My theory on why SOE announced a lifetime membership for Free Realms.

As people have heard Free Realms is offering a Lifetime membership for $29.99us until Aug 2, 2010. Now I don't think this will be the last time we see a lifetime sub offered for Free Realms, but next time its offered I think its going to be higher, and the reason I think this is because of the PS3 release.

When Free Realms is released on the PS3 I believe its going to come out in a box for 50-60$ and thats going to include everything that's currently offered in the membership. This gets away from having to worry about having to sell memberships and having restrictions for people without, and eventually we may see memberships phased out for the PC as well. This will than also allow them to sell new areas in the marketplace, instead of adding more restrictions against non-membership players.

The other thing we may see with the release on the PS3, is Sony standardizing the payment methods used in all its games. Right now you can buy cards for the Playstation network and they are separate from the StationCash used in the Marketplace for SOE games. This will allow Sony to just sell one type of card, and its probably easier to release just one type internationally as well. 

Living up in Canada I can't get StationCash cards, I can buy StationCash with my Credit Card, but I prefer buying the actual cards, since you can get a better deal when the have double StationCash weekends. I can however go to my local Walmart, Gamestop, etc and buy a Sony Network card, but Only in 20 and 50 denominations not the 5, 10 and 25 like SationCash. Having cards in smaller amounts also opens up more people buying items from the marketplace, since a 5$ card is much easier for people to buy.

Well that's my theory

RGX

Confesions of a single character player

Hello My name is RGX and I am a single character player.
My current game of choice is Everquest II, where I currently play a Half-Elf Ranger.
Who is currently at max lvl (90) with a Maxed Tradeskill (Woodworker) and Maxed AA's Points (250) Tinkering and Adorning is also maxed (450).
But I can't switch to playing an Alt.

I do have a lvl 82 Dirge Alt, that I built up when I had some friends rejoin the game, but since the expansion was released he has been sitting on the sidelines, and only bringing him out to work on crafting.

However I'm not bored.

Currently I'm working on working on going thru and working on slayer achievements, trying to get all the Destroyer titles, and when I don't feel like slaying gray mobs, I run sets of writs, run BG's, Gray quests, and completing other achievements. I also raid at least 2 nights a week in an alliance and spend a number of hours setting up my house in Halas.

While most players would start working on an Alt at this point, I spend my time trying to improve my Ranger to get as much DPS from him as possible, (hoping to release a DPS AA guide in the next few days),

While many rangers betrayed over to assassins, that's not for me, I intend to make my Ranger the best he can possible be.

Now you'll excuse me I have to get back to grinding faction in the Hole, those quests wont do themselves.

RGX

Playing a single MMO for to long, or entering a new MMO for the first time, or Am I just a Newb?

  I started playing MMO's in April of 99 with EQ when a friend recommended it to me, a year later my friend left and I continued to play because of the people I met in EQ. Than when EQ2 was released I moved over to that along with a number of guildmates to form a guild in EQ2. In that time I've met a number of people, either thru pugs, raid alliances or crafting.  

Now during this time I also tried a few other games WoW, Vanguard, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Star Wars Galaxies, Dark Age of Camalot, and out of those games, only two of them , WoW and DAoC, had people I know playing them. WoW I tried playing twice once with some friends and the second time with my sister who had taken over my old account, each time I was a subscriber for 4-5 months. With DAoC I played with some people I had met in EQ but than again I only played for a few months. The other games I played for a month or two basically because I had the Station Access Pass and was never really able to get into the game.  

Now here it is, 11 years later and I'm still enjoying EQ2, however there are a number of MMO's coming out, and I have a number of them sitting on my shelf behind me, WAR, EVE, AoC, LoTRO and I'm not not sure how to approach them.  

Entering a new MMO seems to be a very daunting experience, your entering the game with no connections and no real idea where to start building those connections. Joining a game when it's just been released seems to make it a little easier because everyone is starting of on the same foot, but  coming into an established game seems to be even harder. As an experienced MMO player I have a basic idea on building these connections but it still a lot of work, going thru the forums, searching the net, and just paying attention to general chat. And as most people know going thru this stuff you will find a lot of garbage, official forums takes a lot of sorting to find anything actually useful, the same for just doing a google search, and as for general chat well I might as well just say barrens chat.   

Now I've just started playing Global Agenda, I picked it up from steam when they had it on sale and now that is gone free to play so if I didn't enjoy it, I wasn't out that much and didn't have a time restriction. Now I'm really enjoying the game and the character intro is really  nice, and i hope to post my impressions later on. However there are a number of things that intro didn't explain, and as for a manual, well I haven't found it yet, and actually had to do a google search to find a post called Global Agenda: The missing Manual. Even that didn't give me the answers I was looking for, so I tried asking in chat.  

Well I got the replies I was expecting, the go back to Wow, the Chuck Norris, and you suck comments, and than eventually an actual answer. This made me wonder are MMO players so jaded that most of us can't be bothered to respond to a simple question with any sort of helpfulness? and if  thats true, I have to feel sorry for anyone actually entering an MMO for the first time, if this is the  type of responses a person gets from a simple question, why would you want to continue to play?  

As for my self I'm going to stick it out, and if anyone has some suggestions for some of the other games I've listed I would really like to hear them. So this asks the question;  

Am I hardcore for sticking with it or still just a newb?  

RGX