I don't feel VIP at all

Their target was to overtakle WoW - which makes their failure all the more humilating - and funny

There was a tremendous amount of hubris in the room when they made that the target.

Failure was inevitable.

No. What makes their failure all the more humiliating is that they promised their customers the world but released a product that looks like it was developed and launched back in 2004.

If they had actually delivered what they promised they could have been the next giant gorilla.

The pitched must have sounded ok - WoW, but with Star Wars, fully voiced, made by Bioware, with a budget bigger than an actual Star Wars movie, and half a decade of development time.
Sure, it wouldn't hit 10-11 million right away, but it'd be comfortably over 2 million by the end of its first year.

I agree they couldn't have beaten WoW the first year or even the second or third, but if the game had been what was hyped and promised there could have been two giant gorillas.

Actually. I bet a lot go in making a game they think is good, but don't think it will be the WoW Killer.

The investors on the other hand, likely want the WoW Killer.

The WoW Killer can be made. It just hasn't been. May never be. But it can be!

That's pretty much the crux of it. In a market with so many hybrid and F2P options people aren't moving from one game to another they tend to keep a subscription and just play others as free/premium/etc. There's pretty much never going to be a 'mass migration' like the days of old when everything was subscription based.

It does diminish in value as you go up the reward tiers (and thus unlock free access to certain things with or without subscription), I'd say. I've pondered letting my subscription lapse given the number of slots I've purchased and that I'm Tier 9. If not for the dangling carrot of the VIP costumes, I probably would've let it lapse since I don't care much for the Incarnate system.

I agree that's very unlikely to happen. However a properly made MMO based on an IP with a fanbase in the tens of millions could be made that could rival the 800 lb gorilla.

Unfortunately for SW and ST fans no one has made a proper MMO for those IP's yet, and with the poor showing that's been made by the half pancaked MMO's that were made its unlikely a proper MMO will ever get made.

I checked my cc statements (thanks for e-statement otherwise I couldn't find them at all) I think before freedom tokens were granted for each badge of vet right so for each 3 month and one token for each year(I assume this because otherwise I should have around 144 token intead of 129) I can't remember how many token I had when freedom launch before buying points but it should be at least 20 (except tier 1 one and this makes sense because of some sort of setup for european and vet rewards I was seeing two months addition to my vet rewards than my paid time and I think it was close to 4 year or just got badge a week or so before it)

My calculation shows that I should have 125 token if it is how this worked. (I have bought 111120 pp which roughly equals 92.6 token, 16 token for being 4 year vet when freedom launched, 4 token for being annual, 1 token for first tier, 12 token for past year for freedom it all comes to 125.6 token) However I am pretty sure I had some extra tokens after I bought two 9600 at freedom launch and after getting tier 9 and celestial armor I had 3 or 4 token left.

If there is somewhere I can check what level of vets got how many tokens at freedoms launch than I can give a proper number still it seems I was wrong about my calculations and I apologise for misinformation I was giving out and derailing this thread.

On the subject: I was enjoying itrials daily with my friends daily running each trial once but it become boring after doing it too much. Only MO runs were somewhat entertaining but only badges left for me were magi trial (and people knows what I feel about it or hybrid slot so not too much thrilled to run it) and MoM's Malaise illusion one (one last not spawned all the runs I made)

SSA's are fun but I won't run them more than once unless I want to see story again.

Extra character slots (I only play in one server and on really rare occasions I move to other servers, even on my main server I still have 5 or more slot left and I didn't bought any extra slot), costume pieces, AT's and powersets are all good deals but I need to make some calculations if they can be bought with money spend on pp's rather subscription since I am tier 9 vip they maybe only things that can eat my PP extra on what I am already buying while vip.

Only thing that may worth to keep my vip at this point is Superior ATO's. Since catalyst is an incarnate drop I wonder if my already slotted purple ATO's will stop function but than again I will probably focus on my low level toons which were sitting in slots since I joined game so it may not be a big deal. Oh and second thing is beta testing I will definitly get back to test genesis or other incarnate slots but there is a long time for that to happen.

Now if VIP had some ingame benefits on vendors and at WW like %5 discount at things bought or no fee at WW while seeling (or half fee) I think being vip would be more appealing to me.

Just still shaking my head every time I see people apparently basing their perceptions of "success" and "failure" numbers off of that other behemoth MMO. Frankly, if they budgeted their development so that they'd need more than 500k subscribers to turn a profit, they're setting themselves up for a huge chance of failure.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Any game that can't retain all its players indefinitely is doing things wrong....

That goal in itself is a recipe for failure.

Yeah. A source that can't be bothered to get their facts correct.

Really?

CoH: Freedom launched September 7, 2011 and that's somehow several years?

Not to mention the whole "limited gameplay" if you aren't paying a subscription.

When they can't get easily checked facts straight (facts that they are using to try to use as the basis of their premise), the entire article is questionable.

This is one of the many reasons I quit paying attention to sites such as kotaku long ago.

So tell me again why what you said is supposed to be indicative of anything broader than how you feel currently?

You're talking about how your feelings are shared by a lot of mythical people who seem to have left. I'm talking about real people in this thread and in this game who are still here, playing, paying and enjoying the game.

Saying I'm not statistically valid is fine, but I wasn't trying to maintain any sort of statistical absolute. Just pointing out that people who aren't happy stop trying to swim upstream and leave, and the people who stay are happy to do so, and a large number of them have been staying and enjoying just as long as you have.

There's no added weight to your argument based on how long you've been here that isn't counterbalanced by people here just as long who feel the opposite.

*shrug* requiring a monthly charge is not the same as having a monthly option available. I think your beef is largely semantics.

IDK, I think there is something to what you say in the sense that you do want to be able to turn a profit with as few subs as possible. While 500k is more a lot of games can handle I can understand them thinking they could get 2-3 million steady subs going in.

I just don't get them thinking they were going to beat WoW. That is where I felt the level of hubris in the room need to be counterbalance. I am sure as usual in the corporate environment, someone expressed some doubt about that, but probably was let go short there after, for not being a "team" player. Telling the truth in the corporate environment can get you fired.