Dungeons and Dragons online has a sale going this weekend where you can get 6900 Turbine points for $50. It was simply way too good a deal to resist. Until now I've been pretty smug about the fact that I've barely spent any money in DDO during the past year that I've been playing it on and off. It's still not a ton of money, but more than I was planning to spend for certain.
I had already previously bought 32 point builds, the Drow elf race, and a couple of low level adventure packs. So I bought Warforged and a shared bank slot for my account. I'm still sitting on almost 6000 points. The optional classes don't interest me that much, so I'll be waiting for them to go on sale. I may pick up some more adventure packs since they are all on sale this weekend. I found a pretty good guide to them by Sirgog over on the DDO forums.
Regardless, I have enough points now to last a good long while. Good for Turbine that they got a good chunk of cash off of me, but from here on out it's unlikely I'll spend more. I'd be interested to know what proportion of DDO players fall into the "never spend anything," "spend $60 and they are done" and "spend as much over a year as a subber would" categories.
I remain surprised at how much you can get for how little. With the 6900 I got the last time this deal was offered, plus a few hundred for starting noob characters on every server for one-time favor rewards (up to 700 TP), I've unlocked:
ReplyDelete- 32 point builds
- All four race/class options (which I intend to use)
- Half a dozen premium adventure packs
I still have 1700 points and 200 in easily attainable favor awards on other servers. At this point, I'm more interested in the low level game than the high level game, but the stash I have left would buy me enough packs to follow Sirgog's "medium budget" guide to the level cap with even more flexibility than he recommends, if I were so inclined.
Also, I see people on the forums talking about "upgrading" from the VIP subscription to Premium Free to Play with these offers. Ooops?
@Green Armadillo: it's a great value from a customer perspective. For the price of an average new client I get permanent access to most of the game.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have to agree with you. Whether it's a good long term business strategy for Turbine / WB remains to be seen. If it converts a lot of subbers to FtP, it may not be.
In a way, this sets the price structure closer to the game DDO was already compared to: Guild Wars. Sure you're unlocking options a la carte, put the model is the same. I kept buying expansions and cash shop items in GW because of the quality of the content. If ArenaNet can succeed that way, I don't see why Turbine can't.
ReplyDelete@Anjin: yeah, I seem to recall a lot of unfavorable comparisons of DDO to GW back when it was sub based as well. Regardless, we know that DDO is doing better under their current model than they were as a strictly sub based MMO. Hopefully it will continue to do well for Turbine (especially since it has to keep going long enough for me to spend 6000 points!)
ReplyDelete