Discussion: Announcing a New Paragon Market Pilot Program - Freebie Friday!

Based on the feedback in this thread, Paragon Studios has revised its announcement.

FOR GENERAL RELEASE

Paragon Studios is pleased, in a manner consistent with appreciating the likely benefits accrued to the playerbase, and in no way due to the potential profit opportunity exposed through psychological manipulation of the players, to announce a new program for the Paragon Market whose structure and details are intended to be a test case for future development and indicative of the limited resources logically allocated to a non-finalized design, where all players of City of Heroes, whether they are free players, premium players, or VIP subscribers, so long as they are physically and mentally capable of satisfying the mechanical criteria for participation within the limited time window designated below, will have the opportunity to purchase an item that already exists in the store but whose price will be temporarily reduced to zero paragon points; said item to be an item selected by the devs in a manner which does not reveal this purely deterministic decision to the players until the market update occurs. This item could be reasonably inferred to be almost anything currently available in the Paragon Market if you are not one of the people who already know which item has been selected, except for things that are exclusive to VIPs, unusable by premium players, or unable to be awarded on an account-basis which would be logically inconsistent with the descriptions or circumstances of the items released to date. This should not be construed as a guarantee the item will avoid logical inconsistency as no such warranty is being offered. The specific selection of item will be different in adjacent weeks in at least some possibly minimal describable way. At the time of this announcement, Paragon Studios plans for each promotional item to be available for purchase at the previously mentioned zero paragon points for a consecutive 24 hour window of time although this may change at any time, including possibly the moment you are reading this. For the first item in this program Paragon Studios will be altering the price of said item at 4:00PM PDT on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 as determined by the US calendar in any region within the Pacific timezone. The item will be available at the modified zero price until 4:00PM on Friday, May 11th, 2012 as determined by the previously specified criteria. You should be able to locate the "Freebie Friday" item starting on Thursday under the "Featured Items" section of the Paragon Market, although Paragon Studios' development staff does not directly support the functionality of the Paragon Market and we cannot be held responsible for the functionality or any malfunctions thereof of any component of the Paragon Market interface.

The process by which a player may claim their item, which will be awarded to the account of the login of the player making the claim, and which can only be awarded once per login, has been judged to be relatively straight forward relative to people of average intelligence, as that criteria is judged in the Northern half of California. That process is represented in, but in no way guaranteed to precisely replicate, the list below.

Step 1a: Wait for the moment in time which corresponds to 4:00PM PDT on May 10, 2012.

Step 1b: This time can theoretically be spent playing City of Heroes although this is not a mandatory requirement.

Step 2a: Log into your game account.

Step 2b: Click on the Paragon Store Icon.

Step 2c: Retrieve the beverage of your choice while the store performs whatever dynamic loading the programmer incorrectly felt was appropriate to this situation.

Step 2d: Locate the Freebie Friday item, which may be located under the "Featured Items" section of the store although this currently cannot be guaranteed by the Paragon Studios development team.

Step 2e: Add this item to your cart and execute the purchase.

Step 3: It is currently unknown what step would be most appropriate here to maximize the probability of the activity listed in Step 8 to complete successfully.

Step 4: Obtain a net increase in overall game content as measured by the virtual currency costs associated with those items.

Disclaimer: Virtual currency costs may not be proportional to material value increase judged objectively by a monetary standard.

Join the individual employees of Paragon Studios that are either professionally involved in this project or have volunteered to participate with or without the application of duress-inducing circumstantial engineering in performing the described transaction which may or may not be the first in a sequence of such transactions made available at seven day intervals, possibly with minor to significant structural changes in the process, items, or circumstances thereof. Also, you are encouraged to leave any feedback to this preliminary test program which conforms to the usage policies of the discussion forums and is either reasonably relevant to the program or sufficiently entertaining to be considered likely to improve the community experience of the forum readership, and which does not require moderation for content.


Note: production has confirmed that the initial item being offered in the first iteration of the preliminary program is not a kick which strikes the players' testicles, or an in-game item which subsequently awards this activity, as no such item is currently available in the Paragon Market at any price and therefore fails to satisfy the eligibility criteria. However, this may change for future iterations.

Just my 2 inf., and actually being serious here, for the test program for the 4 weeks, why not have the time window to claim the freebie be expanded?

Or maybe save that for when/if this Freebie giveaway goes live? I guess it's because of "Freebie Friday!" but...not everyone logs in on Friday. *shrugs*

Not a huge issue but...


If there was a way to have a 'token' of sorts be given to the account once the 'freebie friday' starts so that I could login, I'd get a 'token' and then I could claim that freebie whenever I wanted to.

Thinking about it, maybe have a "coupon" that's (in-game) emailed to the accounts during the time window. Then when the person goes to the PM and selects "Freebie" from the store, they can just punch in that weeks' "coupon" code and it's still free.

*shrugs*

If you are reading this I am already site banned and will have had my account erased..if you read this..be very careful what you say They are listening!

..Do not click on Free item, warning warning, it isn't free.

I clicked on it already (a bug I guess or someone on the inside trying to help) It locks you onto something called the Chance for a Free Vacation..and you spend the next two hours listening to a great deal on a Time share in Founders Fa....

They are at my door FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I THOUGHT THIS WAS A VIDEO GAME!!!!

QUICK THE BALCONY!!!!! THE BOLT IS GIVING

Free stuff?

Just curious what's the upper limit on the number of free accounts I can create?