Champions Online's special subscriptions make a comeback

actually because I don't think they chose to take the risk, it probably means CO sells well enough for them to allow more life subs.

I wonder how many people will back up their indignation by actually purchasing the lifetime. Somehow I don't think the size of the new thread will remotely compare to the 'no more lifetime' thread.

Yes exactly. Your prediction won't change the facts.

Nice poly. Carrot and stick. Now they will be bagging even more dough for a game with little content as of now. CO in its current state is barely bigger than GWProphecies.

CO is going the way of HGL. Wait and see.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they reinstated and I'm happy for those that missed out but it's all I can do to resist posting "OK, it's back. DON'T waste a second and get your effing credit cards out NOW". But I know that won't do any good so that is why I'm trying to get it out of my system here.

@Psychotic Storm
actually, lifetime doesn't mean they have to run the game for any set period of time. It could be canceled in a week and they'd still have the $250. No refunds.

Also means if some1 quits the game, say for example if Atari/Cryptic decide to nerf XP to death & make costume parts insanely difficult to get through gameplay (but sell them for real $ in their virtual store). Then Cryptic doesn't care, they already have you for full retail price + 14 months equiv game time (16 months if some1 did the 6 month deal first).

Also people who make such a large investment will be more willing to go along w/ and purchase microtransactions. Same deal as Tom Sawyer convincing Ben Rogers that whitewashing the fence is what he really wanted to do. It weakens their self-defense mechanism & makes them more malleable.

I was on the fence about this game until beta. It is just broken & they seemed to have painted themselves in a corner w/ how the fundamental game is designed. & many of the aspects which dont work cant be changed w/o requiring severe change in how the game functions. (i.e. low population instances & outdoor quest crowding/griefing). Teaming & quest sharing yet no quest re-completion bonus. Having in game items available as microtransactions but requiring 15-80 hours of grinding to get EACH ONE through game.

I don't think any amount of revision and debugging will make this game a success. I give it one year, maybe two before closing up shop. With at least 6 months before it approaches what the rest of the industry would consider gold (i.e. not beta) status.

Nice. Now all the people who bitched can put their money where their mouth is. I would put up good odds that the majority of those people don't, in fact, purchase either of these.

I guess in 4 days we will tell eh?

"UPDATE: Due to the overwhelming response to this update, we've been experiencing some issues with our account server. We're going to be working on the server throughout the night, and we plan to have everything solved by tomorrow. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this as quickly as possible."

Sounds like a lot of people really do want in!

I'm glad to hear that Cryptic is getting so many subscriptions. Although I'm rather hesitant to dive in for a lifetime sub- a 6month sub seems right up my alley- enough time to devote to an mmo to ideally see all the aspects of the game at a fairly heavily discounted price.

Without falling into fanboy/fanboy-hating, I really want CO to succeed- it is nice to see innovation, and from my experiences in beta, I think this has potential. Although they do still need to tune some things, the game was very playable in my opinion- most mechanics worked, but needed to be balanced. Hopefully Cryptic's live team will push to continually update like they did in the beta.

And if Cryptic does not succeed- I hope it doesn't completely vacuum on itself like HGL did...

I would really love to see how many people sign up for this now. The outrage was amazing and IMHO a lot of it was being exagerrated. Many people were going from "I love this game and want a Lifetime sub" and then saying "well since I can't get a lifetime sub I am not playing!"

If you really love the game, yeah it would be nice to get a lifetime sub, but it isn't like as a MMO community we are use to lifetime subs -- Champions and LoTRO are the only two that do it. Also the entire time people keep saying "Don't buy Champions Lifetime -- you will get tricked by Roper".

Oh well... I know we will never see the stats, but it would be very interesting. Please check out my Champions Online Podcast at www.slashcry.com

Are they still putting the Startrek online closed beta in ?

mysecretid, I don't know who you are or where you're from, but I f***ing love you man.

The outcry was a godsend to Cryptic's marketing department. So many people deluged the forums with outrage about the offers being canceled that they brought attention to people who might never have noticed the offers in the first place.

I would be willing to bet that they will at sell a lot more of the special subscriptions (especially the 6-month subs) over the next few days than had they never "ran out" (of virtual subscriptions?) in the first place.