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NEWS: Champions Online Reinstates Lifetime Subscription Offer!
Keogh
Member Posts: 1,099
This has just been posted on the Champions Online website:
Discounted Subscriptions Are Back!
Posted by Daeke
Earlier this week, we gave notice that we were running out of special Lifetime and 6-month promotional subscriptions. Within a day, the rest of our supply had been sold out, leaving a number of you confused and upset. The response to this promotion has been overwhelming and we want to thank everyone who posted on our forums, called customer service and sent e-mails over these past few days.
After further consideration, and to meet the needs of our community, we have decided to reinstate the Lifetime and 6-month subscription promotional programs with no supply limit until 11:59 p.m. (Pacific time) on August 31st.
At Cryptic, we are dedicated to our community. We look forward to seeing you when Champions Online launches this September!
Note:Our server is currently being hammered by everyone due to the excitement this has generated. Please be patient, if you're attempting to buy a subscription.
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez"
Bladezz (The Guild)
Comments
I know I said this in a different Lifetime subs thread, but isn't a serious possibility that Atari is worried about claims against their advertising and game support with this current lawsuit from Turbine?
Edit: and also possibly that they may need the upfront money from the lifetime subs if they lose the lawsuit?
And now their billing system thing is down
I can't win - oh well will try again tomorrow
... or they know that they'll sell more lifetime subs if they remove the offer then "graciously" reinstate it. How many people who were on the fence before are rushing to buy now?
No I think the sole reason for this is the Star Trek Online Beta Keys that were part of the offer. They used the STO beta as an incentive an limited it based upon how many people they want in that CB. Not realizing that things could go the other way around. The incentive of a lifetime sub over-populated the CB rather than the CB incentivizing the lifetime subs.
I believe that Turbine showed that lifetime subs made them a lot of money. I think Cryptic simply had no idea they would get flooded. And was assuming they would get more of a trickle of hard core MMO followers instead.
Also I think you are ascribing to much control to Atari. If Turbine's past behavior (ie. taking over NA operations) and lawsuit is any indication Atari doesn't do jack as far as this stuff is concerned.
From Cryptic's standpoint a ton of Lifetime subs, even at discounted prices is a good thing. It recovers revenue much quicker and makes them more liquid while simultaneously assuring good sub number press releases and maybe a nice initial population to promote and grow the game. Even if they take some kind of hit a year from now from not having subs on those, in the long run its still probably worth it if it grows subs even if only a modest amount.
I think people are making a grave error thinking Cryptic doesn't want lifetime subs. Turbine made good money off of theirs. If anything the mistake Cryptic made was assuming it would be low demand and linking it to the CB keys. That was a dumb idea. They should simply have said the first 200 order get a key rather than make a hard limit on the whole thing. I think this is simply another indication that this is all Cryptic and not Atari, because in the end they are just egghead RPG nerd game programmers and their marketing stuff is not exactly polished up they way a publishers should be.
I think this simply lends credence to Turbine's allegations that Atari doesn't do jack. And I am not talking about Jack Emmert
No, I definitely agree that they want more lifetime subs. $200 up-front + box cost is excellent for an unreleased game without a lot of promise in subscriber base.
Whether it was intentional or not, the temporary removal of the offer got CO a lot of attention that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The reinstatement of the offer removes most of the bad PR.
If it was an STO beta limit that caused the removal of the initial offer, then it's surprising that they didn't remove the STO beta from the offer and include a cosmetic CO bonus instead.
Well on the fourms they did say there was a limit of 1k life and 500 6 monthers... Problem was they dident bother to put it anywere else. So people like me were waiting till closer to pay day than Bamn!
Glad its back
I honestly had lost faith for a bit there.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Interesting marketing ploy. I was expecting they would reinstate the lifetime subscriptions after generating some buzz from that one day removal. Probably a good deal of people that were on the fence reconsidered that "one time deal".