If there’s the best time to be pissed off at game abusers, this would be it. IMC Games has announced that the Free-to-Play release of Tree of savior will be moved to mid-May as they are addressing various fixes for the game as the schedule of the original F2P release looms over the horizon.
One of the biggest changes IMC Games has implemented is the removal of the regional pricing of it’s “Founders Access DLC”. According to IMC, players who had the founders access cheaper are able to sell Tokens in the market for silver. Tokens in ToS are the premium items that players can purchase to provide in-game advantages such as being able to sell five items on the market, (F2P players can only sell one item at a time), increased move speed, an extra dungeon attempt (F2P players can go through a dungeon only twice a day) etc.
Removing the regional pricing is IMC’s attempt to equalize the advantage players who have a lower dollar conversion rate since they are releasing a new set of bundles for the game. This is clearly IMC’s means of reacting to the “Boleto Bancario” incident that plagued the game a few days back.
With that said, IMC has changed some of it’s promises to players in light of recent developments. The notable changes (which I haven’t mentioned already) are as follows:
- The (NEW) DLC products will now have a 50% discount instead of the earlier promised 30%
- Previous DLC purchasers can also purchase these new DLC packs
- The discount will not take into consideration the regional pricing. so expect the discount price in US Dollars
- Regional pricing will be retained for South Americans and South East Asian servers AFTER player migration is complete
- The game will now have a South American Server
IMC Games has had it’s hand full during the Founder’s Access since the period has been plagued with server crashes, bot problems (they actually banned almost 3,000 accounts) and game breaking bugs. It’s a good move for IMC to delay the F2P release since it’s going to be a whole new ball game once the people come in.
Here’s the complete statement from IMC:
Greetings Saviors,
Until yesterday, the Founder’s Pack products were available for purchase at prices set by Steam, which take the living standards of individual countries into consideration. If, for example, a player from NA had to pay $49.99 for a package, another player living in a different country was able to purchase it for half that price or even less.
Players can essentially purchase the Founder’s Pack at a lower regional price, purchase Tokens with the TP earned, and sell them on the market to obtain silver. Players in regions where the price is not discounted face a loss compared to them.
This is not what we intended when we designed the Token and market systems. Any tradeable items in one server should be sold at the same price to all users. Therefore we requested Steam to change the price policy before releasing new TP bundles and transitioning to F2P to prevent problems ahead of time. The prices were changed yesterday because our request was handled.
We sincerely apologize for disappointing those who faced sudden, drastic price increase without being notified beforehand, and we’d like to provide the following solutions.
1. We’re going to open a South American server. We’ll open it after the team transfers to EU and SEA servers have finished, and then start taking transfer requests from Klaipeda and Orsha to the new SA server. We are cancelling previous announcement that there will be no new SA Steam server.
Please note that we can only move teams from Klaipeda and Orsha to the new SA server. Transfer from Fedimian and Telsiai is not supported. In addition, unlike the previous transfer to Fedimian and Telsiai, we will open the SA server first and then transfer teams to it. We will start taking team transfer requests to the new SA server as soon as next week. We’ll take request tickets until the beginning of May, in the same manner and procedure as we have done for the transfer to EU and SEA servers.
2. We’re going to apply different prices to the SA and SEA servers after transitioning to F2P. The discount rate will be announced separately later. The Tokens purchased on SA and SEA servers cannot be traded on NA or SEA servers, so we expect that fairness will not be an issue as mentioned above. We’d like to note that the new DLC products specifically sold to SA and SEA servers cannot be claimed on NA and EU servers, and vice versa.
Lastly, we’ve decided to raise the discount on our DLC products. We will be selling them at 50% off instead of the 30% originally planned. The content of the DLC products including the TP amount will not change. Players who have already purchased the DLC products previously will be able to buy the discounted packs as well, since they are treated as new products. This discount will start on the 21st as planned and will remain available until near the F2P transition date. These 50%-off DLC products will not take regional pricing into account as they will be discontinued before F2P and regional pricing implementation for the SA and SEA servers.
Due to such change of plans, we had to push the F2P release date back in order to account for longer preparation. Our goal is to finish transferring teams to the appropriate servers first before opening up our game to the general public. We expect the transition to F2P to happen sometime early to mid-May, and we will make a separate announcement once the date is confirmed. We apologize to those who have been waiting eagerly for the F2P transition.
Again, we apologize for the instability in our service. We’re going to continuously strive to provide a pleasant and fair environment where players can truly enjoy the game itself. Thank you for your concerns and support.
Sincerely,
IMC Staff
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