At first I was planning to write a good review about this game (and it totally deserves it! if only something very bad didn't happen). An Impression will have to do for now.

For some who do not know, Allods Online is a new MMORPG, developed by Russian company Astrum Nival, and for North America version (Europe as well) hosted by Gpotato (Gala-net). The game is Free to Play (F2P), meaning you don't have to buy the game to make an account, and you don't have to pay the monthly subscription fee. However, you can buy ‘extra’ stuff through Item Mall or Cash Shop (will be referred to as CS Item) with real cash to enhance your gameplay. The popular CS Items among F2P games as follow; are items which grant you Statistic Bonus for a period of time, items which grant you to gain more Experience Point for a period of time, items which remove Debuffs from your character, items which make your character move/travel faster (Mount), items which make your character’s appearance cooler, items which increase chance of success of action performed by your character, and so on. Comparing the prices, generally players don’t spend more than $15/month on F2P ($15 as the standard price for monthly subscription fee) though many hardcore players do exceed the number.

However, Allods has gone too much further than that.

First, the Character Inventory Bag. Players start with a normal bag that has 18 slots, able to contain 18 stacks of different items. There’s a CS Item, a bag, with 24 slots, selling for $20. Even though you can also obtain this bag from in-game by doing a long and hard, and boring, and frustrating quest (I already finished it) it still is outrageous. 20 dollars is more expansive than a month worth of Pay 2 Play MMORPG. The bag’s price (NA server) is also 10 times that of the bag’s price on Russian server.

Still, you don’t necessary need a bigger bag to play a game, do you? It just makes your gaming experience more enjoyable. (Well, that is very important though.) Anyway, let’s move on.

Second, is the Fear of Death debuff. For those who don’t know, starting at level 15, whenever your character dies, you will have this FoD debuff after your character respawn. The debuff makes your character much weaker for a period of time. Its duration increases greatly as your character’s level goes up, though. As of this moment, a level 40 character will suffer 40 minute of FoD debuff. During which time, it is impossible to participate in Raid, PvP, or Dungeon at all. However, the Russian developer has just released a new patch, that would increase the duration of the debuff, so that a level 40 would suffer it for 2 hours instead. And logout doesn’t help either. The only way to remove the debuff, is to pay (CS Item; Perfume), obviously. Also, the patch has changes so that a character resurrected by another player will also suffer from the same debuff, making players (Priest, Summoner, i.e.) don’t want to learn Resurrection skill. Can you imagine how many times your character usually get killed in other games, while doing Raid, PvP, or Dungeons? If nothing changes soon, you are going to go Away From Keyboard for 2 hours every time death occurs.

http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/19/reflecting-on-the-allods-open-...

Gpotato had addressed the community, regarding the overpriced Cash Shop items: "Over the next several weeks we will continue to evaluate the details of our item shop and we will begin to introduce new items to help assist you throughout your Allods experience. We wanted to make clear that beyond the introduction of the item shop nothing has changed in Allods that wouldn’t allow you to enjoy the game just as much as you did during closed beta. You can still enjoy the entire game without ever having to spend a single cent. Additionally, many of the items available in the item shop are tradable in-game, appear through a number of quests, and can be auctioned off by other players."

They have clearly said that they would evaluate, not would fix, the pricing of the Cash Shop. So that means they have planned to make the CS Items overpriced from the beginning, and now they just try to figure why it doesn't work as planned. Gpotato also has said that one can still enjoy the entire game without spending any cash at all. Makes you wonder if the PR Person, or the Lead Community Manager or whoever addressing the community knows the upcoming changes from Russian version or not, or if they consider being stuck with a FoD Debuff for 2 hours every death at end-game, among other things, is enjoyable.

http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/22/developer-rumors-and-item-shop...

Gpotato had again addressed the community; "We want to make clear that this is something we are not taking lightly. We are not sitting and waiting just to see how many dollars we’re going to make over the next four weeks. It is very clear to us that players are already disgruntled with the situation and we are actively working on new pricing options to accommodate the masses. However, we ask the Allods community to please be patient with the situation! Adjustments like this cannot happen overnight."

Now, is it only just me who think that they are doing just that; sitting and waiting to see how many dollars they are going to make over the next four weeks? Remember, they said they would re-evaluate the pricing, and look for more options. They have not promised they will lower the price. In fact, the Cash Shop is still open and available. They are HOPING some people would buy their current overpriced items, otherwise they would have temporary closed it already.

There are more examples of this over pricing cash shop issue, and I will write more about it later.