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Entropy

Gold membership

Gold membership  

507 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you agree with this idea?

    • Yes (won't buy though).
      105
    • No.
      130
    • Yes, and I will buy one.
      246
    • I don't care.
      31
  2. 2. What benefits do you want for it?

    • None (voted no)
      129
    • Higher chance to make rare items.
      229
    • More experience.
      244
    • Different color name.
      170
    • Better chance to get rare stones while harvesting.
      248
    • Less item breaks.
      222


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Radu,

 

Any concern about ppl not from US or EURO that have no international credit card or paypal account.

Its kinda hard for some of my friends to be able to use your shop. (Im from Brazil btw, and lots off ppl from my country have some difficulties to spend RL money due to the fact they do not live in euro os US)

I have same problem, not all countries in Europe have euro and I would have to go to my bank and buy them, so it would be more expensive for me.

I would have bought much more in the EL-shop if there had been another way to pay, I have needed those gold-farmers :D to buy there, what I don't like.

What about Pay Pal? I know some people don't say the best about it but I've had it for a couple years and it has worked great for me, from eBay to EL, and I don't even have a credit card, just a regular debit card.

 

I had paypal but after I had virus on my comp some years ago, are they not allowing me to use it, I have friends with same problem, patpal don't even answer us if we contact them.

The friends who used to buy from the shop for don't play now.

 

But I would really like to support this game even if I don't play much, I hope we will be able to pay with netbank.

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HI,

 

I voted no for both options because this idea would definitely lead only to the split of the comunity, and sooner or later, the guys who are not paying would start to be frustrated. (I can imagine mainly pkers flaming around.)

 

On the other hand i understand that EL needs money. Who does not right? However i dont think this is the right way how to support this game. As some of the people have mentioned, el has unique spirit based on the fact that EL was, is, and hopefully always will be, a free game. There must be couple of ways how to raise funds for this game without such a disasterous interference like this idea certainly is.

 

To be honest i dont really believe that this is a way how to repair the el economy. I mean less brake rates? more exp? more special items? more drops? Come on Radu, isnt this what you have been trying to avoid for years?

 

Once Again BIG NO FROM MY SIDE.

 

Regards

 

Isti

 

EDIT: typos

Edited by Istiach

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I'm sorry I haven't read all the replies, I hope to say things not discussed before (if so, feel free to delete my post :D )

 

The idea is not bad, and can be implemented with all the benefits suggested (may I suggest also to reduce the chance from 50% to 49% to lose items in inventory when dying?), but will be fully appreciate from who don't want/can spent real money for the game if you can put in the game some rare item (invasion drop, rare harvesting stone...?) that, once used, will give you the same advantages of a "golden" one. Maybe also only one advantage per rare item. The advantage of course will be temporary in this case (a day? a week? a month? real or in-game? depends on how much we make this item rare).

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Edit - found an explanation of the goldfarmer problem in asgnny's thread.

I prefer asgnny's suggestion, too bad I missed the time slot for the vote again. I said that in the past, I'll say it again: please don't lock votes after not even 12 hours of time, because not every player is reading the forums 24/7!

Edited by majestyk

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Not yet voted and going to think on it for a bit before I do.

 

Basically I like the idea but wonder about the whole cause/effect thing and if it will actually produce the results it is being aimed at.

 

I fully understand and appreciate that we've had this unofficial gold membership for a long time already, in the form of people using gc/$ and I'll be honest here and come forward and say I've taken advantage of it. The very laptop I am on right now has been paid for buy the GC I have raised ingame, as has the one my wife uses. Boo hiss, I shoulda spent it in EL shop, I know, but hey I'm able to keep playing EL where I wouldnt have done on my old PC at this point in time.

 

Thing is, I've had a number of ideas before where I could buy stuff from the shop to sell ingame and raise gc, then reinvest it back into EL shopsales and build up a small business like this. (Idea was on fluffy fighting book sales). But Radu said no to it since he wouldnt sell that book from EL shop. I can understand he was reluctant because he feared I'd turn into one of these ebul gold seller people and he'd lose out (I dont think he realised at the time that I intended to plough the profits back into the shop, but maybe it woulda made zero difference either way).

 

What I would suggest though, is some possible way into which this system of gold farmers IS made into Radus advantage, as my bookselling idea would have been. After all, if I coulda sold fluffy fighting books ingame for gc, sold the gc for $ then spent the $ for more EL shop products, then Radu AND me benefit from it, instead of the current system whereby only the GC farmer benefits.

 

 

So..why dont I spend my rl cash to help EL anyway? I could buy a crapload of rosto couldnt I? No....Apart from currently not having anything to wear that merits using a rosto to protect my stoofs, the few times I have had something valuable to "save" with a ros I simply dont have the pr0ness to do it justice.

 

I rarely keep rosto that I mine myself, would be pointless buying in more. I could sell them, but then we hit the problem of me selling something for less less of a gc:$ ratio than I'd get a return on by reinvesting back into buying more from EL shop again. **when I got the laptops the rate of exchange was 5k per 1USD, recently I hear its gone to 8kgc per 1USD - so roughly 3usd worth of gc's per rosto compared to the $5 per rosto from shop).

 

If we wanna make an incentive to spend rl $ in the EL shop, lets look for ways to take advantage of people who are already willing to spend and encourage them to do it in partnership with the Shop itself. This whole idea that a player could be getting an unfair advantage by spending $ in membership (vs spending in the shop anyways) is ridiculous as a reason to shoot the idea down. Why? I've spent on the shop and would happily fork out cash into membership for me and my wife (probli annual so i didnt have to remember to renew too often) but I've no obvious advantage in levels over non-payer players..my levels and stats havent been boosted beyond the reach of anyone that has/will never spend rl $. I have had no ingame items ever that cant be gained by anyone.

 

To summarise: I have a bot (guild trade bot), 2 new laptops and am looking into putting a guild map together, all from gc's. The renewal of the bots yearly fee was also paid for by gc's sold off. So yes, I'd love this membership idea, but I'd be just as happy if there was a way in which we could legitimise the gc:$ business and turn what we earn into EL shop purchases or other paid for services that we'd like. I'm not out to overtake people on the fast track to pr0ness in levelling (though I recognise the arguement that some WOULD be) but I'd hate to see this idea of membership blown out of development simply because some people cant be arsed thinking ahead of the game enough to realise they COULD feasibly pay for gold membership by earning their own gc and converting it. Team work works wonders, try some today! It's just as good outside pk maps as it is inside, trust me.

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I much rather see this be part of the game than to see people get restricted in character usage, or harvesting capacity.

 

I don't need more xp, I'm a lazy slacker anyways. Doesn't really matter what the bonuses are, even just giving goldmembers a small % discount on shopbuys and nothing else would probably work.

 

As for the people claiming they don't have creditcards / paypal, ask around ingame, surely there will be people willing to help you with it.

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As for the people claiming they don't have creditcards / paypal, ask around ingame, surely there will be people willing to help you with it.

Yes, goldfarmers, it's why we leave the game. :D

At the moment am I harvesting afk 8-10 hours/day to buy in game what I would like to buy from the EL-shop.

Edited by Zamirah

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Well, one way to partially solve the problem with the gold farmers is to have a "Gold Membership" thing, just like some other free MMOs do.

There are many advantages to this idea:

1. If we get a lot of gold members, we will depend less on rostos and rare item sales, so I can increase their rate.

2. The economy will be less affected by gold farmers (see #1).

3. Will give some advantages to those who pay for the game.

 

You'll be making more money (which is a fine thing), but I can't see how this is going to help the economy or reduce inflation? There will still be gold farming, lots of resources entering the game, resulting in inflation. How are more rostogols and rare items helping the economy? How will the economy be less affected by gold farmers? IMO, the only valid point is #3 - people pay to play and get certain advantages, and you get some regular income. That's ok and valid in itself, so there's no need to advertise it by saying it will help the economy.

 

Asgnny's suggestion does get more to the root of the problem - it will reduce resource inflow and thereby reduce inflation. How about going for both options? :D

 

Cheers,

majestyk

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voted Yes (won't buy though).

everything except more experience.

 

I would look at it as a new "cape" or so, if you want the benefit, you can buy it from the shop and help the game running. If you do not want to buy, you can achive similar by spending little more effort in the game. Seems fair to me.

 

Also i think it could be interesting the different levels, which would allow to buy 1, 2 or all the benefits for different price.

Another idea would be to sell strictly ONE benefit, but you can choose, which one for given month - it would add more strategy and planning to the game :D

 

Also maybe there could be benefit of "having little saint halo above head" - it would be really funny - especially for those with horns :)

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I came up with a couple more thoughts on this last night. Hopefully they're not too random...

 

1) The shop could sell nexus points for $ (think this one over before you flame me too hard on this please)

2) Mother nature could poison plant harvesters randomly (but effectively)... (this might reduce the afk harvesters...)

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2) Mother nature could poison plant harvesters randomly (but effectively)... (this might reduce the afk harvesters...)

not sure about this - it would kill newbies, but will not affect too much those with higher levels (poison is ~ 54 hp as well as some events harvesting Dung. i can get two before Restore) - and you can weight the risk - flowers wont kill you, Dung is only for strong stomach :D

after first poision you will stop harving, so second is not probabelly without players decision. More effective way to stop AFK harving would be MORE small events (like 1-3 gc in bag) - it would help to the newbies, wont affect the game too much (i bet you loss more value for AFK not harving after this "positive" event until you woke up) and make the non-AFK harvesters feel better (Wow, lucky me - another money here) - :)

Edited by gilhad123

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More bad luck will just make more people leave game.

There are already too much bad luck, items break easy, you die from poison and other things.

Less luck than when I started, not so many rostos and EFEs.

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1) The shop could sell nexus points for $ (think this one over before you flame me too hard on this please)

 

i think this is a good idea but to be consistent with the current price it would have to be over $100 a nexus and nexus removal stones might have to be changed or removed.

 

i think a better way to solve the problem is to sell many more items in the shop, people buy gc with $$ then buy items, im sure everyone involved would prefer it if they could just buy the item straight from the shop. this would result in more money for radu, less gold farmers and prices will come down as more items enter the game. the items would have to be quite cheap to stop farmers but you'd still be making more $$ than you are now.

 

if you do have to start charging for a gold membership i may pay, i dont think extra xp is a good idea though.

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mayestyk both options would be bad, maybe people want to buy gold membership for their alt(s) too, which would double his income from memberships

Edited by Sqwurl

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I voted yes and that i would purchase. I'm interested in this proposal and don't think it would have a large neg. effect on the in game economy since most of the suggestions mentioned are chance based.

 

I also like the idea of possible P2P based on the 3 initial races perhaps some different physical features, eye color, hair etc.

 

That being said I do think that if you really want to see better income from the EL shop you should consider revamping the shop page. It is not very user friendly, I know when I was an el noob and first looked at the page I just was :confused: Having a form that people can fill out automatically with their user name and either a drop down or click and purchase(Like a shopcart program) would drive up sales imo.

 

It might also be good to include a link in game to the shop page or (if possible) be able to purchase shop items through an in game menu, with delivery coming through going to an NPC instead of a member of staff having to meet you and deliver. I think making it more available to players will increase your traffic in the shop and help drive up profits.

 

Hope that's not too off topic.

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If its small value, like 2% more exp, i dont see big problem for free users.

 

small % discount on shopbuys and nothing else would probably work.

It will work also for free players, i can always ask you to buy something for me cheaper :*)

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mayestyk both options would be bad, maybe people want to buy gold membership for their alt(s) too, which would double his income from memberships

 

If you buy a gold membership for your alt(s) then that's even more bricks for Entropy, which is exactly what he wants to achieve with this suggestion (but as I said, this will not help the economy at all). If you implement both (This and Asgnny's suggestion), then this would reduce the possible bricks from gold membership for alts (but then, why would an AFK harvesting alt char need gold membership?) but still provide money inflow from other players while also helping the economy which will further increase shop sales again.

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I suspect the gold membership idea would actually increase the number of gc farmers, and increase the exchange rate of gc/$. Granted, more money would be coming into the shop at first, this option would alienate some of the players who cannot pay $. I don't think ignoring the root problem and trying to eliminate one part of one of the symptoms is the best way to fix it.

 

There are some players who will buy these gold subscriptions to support EL (though I expect these players already do, or would buy other shop services), others who will farm gc in hopes that others will pay for them, and others still who will just make more farming alts to earn gc to sell, in order to buy this "gold membership" for their main. (note: using an alt like this to buy a benefit from the main violates rule 5, imo, but just as it is now, would be hard to catch.)

 

If the farming is not taken care of, the gc/$ ratio will just climb and climb until the only person left buying EFE's from the shop would be a donor. How hard is it to make 40k gc per month with an alt? not very. There is still a limited amount of money which is spent on EL. The "ebul IRL rich people" (who pay for the server, hosting, etc.) won't suddenly triple their overall spending (official and unofficial) because the gc ratio is better. Eventually players will fight over people who buy their gold membership each month. Players begin offering better and better gc/$ ratios up until almost nobody would dare buy these items from the shop directly.

 

Stop the farmers, and this all changes.

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an afk harv alt would need it to have increased rare harv events, which would lead to more Binding, enrichment and Rostogol stones in-game, decreasing their price.

after prices decrease people would have less need to buy GC from goldfarmers.

 

its good for everyone, the people who dont buy one benefit from the players who do buy it, but get slightly less.

seems more fair then how things are right now, people who do spend $$ benefit more and cause inflation for regular players

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As for the people claiming they don't have creditcards / paypal, ask around ingame, surely there will be people willing to help you with it.

Yes, goldfarmers, it's why we leave the game. :confused:

At the moment am I harvesting afk 8-10 hours/day to buy in game what I would like to buy from the EL-shop.

 

Maybe this will clear it up for you:

 

[radu @ 6]: right now, for March, we made like 4K bucks

[radu @ 6]: now, you might think that 4k is a lot

[radu @ 6]: but that's two people, paypal fees, taxes, hosting fees..

[radu @ 6]: and we pay 7.5% more taxes than employed people

[radu @ 6]: and no health insurance, 401k, etc

[rauch @ 6]: so what do you have left? 1k? 1.5k?

[radu @ 6]: so we are at a point where it's not worth it anymore

 

 

Basically, Zamirah, we´re gonna have to accept something or Radu won´t even be able to keep the game going without making personal sacrifices. We´ve been playing the game for free for all this time, at least with this you will know that the money that's paid ends up in the hands of the devs of the game (or well.. some of it in Obama´s pockets too :/).

 

This whole discussion isn´t about goldfarmers anymore, it´s past that. Nor is it about giving people advantages if they pay for it.

 

The game we play is someone´s work, why should he not make at least a decent living out of it? Leave aside the options that were given in the poll, i don´t care one bit about getting more xp, or getting a higher chance of making rare items. Sure, would be nice, but it´s not the key in this, for me at least.

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If it will be done I'll be considering leaving EL for some free MUD, because I DO NOT like idea that rl $ places one people above others. (and I have no ways to pay - no paypal account or card).

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As for the people claiming they don't have creditcards / paypal, ask around ingame, surely there will be people willing to help you with it.

Yes, goldfarmers, it's why we leave the game. :confused:

At the moment am I harvesting afk 8-10 hours/day to buy in game what I would like to buy from the EL-shop.

 

Maybe this will clear it up for you:

 

[radu @ 6]: right now, for March, we made like 4K bucks

[radu @ 6]: now, you might think that 4k is a lot

[radu @ 6]: but that's two people, paypal fees, taxes, hosting fees..

[radu @ 6]: and we pay 7.5% more taxes than employed people

[radu @ 6]: and no health insurance, 401k, etc

[rauch @ 6]: so what do you have left? 1k? 1.5k?

[radu @ 6]: so we are at a point where it's not worth it anymore

 

 

Basically, Zamirah, we´re gonna have to accept something or Radu won´t even be able to keep the game going without making personal sacrifices. We´ve been playing the game for free for all this time, at least with this you will know that the money that's paid ends up in the hands of the devs of the game (or well.. some of it in Obama´s pockets too :/).

 

This whole discussion isn´t about goldfarmers anymore, it´s past that. Nor is it about giving people advantages if they pay for it.

 

The game we play is someone´s work, why should he not make at least a decent living out of it? Leave aside the options that were given in the poll, i don´t care one bit about getting more xp, or getting a higher chance of making rare items. Sure, would be nice, but it´s not the key in this, for me at least.

Did I ever say I did'nt want to pay ???

I posted several times before that I wanted to pay for the game.

Just make it possible for us who dont have paypal and live in a country where we need to go to a bank and buy euro .

I don't want to buy from another player I don't know RL and my RL friends left to play a pay-to play game.

Edited by Zamirah

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As for the people claiming they don't have creditcards / paypal, ask around ingame, surely there will be people willing to help you with it.

Yes, goldfarmers, it's why we leave the game. :confused:

At the moment am I harvesting afk 8-10 hours/day to buy in game what I would like to buy from the EL-shop.

 

Maybe this will clear it up for you:

 

[radu @ 6]: right now, for March, we made like 4K bucks

[radu @ 6]: now, you might think that 4k is a lot

[radu @ 6]: but that's two people, paypal fees, taxes, hosting fees..

[radu @ 6]: and we pay 7.5% more taxes than employed people

[radu @ 6]: and no health insurance, 401k, etc

[rauch @ 6]: so what do you have left? 1k? 1.5k?

[radu @ 6]: so we are at a point where it's not worth it anymore

 

 

Basically, Zamirah, we´re gonna have to accept something or Radu won´t even be able to keep the game going without making personal sacrifices. We´ve been playing the game for free for all this time, at least with this you will know that the money that's paid ends up in the hands of the devs of the game (or well.. some of it in Obama´s pockets too :/).

 

This whole discussion isn´t about goldfarmers anymore, it´s past that. Nor is it about giving people advantages if they pay for it.

 

The game we play is someone´s work, why should he not make at least a decent living out of it? Leave aside the options that were given in the poll, i don´t care one bit about getting more xp, or getting a higher chance of making rare items. Sure, would be nice, but it´s not the key in this, for me at least.

Did I ever say I did'nt want to pay ???

I posted several times before that I wanted to pay for the game.

Just make it possible for us who dont have paypal and live in a country where we need to go to a bank and buy euro .

I don't want to buy from another player I don't know RL and my RL friends left to play a pay-to play game.

 

Where do I say that you did? You seem to miss that I reacted to you bringing up goldfarmes, and me saying this isn´t about goldfarmers anymore. If at all this is about an individual then it is about the creator of the game. He was clear last night, something will have to change, and the majority of the people discussing in channel (which afaik, is accessible for all), agreed on some sort of ´goldmembership´ to be the best of the options he passed by us while sort of thinking out loud.

 

Else would you prefer to have all alts forbidden? Or would you prefer to see the game being sold to some company that will shit on whatever we think and just make changes without even bothering to consult the playerbase?

 

Given the fact that a change is probably inevitable, I just tried to point out that IF this were introduced, and IF you aren´t able to pay for the membership with RL currency for whatever reason, there will be people in game, just friendly, helpfull people, that will enable you to get the membership anyhow. At least you´d have the alternative of that, the choice however not to is all yours.

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If it will be done I'll be considering leaving EL for some free MUD, because I DO NOT like idea that rl $ places one people above others. (and I have no ways to pay - no paypal account or card).

 

sorry to tell you, but its been going on for years, people spending $ on game getting more then others.

maybe you didnt realise, but this change would tone it down quite a bit, while fixing the economy.

 

besides people who cant pay the $ can ask others to pay for them, in exchange for GC

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