Thursday, March 8, 2012

Kingsisle's Ninja Pack a Hasty Mistake?

The new myth themed Ninja Pack is here! For the first time ever you can get spells as rewards! And a new adorable Sheng Long Dragon Pet in four colors with respective cards! Find out more information by hitting the official news link at the top of the page!

Before I go on my rant, let me present you with this:

Dragon's Hoard pack is released! Buyers are promised a super ultra rare reward of the impressive Skeletal Dragon Mount! It also promises players chances to get different types of dragon's each with their own unique skills and some new housing items among other things all dragon themed! It is instantly a hit with players and now everyone is into the Dragon's Hoard craze! Eventually, everyone who wanted one, has a skeletal dragon mount now or has given up trying. Kingsisle sees how much people liked the pack so they say: This time let's give them even more super rare mounts so that people can be more unique and we will theme it differently with different rewards!
They called it, The Wyvern's Hoard pack! Now players were scrambling with their crowns to be the first ones to get one of the six super rare mounts available as a reward! This pack sells even better than the last! Housing fanatics are tantalized by its promise of brand new housing items and garden items galore! Buckets full of pets were dumped into the reward tables too! Everyone was even more satisfied with this one. The mounts were harder to get but it made them more special. Kingsisle saw this strategy was working and they said, "Hey! Let's make a pack thats out for a limited amount of time so that we can ensure the mount will be special!"
So they came out with the limited edition Nightmare Pack! Everyone loved the new ghost themed pegasus and went gaga for the holiday themed housing items! Along with a brand new introduction of an item called a teleporter tapestry! The promise of it leaving the crown shop made it more successful and they succeeded in making the rewards truly rare and special! "Ok," says Kingsisle, "this is a good strategy. Let's stick with it but take a break for a while now that the pack is out of the crown shop. Let's ration out some of our new content to the players to give the non-crown players something more to do!"
They did stick to the strategy and they came out with the Raven's Hoard Pack which to this day is still stymying wizards for another chance at their coveted prize. This pack had the best marketing plan yet by promising players not only a new high flying mount (so they could be like their friends who had a high flying hawk) that was beautifully rendered, but also promising a second mount to get even more players in on the new development of TWO PLAYER MOUNTS (in case they couldn't get the gift card)! A cleverly red version of the other mount that holds its visitor in its claws! It topped all other packs before it! It was a masterpiece! A true work of marketing genius! Kingsisle had really learned how to use this new discovery! They even figured out how to fill this pack up so much with pets, mounts, housing, and more, that it still lasts in its rarity appeal! All of these packs were also packaged with tantalizing previews before release and more suspense to it on top of the prizes! Kingsisle had created a great formula!
Kingsisle celebrated its new formula with the less successful and appealing pack called the Kirin's Hoard, advertised and built up by contests on IGN. While it is still a popular pack, it is no where near as popular as the others. But it was still very successful! Kingsisle noticed how they did things differently and saw that the previous way was better but that was alright because it was still a huge hit! The formula had been tweaked and perfected! So what was stopping them from using it again? Nothing!

Then something strange happened. Kingsisle had the formula just right but then completely veered from it and gave us the strange and uninteresting pack called, The Ninja Lore Pack. Although it promised something new, actual spells! None of the spells are very appealing to players over level 45 or to a max of 50. They are amusing at best and no one really has the motivation to seek out the mysteries of the spells but wait for others to find out. So what did Kingsisle do wrong? They gave new features! They gave four new cute pets! What happened?

1. There is no mount!
2. No special build up or suspense to the release.
3. What motivation was there for players to get these new pets other than that they were "cute?"
4. The spells are not appealing enough to find out about first.
5. The side rewards like housing items, other misc pets, and TCs, are random and mild at best.
6. All of these problems can be summed up in this one: THEY THREW IT TOGETHER TOO QUICKLY!

You guys had the formula! You had the marketing! You had the money to make it happen! You gripped the players to your game! Why be sloppy with this one? You let it slip by you.

Kingsisle is a great company and comes out with innovative new features all the time and is constantly hard at work! I deeply respect them as an artist myself. But people have come to expect certain standards for releases. They expect them to pull them in by the collar and not let go! So maybe take more time with the next one?