REALLY wish there were Paragon Points cards

So I got a couple of pre-paid game cards for friends and whatnot over the holidays. I would have LOVED to put some Paragon Points cards in my wife and son's stockings.

As others have suggested, I bought a pre-paid credit card (which cost $5 and some change extra to have made- where most game cards are for the value you pay, plus tax) to give to the boy so he could buy some in-game stuff (he's premium 'til he gets a job and has enough money)

After debating it with myself, I figured he probably wouldn't spend it on the game if he just had a card to use on anything, so went into his acct and added the points myself last night.

He hasn't logged in to find them yet, and I look forward to his reaction

All the same, Paragon REALLY needs to come out with game cards. I don't want to spend five dollars and change extra for a thirty dollar card when I could just buy two game cards for fifteen plus tax to get the same result.

I don't know what the cost/profit ratio is on the various game cards but I think, especially with this new Freedom system, Paragon would stand to gain a lot from it that they otherwise wouldn't. I know I'd pick up a $15 dollar card for my premium 2nd account from time to time when I have spare cash (I know this because I do it now, just not for City of... because they don't have any.)


Just sayin'.

I would have gifted Paragon Points to at least three in-game friends, instead I bought them stuff on their Steam wish lists. Please understand I'm not saying this to rub the devs faces in it, but I feel like the game probably missed out on some decent revenue this holiday season.

Seemed like a no brainer to me. Then again I have no idea what the behind the scenes overhead would be. I just know I would've certainly picked some up and most likely gotten one myself from family. (I did get The Freedom Phalanx novel though. )

Fully endorse this idea,and I think it could be a real money spinner for Nc Soft.So come you folks that make the decisions you know ir makes sense

I suspect that new point and monthly cards are coming soon. I think at this point all of NCsoft's games are free to play... so new hybrid cards should be coming soon.

I went to purchase a new time card a week before christmas and was shocked that they no longer sold time cards at gamestop. So I'll need to pick up one of those debit/credit card things as otherwise I've no way to keeping my vip status and will lose access to that bonus going on right now. Normally I bought a 60 day time card from gamestop... even tried the drug stores that normally had the older timecards (20 bucks for 1 month that includes that rocket pack) and no go there either, so I concluded that at the start of the new year would be new point/timecards coming down the pipe.

All I know is, on regular time cards, is the Fry's near me is going to the generic NCSoft purchase @ Register type. It's really a PITA cause they have them mashed in with all of their other types of those cards. On a product hook. Behind the main counter in their Software Department!

Believe me, I wished we could gift points. Or even convert time cards into points (like what was done for Exteel).

Thank you for the time...

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

Point cards would be great gifts, I fully agree. My roommate is also a subscriber, so he'd have gotten one.

But I'm sorry to say, if it had come down to a choice between Paragon Point cards and Steam wishlist gifts (at the last minute, as things go), Steam still would have gotten most of my money. My City of X friends live in other states and countries. I want to be able to log on and gift something from someone's Paragon Market wishlist, direct to their account.

One of my in-game friends makes the best AE arcs--seriously, the guy should be writing comics. I have offered to pay for half of a five-slot package, and he is having to go through the whole rigamarole of setting up a PayPal account just so I can send him ten bucks.

I'm not sure about point cards, but Zwillinger has addressed the possibility of players being able to gift points and/or market items to other players. It basically boils down to the fact that NCSoft's legal department would need to become involved, and a whole slew of new potential customer service issues would need to be anticipated and addressed. If it were just a matter of writing some code and patching, they likely would have done it already. Of course, it's also possible that it is currently being worked on, just in the background.

If NCSoft didn't want to go to the trouble of making their own cards, they could add Ultimate Game Card support instead. Better yet, both!

WARNING: I bold names.

I have been hammering on them to do this ever since I found out the right people to hammer on to get this done. I've even mentioned it a couple of times in person after flying thousands of miles to Mountain View, California specifically for game-related purposes.

The vibe I'm getting is that it is something they want to do, but they've been (and still are) so busy working on the CoH: Freedom launch that it just hasn't bubbled up as a priority yet.

They have acknowledged that they know that people want to be able to gift things. To be fair, it's not as simple as people probably think it is; it would take some dedicated hours from a lot of teams and would probably be a full-scale IT project to implement it in a secure manner. All of that costs money, and someone has to sell to someone else the notion that it will bring in more money than it will cost to do. I strongly suspect that the "someone" is Ross at Paragon Studios and the "someone else" are the powers-that-be at NCsoft in Austin. If Zwillinger sees this thread, maybe he'll point it out to give the "someone" more ammo. Or better yet, if I'm right that this is something that would have to come out of Austin and not Mountain View, perhaps someone could float the contact info of the NCsoft equivalent of Zwillinger (i.e. the NCsoft Community/Public Relations people) to us so that we could echo it one link closer?

Like everyone else, I'm really hoping that it comes to pass sometime in 2012, and sooner rather than later.

There are people in this game that I would LOVE to buy stuff for, but I'm not able to do that.

I'd be more than willing to buy a $5-$15 dollar Paragon Points card, and just /tell them the code on it in-game so they can enter it in and get the points.

I'm not saying I'd do it every week, or even every month, but I'd do it. And of course I'd be picking up the occasional one for myself, as well, as an impulse buy.

We know it's a highly requested feature, and, as such, we're interested in supporting it. I'm not sure where it is in the pipeline, but I know it's on a list somewhere.

When my family asked me for a Christmas List I had nothing to give. Point cards would have been perfect!

Cause this spaceship was built from several different off brand Lego sets and none of them quiet match up like they should. Every part of this game infrastructure seems to be a balancing act with interconnections that don't seem logical.

If they do surprise us with the ability to buy Paragon Point cards in game stores or grocery Stores, I hope with all my heart they think about tax.

It is fine and dandy to buy a 100 dollar gift card, but when you get it home and try to apply it online you will not be able to use the whole hundred because of tax...and then there is a wide gap in the price of buying points. It goes from $100.00 to $50.00 with nothing inbetween.

You will have to first buy $50.00 dollars worth of points, because tax makes your total $108. something and you only have $100.00 on the card, and then you have to make a few smaller transactions to use up the card because, if my memory is correct, points are bought in $100.00, $50.00, $15.00 and $5.00 bundles. And, with each transaction you do to use up this card, you incur more tax.

This is the only game I play, so I don't know how the other games handle this with their points cards but buying a points card and having some money trapped on this card due to tax sounds ugly...at least with my Visa Gift card I can use the remainder elsewhere.

Lisa.