Regarding opening DMS to the public

[Robertinha]

Honestly I also was never aware that the area would ever be made permanently public. If the amulet and bloodstone was meant to be just a head-start item then why was it so expensive? 749 gaia cash and I used it like twice since I bought, since it is impossible to solo DMS and people just wanted to go with their own friends. Also there should be something about that "head-start" on the item's description together with something about the intent to make DMS opened permanently after a while. So we could decide to either buy or wait... I feel like if I got scammed...

[Arasay]

Well I'm happy.

[CARTlER]

Arasay

Well I'm happy.

Where is DMS even located at...?

[Only Gray]

Hmm.

Something about "good deeds"?

I think it would have been great for it to be released to the public on the 1 year anniversary of DMS.

I would actually like to know the real reason behind the release to the public.

Maybe the DMS bundle is making more of a profit than the gems? lol

[Ghin - Aoiichi]

I for one ,am going to keep my amulet. I bought it when it first came out. So its my proof that i supported zomg.

So maybe un-soulbinding is not such a good idea??

[Alannaa]

I have a suggestion. I really hope someone takes notice and considers. The amulets and stones are now entirely useless, and a lot of people threw away good money to get them. For some of us, we've had them since day one. We've had the opportunity to get some mileage on them, and now stones are going for a massively reduced sellback. Until amulets are, for-sure, un-soulbound, us amulet users don't get that luxury. Besides which, I was never made aware it was soulbound and so for the better part of my ownership of it, I've been a bit burned up I couldn't sell it, which is a condition whose existence I never understood. I propose corollary action. You don't have to un-soulbound it, just give us a compensation object. Like revives or a rare(new?) ring. I'd be content to let sleeping dogs lie after that.

[Scobre]

Thank you for posting this and clearing it up for many. That's nice people are getting a refund for it even though I'm sure some will be sad because of school, but at least it got open to all when school starts. I hope that more people will come to play zOMG! now. Would have been cool to have had an announcement of dms open to all. Could someone possibly write a manga of the curse being lifted?

[ThE_WrAiTh]

smile

[oukashi okamii]

A better solution would be a new craft-able ing that is unsoulbound something like this.

[True Manticore]

It is great that the area is being opened to the public as promised (though not so great that there was no warning) but what is downright disappointing unfair and unexpected is the possibility that the Amulet may become unsoulbound.

When the amulet was released Gaia promoted the item by giving us 2 guarantees:

1st: that while the DMS would eventually open for everyone, the amulet would give owners the advantage of a head-start.

2nd: that the limited-to-5000-units Bloodstone Amulet would become soulbound upon use and therefore, not only would it always be a valuable rare collectible because of the limited number, but it would become increasingly rarer overtime the more people used it, thus soulbinding it.
In other words, the amulet would remain a solid investment as a collectible even after the unlocking of DMS to everyone.

For zOMG supporters who owned the amulet this meant 2 choices: either to equip the amulet and enjoy the head-start in DMS but having it soulbound, or to forfeit our well-earned DMS head-start while keeping the amulet as the solid investment we were lead to believe it would always be.

Now as for me, knowing that DMS would one-day-who-knows-when open to everyone, I made the difficult choice of never equipping the amulet, and so I did not enjoy my head-start. I was convinced though, that my reward for equally supporting the game would be seeing the value of my collectible increase, as more and more users used theirs on DMS.

But now, if the amulets become unsoulbound, what will happen is that those who made the sacrifice of not enjoying their head-start in DMS will find they gave up that privilege for nothing.
Whilst those who equipped the amulet will not only have enjoyed the advantage of exploring DMS when it first opened, but are then given a further choice to profit from the collective value of the amulet by selling it away once it is no longer useful.

The result? Listings of amulets will flood the marketplace, decrease the amulet's value substantially, and everyone else who did not enjoy the head-start when after all they could have done so, will get cheated out of their investment.

Leading us to believe the amulet would always be soulbound may have, however unintentionally, worked in the same manner as a marketing strategy that promotes the sale of an item based on false promises of its future rarity.

I really hope the amulets remain soulbound because there is also the larger issue of trust. If we can't trust the information Gaia and the Cash Shop give us regarding the items they sell, then how can we invest with confidence in the future?

[That Is Lame]

I'm sorry but i don't like this at all. I've purchased the gem about 3 weeks ago and now i just feel like i lost alot of my gold. I'm a little mad that DMS is open for the public now and i think all players with the gem or amulet should get their gold back, or should get an item worth that value back. quote="siskataya"]Hey everyone!

I wanted to make this thread regarding the recent decision to open DMS to the public. We made this decision because it was always our intent to one day have this area open for all Gaians to enjoy. The Bloodstone Amulets and Gems were head-start items to allow their owners to have first access, but not exclusive access, to this area. For 11 months, and 2 weeks, you had just that - first access, and we hope you enjoyed it!

At this point, we felt that enough time had passed and that finally opening the area to the public would be a good thing for the Gaia community. We had previously stated the following in an announcement from Sept. 2011: "But there may be a way for everyone to explore Dead Man's Shadow: if the Gaia community comes together as one to perform positive deeds, the the curse will be temporarily lifted, and all Gaians will be able to freely enter the area for three days. These good deeds include things like making Bloodstone Amulets available on the Marketplace, posting in the zOMG! forum, and bringing heroic new players to register for the game through zomg.com. If enough good deeds are performed, the curse may even be lifted permanently." We felt that enough good deeds and community spirit has been shown to open the area forever!

Now, all of this said, we do understand why, if you happened to buy the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem within the past week, you might be upset that you didn't get a larger amount of time to explore this area before it became public. If, within the past week, you purchased either the Bloodstone Amulet or Bloodstone Gem from the marketplace for gold, or used Gaia cash to purchase either of these items from the cash shop, we'll remove the item from your inventory and refund you the gold or cash you paid for it. You'll need to file billing ticket through our Help Center, however, to have the issue addressed.

Hope this helps, and we hope that you can make even more new friends as they come into the area.

Take care and have a great evening!
Sisky


UPDATE:

I just posted this in the thread, but wanted to re-post it here so everyone was aware of my post!

siskataya

Hey everyone!

As promised, I'm back in the thread today! It was probably a good thing I headed to bed when I did last night - I was beyond exhausted. If it is any consolation, I had weird dreams all night about my car breaking down and instead of being given a replacement vehicle to use in while the car was being fixed, I was given a giant scorpion the size of a car to ride around town. I have no idea WHAT motivated that dream... I digress.

Anyway, I have been reading through all the posts/threads and messages I've received about this issue. There a few things I want to say here:

* Regarding the complaints that not enough notice was given that DMS was being opened to the public, we agree that we could have done better on announcing this. We just got excited that it was now open, and thought since we has said before it would one day be made publicly available, that a fun surprise dev notice would be a good way to let everyone know. Sorry if this seemed random and out of the blue! From now on, we'll try our best to give at least 2 days notice that such changes are about to happen. This does not, of course, include any surprise features/changes that we want to be fun surprises for the community, in which case it makes no sense to make an advance notice! That would be silly!

* We've decided to revise our offer (made in the opening post) to refund anyone who purchased the Bloodstone Amulet or Gem from the marketplace/cash shop for gold/cash from one week to two weeks - yay! We feel that perhaps one week was too short a time period, so extending the refund period to two weeks will be better for the community. Also, if you had the amulet for more than two weeks, you probably had enough opportunity to use the item and try out the area!

* We're looking into unsoulbinding the Amulet and I'll let you know once we have a decision on this biggrin

Hope this helps! biggrin
Sisky

[Degsynism]

I think this is unfair to the players who bought Bloodstone Gems a month or a few weeks ago because we played a lot of games in Gaia just to save up for a Bloodstone Gem and we bought these Bloodstone Gems for 500 , 000 to 600 , 000 and above gold . I think , we should have a Sellback price at around 550 , 000 Gaia Gold just to make everything fair since we worked and played hard just to be able to buy Bloodstone Gems and stuff . Remember , we would not be wasting time and real money just to earn gold for the Bloodstone Gems if we ever knew that DMS will soon be open for everyone . I just want to explain my point .

[kyo-kyuubi25]

Rainbow Filled Nights

This is good and bad;
Good for those that can't afford a bloodstone.
Bad for the older DMSers, and the people that come from Papa Saw with no idea what a buff does, aka, noobs.
Oh well. It was bound to happen.

i know right kind off sry for those who bought it in the last minute

[Fieera]

Personally,

I don't know where to start from, but... I think it was a bad idea, considering some of the people who bought it with real money, Gaia Gold, Gaia Cash or etc. I mean, it is good that everyone has now an access to Deadman's Shadow, though, it is certainly unfair for the people who got a Bloodstone gem which is "soulbound" and useless now. I neither don't feel like selling mine for 50,000g, which in fact is worth more than this, if you look at it's actual price in the market place or when it was on the Cash Shop. It was a lot of Gaia Cash to spend on or gold. If necessary, there could be a possibility to make this an alchemy item, or anything good for rewarding the owners of a bloodstone gem, like something special, else than just destroying the item. There is a lot of possibilities. I believe in it. This matter should be checked out too. Well, anyway... Thank you for reading and your concern... I just felt like sharing my opinions. I hope they are alright too. Many thanks.

~ƒieera

[allegoriest]

True Manticore

It is great that the area is being opened to the public as promised (though not so great that there was no warning) but what is downright disappointing unfair and unexpected is the possibility that the Amulet may become unsoulbound.

When the amulet was released Gaia promoted the item by giving us 2 guarantees:

1st: that while the DMS would eventually open for everyone, the amulet would give owners the advantage of a head-start.

2nd: that the limited-to-5000-units Bloodstone Amulet would become soulbound upon use and therefore, not only would it always be a valuable rare collectible because of the limited number, but it would become increasingly rarer overtime the more people used it, thus soulbinding it.
In other words, the amulet would remain a solid investment as a collectible even after the unlocking of DMS to everyone.

For zOMG supporters who owned the amulet this meant 2 choices: either to equip the amulet and enjoy the head-start in DMS but having it soulbound, or to forfeit our well-earned DMS head-start while keeping the amulet as the solid investment we were lead to believe it would always be.

Now as for me, knowing that DMS would one-day-who-knows-when open to everyone, I made the difficult choice of never equipping the amulet, and so I did not enjoy my head-start. I was convinced though, that my reward for equally supporting the game would be seeing the value of my collectible increase, as more and more users used theirs on DMS.

But now, if the amulets become unsoulbound, what will happen in that those who made the sacrifice of not enjoying their head-start in DMS will find they gave up that privilege for nothing.
Whilst those who equipped the amulet will not only have enjoyed the advantage of exploring DMS when it first opened, but are then given a further choice to profit from the collective value of the amulet by selling it away once it is no longer useful.

The result? Listings of amulets will flood the marketplace, decrease the amulet's value substantially, and everyone else who did not enjoy the head-start when after all they could have done so, will get cheated out of their investment.

Leading us to believe the amulet would always be soulbound may have, however unintentionally, worked in the same manner as a marketing strategy that promotes the sale of an item based on false promises of its future rarity.

I really hope the amulets remain soulbound because there is also the larger issue of trust. If we can't trust the information Gaia and the Cash Shop give us regarding the items they sell, then how can we invest with confidence in the future?

Unfortunately, you can now un-soulbind. I waited until I also had a gem to DMS so mine wouldn't get soulbound. ;__;

I still say this means they should re-release halos and stuff, since they seem to be okay with going back on things they said. (I also don't see how allowing you to unsoulbind is the middle road either.)

Silly manticoala, having trust and whatnot.