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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Friday, November 22, 2002
10:02 - Clever PR Tricks

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Lance just woke up to convey to me the following fun little Microsoft tidbit.

Asheron's Call 2 ships today. They've been selling preorders now for months, to customers in as many as fifty different countries worldwide. But now, twenty-four hours before release, they've suddenly come out with a statement that says that "unless your billing address is in one of the following nine countries, you can't play."

Mexico isn't on the list. Australia isn't on the list. The Netherlands is, but Belgium isn't. Spain is, but none of Scandinavia is. Russia isn't. France and Germany are, but Ireland isn't. Half the EU isn't.

The rationale is apparently that the excluded countries don't have economies that are stable or strong enough for their new billing system. All the public statements they've released so far reek of badly-handled lawyer-ese, and the message boards are lighting up like Las Vegas Boulevard with livid users-- some forty percent of the users of Asheron's Call 1 live in countries that are now barred from participating in the new version.

The fine-print, after all, says that what you buy off the shelf is just the box and the little plastic disc; they're under no obligation to provide the $12.95 service to you, even if you've paid for the setup and installation. So a ton of people are out the fifty bucks-- but also out the months (or years) of gameplay they've been anticipating all this time. Because their countries aren't good enough, according to Microsoft.

Lance has had a great deal to say about Microsoft's mishandling of Asheron's Call 2, both in the sense of the structure of the game and storyline, and in the management of logistics. But this one really takes the cake.

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