Lifetime subscription to Champions Online... - Keen and Graev's Video Game Blog

I’m cool for the offer of a lifetime subscription, but I really don’t like offering exclusive ingame stuff for paying that way.

Ah yes, that worked out so well for Hellgate London …

I feel sorry for the suckers that fall for this.

I’m probably going for it.

Although the price is borderline. If it were any cheaper it would be a no-brainer and if it were any more expensive I’d say no for sure.

For me, it comes down to looking at my past few years of MMO gaming and applying the subscription instead of paying monthly. I should note this deal also appeals to me more because I usually pay through timecards which have a standard Canadian price of $20 per month. Even with the exchange, this purchase would work out to about a year’s worth of playing.

I played WoW for 3+ years. Absolutely would have appreciated a lifetime sub.

I played CoH total for just over a year. I probably would have played more with a lifetime and would have appreciated it. I haven’t liked CoH’s more recent directions, but that’s just another factor of NCSoft vs Cryptic.

I played LOTRO for less than 9 months but still kinda wish I’d gone in on the cheaper lifetime (which IMHO is overpriced at $299 now).

If WAR had a lifetime sub, I wouldn’t have bothered anyway, I almost didn’t get the game in the first place and while I was pleasantly surprised at first, I wasn’t terribly upset that it didn’t go far for my expectations.

AoC I might have gotten burned on a lifetime, I really did expect more out of that game, but oh well if I had anyway.

Overall though, I’d calculate that if I’d gone lifetime subscription at a rate of $200 per title, I’d probably pay about the same amount that I have. In the case of the three big games I enjoyed most, I probably would have gotten a bit more entertainment out of them.

So for me, I’m happy it’s an option.

For you? I didn’t think Champions Online was your sort of choice anyway Keen. I’m of the perception that you have an extreme dislike of the sort of zone instancing that Cryptic uses.

Why mock an option? It’s not like it’s required to play the game.

I bit on the lifetime sub on LOTRO with mixed results. I played about 2-3 months at release and have dipped in from time to time to see whats changed and the added content from mines of moria (which cost me 50 bucks).
If I played every day it would be a great deal but sadly on launch day its impossible to know how long you will play anything. Even with extensive beta testing the server balance, class balance, end game and so on changes from this initial offering so much its rolling the dice.
In defense of this I will say I have resubbed to wow,eq2,ddo, vanguard multiple times during the last few years. If I had lifetime subs to these games I would surely spend more time there but not enough to warrant a lifetime sub at $200.
$200 / $15 = roughly 13 months of online play.
I have played maybe 6 months total since the game came out in 07. I guess I’m looking to break even around 2012 🙂

It’s another option, considering I’ve played 2 MMO’s, one for 3 years and one for 6, I would’ve loved a Lifetime Subscription Option, if Aion offered it, I’d sign up.

There’s nothing wrong with choice, and I don’t think any principle is involved, considering you can always say no.

I am afraid they just want to grab as much money as they can, and god knows, nobody knows, how long you will like to play this game actually. If they do not pull off a Tabula Rasa, the worst case scenario.

This reminds me of pay-to-play-betas like Mortal Online, or digital Collector’s Editions and preorders in the case of Aion.

Just a few creative ways to get your money, that unfortunately become more and more popular in the industry.

I also don’t get how the NDA factors into it, because it’ll likely be down before this offer expires (early access starts mid-August, right?).

I think you drank too much of Mark Jacobs’ koolaid regarding NDAs. It’s not sane or reasonable to expect them to be dropped during closed beta.

It is tempting, but they should run it until Oct 1st. Since it ends at launch, it is really just gambling.

It’s just 200 bucks. If you spent just several weeks in the game, you got your money’s worth.

Try spending several weeks going to the movies, out to a show, or grabbing ice cream. Add that up.

Granted, if I played like you, meaning that I threw all my eggs into one basket with all the passion of a cult member, then I would be weary of my own undoing as well. Still, throw down the cash if you like them game. If not, don’t.

Beau

Don’t think this is mock-worthy. A lot depends on your financial situation. For some people, $200 is a lot to lay out, for others it’s no biggie.

Thing is, having a Lifetime Subscription changes the way you play these games, way down at an emotional level. I have a LOTRO Lifetime and I love it. I feel no pressure to play when I don’t really feel like it (I hate spending $15 for a month of gaming then at the end of the month finding I’ve only played 2 hours because some other shiny thing distracted me), and I’m in no rush to get to cap asap.

But I was pretty sure LOTRO was something I’d want to play for a long time to come. And Turbine was still running Asheron’s Call, so I figured they weren’t going to be quick to pull the plug.

In this case I personally probably wouldn’t go for it, but I think its a valid option for people super enthusiastic about Champions Online.

Now *if* the offer was only good for, say, 1 week, then I’d agree it was insulting. But assuming it’s an offer that’ll stick around through Open Beta and all that, then I think its a great option.

My only real beef is dangling the STO Beta access as bait. That, to me, shows a lack of confidence in CO itself, like they don’t think Champions Online itself is strong enough of a draw to bring people in. That’s actually a dis-incentive to me…like there’s something they aren’t telling us.

@ Beau

How would spending a few weeks in game = getting your money’s worth when those same two weeks would only cost you $15.00 normally? That argument makes zero sense from any way that you look at it.

Comparing the price of a game subscription to any other form of entertainment is tricky at best. If I could spend $15 a month and see every movie that comes out in that month as many times as I like, then you can compare the value. Otherwise, it’s apples to oranges and doesn’t apply.

Look, if you’re fine with spending the money up front then more power to you. I would probably consider it with a game that I was truly into or really hyped about. (Like SW:ToR) Even though I’ve been burned in the past, I could always justify the price if I enjoyed myself and I played the game for anything more than 6 months.

However, the life time offers should extend past the first free month of play to give people an honest look at what they are getting for their money. To have the offer end on launch day isn’t giving you a fair look at what you’re buying. Thus the risk and why Keen and others feel the offer isn’t good value. Buyer beware.

@ Pete S

The STO thing has me concerned as well. Especially considering that it’s the only thing that would make me shell out the money for a 6 month sub to Champions at this point. Now that’s a game that has my interest, but if I don’t enjoy Champions, how smart is it to pay for 3 or 4 extra months to a game I don’t enjoy just to be able to test a game I MIGHT enjoy later?

Bleh….

I think it’s a steal. I’m debating if I want to play this game seriously or not, and If I do intend on playing this game for any length of time, I would go for the Lifetime subscription. It’s a great investment for your entertainment. I mean look how much we’ve all plunked down for our various MMO’s over time? Me, I think I’ve spent something over $900 to Mythic for 1 Dark age of Camelot account, and I’ve had 2 accounts for a vast majority of the time played, so actually I’ve spent almost $1800 dollars to Mythic, if I include the costs of expansions.

Then I’ve had a City of Heroes account for over 4 years. And I’ve played Planetside over time, now Warhammer.

$200 for a lifetime, heck yah!

I mean, how bad is $200? That’s barely a drop in the bucket for your average MMO gamer over time. Yah it’s expensive for a lump sum. But over all, that’s a fraction of what we’ve all played just for 1 account in one game over the course of a few years.

Fretting over a single $200 payment seems almost ludicrous, when you put it in perspective.

Paying 199.99$ without knowing the game firsthand is a bad idea, special after AoC & Warhammer. I don’t like it that the offer will end before the release the game but when I look at CoX and how many month I spend there, on and off checking out a new issue then I think it would be a good idea to pay for the lifetime subscription.

Honestly I will take my time with the open beta to find out if I like CO and if so, the chances are good that I will pay for the lifetime subscription……

If it was a game I knew I would come back to time and time again (like CoH, DAoC, WoW) I would consider it. After all I have a lot more then 10 months time subscribed in many of those games. Still I would rather have a subscription like Station Access.

Thinking about that makes me almost want to re-sub to EQ2 and Vanguard. Almost but not quite.

I will see your “lifetime” subscription to a game with Bill Roper and behind it and raise you a game with a subscription and microtransactions (oh wait…those are “cryptic bucks” aren’t they). Nothing Cryptic about it – message to Cryptic: As grandma used to say “defecate or get off the pot” – micro transactions or a subscription; stop trying to stick us with both. And given the performance of Hellgate London (not to mention the closure of Tabubla Rasa, Matrix Online, etc, etc) I wouldn’t trust the “lifetime” subscription either – it is likely to be a very short “lifetime”.

Julie
http://www.noprisonsersnomercy.com

Like I said elsewhere, a lifetime subscription is not a bad thing. More options are always good. I am very pleased with my LOTRO lifetime subscription, and it isn’t just about the money. It’s the feeling that I can sign on whenever I want for how long I want without regard to handling subs.

I do like that they are offering it, but then they go two steps back with how they are offering it. Offering a lifetime subscription where the offer stays open for a short time after live = win. Offering one only prior to seeing the final product = fail. I agree with Julie the most.

Well, it’s very very simple.

Wait for the game to come out, give it at least a month. Play it and see if you think it’s worth 200 dollars. Point being that you can take 200 dollars and compare it to any other form of entertainment and see that MMO’s (as long as they’re your “thing”) are the best deal out there.

Think about it. The OP will probably play it for a while, blog about it, stop playing it only to come back to it several times over the next few years. That’s normal MMO player behavior, something he just needs to recognize. The 200 dollars is worth never EVER having to pay again.

And having micro transactions is not some kind of “trying to stick you with both”, it’s just an offering of choices. I wonder how many F2P games people have played that might say that kind of thing. I always hear that argument, as though there it is somehow forced upon you by the great Will of the Game to spend money in both to have fun. They aren’t “sticking” you with anything.

Beau

My only concern about the future of games that do lifetime subs is the possible lack of motivation from a business point of view to create new content. If business A decides that cost of making new content is not worth the possibility of getting new/current subs will companies slow down work on the game and start using resources on new games. Right now the motivation is to keep folks subbed.

Granted I personally love the idea of lifetime subs if the price is right, but I’m curious about how would affect longterm.

Maybe I am thinking WAY to much into it. But you see it all the time with Xbox Live games. The ones that supply more content are the ones that charge for it.

Baaaaah….I’m ramblin’

I think I agree with Railith the most. Its obvious that game companies have the most to gain by doing something like this. They get your money up front and if they ever go out of business early, they still get to keep it.

that said I love my lotro lifetime sub, it has already paid for itself 1.5 times

Maybe I am thinking WAY to much into it. But you see it all the time with Xbox Live games. The ones that supply more content are the ones that charge for it.

A lifetime subscription does not stop them from releasing paid expansions, which you would have to pay for anyway.
As for impact on content creation, I do not think that would be an issue even without paid expansions unless a very large portion of the playerbase would go for lifetime.

Cryptic said the game would financially be a success if the managed 100K subscribers. I really doubt more than a few per cent would go for the lifetime offer.

@Sente,

Baaaaah! Yea I didn’t think about expansions! Thank you for that slap to the side of the head.

I can’t wait for the NDA to come down. I hope a lot of the people saying “Oh yeah I bought my lifetime sub” have at least tried it for themselves and like it.

What a horrible misfortune it would be to buy a game for $199 ahead of time… especially a MMORPG … and not like it.

I remember buying a six-month sub for EQ2 on release. Three months into it, I quit the game. I regretted the purchase even earlier than that.

I can’t imagine how much worse it would’ve been if there was a lifetime option and I had bought it.

If I’m madly in love with an MMO, I may consider a 3-month option, but beyond that it’s just too much of a gamble and leaves too little room for “I want to take a break for a month or so”.

@Keen: It’s not like there isn’t a lot of info out there for an educated opinion tho. That’s why I retracted my NDA comment, because it is kinda lopsided, there’s plenty of info but in selected places.

Speaking for myself, I have a pretty good track record at picking out the MMOs that’ll suit me. AoC was the only big miss so far, but I fail to see how another game’s failure connects to this one. It’s not like it’s a conspiracy for a trend, heh.

@Rog: We’ve all been around this block before though. We know that information is incomplete, inaccurate, tainted in some way, or just not good enough.

Trusting information on a site like IGN, Gamespot, Massively, Kotaku, Shacknews, whatever the site might be, is simply not an educated way to make an educated opinion about a MMORPG pre-launch. These sites are fed information for exclusives. They’re told what they can and not not say, and often the matter in which they can say it. I’ve been with sites like these and I know how the game they play works.

This isn’t really about the NDA though. This is about paying $199 before even trying a game, without truly knowing the full details, and then the fact that you would want to pay $199 for a MMORPG all at once to begin with. In my opinion it’s silly. I would never exercise this type of consumer behavior over anything else – why a MMO?

@Keen: You’ve never purchased new-to-market electronics or virtually anything off of eBay?

Hell, I’ve had meals that cost a 1/4 of that and I wasn’t sure the description on the menu would match. I’m hardly what I’d describe as wealthy, but this isn’t as huge a purchase as you’re making it out to be. If it works out, it’s a deal, if it doesn’t, I’ll buy a few less games this fall.

Meanwhile, doesn’t a part of you think, “oh geez if they’d done this with EQ”.

It’s about risk versus reward. I can only speak for myself, but my choice of MMO has only led me to complete I-was-duped disappointment once (AoC). Every other time I knew what I was getting into.

You’re presenting it as tho making a purchasing decision you’re not 100% sure about is abnormal. It isn’t.

Or to put it another way, my time invested in playing a character I’d rate about 4x more valuable than this sub price.

So to buy the game, install it and play it for a few months, that’s already my decision right there.

@Rog: I’ve never early adopted anything like an iPhone or video card without reading reviews. I would also never pay abnormally high prices at a restaurant without someone saying “I’ve eaten there before and it was good”. For a MMORPG this is a huge purchase. You’re thinking about spending a year at least in advance.

There’s a difference between purchasing something you’re unsure about, and purchasing something you’re unsure about under conditions which are the very definition of sketchy and unfavorable.

We’re talking about a MMORPG here.

How many MMORPGs have you tried and truly liked enough to play for the length of time that the $199 would cover? From your list in comment #4 it seems like at most 3? How many MMORPGs have released in the past 4 years alone? How many have been flops at launch, within the first 3 months, and within a year?

Of course you can play the risk vs. reward game. If you have $200 to gamble then that’s yours to gamble. However, don’t lose sight of what we’re talking about here. This is a game – a game within a particular genre that has a very nasty track record right now full of unpredictability.

This goes for any MMORPG. I wouldn’t pay a lifetime sub right now for Aion even though I plan to play for a long time. I wouldn’t have even payed it for Warhammer Online (which I admittedly allowed myself to get hyped about) even at the time I was most excited about it. In my opinion it’s simply not worth the gamble.

The main thing I don’t like about a lifetime sub for an MMORPG is it reduces their incentive to maintain the game. I want them hungry to maintain my subscription.

Maybe I’m reading too much between the lines, but I’m a bit nervous that your reaction indicates an opinion about Champions that you can’t explicitly talk about due to the NDA.

I bought the lifetime sub to LotRO and really only played it for about 6 months. It was a fun 6 months, but I don’t think I’ll ever do that again.

WoW has turned out to be an abberation in my gaming pattern. My interest in that game is tailing off, but it’s been good to me since OB way back in 2004. Nothing else has come close…and I doubt another MMO ever will.

@Keen: There are two underlaying factors here tho, kinda the reading between the lines.

You’re saying the genre has a poor track record, but that’s neither here nor there because I’m not buying the whole genre. The only track records important here are:

1. The track record of the developers.

2. The track record of personal purchases without getting burned by hype.

To me, the unspoken part of this conversation is that in #1 I enjoyed City of Heroes while you openly loathed it. And #2 you’ve been burned. A lot.

I don’t mean to cause offence or take a cheap shot, with getting burned so often, I would say yes, half of the factor in such a purchase being so low, it would be a gamble for you.

For me, it’s just a smart purchase. It’s cheaper. I save money and feel comfortable in the process. I’ll enjoy the game just a little bit more this way, never distracted by re-subbing.

I’m not great at calling what games will be uber successful or loved by all, but I’m more than decent at picking what I like. =)

It’s not a gamble if you’re comfortable with what entertains you.

IIRC Lord of the Rings sort of did it correctly. If you got the Pre-Order then you had the option of getting the Lifetime subscription. So at least you did not have to make the final decision tell after you have played it for a while in production.

I have not been hyped up on Champions yet. I would like to play it for a while first and also see if I will like it better than CoX. Even then, I may be a sucker for in-game swag (I have lots of CE boxes of other games) and even got the LotRO lifetime as well. But right now I am not feeling it.

You save money in the long run. The long run is what’s in question. How many MMORPGs have a “long run”? That’s what I’m getting at here. The track record of the industry is in question when looking at MMORPGs as a whole and whether or not they have, as a type of game, been able to deliver more than they have failed.

It will ultimately come down to personal preference. I can’t, and won’t, try to say “Oh you’re wrong for pre-ordering a year’s worth of the game”. I will say “be careful” and “think about the big picture” before you leap into something like this.

I applaud you as well Keen, on keeping to the NDA. Must be extremely tempting at times, because factors about the game itself are the elephant in the room.

@ Keen :

I’ve disagreed with you quite a bit, but on this one, you are right on.

Anyone ordering up a $199 lifetime sub without any playtime in is asking to get taken. Bottom line, end of story.

You know, I wonder how these developers can get by with releasing such total trash and subpar products, and then I look @ the comments here.

The amount of people here ready to drop $200 USD without TOUCHING the game speaks volumes.

The amount of entitlement this will engender in the folks who preordered a lifetime subscription without ever having even touched the game is staggering.

This seems tailor made to create a financially-aggrieved, violently vocal minority. Games already have enough trouble keeping a community even borderline healthy.

@moonmonster: I’m not sure how you figure that. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone in LOTRO claim an inherent entitlement or special treatmentg along with their lifetime subscriptions. None more than just what they’ve purchased. Most of them seemed happy to pay for the expansion too.

You might want to look at existing examples before positing doom onto something.

I really am enjoying what Champs is putting out there, then again I love comics and think it’s a very, very fresh game. NDA is still up so can’t say too much but I REALLY like this game. Will I drop $200 for it? No way. Put it this way, if I play for more then a year or two then the money will not matter at all and I will just be happy to have found a good mmo…the last one was that…other game…you know the one.

Don’t speak its name Russell!

*shivers*

There’s a world of difference between

‘I like this, I can see sticking around, I will spring for the lifetime and hopefully save some money’

and

‘I assume I will like this game. So I’ll bet that I’ll be sticking with it’.

The first one, if you decide the game isn’t for you 5 months down the line, that’s your mistake. The second is ‘I paid $200 because you said X, Y and Z and you didn’t deliver’.

While I see Keen’s point, I’m still kicking myself for not taking Turbine up on the LOTRO Founder’s Lifetime offer. I tell you what, I’d buy a lifetime sub for SWTOR sight unseen!

I think people are forgetting the microtransaction aspect. Even with a lifetime, you still can shell out more money with RMT goods. Plus, you have no idea how much the micros affect the game-your lifetime sub may be worthless because you find you don’t want to have to shell out an extra ten bucks a month to remain competitive by using cash shop goods.

TBH a lifetime sub doesn’t save you much of anything unless you know you will play the game a good amount of time over a period of 2 years.If you sign up, play six months, and then get bored and pop in occasionally, you’d probably have been better off going monthly and quitting.

I agree with Keen in general though, I really don’t expect to play a MMO for a period long enough to justify lifetime, and the savings are generally tiny enough not to bother.

I don’t know, i personally don’t think that 200$ is all that much. If you feel its too much and don’t want to take the “chance” well, don’t.
I spend that much (sadly) in one month between Starbucks and Tim Horton’s. So even if I only play it for one month, ill just make my own tea and i haven’t lost anything IMO.

*shrug*

I like the convenience of paying once and only once. i pay with time cards and i hate picking them up and always forget and run out of time.

Also, just for the record, i make just over min wage so its not like i have tons of cash to throw around. With that said, it doesn’t feel like a “gamble” to me and ill be getting the life time subscription.

“Faith is the ability to believe that which the facts do not support.”

Those willing to shell for the lifetime sub at this point are simply taking it on faith that CO will be a good game. Unless they’re in the closed beta, they really don’t have anything valid to base it on. Pretty much EVERY game looks good pre-release. There’s no reason to think CO will be a great game, or a bad one.

So they take it on faith. Power to them.

For me, I think pretty much every single thing Cryptic has done with Champions is a step back from CoH. They took a small-time world and butchered the system to keep a questionably-interesting IP, moved towards a twitch-based game, removed any level of enforced character cohesion, made a graphical engine that looks like my 10-year-old nephew’s crayon drawings, are already starting down a road of exclusive RMTs, and are now tying a massively expensive sight-unseen lifetime sub to their much larger property in STO to try and sell it (and prostituting the “beta” for STO in the process). My decision at this point is based a lot less on any view of Champions as a game, and more on Cryptic as a developer.

Remember, too, that this is the evolution of the Marvel MMO, which Microsoft pulled the plug on. That’s not an irrelevant point either, IMHO.

So I’ve read all the posts up til this point and I definitely agree with most of the points here:

– paying $200 up front without having even touched the game (or in some cases even seen any reviews) is, to me, nuts. I wouldn’t do it, least of all for this game.

– The only track records that matter here are the developers/publishers/whatever. Even if a game looked great and you were sure you were gonna play it forever, you would be hesitant if it was made by the guys who made Hellgate London / Matrix Online / Tabula Rasa / any other shutdown MMO.

– Because of recent disappointments/flops and financial issues in the industry (a la Stargate Worlds, or Funcom posting a financial lost on the quarter) companies are looking for any new way to make money – especially immediately. That is/was the whole point for bulk payments in the first place: you save a little bit over all but pay up front and can’t get it refunded.

Those are all great points but I think you are all missing something very important here: the competition. If you were asked what is the most hyped game out there that is the only one that has the potential to be a WoW-killer (even though I hate that term), most of you would answer Star Wars the Old Republic. And for good reason cause it looks awesome so far and Bioware has yet to make a game that I personally haven’t liked.

Even though we don’t know the release date for it, I’ve heard rumors about Christmas ’10 or early ’11. That is just about the time when a $200 lifetime membership would actually start “earning money.” – when you pass the break-even point as it were. If I were in the industry, I would be terrified of Bioware and SWtOR, and of course future WoW expansions. CO wants to suck as many people in as they can to play it, before they leave for something else. Remember what happened with AoC? it came out everyone played it for a few months and then left for Warhammer – for a total of $45 spent on it or so. Its all about making money.

Another thing. Maybe its just me, and that I haven’t been paying too much attention to CO. But it seems to me that it isn’t being hyped, almost at all. And the fact that it has an NDA up doesn’t really discount this because SWTOR is much farther off and probably pre-alpha right now – and its hyped through the roof. It just seems that CO’s advertisements have failed. The only ones I see are on the side of facebook that say, “like the Old Republic? You’ll love Champions Online!”

In my mind this lifetime subscription is a desperation tactic – their game has really tough future competition (even from the same company), their advertisements have failed to create a decent amount of hype, the economy is bad so people are cutting back (so this deal will appeal to them more maybe), and the NDA is still up so nobody knows too much about the game.

If you really think that you are gonna play it forever, at least play OB before paying for it to be sure – unless you just have $200 to throw away. In that case, I’ll give you my paypal account so you can at least have your money accomplish something!

This may seem a little hypocritical, but I would probably pay lifetime membership for SWtOR, but only after I played the game. I have absolute trust in Bioware – I know they make great games. but even for them I wouldn’t pay without having tested the waters first.

This seems incredibly desperate.

STO betas through lifetime subscription to CO? Wow. Weak.

I agree. Paying 200 bucks up front before even trying is not good. But paying 200 bucks after the first month or so playing is cool enought with me.

What is weird is that WHY are they doing this?

Probably because they need cash up front more than they need the recurring revenue.

does that mean that the sub. model is dying? probably not. more likely, it’s a money grab because they know the game will be dead within a couple of years.

My assumption is, although I could be wrong, that A) The lifetime subscription is something you can order after the games release. Hence after you’ve played it a while. And B) I’ll likely play the game for some time greater then 16 months.

I’ve payed and played several MMO’s for over 2 years time. Planetside, City of Heroes and DAoC. Often having 2 or all 3 of them going at the same time.

So for me, A $200 dollar lump sum payment seems like a steal. Heck, I’ve payed several MMO’s I ended up not liking over $100 bucks after the box cost and a few months subscription.

You don’t like it, don’t buy it. It’s not like it’s the ONLY subscription model.

Actually after playing more today I very well may buy the 6 month plan…it’s THAT good for me.

I cant believe the number of morons who have no reading comprehension posting here. The point is not about how much of a great deal it is, nor about how much money you save over the long haul. Its about trust.

Of all the upcoming MMOs out there I trust Bioware the most, however I STILL would not give them $200 blindly. Why would I trust any other company with such money?

I keep seeing people write how its a good deal in the long run. Yeah, what if it never gets to the long run? Cryptic shows a couple of screenshots, a few videos, and then asks for $200 based on that? Sorry, I need alot more than their marketing telling me its a great game.

And since when the hell is $200 chump change? All I keep reading is how 200 dollars is nothing. This coming from the same whiners crying about a PS3 costing $399. Sheesh….but I digress.

@vario: On the reading comprehension, what keeps getting missed is there’s the “blind” assumption that’s just not true, it’s mostly just rhetoric.

The closed beta is going on, there are plenty of people in that. The open beta starts before launch. There are also spot beta openings here and there (TTH just had a signup offer for one).

Anyone who wants to see Champions Online before it launches, albeit in beta state, has plenty of opportunity to do so.

@Rog: A good point. Anyone who would have the ability and possible desire to pay for a lifetime subscription would most likely have already scored a Beta Key though numerous methods. TTH even set a side a sizable portion of beta keys for its premium members. I suspect other MMO media sites are doing the same thing.

It would say more if they made the deadline for it up to a month after the game comes out. Doing it before makes it seem like they don’t have faith in the game and are trying to get as much money up front as they can.

“I played WoW for 3+ years. Absolutely would have appreciated a lifetime sub.”

Same boat here. I’d jump at a lifetime sub.

Hindsight is 20/20. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all see the future and realize something would be worth it? imagine how many of us would have bought IBM, Microsoft, or Google stock back in the day.

I have been out of the MMORPG blog scene for a long time, but I was browsin’ through today and saw this post. The dog pic is hilarious, and the subject matter is even more so.

$199!? no thanks.

It’s great that people have their own opinions, but can we please keep it to that. There’s obviously multiple camps that believe one thing or another, but don’t sit there bashing the other people because their belief doesn’t match yours…that’s pretty close to “fanaticism”.

If I chose to spend $200 for a lifetime sub of a game, that’s my choice. Not yours. No one is forcing you to do so, or not to do so.

In regards to why they did it? Only they know, but there are a good number of people that have been in beta that did it no questions asked. It was initially meant for those people that were in closed/open beta as they already had a chance to see it.

The idea of “whoring” out the STO closed beta access…even though it may have some merit, I think it was more a “hey, we’ll throw in some perks for you too that we know you probably would like”.

Just really gets tiring seeing all the bashing that goes on, whether direct or indirect. Let people have their own opinion, and well, if you don’t like it, keep it to yourself.