us and had a similarly smooth
experience.
> Second was GalCiv from Stardock. I log onto their website to buy the
> game and find out that I can download and play the game immediately
> and included in the price is a CD that they'll mail to me.
Stardock has a unique, proprietary system that they spent (IIRC) 2
years developing in a somewhat open beta. We don't have that option,
unfortunately. I agree that it's very nice setup and I haven't had any
problems with them either.
> Now I get to Matrix. I know ahead of time that the price of WitP is
> $20 or $30 higher than the other two I bought. Not really a problem
> but there;s still some degree of sticker shock.
Keep in mind WitP is a unique product. It's priced at that level
because we couldn't justify development otherwise. As I've posted in
this newsgroup, WitP is our _only_ game priced at that level. The only
other product at that price is the collection of four mega-campaigns
that normally sell separately for $25 each, available in the General's
Edition for $70. The vast majority of our games are $40 or less.
> Log onto the website to buy the game Now I'm greeted by a list of
> options:
> Want a physical disk? KACHING!, $10 please
> Do you think you might ever need to download the files again?
KACHING!
> $5 please
> I want to say there was one more item along those lines to but now I
> can't remember it.
All I can say is that we provide as many options as we can, with
declared prices on each option. War in the Pacific is our most
expensive product, but many gamers feel that it is still a bargain at
that price.
> Rightly or wrongly, I walked away from that purchase with the feeling
> that Matrix was one of those annoying companies that spends a lot of
> time playing all the angles, trying to squeeze the last dollar out of
> my wallet. In other words, a company that I tend to view very
> sceptically whenever I deal with them.
I hope that's not still the impression that you have, as it could not
be further from the truth. Wargaming is a niche hobby and no one's
getting rich doing this. For companies like you describe, in my
opinion you need to look again at some of the more mainstream cookie
cutter games.
If you have any questions regarding our store options in the future,
please drop us an e-mail to support@matrixgames.com and we'll be happy
to answer.
Regards,
- Erik
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