Thanksgiving surprise: Four free days in Champions Online

No, its not rubbish. Its just not worth a monthly sub.

If they keep offering these free days then there would never be any point in subscribing. You could easily see everything that is new during those days.

I tried it during the Bloodmoon weekend - completely bored. Most of the time, healthy disagreement is just great - all part of thinking and acting critically - and there are times when something is obvious trash, appealing only to small children and people who love the concept of a superhero MMO and are willing to settle for this sub-par crap because it doesn't have any real competition yet.

The gameplay is a dumbed-down version of World of Warcraft's own mechanics, the artwork is something out of an 80's Fisher-Price catalogue and the people I met in-game were all teenagers.

I almost ended up doing support for this game. The fact that the company was only willing to pay me $15.00 says something about their general ethics and sensibilities. Before they even brought me in for an interview, one whole city away from me (knowing I had to travel over an hour on public transport to get there) I gave them my salary expectations. I went through the entire interview process and only after all of that I was told that they were only willing to take me on for $15.00 an hour. I am a professional with 6 years of experience and a degree with an average salary of $60K.

There was also the small issue of Cryptic trying to steal customers away from their competition by posting in their game's forums - adding insult to injury, they were proud and rude and only apologized after causing serious community disdain.

Disgusting. Tasteless. Stupid.

@Teloch:

You have a degree with 6 years experience, and you wanted to go do tech support? What's the matter, couldn't find a real job?

You wanted to do tech support for a MMO and get paid 60k for it?

LOL.... I've seen some moronic posts on here, but yours takes the cake.

@MrBounce

Your insensitivity and complete disregard for critical assessment is alarming. Are you not aware that the average salary for technical support in the Bay Area is around $45K? Are you aware that my last support position paid $52K? Do you realize that someone of my calibre is taking on support roles because the market has dried up due to a recession? Do you not think it's odd that I was brought into an interview when I made it plain to Cryptic what my salary expectations are?

I did not expect $60K, I expected at least $40K. Have something substantive to say?

@MrBounce Haha! Served!

I had a job supporting Adobe apps for (almost) 80k a year, but that was at a tier 3 level (basically the last stop for issues before I enlist engineering's help). It took 8 years of some seriously awful work to get to that level. I made that much I figured because I ran accounts who paid in some cases half a million a year for support and maintainence - several enterprises every single one of you has heard of and used their products in one way or another.

Sadly I got riffed in the round of layoffs last year, but no - you won't make 60k a year entry level doing anything in this economy with only 6 years experience.

@Veritt

I had made it more than clear that support is not my primary function. I'm a Unix Network Admin. I'm done wasting my time here - all I wanted to do was make it clear to any passers-by that Champions is a terrible game and that the company that produces it has some serious issues. Reiterating further is really pointless.

Or they might just be trying to keep CO in the news and buyers interested. It is smart to market the game this way and let more and more people touch it and get interested in it.

Or I guess they could wait until a year later like Warhammer when people have already given up on the game.

This is the second free weekend they have done. Both free weekends have come at the sametime as a major content patch.

They have lost subscribers just like all new MMOs and probably wish they had more. But it is much smarter to start getting more people to play the game now than a year from now when people have already given up on the game. DDO is one of the few games that has been able to reach back from the grave -- WAR waited to long to shake things up.

I guess Cryptic is damned for trying to have a new approach to marketing.