[Elriic]

I want to start off by apologizing. I didn't mean to mislead, lie, or hold back any information. Yes, DR has a $14.95 subscription with a larger premium subscription as well. I'm not on staff with DR, I don't hold an interest in the company, or any of that. I'm a long time player that loves the game enough to pay for it and who would love to see new people try the game out.

Next, I want to address the quoted post.

You are ill advised on many accounts.

1) While there are people who log in multiple accounts, there are in fact hundreds of individual, unique players playing the game. Why? Because it is that much of an in depth game. I'm not denying that there are people with multiple accounts who play the game. But the vast majority of people have one account which means one character logged in at a time.

2) People selling accounts and characters are the EXCEPTION. Not the NORM. The vast majority of people who play this game become seriously attached to their characters because of the personal investment involved. Of course, like any other game you have people who buy and sell in game currency and characters because they either want to avoid the grind, are just lazy, or pick any reason. Think about how much people enjoy the game if they're willing to invest the kind of money we're discussing into it. This is more of a salute to the game, than it is an insult when discussing the long term health of the game.

3) The reason why they ask for the credit card up front is because the people who operate the game on a day to day basis have a zero tolerance policy for griefing. I'm sure there are other reasons, but if you ask the player base, we're generally cool with this. A lot of us remember the time when they DIDN'T require the card up front and we had random jackasses talking about TV, and rolling up characters to follow you around and insult you.

4) You'll have to speak to someone who plays Gemstone to address your points regarding that game and its economy and dynamics. Aside from a nostalgic stint here and there, I haven't played it since it was Gemstone 3.

You're entitled to your opinion and I'm not going to wax rhapsodical trying to convince you to change your mind. I'm simply going to leave with some final thoughts:

DragonRealms is almost 18 years old if you go all the way back to the alpha/beta on Genie. Its survived being connected to Genie, Prodigy, AOL, Microsoft's GameZone, and a transition to a web based service. Its survived economic downturn. Its survived the general decline in text based gaming. Its still there. We, the players love the game. The GameMasters who do everything from provide customer service, to run events, to sit for hours with players helping them custom design their stuff, to the developers who take the time to learn a proprietary programming language so they can build onto the game are --volunteers-. I personally took the time out of my day here to reply to your post.

If we're all willing to pay $14.95 a month for a basic account, or spend hundreds of hours a month as a volunteer, maybe there's something special here?

Respectfully,
Aaron Schlesinger, player of Elriic for the last 18 years.