Are lifetime accounts going to be offered this year pretty please? Id love to have an account or two while I'm in a retirement home somewhere in the next 50 years please Happy Holidays everyone
Let's cut this thread short with a quote from when DBG's community manager literally said it's unlikely to happen again. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/lifetime-subs.266411/ Could it, sure, is it likely or would it make sense for DBG, probably not.
Lifetime subs were a great deal for a company that raked in cash and sold the franchise. It is a very bad deal for a company in it for the long haul. They lose money after 2 years, roughly. Hopefully we wont get lifetime subs because we have a new investor who believes in the franchise and wants to invest in keeping it strong for more than the next 2 years.
Usually, corporations that are hard up for cash and going bankrupt offer a life time subscription that cost as much as a regular subscription would, for the time frame, they think they will remain solvent. "Get X subscription for life by paying us for only three years' worth of subscription!" Three years later, "We are going out of business. Buh bye!"
Well, the last one for EQ was in 2018 so that is going on 4 years and game is still here. And it was $300 which is less than 3 years worth of subs if your paying yearly.
Lifetime subscriptions are a bad business model for a company that plans to keep their product for a period of time. Which it feels like EG7 wants to keep their product. So no, we are 99.999% sure never going to see a lifetime promotion again. EDIT- I should make some caveats. We will never again see a lifetime promo for $299 or whatever the last promo was. Because after three years the game no longer makes money off of those accounts monthly. Now could we maybe see a lifetime promo for $500? $700? $1000? Those make more business sense for the company because there is inherit risk on the consumer to believe a 22 year old game is going to be around 5/7/10 years. However a miniscule fraction of the playerbase would spend that much on a lifetime sub. So unless the company wants to scam people (company will sunset the game in December 2024 and offers a lifetime sub for $299 right now scam), there is no price point that benefits both player and long term owner company. Hence why we will never see a lifetime sub again IMHO, as long as EG7 wants to own EQ.
EQ is still here, but the company that owned it is not. HeatherPurrs is correct. The previous owners got the cash and got out. They had a short lived business model that spanned the time they planned to own the company. However, they devalued the franchise, so us as invested players should not be very happy about that. We should hope that the new owners are planning about the life of our game for beyond 2 years.
Won't happen again, but it isn't the first MMO that is still running that did the same. I think LOTRO or DDO sold a temp lifetime sub at one time, and IIRC LOTRO is one of the ones EG7 is looking to focus on updating.
they only offered them to milk revenue before they announced sale of company they knew was coming months later.
That's just outright false. The EG7 transaction happened over a year later, and from an accounting perspective they probably shouldn't/couldn't have recognized all of the Lifetime membership sales as revenue upfront.
Correct, DCUO also offered Lifetime upon launch, DCUO members get to keep their grandfathered lifetime via AllAccess so long as DCUO is running. I'm not sure why people thing Lifetime = the game or company is about to fail. Especially when AllAccess covers multiple games.
Those who are saying its a bad business model are not factoring in the account retirement rate. You are all assuming that 100% of the lifetime account holders would still be playing and paying after 3 years. I know of 3 life time accounts holders who have quit EQ. Two of them were with in 1 year the other 2 years after purchase.
A bit more complicated than 299 divided by monthly fee... People who are ready to spend such an ammount on the game are likely to spend in other ways as well; I have more subbed accounts now than when I bought my single lifetime account. There is some psychological effect that I am not qualified to describe well, but having toons that are subbed always increases the connection to the game, both making it easier to come back, and also to spend more money via other avenues. Some people buy the account and stop playing EQ. Either they don't want to play anymore, or they pass away, or loose the ability to play, etc etc. There is a certain "feeling of prestige" when less than 10% of the accounts are lifetime accounts, so much that now, 4 years after, they are still being discussed. My fear is that a new batch of accounts are put up for sale, and I miss out because I didn't see it... :-D
same, and still nothing but downtime :\ ugh, guess not happening this year either. Id think it would give them funds to fix the issues they are having currently with downtimes