Champions Online Sells Out of Lifetime Subscriptions
- Thread starter Keane Ng
- Start date
More than likely they were afraid to have too many beta testers for the first beta phase of Star Trek Online as every lifetime sub to Champions comes with a beta key for it. In either case, they have lifted the limit and will sell both offers until midnight on August 31.
http://www.champions-online.com/node/450341
EDIT to add below
@wicced466: More than likely yes... there are very few store retail MMOs that do not have a monthly subscription. Guild Wars being the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Right now Atari and Microsoft are haggling about the cost. My personal opinion is that it will fall through and won't land on the 360. Currently it is still on the listing as a March release for next year.
http://www.champions-online.com/node/450341
EDIT to add below
@wicced466: More than likely yes... there are very few store retail MMOs that do not have a monthly subscription. Guild Wars being the only one that comes to mind at the moment. Right now Atari and Microsoft are haggling about the cost. My personal opinion is that it will fall through and won't land on the 360. Currently it is still on the listing as a March release for next year.
Guild Wars(and soon 2) is still the MMO customer friendly king. High-quality content, NO SUBS.
Followed by EVE Online. Can pay using ingame money, reduced monthly deals, download the game free, high-quality gaming.
Then LOTRO. Lifetime sub, high quality expansions.
MMO companies...they like to bleed dorks dry, and let them. "A fool and their money are soon parted."
Now 3 years subs upfront, and lifetime access is more logical as most players will play heavy, then of and on for 2 years! They have models on how to make this economical. Selling out of lifetime subs is inexcusable. Re-do the rates and it's all fine.
Initial costs for servers and programmers get paid for when you buy the game. Then they fire ALL THE DEVS AND CUSTOMERS SERVICE. And get to play the customers like chumps for months to years.
They(the nastiest companies) are all working on micro-transaction systems so they can bleed you with RealMoneyTrading like Xbox Live and those stupid browser games. Quit throwing your money into some billionaire brats' pockets.
Looking at you, WoW and AoC.
Followed by EVE Online. Can pay using ingame money, reduced monthly deals, download the game free, high-quality gaming.
Then LOTRO. Lifetime sub, high quality expansions.
MMO companies...they like to bleed dorks dry, and let them. "A fool and their money are soon parted."
Now 3 years subs upfront, and lifetime access is more logical as most players will play heavy, then of and on for 2 years! They have models on how to make this economical. Selling out of lifetime subs is inexcusable. Re-do the rates and it's all fine.
Initial costs for servers and programmers get paid for when you buy the game. Then they fire ALL THE DEVS AND CUSTOMERS SERVICE. And get to play the customers like chumps for months to years.
They(the nastiest companies) are all working on micro-transaction systems so they can bleed you with RealMoneyTrading like Xbox Live and those stupid browser games. Quit throwing your money into some billionaire brats' pockets.
Looking at you, WoW and AoC.
Well now you see, you don't have to pay $200 for all the Guild Wars campaigns. You can get them for 30-40 off Steam for all 3 and pick up the expansion for a bit more. Even if you were to buy every add on from NCSoft you would still come up under the $100 mark. If you said LoTRo or WAR or a game that has a subscription fee then you would have a valid point.Arbitrary Cidin said:
If the character creator is anything as good as City of Heroes then I'd want to look into it. But that being said it's an MMO... not really my thing.
they've reinstated the lifetime offer and 6month one again starting today due to overwhelming demand(well everyone bitching about it on the forums really)so people can again slap $200 down for the subscription, or like me go for the safer 6month one for alot less and not feel cheated should the mmo not last as long as it should.
This deal was totally worth it. I was in the Open Beta and decided to get a Life Time Sub because I knew it would be a game that I would come back to pretty regularly.
However there are still some hiccups and poorly planned out bits here and there (mostly with weaponry and minor clipping issues [especially ties with small chests])
The character creation is (dare I say) 10 times that of the CoX one. There's SO many ways to can customize your character.Eric the Orange said:
However there are still some hiccups and poorly planned out bits here and there (mostly with weaponry and minor clipping issues [especially ties with small chests])
This is more like it. There is no reason why gaming companies can't change the way they structure their profits while adding lifetime sub's to their payment options. Turbine has offered a lifetime sub for a long time time for Lotro and it's been very popular. The thing that drives this adherence to old policies is the stale idea that regular sub's means more money. What I'd like to see is more creativity and fresh thought about this as lifetime sub's are certainly a good option for the hardcore MMO fanbase, of which there is a lot of. More creativity would mean better deals for the customer, without a loss of financial viability for the company.Lusulpher said:
Yes, GW has tons of smaller stuff you can buy in game. You can buy extra storage space ($10 per storage pane, which is a newer thing you can buy), extra character slots ($10, if you have all campaigns you'll have 8 slots anyway), skill unlock packs for whatever campaign you have ($10 per campaign, makes it easier to get skills on new characters), and more recently, sex change, face change, and name change, each either $10 or $15 per character.TsunamiWombat said:
There's also a bonus campaign pack that's either $5 or $10, which lets you do bonus missions, unlocking weapons with unique, otherwise unobtainable skins.
There's probably more.
While they haven't released new mission or story content, in April, GW had a HUGE update that added new options (that cost $$$) to the game...and some in-game stuff that artificially adds to the life of the game.Sevre90210 said:
This whole thing is stupid. People are spendng 200$ on something they don't even know will succeed to any extent. Look how many thought Warhammer would be the greatest thing ever. How many thought Age of Conan would be the greatest thing ever...The list goes on..
Actually, most of the people that bought the $200 did it because:Jiraiya72 said:
a) the previous MMO made by Cryptic is still alive and getting an expansion AND an update soon
b) they love superhero MMOs
c) played CoH/CoV for the last 2+ years and see CO as a better game (I do, it's much better in every way)
d) wanted to play the game for a little, then reap the benefits of Star Trek Closed Beta
e) all of the above.
Mythic wasn't really successful before, neither were the creators of AoC.
I bought LotRO for 250 euros when it came out because it included the Lifetime sub and the box looked cool. But I knew what was coming from the Beta and I really liked it. Now I play for more than two years and will be for some more. So it's not always a dumb move, it can be very smart.
All I see is sound business sense. They established a good financial base to kick off the game and supply the users with what im sure will be a regular stream of patches.
It seems that most people are forgetting that Cryptic like many other game studios that seem to be getting nothing but whining and petitions (valve) is a business. The overall goal is to make money. If you created a MMO (and plz view this from a business standpoint) wouldn?t it be a good idea to hook a good number of players with lifetime subscriptions? Granted yes you?re not going to make allot of money of this base but you will have "lifetime" players that will attract friends and family to the game and that?s where the real money comes from.
It seems that most people are forgetting that Cryptic like many other game studios that seem to be getting nothing but whining and petitions (valve) is a business. The overall goal is to make money. If you created a MMO (and plz view this from a business standpoint) wouldn?t it be a good idea to hook a good number of players with lifetime subscriptions? Granted yes you?re not going to make allot of money of this base but you will have "lifetime" players that will attract friends and family to the game and that?s where the real money comes from.
I would have taken advantage of that if the game had been really good. I'm slightly surprised I never even heard of the lifetime subscription offer, because if I had, I might have been willing to grab one. Therumancer is right though: this isn't really a viable option for MMO devs: it'll remain as a pre-release thing with limited quantities in order to preserve those juicy monthly subscription profits.
Yes but it wouldn't be the point of the joke. It would be the point of a serious discussion input, which it ended up to be anyway.Sevre90210 said:
People are pointing out the failures of MMO in Tabula Rasa, AoC and WAR as a reason not to buy a lifetime sub. However, the lifetime sub is the equivalent to about 13 months of playtime and last time I checked, each of these games have lasted at least that long so even it it becomes a failure like TB, the life subbers will still have paid less.
After playing in the open beta, I bought the 6 month sub as I can definitely see myself playing for that long (or at least make my money back from the deal) and the fact I get entry to the Star Trek MMO beta wasn't a factor in my decision at all. Honest!
After playing in the open beta, I bought the 6 month sub as I can definitely see myself playing for that long (or at least make my money back from the deal) and the fact I get entry to the Star Trek MMO beta wasn't a factor in my decision at all. Honest!