Quote:
Originally Posted by unixmad
I am reopening a discussion that has been started on another thread, i didn't want to speak about it because i wanted everyone to stay on topic, but i am not against discussing it.
That's not really my cup of tea to be always seen as the bad guy for trying to find way to get some money from our work but we are a company and not a non for profit organization and if I don’t want our company to go bankrupt like hundred of other online game company, I need to make choices, that’s basically what I tried to explain.
Cyberjoueurs spend a lot of time and money to add new features and technologies to the graalonline engine and a good amount of the players (classics one) get all these for free and don’t pay any more, even worst when they don’t play the game any more they give the account to a trial friend.
You can still argument that classic players have paid, what is true but they have paid for a software version X.X and not for all forthcoming version, no companies make new version for free, they make patch and bug fix free but not new version.
The idea with lifetime was to let player play even if the subscription was over. This is not something any other game services are providing like we are, most other game services are restricting functionalities, items or area when your subscription is over.
Ask yourselves if it is profitable for us when someone buy a 29$ subscription and play for years with no new subscription. I have already made calculation and if I add computer costs, datacenter costs, bandwidth, human costs… We are loosing money.
Also we have made the choice to always give our latest technology to playerworld, that means our gold services have no technology advantage to push classic player to take a new subscription.
We have introduced a few year ago vip subscription thinking that classic player (for most of them playing 20 hours a month) our services will accept to pay 2USD a month to get all services and more but only a few % of classic player are using vip.
So what is the solution? Is it to focus on a new game and close the old one when the new one is ready? Watch other online game company, 95% are doing it and they don’t care you have paid most of the time hundred of USD in subscription and spent hundred of hours playing a persistent game that will not exist any more.
So Cyberjoueurs have to find solutions to attract more players (and I am working on it very actively) but also find solution to not loose endlessly money with long time customers.
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I'd like to say that I agree with you entirely, however, I have never been one to abuse my lifetime classic. I have 5 accounts with lifetime classic that I never use, and I have never given to trial members, and I keep my Raelyn account renewed with Gold and usually VIP as well, not to mention I pay for server hosting for Aetherforge. I fully support Graal in idealisms and financially and any of those arguing that lifetime classic should be brought back should be ashamed of yourselves.
If you love graal enough to be reading and participating in the forums and have been playing for a long time, you should support graal's financial choices.
I challenge you to find a MMORPG engine as useful or as cheap as the graal engine. Not only does it offer an online gaming service at a fraction of the cost of other MMORPGs, you are also given all the tools to create your own content.. FOR FREE.
Seriously, for all Unix and Stefan give to us, you should be ashamed for not wanting to give back.
10-11-2006, 06:50 PM
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