TerraDraconis

The goal is to keep VIP better than Premium so that people will feel compelled to subscribe. One of the mistakes done in some Hybrid models is to allow the nonsubscriber accounts to essentially buy access to everything you would get by subscribing. Where is the incentive to subscribe then? I know because the reason I've never resubscribed to one of them was there is no special benefit that I can see for subscribing to it. The other I have a lifetime membership to so don't have to subscribe but it is the same. Biggest difference is the ring one I get free points every month. ::shrug:: Well and I don't have to spend points to unlock things.

The other big Hybrid model made by a certain Cryptic company was clever and reserved full character creation for subscribers. Just playing free and spending points only unlocks so much.

The fight here is that some people don't want to subscribe but do want full access to things. Yes some want to pay a one time fee for access to this or that but they want full access without subscribing. And I don't think that ever should happen.

Yes that is why people who are absolute morons about things like this should be mocked, derided, shamed, and otherwise shown to be the complete idiots that they are.

There is also the fact that Westley regularly posts an I"m leaving and never coming back rant every few months. No one should be taking seriously in the slightest.

I had wondered when the people who defend stupid would come racing into the thread to claim everyone dumping on him and the others over reacting are the bad people and we should be understanding of the poor misguided but sincere fools who post things like this.

You have no clue do you. The EULA is overly broad... yes so? it isn't enforceable and that means that it can claim your first born but essentially is meaningless.

The key is why is it overly broad and you are being foolish and narrow minded in not realizing the very solid reasons for that. The EULA exists not to provide authority to do something but instead to provide protection should the game company act. Basically anyone suing because they had their account terminated would be pointed to the notice in the EULA that they were not protected by posting over on X board about it.

If NCSoft does what Blizzard has done or Sony or other companies have done in the past with putting intrusive monitoring software on your computer you can bet it will be noticed and everyone will no about it 30 minutes after the software went live. And you can react then how ever you want. But to jump up and down and panic now? That is just being stupid and sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming that the sky is falling because someone said it might.

Doors on the left.


See you when you come back.

Free players have access to the help channel which is global. It seemed to turn into a pretty free for all chat channel on the beta server.

If you put a good cup on first the free punch in the balls can be fine.

Oh and he must change his master account password and security phrases to random characters and numbers and not write them down. And change his email address to an invalid one so he can't get any support emails. That should properly unsubscribe him.

Thats because a lawyer wrote it and a lawyer can't be clear on something like that to save their life. If they can use big words that cover 20,000 things to describe the one expected situation you can bet that the lawyer will go for the biggest amount of coverage that they can.

The important thing to remember about EULA's are.

A) They exist to CYA the company for standard things the company does.
B) They have never actually been found to be enforcable.
D) Having one protects you [thus the CYA aspect] from lawsuits for your standard practices because you posted the standard practice in the EULA.
E) This is why the lawyer writing the bloody thing will try to make is as broad and general as they can.

Exactly I don't think they are going to be actively out hunting stuff. That said .... PLayers will mail customer service folk and devs when they see people post about cheating and if an employee of NCSoft or Paragon Studios follows the link they are sent they have "monitored" the other board.

Also just a wild guess here but do you imagine that the employee's of NCSoft and Paragon Studio's don't read various gaming boards out there on their own anyway? Again to be technical about it if an emplyee's eyes saw a post on a 3rd party board it was "monitored". So to cover their hindquarters they stick scary boiler plate like that into the EULA.

For example where I work has a similar bit of boilerplate about the company being able to monitor the employees computers/email/etc. And this is simply to CYA because if the company computer technician sits down at your computer to work on it and your web browser and email are open he/she has just monitored your web browsing habits and email.

First I expect the guides to start appearing on the main forum boards during the next week. Probably Tuesday and Wednesday. That is when most of the guide writers will be reposting them in the guides forum.

Second it looks like they took the character copy to beta tool down a week or so ago and since the game is going live in 2 days I don't think it will be back up before then.

Oh the if an employee of NCSoft/Paragon happens to be reading another board on their own time and sees you posting that your cheating in COH and you foolishly post information that makes it clear who you are then they ban you clause?

That clause?

Wait you mean paying real money for Virtual items like ... The Character you play? That kind of virtual item?

I've done that. I got done stood in the tutorial and said. "why the hell did I pick that color/part/weapon?" And then as soon as I exited the tutorial made the run for Serge. Later pocket D but I did at least twice make the run to Serge before the Pocket D tailor.

If they are stupid enough to use the same forum name over there and then bad mouth a game any game the deserve any such ban.

I'll bet your friends who are actually interested in looking at the games will quietly try it anyway since it is free. The rest of them are just using the who Premium thing as a polite brush off.

The failure is more your's than the games. The moment your friend spends $5 to buy any points in the store he gains 1 token to unlock chat etc. If your being a good friend you tell him that he can play the game for free but the experience is somewhat limited. The less limited the more you spend up to unrestricted for subscribing.

This is not a failure of the game but instead a failure of you to properly align your friends expectations to what they will find.

Any returning player who expects "Free Premium" access to give them everything they would have had as a paying customer is just being stupid and should be hit on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

If you return to a game that has an active subscription model still and can play without paying money then you are clearly going to be getting an experience that is less than that of a paying customer. I don't think there is anything unreasonable or shocking about that.

Again anyone who returns plays for free and then rage quits because they can't have it all for free is not a player that is someone who should be in the game. They are better off rage quitting over it and going away.

And really there is only a small group of players who will be inconvenienced by this. It isn't even the vast majority of returning players probably under 5% of those who might return and even those are likely to be the type to investigate what does Premium mean. If they have invested that heavily in an IO build they are the type who does research first.

I observe that Kingdom of Drakker (1997-98?) and the island one that started with an L are still active. So yes any claim that presumes it knows what games will still be going in 7 years are just being silly.

I looked at your this and can't see a single thing for returning players to be upset about. They come back login and depending on how long they have played in the past they get some level of access. If they want better access they can resubscribe or pay money upfront.

Where is the problem in this for returning players? demanding it all be given to them for free isn't someone we need returning.

Yes but the trick of that is that there are things you really must buy from the store if you want to be effective. I don't want to talk about the number of bells, twigs, and cakes I've bought over there. And the sidekicks. I go through those like crazy too.

Not really. Looks to come out about the same. The costume sets in the boosters appear to be sold as a set for about $5 and the powers are supposed to be grouped similiarly. Though that bit isn't in the store yet.

What people miss is that they are not making a desperate attempt to have higher player numbers. If that was the case giving more and better things to the free players would be the goal.

One important thing to remember is that this entire project is over 2 years old. They have been working at it for a long time and that means that it's goal is something besides simply having higher player numbers.

The problem is that COX is in the position of being a cash cow. This means that it's growth has generally stopped but it still remains providing a solid reliable stream of money. The problem is cash cows eventually dry up and NCSoft has a distinct record of not keeping them past some point of return.

Because of this it was and is imcombant on the devs to figure out a way to increase the games money stream. They observed that moving to a hybrid model worked for several games that tried it in the period around the time they were starting this project. Those companies saw an increase in revenue by moving to a hybrid model. So Paragon began exploring it.

One of the clear mistakes made by other hybrid games was giving to much of the game content to nonsubscribers. This means that there was no real incentive to resubscribe to the game just spend money from time to time in the store for this or that. So when the Premium level was designed things where clearly held back to entice players to pay for them. The idea being you don't have to be subscribed to drop back by but dropping back by should entice you to resubsribe for a month here or there as your attention turns back to COH. Premium permits a player to drop by and see if they are interested in playing again for a month or two. And that really is its intended goal. Not to have the majority of the players as premium but instead to have it as a viable solid transitional phase to lure you back into subscribing.