Rift - Entitlement? Service? or Nightmare.

As part of this continued stream of thought on Rift, I wish to take up another part of the puzzle with todays MMO market and the player.

Entitlement.

As we noted yesterday (and believe me, reading forums can get pretty nasty in regards to this issue), hackings are taking place as quick as you can read these words. Trion has taken it upon themselves to add a special in game tool to help alleviate concerns.

The "coin lock" will be a way that the game client itself will snoop on where you log in from on a regular basis. If your login then takes place from another region or IP range, it will lock down any selling of gear, trade of monies, etc. You can buy as much as you want...you just cannot sell anything until you unlock the account through a code sent by email.

Service. That is the key word here. I am unaware of any developer offering a tool such as this in any other MMO. The only other MMO developer that even comes close to offering any sort of special security measure is Blizzard. And that you have to PAY FOR.

So, how does the community feel?

"Coin Lock only makes it so that once your chars are logged into the game, they cannot lose money, gear or contents of your bag. It does not change that fact that these people can log into your accounts on both the web and the game, up to the character screen and potentially cause damage." (Coin Lock doesn't change the fact that you can still be hacked)

"everyone i know has been hacked and tis gettign to the point there more people trying tog et there stuff back then are playing this game due to hackors and gold farmers . this game needs a good security system it lacks one now hardcore about everyone i know including me has been hacked and this aint even been live a month it will fix alot of hacking and your company can sell them and i will gladly buy one and can also sell a app for this for the phones and etc cause this is something that needs fixed before anything else whats point of playing a game if everyday you or one ur friends has everything taken alot people i know quit over this alone and it shoulda never hapened in first place" (Please make a authenticator for this game)

Though valid points, the issue is this feeling of entitlement. But, the hacking is not the only issue in regards to this feeling that Trion "owes" them.

With forum titles like...

"Trion we demand feedback from You regarding major issues."
"Any information out there on up coming fixes?"
"same ******** with every faction game"

And many more.

This must be Trions Nightmare.

But, this leads to the final part of this conversation.

Service.

What is expected of an MMO developer. We pay each month for various "services". What SHOULD we expect from our MMO of choice developers?

What is too soon? What should be happening now? Do we as players demand too much?

Initially Rift started with regular rolling restarts and patching. The complaints came in heavy. "Why are they doing this every day?" Now Trion has pulled back on the regular patching, restarts...and now people demand to know what is being fixed.

When you purchase a single player game, how much do you demand from the developer? Do you expect your game to be down for patches all the time? Is it because we pay monthly for these games that we expect more?

If you could wish for a specific time frame for concerns, what would you ask? 1 week? 10 days? 30 days?

Right now, we as an MMO community need to decide what is really expected. When the next set of launches come, what will we be bitching about when The Secret World hits. What will be our concerns over Star Wars: The Old Republic? Will Arenanet keep our stuff secure in Guild Wars 2 or will we be in the same boat as the GW original players...that when we lose our stuff, it is gone. PERMANENTLY.

We are entitled to have certain things when we pay these developers for our monthly fee. We just need to decide how much is too much and how much is just enough.