This needs to stop

abwaxu6vcrj1omjy@facebook.com

Dear fellow players and community,

This is an open letter aimed at the developers and/or other people sitting at the top of GoT WiC/GTArcade.
People who basically make all kinds of decisions about ingame features, shop and development.

This is not my main account Im posting with. I play this game for over 1.5 year.
I see myself as a pretty good customer for GTarcade and its community for spending over thousands of euros during that period.
Whether that is dumb or unfair, is a debate I wish to avoid on this letter.

Now, for the letter, I want to address some issues that me and other fellow paying customers are facing for far too long. I want to keep it concise and clear so I'll list them here:

* VIP Customer Service is not so VIP as you might think: many issues I have been reporting day in, day out are still present after more than a year. One sending me from Facebook App to GTArcade App to avoid one issue, the other one sending me from GTArcade App to GTArcade Web Client to avoid a different issue.
This cannot be real. Customers pay for a service you want to provide. However, sending them to all 3 different platforms to avoid specific issues is terrible service. Issues I have been reported over a year ago, to both VIP and General Support, have been landing on deaf ears. I haven't heard a single thing about it, ever again 'til this day!
Half of the times you complain, you'll get the same lame low worth of items such as resources (1.5M each) as compensation. Those DO NOT cover the money we have been given to you for a service we are still not getting nor the frustration we are getting. We all know you are making tons of money and spending little to nothing to the development of the game.

For the people wondering what this VIP Customer Service is about: after spending couple of thousands euros/dollars, you get invited to join a "special group" of service support on Discord or other means. They are in direct contact with you so you can post all kinds of issues directly to them instead of waiting for general support.

* Ingame Shop: As some of you might remember the 1st year anniversary drama (I sure do) you had to pay a lot of money to gain little return. Remember you had to buy lots of black diamonds on order to get all the rewards, which were "random" but somehow a lot of users posted that they all get the cheapest reward for doing 1st payment?
Yes, I sure remember that. I complained about it to the VIP Service because this game supported gambling at that time. Many of you know that online lootboxes and other chests or items you buy without knowing what you're getting when opening, got illegal in some countries. Mine country, Belgium, is one of them. I was very disappointed it wasn't as straight forward as it was shown ingame until you bought the first round. It then revealed you had to buy more and more each round you're getting higher, without knowing what you'll be getting. This is, by defition, online lootbox mentality which has been illegal in Belgium since 2018. Yet they ignore the law and still provide shady businesses on a game played by all ages. Many bugs, many broken features, everything requires money now in order to "enjoy" war at lowest level of competitiveness, glitches still remain for weeks (such as the current gathering bug), all sorts of ingame Black Diamond Shop boxes (commanders, gear, speed ups, diamonds, ..) going up in prices excessively (example: commander boxes: 1st is 5 euro, second is 20 euro for only 5 medals more than the first one, think about it), .. All this to gain lots of money and the player (hopefully knowingly) getting little in return but more bugs and stuff that does NOT get tested before rollout of new update.

* Development: This above brings me to the development of the game. Many of us know that there is (or was rather) a mobile version of this game, which has better graphics than we are currently playing in browser. You can clearly see they are identical yet they claim its a totally different game, despite having the exact same mechanics, commanders, city, military, Friendship Mechiancs, Weirwood and same items to give them and so on..
We pay so much for this game but it I'm astonished as to how amateur this game even looks, despite having fun mechanics. There hasn't been any noticable changes visually since the release of the game, except for cringy moving Commanders. Yet they rack up millions upon millions of dollars in profit if you look at all the biggest players and their gear and calculate how much money they must have spent (such as Glorious Armor, ~5K dollars). Many bugs still reside in this game, both visually and mechanically that should be fixed day one of the rollout if you gain that much profit. But no efforts nor investment has been done with all the profit they are making.
* Issues: This is just a small list of issues I have been facing for a long time now:
- Grain Hourly Upkeep blocking me from making new troops despite opening more than double than the amount needed (T4, can't proceed making troops while Lord of Lords event is Training Soldiers, no solution has been given by VIP service so I'll lose lots of points here)
- Text still disappears on GTArcade App in Commanders Overview. You cannot read all the texts about their skills
- Can't click moving troops in GTArcade App, but I can in Webclient and Facebook App
- Grain Upkeep Mechanic is useless as you can have 0 grain but army still remains. Hourly upkeep should be removed or Hourly Upkeep mechanic should start working (mechanic that never worked since start of the game)
- Removed visual oversight of specific speedups you have once you want to speedup. They kind of gave us the middle road 2 months ago but the 1st version was the best one befoer they removed that feature all together
- Gathering Node bug where you send army to a node not knowing it's already taken (has been here for weeks) (lowkey making people fight, make war to make more money since its taking this long to fix?)
- Rewards are too low for the daily effort we need to put into
- Mother's Day Event has lv 14 reward short (jumps from lv 13 to 15)
- Released events such as Army of the Dead, Alliance Conquest, Champion, .. all big stuff to have more fun but give you more headache due all the bugs, connection errors and glitches. So much that there isn't even remotely a chance this has been tested before release!! (pioneer server slightly different)
- Lowkey removing specific attributes or nerfing F2P commanders in Expedition (Chris and Sheila being one of them recently) without any notification
- Matchmaking in AC mostly fails for medium and low Alliances (T4 vs T3)
- Low visual/graphic map knowing most people play in 64bit browsers so upgrading them should be low effort
- Daily rewards should not be clicked but gained automatically once logging in and/or staying logged in (VIP Chest, Dragon Skill Raffles, Merrit Diamonds, Friendship Mechanic every 4 hours, Training Grounds Diamonds, All Events giving rewards upon completion, Mistery chest, ..). That constant routine of clicking is making us sick
- Clicking all annoying pop-ups to make them disappear when logging in
- Rebel Group Blitz should let you choose which rebels you want to attack (Normal/Elite) as I defeated Elite lv 25 Rebels but it's only giving me Normal rewards..
- Have lv 10 Spy Report show Formation used on enemy Rebel Camps or enemy players (now it keeps gambling which formation enemy is using so you risk losing a lot. Despite having different gears, it doesn't help you if you do not know the formation. Dev response was: "throw an army and you see their formation". I mean, you can change your Wall-formation after that test army hit your walls.. has no use and motivates losing crucial troops
- KvK should have its specific hospital as suggested in a previous Survey (Yes, I do them) so people aren't afraid losing their troops permanently and people would have more fun.
Otherwise only people who can pay for all those troops (mostly P2W) can afford raging war in KvK. Might have noticed but more and more people are remaining bubbled up at KvK, specifically for this reason..
- Not enough diamond mines after KvK and not enough resources lv 4 in general near castles. This might be on purpose to motivate alliances to capture more castles but that would require more resources for troops and research to do so.. Endless circle..
- Stop introducing new mechanics to have another way of players paying Black Diamonds to get ahead. Instead look at options people can pay with normal Blue Diamonds.
- Be able to Zoom out much further in Open Map
- Have an option to have people who started out with Facebook transfer their account permanently over to a gmail or hotmail address (I asked this personally so I could close my Facebook permanently. Only thing stopping me is this team of devs not wanting to transfer over my account. So Im stuck with my Facebook because of them, depsite wanting to play more and paid thousands of euros..)
- ... sure many of you can enter more issues here

This is by no means an attack or anything but I refuse to keep paying for all the issues and headaches Im getting.
At first I was suggesting this game for friends to play. All of them have stopped due the P2W ceiling a lot of players are hitting (once near T4 research completion). Now I tell them to stay away if they ever mention this game until this team change the way players are treated.

I can receive lots of hate or lots of support, I don't really care. All I want is the team to get to read this so they can stop having (new) players leaving this game and I can keep (remainder) my friends.


Thanks for the read

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abwaxu6vcrj1omjy@facebook.com

@freyafmHi thanks for your answer and time,

1. Nobody reached out to me (except you with this reply) because this is not my main account
2. Unfortunately the issues are still present to this day and are different when playing on different platforms (Facebook, GTArcade Web, GTArcade Desktop App) My point was to point out that Support should not be sending customers around on all platforms where it has its own kind of issues/bugs.. Instead it should just be fixed by next maintenance but some very old issues are still present to this day, which stuns me considering the amount of profit coming in and assuming on the updates, it's a small dev team. Also the word issues like "mana, riflemen, shields, " being put in the game is totally weird.. This wasn't here half a year ago
3. About the lootboxes: I'm looking at it legally and objectively. Paying for something, in an online game, which does not guarantee the item you wish WITHOUT showing the % of chance getting it, is forbidden by law in Belgium. EA's games like Battlefront and FIFA already have their boxes/chests blocked in Belgium.
The 1st Anniversary Event where you had to pay excessively more Black Diamonds each round, without knowing what item you were getting, was exactly that. Lots of people have been complaining about it on Official GoT WiC Discord enough that your whole team should know about that certain error the team made. Anniversary should be to reward your players and not make them pay more..
4. Mobile version: I never said it was the same game, I did say it's a version of the game. There's no other way it has something in common in development team. 95% of the graphics and mechanics are the exact same. It just seem there are different publishers using the same base game.. If not, there's some legal author issues here..
5. I appreciate you saying this has been forwarded to the team but rest assured I heard this for too many times already from VIP Customer Service.. Each time they say "we will forward this" or "they will contact you", I never heard anything of it again..

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natx

Thanks for compiling all of this. A lot of people have been reporting the same issues with no result. It seems you've finally caught their attention though, it's sad that you had to post on a new account just to protect your main account. Speaks volumes to the level of trust the playerbase has for the people in charge of the game.

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freyafm

Good day dear player,
I would like to start by saying “Thank you!” for the good manners, well composed, calm and mature way of addressing your frustrations and disappointments. Not so often we get to meet a player like yourself.
Probably by now someone reached out to you, as we (the mods) forwarded this thread to our supervisors as soon as was noticed and they informed…who needed to be informed.
Moderators know little about the VIP service, as we are not working together. So for the miscommunications when they sent you from one platform to another, I am truly sorry that happened and I hope you eventually found what you needed.
Truth to be told, a free player or one who pays, there is no big difference when a moderator deals with an issue. Needs to be solved/reported or a verdict given (if one is given to the mods) for any type of player.
We (mods) do not have compensations to give nor any promise it’s even an option, but if you see you are in a spot where you do not get an answer, maybe try our forum. I see you have a very organized way of writing, just make a new thread like this one in Support Section of this forum and let us try and help you.

About the online lootboxes. I’ll be honest with you, I did not know much about them until I read your thread. Which led me to this article where Belgium is also mentioned. This popped out as a simple explanation to where the issue with lootboxes are. But again, it depends from which point of view you’re looking at it, so I am going to stay out of it. Very interesting subject, do doubt.

Now, in the section “Development” you brought up a mobile version of this game. I need to correct that a little, because the link you provided is not a version of this game, nor was.
Many players reading “mobile version of this game” instantly think they can play their PC game on mobile. Wrong, different games, just to be clear.
The mobile version which is still in close beta test, is actually based on the version PC. Even though the design seems the same, they are quite different in other ways. The mobile doesn’t have Weirwood Tree trials, lord’s level can only be upgraded by completing a series of tasks instead of just feeding them exp items. And as of now the mobile version is still being tested and developed, while PC version has been out for more than a year already. The mobile version it’s also only for the SEA region (South East Asia) and there are not plans on promoting it in outside of Asia.
You can check it out yourself here in the CBT if you wish.

Rest assured that your thread was noticed and seriously taken in consideration by now.
Thank you again for the good and fairplay attitude you’ve shown.

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freyafm

Hello again!
Well you put time and effort in writing to us, there was no other way to replay you than to replay back with honesty. The forum can be slow at times and hard to catch someone fast enough when communicating like we are. I have sent you a Forum Private message (if you do not know how check - it let me know) , I would like to try and help more.

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sddkdkiik@gmail.com

the greater the expectation,the greater the disppointment .

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