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'We're Shifting Away from Monthly Subscriptions' as of June 7th - Champions Online - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
'We're Shifting Away from Monthly Subscriptions' as of June 7th - Champions Online - MMORPG.com
Champions Online News - Starting June 7th, Champions Online will no longer support monthly subscription, though Lifetime Subscriptions will still be available. As a replacement, players will be able to purchase the Premium Pack that provides a host of in-game items, costume unlocks, access to several services, travel powers and two titles. The pack can be purchased via the C-Store for 1500 Zen starting June 7th.
Comments
Weird.
Let's hope this can be an overall improvement, even if it is a cash shop only revenue model.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
They talk about that on the linked page.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
If you are a subscriber you can make and play as many freeform power characters as you want. This package doesn't seem to include any freeform options at all. I never enjoyed their preset archetype power sets. Freeform is so much more fun, imo.
My bad.
This was the only thing I found about freeform.
If you purchased a freeform slot, that will forever remain a freeform slot.
We are looking into the possibility of creating a purchasable item to convert silver slots into freeform slots.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
So do you get a discount on the Premium Pack if you already own some of the costume and movement items? At 1500 Zen, that's kind of negligible but would be nice. Or better yet, do you automatically get premium status if you have already spent a fat chunk of cash in the premium store? Or if you were ever a subscriber?
So today we are officially celebrating CO funeral.
I still play it in my rotation, and there are always plenty of people to get a group for the high level content - either world bosses or dungeons. For the world bosses there is usually a ton of people. Even on off times there is usually plenty around to at least make a decent attempt. Stuff sells quickly on the AH, etc.
If fact, most of the games people consider low population games have way more than enough on the few or only server they run. Even Anarchy Online. And weirdly enough, most of those types of games have tons of guilds filled with people that spend most of their time on line helping new people and talking and, in general, forcing you to be more social than you'd rather be. Or I'd rather be specifically. In both CO and AO you are forced to group to do anything worth while at end level, in AO it is almost impossible when you hit lvl 200 to solo to 220. Or so inefficient when compared to how fast you can do it that it isn't comparable.
CO has been F2P for years. They are dumping the option to subscribe entirely in favor of whatever this is. I'm struggling to see how this benefits them though. They are obviously still pushing people to lifetime sub, even though they are getting rid of subs. One of the few reasons to subscribe was for Free-Form character building, but they make almost no mention of it in this new package. If I had a little more tinfoil I would say they are going for some last minute cash before dumping the game altogether.
I really like the game... and I really don't get the point of this change. Maybe they think they can force subscribers into lifetime? My guess is that most of them will rather just leave the game behind.
They also maybe think this will boost FF sales, it looks like they realized that FF is the best feature of the game, and they don't want to simply give it away as a subscription perk... my guess is the same, most of them will rather just leave.
The only "small" issue with those rather just leave guesses is that subscribers are a pretty big chunk of the playerbase. If only half of them will pick the rather just leave route, Cryptic will lose a lot more than what this change (the occasional $15 and a few lifetimer sells) can bring in.
I don't know if they did the numbers or not, it seems like they just do this in parallel with the subscription removal of STO announced a few weeks ago.
The thing is, the subscription in CO works quite differently than in STO, and in CO this move barely makes any sense. (except the aforementioned forcing subscribers into a lifetime).
They're obviously betting on the fact that players who are prepared to spend on a sub will probably be willing to spend even more on multiple Cash Shop purchases.
In STO, sub is close to pointless (as I used to say, maybe even on this site too, in STO only the lifetime and the free play are the smart options), so taking the sub away is a bit weird, but at the end it harms nobody, on the contrary, it is even a nice gesture towards the free players, since the bundle has more unlocks than they could get by individual purchases.
CO's sub however is the total opposite, it is the best way and the most popular option to play the game. Taking it away has the chance to wreck the game for good... I'm quite certain they haven't thought it through when just copied over STO's change.
CO is popular because it is the only game where you can make your very own hero, without any powerset limitations (CoH) or outlook (DCUO's human-only characters and narrow cosmetic options). Players subscribe for this, for the possibility that if any time they have a new character idea, they just simply roll a new alt and make it happen. It was possible by two reasons: the free character slots, and the Freeform. With this change, both of those will be gone.
What are the options left for a current subscriber, or who used to subscribe on and off, a few months each year? Especially if s/he has a dozen different characters?
-can subscribe in the next few days, and keep it up forever - with the risk that if any time, for any reason the money don't transfer (maintenance on either side, glitch, etc.) the sub goes off and s/he loses everything,
-to prevent that, coughing up 200 bucks right now. In both of these cases s/he still loses the free character slots, as in half of the actual benefits of the subscription. But at least keeps the Freeform, so it is the lesser evil,
-or, without the everlasting sub or the lifetime, s/he loses all. Every unique character created over the years will be turned into an AT.
I'm sure there will be those who will buy the lifetime (but even they won't be too friendly with Cryptic for a while), and I'm sure there will be those too, who will just simply turn their backs and leave.
And since the lifetime sub was just neutered, it is not a wonder why the players are pissed now. Very dumb move, Cryptic.
Depending on sleep, Gold/LTS players should be able to grind out three last free character slots.
It certainly feels that way, that they're going to squeeze as much money as they can before shutting down the game.
I think they're going to shut down all three Cryptic games (Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter) at the same time before launching their new Magic: the Gathering game. Probably also going to shut down the Cryptic "name," and blame all the failures on the Cryptic "people" which is BS because everyone that's working there now will continue to work on the new MtG game.