How to make friends and influence people

[alshell]

<p>Sony, congratulations, you have once again shown your inate ability to gain friends and influence customers into buying your products with this new `Player of the Year` competition.</p><p>Once again, this competition is ONLY open to people who have an account `within the 50 states` of the USA, who are also `US residents` . You are, yet again, neglecting the accounts in Europe, Asia and Australasia who give you considerable amounts of income. Sony is a worldwide corporation with outlets and factories in many countries, if you can negotiate wages etc and sustain factories in these countries with little problem, surely a little thing like a game contest can be sorted so that people from other regions than the US may be able to participate. You have countless legal experts who work for you sorting out things like contractual agreements etc, so that they can apply worldwide, and yet your competitions are only open to US residents.</p><p>This is a lazy method of practise and is seen, by many people outside the US, as being a form of discrimination against us. We pay the same fees as anybody in the US to play the game, yet we are precluded from participation in any competitions or events you run within the game. Maybe those outside the US should have a discount on their accounts to compensate for this lack of participation.</p><p>On a lighter note, my nomination for `Player of the Year` has to be the plat spammers....who else has made so much contact with so many other players to offer so much `help` in getting people the equipment and levels they would like to be able to enjoy the game to its fullest<img src="/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Stuge]

You are a valued member of the community and your opinions and concerns are valid.  Thank you for bringing light to this subject where none existed before.  Kudos to you, alshell.

[Raveller]

<cite>alshell wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>On a lighter note, my nomination for `Player of the Year` has to be the plat spammers....who else has made so much contact with so many other players to offer so much `help` in getting people the equipment and levels they would like to be able to enjoy the game to its fullest<img src="/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote> I agree. They give so much fun to me and my guild.  <img src="/smilies/ed515dbff23a0ee3241dcc0a601c9ed6.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[DrkVsr]

<span style="font-size: small; color: #993300; font-family: comic sans ms,sand">You have seen what the reward for this contest is, right? Paid trip to Vegas (for the Fan Faire), are you prepared to cover the cost if the winner is from, lets say, South Africa? Didn't think so</span>

[firza]

<cite>DrkVsr wrote:</cite><blockquote><span style="font-size: small; color: #993300; font-family: comic sans ms,sand">You have seen what the reward for this contest is, right? Paid trip to Vegas (for the Fan Faire), are you prepared to cover the cost if the winner is from, lets say, South Africa? Didn't think so</span></blockquote><p>Then change the reward, change the quest, whatever you do, make sure you reward your customers equally.</p><p>Unfortunatly this company has a record of total neglect for its foreign customer base. If it was you that dealt with a company who totally neglects your wishes you would complain too. </p>

[Vonotar]

<cite>DrkVsr wrote:</cite><blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: tahoma,arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color: #993300">You have seen what the reward for this contest is, right? Paid trip to Vegas (for the Fan Faire), are you prepared to cover the cost if the winner is from, lets say, South Africa? Didn't think so</span></span></blockquote>Didn't think what? Did you forget about the [Removed for Content] in ASSume? So a couple of cents per subscription would be diverted to pay for a couple of air-fare tickets, big deal.  You make it sound like a South African winner would cost thousand$$$ more than a good ole American citizen. Please note that the competition rules also exclude Canadian residents as well.  I don't think distance is the issue here. SoE is a US Centric company, that is why those of us outside the US are shafted by buggy servers, missed updates, no marketing and no boxes in the shops.

[DrkVsr]

<span style="font-size: small; color: #993300; font-family: comic sans ms,sand">Ah'm from NZ, and one of possibly only 3 people in the whole country who has even heard of EQ/EQII let alone play it (and one of the others is mah nephew ah got into the game and keep buying him the expansions) As someone in another thread stated: there could be other reasons that could make things 'difficult' for SoE if a winner came from outside US, specially seeing how they would be going to 'Sin-City'</span>

[alshell]

<p>Here we go again, for the last 5 or 6 updates, the Euro Servers have had no ingame notification of the server going down. So as not to be accused of being lazy and not reading the boards, I also logged onto my US server account on days that the sever was going down for updates, and, lol and behold, there was a 1 hour, 3/4 hour, 1/2 hour, 15 minute, 10 minute, 5 minute and Immediate warning on every occasion!</p><p>So, here we go again, yet again, the Euro community is treated like something to scrape off the bottom of the shoe by SOE. We pay exactly the same as our US counterparts for this game, yet we do not even get the courtesy that they do....how sad that a multinational company has such racist (yes...racist is the right word) tendancies within its staff. If you aren`t American, then you aren`t worth bothering about. What is more surpriing is that Sony`s parent Company is from one of the most well mannered and considerate countries in the world.</p>

[Dark_Grue]

<p>There are legal considerations in running international contests that make doing so prohibitive for pretty much any and every company and organization. Heck, the Québec specific laws governing contests and promotions make such things just within Canada nearly impossible (and so a lot of Canadian contest specifically exclude Québec).</p><p>While the list of SoE's sins is many, long, and diverse, this isn't one of them.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<cite>alshell wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Sony, congratulations, you have once again shown your inate ability to gain friends and influence customers into buying your products with this new `Player of the Year` competition.</p><p>Once again, this competition is ONLY open to people who have an account `within the 50 states` of the USA, who are also `US residents` . You are, yet again, neglecting the accounts in Europe, Asia and Australasia who give you considerable amounts of income. Sony is a worldwide corporation with outlets and factories in many countries, if you can negotiate wages etc and sustain factories in these countries with little problem, surely a little thing like a game contest can be sorted so that people from other regions than the US may be able to participate. You have countless legal experts who work for you sorting out things like contractual agreements etc, so that they can apply worldwide, and yet your competitions are only open to US residents.</p><p>This is a lazy method of practise and is seen, by many people outside the US, as being a form of discrimination against us. We pay the same fees as anybody in the US to play the game, yet we are precluded from participation in any competitions or events you run within the game. Maybe those outside the US should have a discount on their accounts to compensate for this lack of participation.</p><p>On a lighter note, my nomination for `Player of the Year` has to be the plat spammers....who else has made so much contact with so many other players to offer so much `help` in getting people the equipment and levels they would like to be able to enjoy the game to its fullest<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/97ada74b88049a6d50a6ed40898a03d7.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p></blockquote>It's not SOE setting these regulations - check your local laws concerning this type of contest and then complain to your goverment. Your goverment is the one that is preventing this with their laws and no "contractual agreement" can violate the laws of the nation. There are states within the continential US that people cannot participate in contests also, not only SOE ones but any of them