FREEDOM Price List

Are you a Virginian?

Buying for others won't be available at launch, but they hope to add it later.

Got information on that? I've seen another post from a red_name that said that buying for others would potentially be a public relations/custoemr relations nightmare.

Heh, I still need to buy the steampunk pack, then I have every ingame item that's ever been for sale except the arachnos cape and emblem from the CoV collectors edition. I haven't gotten the steam punk pack yet because i can't get into my masteraccount, again. I already changed my security questions once when they became mandatory, but apparently I made a typo somewhere or something. It wont accept my answers even though I'm 99% sure i'm providing the correct ones. I should sort it out with support again one of these days ...

Also the Time Manipulation set will be free for subscribers, so you wont have to click on it and buy it.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later as I wish for my VIP account to be able to spend points on my Premium account.

Yes, that quote said it won't happen *at launch*.

If was never going to happen, he wouldn't have said, *at launch*. Nor mention how Positron loves the idea.

Does that red_name even have a job at Paragon Studios anymore?

Considering that Zwackenheimdall was still posting on that red name account as of 6:58 PM Central Time today, I'd say it's very likely he still has a job there.

What does that quote have to do Wishlists and Public Relations nightmares?

Issue 14 brought me to CoH. This is probably the most exciting thing I've ever read here, ever.

I actually got my hands on that last year by way of Amazon. It comes with some cool stuff, including an art book and some plastic miniatures.

I thought that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance? So as long as the devs don't shut down Vigilance, we're all set!

Actually, his Positron mention was related to question 2, about another page of character slots.

Customer Service probably means the people who have to take care of booster codes not being applied to accounts and emails with attachments being lost. They probably don't want to have too much going on at once. First let them make sure the store is working properly for primary customers. Then worry about adding functionality that involves multiple accounts.

It's a shame though - I'd love to run at least one costume contest where the prize is a store gift. I'm too impatient to marketeer or grind alignment merits to award PvP IOs, but spending $10 to reward a fellow player's creativity is more appealing to me (and heck: cheaper) than buying someone a drink.

Doctor_Gemini already addressed that Zwill was responding to two topics, and topic #2 was more character slots which Positron apparently liked.

Oh my GOD yes. I won't have to play computer tag to do my character arcs! (I have two and I will never remember to send one file to the other one)

Thats a good question. It would be good if the NCSoft time cards could be converted into Paragon Points instead of Sub time.

The "Positron loves the idea" quote was in reference to being able to buy a fourth page of characters, not being able to gift items to other players.

I wish they would enable this functionality. I just don't see what the big deal is. Fine, limit the ability to gift purchases to existing VIP players or something, but make it happen.

Here's TonyV's Eminently Logical Thought Process™. Let's say that I'm a scummy thief and I steal someone's credit card number and buy a bunch of stuff, say, a couple of hundred bucks' worth, and gift it to people. Then Steve, the guy whose card number I stole, calls up NCsoft and tells them, "This card is stolen, I didn't authorize these purchases, you have to not bill me!"

Okay, now NCsoft today is looking at that like, "We've lost a couple of hundred bucks!" However, this is not true. For one thing, there's nothing stopping them from simply taking a lot of the stuff back. I bought Fred access to the AE system? Fred gets an e-mail saying, "We're sorry, but this purchase was made fraudulently," and *poof!* no more access to AE. Granted, Fred may get cheesed off, but it's not like he bought the access, and really, the person to be mad at is the person who stole a credit card number, not NCsoft.

For another thing, keep in mind that these purchasables are for virtual goods. NCsoft isn't really losing any money. It's not like NCsoft has material costs that they're out, because there's no physical product. They're not even out the cost of shipping. We're talking only about bits and bytes. Worst-case scenario, they're out the opportunity cost had someone bought the item legitimately, and because of the above paragraph, that only applies to consumables like inspirations.

This is sort of what I informally refer to as the "Hollywood Piracy Fallacy." The MPAA likes to bandy around numbers like, "because of pirates, we lose 68 kazillion dollars every year!" That assumes that in a perfect world, every single person who snags a torrent off of the Pirate Bay would have spent $10 to see the movie in the theater, $5 to rent it, and $40 for a Blu-ray. So yeah, if every single person in the world--even those 14-year-old kids in Chengdu, Chine who have no income--had spent $55, it might add up to 68 kazillion. In the real world, though, the amount is a lot less.

Anyway... So I absolutely, positively see zero problem with allowing people to gift Paragon Points or buy wishlist items for other people. Yes, there will be some fraud. Yes, you will end up sucking up having to give away some virtual bytes to people. But how much would you make off of people legitimately gifting things? Are you willing to forgo, for example, $100,000 in gift purchases just because you might "lose" (not literally lose, only "lose" via opportunity cost) $5,000 to fraudulent purchases? That just doesn't make good business sense, and it's absorbing a lot of opportunity cost in goodwill and new blood that allowing gifting would create.

I really do hope that the marketing and legal critters at Paragon Studios and NCsoft will seriously reconsider their reticence in allowing gifting.

We've seen no indication that it's marketing/legal that has the issue; Zwill said "Customer Service nightmares", with Customer Service capitalized like the department that handles missing account items. When certificates/vouchers went live, global services had to be taken down for emergency maintenance later that day, so I'd be more inclined to believe they want to get the core of Freedom up first before worrying about additional parts. (I've been accused of being an optimist, though.)

But we've just got that one line on the issue, so we don't know one way or the other. I'm all for trying to get them to discuss it a bit more. Then we can target our expositions on the real issues against it.

They would lose *some* money. Mainly, the time and associated costs of their employees dealing with the theft. Not a lot of money, I know, but those bits and bytes don't push themselves.

And in some instances, it might get complicated. If someone used fraud-achieved points for a consumable item (like a respec, or ability to run a trial) it can't be taken back.

Not tier 3, tier 5: Dev Chat Highlights, July 20: Paragon Rewards

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Oops, Thanks. Corrected.

I also added that Character Costume slots are available as individual purchases and not necessarily a group of 5 as per someone's mention of that in another thread.