User Expanded Support to Travian

I looked 2 mins ago. Then the 12 month average was 1.25. hence my question.

Edit: forget it, it was the 12 month high I was looking at. I really should go to bed.

 

Well I don't think anyone will buy from the Travian Store if they aren't offering cheap deals... concerning COTOs we are probably screwed, as EU people will not be able to compete in the economics around them anymore.

We can always buy from third party places that could even sell to us cheaper when they buy from Portalarium though... So they might charge only like 5-10% more instead of 20% etc.

I can understand that getting dismissed on such short notice by Portalarium must feel bad. But I think everyone knew this was going to happen.

@Cerus Will the world always stay together (US,EU etc.), or will the economies get seperated at some point IF your cotos are not selling in the Travian shop?

 

I don't understand how the fact that the euro is at its highest rate since 12 months could favors American consumers. If I pay with euro, for american virtual things, my euro has more value now than it had for 12 monts, therefore I should be able to pay less for the same thing, isn't it ?

@Cerus

 

@Cerus

Q: What will happen with my Store Credits on my account after the migration?
A: As we are not supporting Store Credits on our website, we will convert Store Credits of users from the TG publishing territory into Gold Crowns.
Q: Will the gifting feature be available on the Travian Games website?
A: We have decided to not support the gifting feature at launch, as it carries some risks, especially in combination with RMT. We will re-evaluate this feature at a later time.

NEW Q:
- so we are forced to get COTO at what rate? (Store Credtit$ per COTO)

- What happens to our "$xxx Store Credit Gift Coupon (digital)" will they also be forced into COTO?
- What happens to our not claimed Add-On-Store-items which on Portalarium we could still gift or convert to Store Credit?

 

The USD price is the baseline, either Travian would use a recent rate (currently around 1,24 interbank) to translate into EUR. This however would mean fluctuating prices and - depending on the agreement with Portalarium - introduce FX risk. (Player pays x EUR today, Travian pays y USD to Port at a later date - if FX is different Travian either pays "less" EUR or "more"). To limit this the easiest way is to pump up the EUR price by assuming an FX rate which is significantly worse than the current rate. Also this way they profit from the current trend of a weaker USD. This is quite common behaviour for "importers" of goods - the FX rate often doesn't reflect customer-friendly FX moves.

 

Some of us have more than one account and spend the the qualifying amount on each and then use the gifting mechanism to consolidate the credits over many telethons for larger purchases/account upgrades at a later date.

+1 I've a quite number of items not claimed in game on an alt account for later use.

 

Q: Will the gifting feature be available on the Travian Games website?
A: We have decided to not support the gifting feature at launch, as it carries some risks, especially in combination with RMT. We will re-evaluate this feature at a later time.

Q: What will happen with my Store Credits on my account after the migration?
A: As we are not supporting Store Credits on our website, we will convert Store Credits of users from the TG publishing territory into Gold Crowns.

This is sad. One use case that comes to my mind is Elgarion's Outlander Creativity contest. Elgarion is a player who uses his private money to hand out store credit as prizes for creative writing on his website RPOTA.com. Seems all of us Europeans, I would assume we are nearly half of the currently active users of that site, will not be able to participate in that contest any longer.

I am going to use and/or gift my store credit before the transition takes place. It's only about 25 USD worth. I am sorry for those that have large sums of store credit, though.

 

me too and thats a lot of stuff (and money...)

@Cerus
another related Question:
- What happens with gifted items which i didn't use/claim? will i still be able to claim them?

 

That is absolutely crazy that 2 different offers/ services are now active for European Players vs. US Players. I am very disappointed with this... at least, everything should be the same on the web pages even if prices are different...

 

Nope... Many more possibilities to resolve that! This was the easy cop-out way to resolving it!

 

Listen, i am not defending the PR disaster or the price jump.
But pretending Port could have handled the new laws by themselves is nonsensical. It's a simple risk Vs reward Vs investment question. A lot of companies of this size will have to do the same. Data protection has it's own price for the endconsumer.

 

We're going a bit off-topic but licensing SotA for all regions except North America was done years ago (Black Sun first, Travian later). The complexity of marketing a product globally probably were a driver, as much as getting new capital and in Travian's case active support from add'l resources. I don't think European Data Protection Laws were on their screens back then.

 

Oh, this is of course very true.

But I am sure they played their part in doing a complete megration.
They are only new to us and not so much to lawyers that do international law nstuff ^^

 

Regardless of what we suspect was the driving reason for this the only people who know for sure and could explain it fully if they so choose are Portalarium - but I get the impression from the way the Black Sun issues were handled, they will make no honest comment at all, simply wash their hands of it and leave Travian to handle the fallout. I have a lot of sympathy for Travian in this situation, to be honest - and have lost all my respect for Portalarium, who made these decisions but left others to announce them, try explain them, and absorb the damage resulting from them . And honestly, my trust of Portalarium is now so low I expect that if we do go off discussing the ins and outs of possible reasons and implications of potential taxation changes, they will use that to justify closing the thread and ending the conversation because it had gone 'off topic'.

 

I think that is another cultural thing that Portalarium has to learn, and I hope the Travians are going to help with that: Europeans in general do not react well to attempts to make them shut up. Most of us were raised in an environment where it was allowed and encouraged to question and critizise anything and anyone, and demand reasons and answers even from parents, teachers, and other authorities. Attempts to silence us don't sit well with us, probably even more so than with people of some other cultural backgrounds.

I am very pro-Portalarium. But the thread-closing practice and the lack of open and honest communication annoy me to no end.

 

Perfectly done.. German internet articles report about the transfer to Travian instead of talking about the content of the launch. What did you expect as you made the decision to proceed in this way at this point of time without any communication before?
Are you interested in success? Or is your US-player base enough for you... would make it easier nowadays...

 

I hope Travian actually starts to make a change here. From what I know they handled criticism better in their games.

 

OMG what a disaster. really really not happy about this

 

@Cerus

With regard to the following FAQ:

Q: What if I try to access the SotA services from a location that does not belong to my territory?
A: You can access the game independent from your location. When you are visiting the website, redirections will lead you to the Portalarium, Blacksun, or Travian Games website, based on your current location and the corresponding publishing territory.

Please clarify: In the case described in the FAQ above, will the player

• whose account has been migrated to Travian AND
• who accesses the website from the US AND
• is re-directed to the Portalarium version of the site

be able to access his account on the Portalarium version of the site and make purchases from the Add-on store on the Portalarium version of the site?

The reality is that many people frequently travel back and forth between different countries. They need to be able to access their account and make purchases from anywhere.