Yesterday, IMC Games announced that they would be increasing the price point for the tier 1 and 2 founders packs in certain regions in order to ensure players on the same server were receiving the same dollar to in game silver value for the Token. For those unfamiliar, the tier 1 and 2 packs offered a 60 and 30 day token respectively, similar to CREDD in WildStar or the WoW Token in WoW, which provides players with trading abilities and additional bonuses much like a subscription would.
However because the game did not launch with server regions to match the price variations, players on the same server had access to these tokens at differing real money prices while still being able to sell them in game for the same amount of silver. Imagine living in Canada and being able to buy the WoW token for $10 US dollars while still receiving the same amount of in game gold as those players spending $20 US dollars in the United States. Commendably, IMC took notice of this and did something about it.
Despite my respect for their taking action on this by normalizing the price across regions, the problem would have been avoided all together had they launched the game with the same regional servers they now have available. Nevertheless, the amount of flak they’ve taken for making this decision is ridiculous and is predictably driven by players who were able to take advantage of the higher ROI on selling the Token. The result is that Tree of Savior’s rating on Steam which was never sparkling continues to steadily decline.
To make matters worse, IMC also announced that the free to play launch would be delayed to an as yet undetermined date which caused even future players to unleash their well-honed internet rage, never mind the fact that the decision was the right one to make under the circumstances. IMC has decided to make sure existing players that have requested to transfer to either the South American, South East Asian, or European servers are able to do so before opening the doors to the free to play crowd. This should prevent the need for future players to be transferred as the regional servers will be set up and the founders players will already be situated.
One last note regarding changes to the founders packs, the tier 3 pack which was sold for $10 in the North American region was removed entirely prior to the price increases because the low price point allowed for repeated abuse by gold sellers and bots. This decision puzzles me considering the game will be launched as free to play before long. If $10 is too low a barrier of entry to prevent rampant gold selling what do they think is going to happen once Tree of Savior is free, which is a decidedly smaller barrier than “not free.”
However not all is doom and gloom for Tree of Savior this week, if you are a part of Steam’s North American region, the regular prices on the founders packs didn’t change at all and the discounted price that began today, April 21st, was increased to 50%; up from the 30% off originally announced. Not only that, but even if you had previously bough these packs you can now buy them a second time and take advantage of the steep discount on Tokens, cosmetics, and TP, which is the cash shop currency for ToS. Considering there is no other way to purchase more TP until after the game goes free to play and the dollar to TP ratio appears to be more favorable when purchased through the founders packs than it will be later, it’s pretty much a no brainer for anyone invested in the game to pick up one of the packs. Initially I purchased the now absent tier 3 pack for $10 but with the start of today’s sale I’ve added both the tier 1 and 2 to my account as well.
Tree of Savior deserves many of the complaints it has received on Steam and elsewhere from the excessive lag at launch to the dystopian levels of restriction on player to player trade but most of these changes to the founders packs were warranted. And if you have any interest in playing now or in the future, I highly recommend snagging one of the tier 2 packs at the $15 discounted rate. It’s one more way you could chose to spend $15 on an MMO these days.
Waiting For Rez 