Is there any chance that future opportunities might exist for lifetime account purchases? The last one I recall was 2018(?) for $300 if I remember correctly.
That was a deal concocted by one of those "effective managers" to pad revenue books for some investment deal. In itself - lifetime subscriptions in EQ is a baaaaaad business decision and I doubt it will ever happen again. If they do it again - it's either a sign that something is rotting in the state of Denmark or that they have not learned from the History.
Of course, I understand that perspective. It's still a subscription-based game and cutting that revenue stream is not the best plan when it comes to their bottom line. It might be a nice "reward" option for long or very long time players. I believe they only offered 5000 purchases the last time out. Appreciate the feedback.
I think it could still be a good deal for them if it keeps people playing longer than they would have AND those people spend money in the marketplace.
I'd like to see the $79 (price?) for a 1 year sub promo again. People would buy for their boxes. It would retain players for a year but the promo rate could be introduced sparingly (every 4 years).
Just continuing with this line of thought, if they could offer Annual subscription + Base expansion for around $120 or maybe too impractical but $99. This would reduce the impact of the playerbase dropout after the first couple months of an expansion.
It should be noted that Daybreak continues to offer lifetime subs for other games they publish, i.e. DDO and LOTRO, neither of which have close to the subscriber base of EQ.
Those are not all-access titles. Lifetime membership to EQ is also lifetime membership to EQ2, H1Z1, Planetside 2, and DCUO.
A lifetime subscription doesn't have to be All-Access, it can just as easily be for any specific game, which was the point I was trying to make. Yes, the lifetime subs they sold a few years ago were All-Access, but so what? Going forward they can do whatever they want to do.
Yes, there was a limit (initially) on the number of liftetime subs they offered. However, those went very quickly, and they decided to remove the limit.
Star Trek Online was selling lifetime subscriptions before the game went live. I know, because I bought one. And so long as you ignore the same ol' "the game is dying" threads that every game forum has had since day one, the game is going strong. The recent content push was pretty damn good, in some spots extremely challenging. A lifetime sub for EQ wouldn't be the death of the game.
If they did that, they'd have to drastically reduce the price. I'm not going to pay 300 bucks for only just EQ. Not when it applied to all those other games in the past. The precedent is set. And I seriously doubt they'll drop it to something like 90 bucks which is only a few months cost. Its gotta be all access to be worth the while, and they're not going to drop the price.
I'm not worried about EQ dying right now. But if they do another round of lifetime subs then you can be assured it's on its last legs. Lifetime subs are a great idea for DBG is the game has limited life.
They offered 4000 on the first round (The deal is good through December 31, 2018, but is limited to 4,000 subscribers.) and then they opened up more but the limit was not lifted totally. They just added more and They never really clarified if the new limit of 6000 was the original 4000 plus 2000 or 6000 more. *For the life of the participating game(s). **Only 6000 Lifetime All Access Memberships are available. So all that needs to be taken into account when folks are debating issues. It was a limited offer and could very well be repeated with a lesser amount offered.
This would be true for nearly any other game. Two of my guildmates purchased lifetime subs for their main accounts. What do you think they did with those “savings”? Spoiler, they added another account. EQ1 just functions differently since boxing is so heavily encouraged and practically required on Live. People typically forget about the large lump sum expense and aren’t waiting around until the break even point, before continuing their spending. The freed up $10-15 is going to be seen by most as bonus EQ money.
You can rest assure that if they ever decide to reintroduce a lifetime subscription, it is because they know their game is going to be done within 3-5 years as far as support and patches and content. Think of it this way... those lifetime subscriptions were awesome for those six thousand players who bought them in 2018. Because right now it is a free roll for them. Outside of expansion sales, DPG is making zero dollars off of these six thousand players. That is not good for business my friends.
