Premium Players get less than expected!

This argument is just silly. When I am told I need to pay to access a certain feature on one hand, so I do.. And then on another hand I'm told that everything that I paid for would remain in tact, except for this one thing which was apparently not a part of the transaction I made almost exclusively to purchase it, I start to get confused and shake my fist at my monitor a little.

No, they don't. If even one of them finds a receipt or page printout from the purchase screen that says a word about Incarnates then it is proven. Regardless of what any other source says.

The Alpha Slot wasn't in Issue 18 Beta until late May-Early June, and was stripped out mid-July.

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

You did not pay for the Incarnate system when you bought Going Rogue. You paid for a prerequisite to that system. You paid to use the Incarnate system itself with your monthly subscription.

Why don't they have to prove that, against all documentation, they are owed something?

Why don't they have to prove that they got a notice that they were buying a preview of the Incarnate System before it was announced? The announcement of Going Rogue Pre-Orders dated back to Feb 18th, 2010. Pre-Orders went on sale the first week in March 2010. It wasn't until March 26 to March 28, 2010 with PAX East that the Incarnate System was announced. Logic dictates that any pre-sales before PAX East did not include any mention of the Incarnate System.

Even if it DID include mention of the Incarnate System, it would have said it was a preview. So a demo. The limited demo was removed from Issue 18 during beta. It was added to beta in around the beginning of June 2010 and removed in July 2010.

The EULA clearly states the game is subject to change.

So anyone saying that the Incarnate System was included in Going Rogue needs to show proof that:

• The Incarnate System was a part of the pre-sales before it was officially announced.
• The Incarnate System was not a feature that was tested and subsequently removed during Issue 18/GR beta.

Until such time as they can offer any proof of the above, they don't have anything to back up their claims. On the flip side, the document trail clearly shows that the Incarnate System was announced a month after pre-sales started which means that the people saying it wasn't included have shown their proof and are waiting for someone to prove them wrong.

You can't waltz in here and say that someone making an outrageous claim shouldn't have to back up their claims. Of course they do. I could claim that I am the current President of the United States, despite the fact that I'm a white guy from Canada. A lot of people wouldn't take me seriously if I did though. Even the people that did take me seriously would demand proof (and rightfully so).

So where is your proof that the Incarnate System was put into the pre-sales package a month before it was announced at PAX East?

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

Wait, you don't really think that I'm able to edit thread titles, do you?

Why not? I can.

So is 'first level'.

You know, the Alpha slot. There are three bullet marks for Going Rogue, when Posi talks about the Incarnate system.

Where do you draw the line? Besides which it was probably easier just to program all the Incarnate Powers to turn off if premium.

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

I wonder how many people shoot venom out of their eyes every time they see your irrelevant nonsense flooding conversations they're interested in.

It may be easier, but in the end they would probably make a lot more money by charging a bit of money per a slot and per a tier of power within those slots and it would almost certainly make a lot more people happy as they would be able to have fun in the end game with their friends even if they are premium.

You can edit the title within the thread - only mods can edit the actual title as it appears on the forum section it's in

Now you've spoiled the fun.

Because what you bought, whether you cared or not, contained a bunch of other stuff. It's that stuff that you get to retain access to. The other thing, Incarnate access, which the devs more or less arbitrarily linked to Going Rogue*, and which wasn't specifically released with the boxed set, was not retained.

We get you don't like it, but the fact is that, in a very narrow, literal way, you really truly didn't get Incarnate stuff when you bought the boxed set. You can't argue that this is wrong. It's a cold, hard fact - when you bought GR there was no Alpha slot to be had. Is it the whole story? No. But that doesn't matter. You can argue against it all you want, but you aren't losing something you got with the boxed set, because in the most literal sense of the words, GR at its release did not include any Incarnate features. Full stop. All the "yes, but" in the world doesn't make that untrue.

Even if Alpha had been there, that was the extent of the Incarnate access that specific expansion would have given you, right then when you installed it. Even had they met their original plans, the absolute most anyone would be getting as a Premium would be The Alpha slot, with no iTrials or later slots.

Human communication is wonderfully vague, relying heavily on context, which, sadly, can be unclear. The people who said you get "nearly everything ... including... expansions" weren't writing a legally binding contract, no matter how many claims to the contrary some folks have tried to suggest. It was almost certainly someone trying to convey, in a few words, that most things previously bought would still be there. That's a true statement when looked at across the features we've been able to buy - CoV's bases and PvP, costumes, emotes, temp powers, etc. GR's zones, side switching for existing characters....Most of that will still be accessible to a Premium account if they bought it.

Because the devs qualified the statement ("nearly"), and because even the Alpha slot was not on the actual feature lists on the box or the online stores (that anyone can find), it's not provable that the devs are being dishonest. Clearly, some folks posting here think that conclusion requires a play on words, twisting the meaning of "included", but either interpretation requires a reading meaning into the words which is not unambiguously intended. Neither interpretation is absolutely, obviously correct.

I'm not a dev apologist here. I don't like everything they're doing with Freedom. But this is a ridiculous deep dive into semantic meaning that isn't productive. If you don't like Incarnate stuff being locked behind subscriptions, then by all means, tell the devs, as many of you have. But stop trying to prove that they denied something they promised. You can't. The evidence is circumstantial at best.

* The actual story of the iTrials is clearly linked to the Praetorean universe, along with Cole's ties to the Well of Furies, all of which is laid out in Going Rogue. I'm unaware on any mechanical reason Incarnates needed to be linked to Going Rogue, and that's why I call the linkage "arbitrary".

A lot of your point seems to be contingent upon this statement so I've singled it out: When I bought Going Rogue around 5 months ago, there was an Alpha Slot to be had upon my purchase, and that is why I made said purchase.

Quoted because this is really important for people to read. Even if you could somehow prove that you were promised incarnates with GR it doesn't matter since Freedom only says that you will retain access to most of the things you had.

The important thing is to discuss what is actually happening and to discuss why they should/should not provide a system for premium players to access incarnates based on the player experience and development needs, not pretend (or even if not pretending talk about in general) that you were promised anything more than you have received so far.

When I bought City of Heroes there were Kheldions. Should I get those for free? When player X bought City of Heroes there was a mission architect, should they get that for free?

Honestly, what's wrong with giving Premium players who previously purchased Going Rogue access to just the Alpha Slot? That seems perfectly fair to me.

I'd say they should get Mission Architect if they bought the Mission Architect version.

Let me then call up another part of my own post, just to reinforce the point about the ridiculous semantic deep dive we're continuing.

My context was meant to convey at release. In fact, I used that phrase elsewhere in my post.

If you go out and buy CoV today, it refers to features that no longer exist, like base raiding. That's why the boxes also have a disclaimer on them about online features being subject to change.

They obviously didn't pay for the game solely because it granted them access to those features. There are people, myself included, who paid for GR specifically for access to the Alpha Slot.

Once again, you bought a prerequisite to the Alpha slot. There are other prerequisites, but you're not trying to make a case about them, so it seems that you're not understanding this point.