Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post

Jazuela · 05-29-2013, 07:56 AM

Well since you asked: my answer is nothing. Nothing would get me to pay for something I'm getting, better, for free.

There aren't hundreds of players logging in. There are dozens of players, many of whom have multiple accounts. Dragonrealms and the Simu flagship Gemstone (currently IV) are trading card games.

If you do a google search for "dragonrealms character sales" you'll find the first search result page consisting entirely of websites dedicated to selling and buying DR characters for RL money. That is why people pay for this game. Because they can get more than what they paid for, by "levelling up" their characters and selling them on the internet.

Since I'm not interested in trading card games, there is nothing that DR could do, that would convince me to pay to play it. I wouldn't even play it for free.

And that 30-day free trial is a joke - you have to provide your credit card number (or bank account info if you want to do debit or check), and if you don't cancel before the 30 days is up, they start billing you. There is no option to just show up - with your unique account name and password, and the counter starts, and 30 days later if you haven't submitted billing info your account is cancelled.

In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked over at Gemstone, and attempted to log in with my old GS account and was surprised to find out it was still valid. I haven't played it in 10 years. But the account name and password still worked. I got an error message saying Welcome Back, please give us money - which of course I didn't do. But that 10-years-dead account info was still valid.

I should've sold it when I was first offered - could've made $2000 on my PC at the time. Silly me, I had integrity. Didn't do me a lick of good; the game only has maybe a couple dozen actual individuals playing it, all trading items and characters back and forth for money, and the script-jockeys are still at it, gathering their mana-bots around them to enchant items that get sold in turn for even more money.

One player with 1 high-level wizard on a premium account, plus 1 other player on a premium account with a cleric - and then the wizard has 5 other characters (you can have multiple characters on one account) - those 5 characters channel their mana to the cleric, who can receive it at 100% because he's a cleric. then those guys log out and the wizard logs in - and the cleric channels all that mana to the wizard, who enchants the item, and they sell it and split the profits.

It's a HUGE money-making business...and they've been doing it at the very least since the days of Prodigy.

There was even a write-up about how one guy was averaging $100,000 in a YEAR profiting off the items and character sales business.

That is why people pay to play those games. If you think otherwise, you're very naive.

05-29-2013, 07:56 AM	#9
Jazuela Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: New England Posts: 849	Re: Join Dragonrealms today! Well since you asked: my answer is nothing. Nothing would get me to pay for something I'm getting, better, for free. There aren't hundreds of players logging in. There are dozens of players, many of whom have multiple accounts. Dragonrealms and the Simu flagship Gemstone (currently IV) are trading card games. If you do a google search for "dragonrealms character sales" you'll find the first search result page consisting entirely of websites dedicated to selling and buying DR characters for RL money. That is why people pay for this game. Because they can get more than what they paid for, by "levelling up" their characters and selling them on the internet. Since I'm not interested in trading card games, there is nothing that DR could do, that would convince me to pay to play it. I wouldn't even play it for free. And that 30-day free trial is a joke - you have to provide your credit card number (or bank account info if you want to do debit or check), and if you don't cancel before the 30 days is up, they start billing you. There is no option to just show up - with your unique account name and password, and the counter starts, and 30 days later if you haven't submitted billing info your account is cancelled. In fact, out of morbid curiosity, I checked over at Gemstone, and attempted to log in with my old GS account and was surprised to find out it was still valid. I haven't played it in 10 years. But the account name and password still worked. I got an error message saying Welcome Back, please give us money - which of course I didn't do. But that 10-years-dead account info was still valid. I should've sold it when I was first offered - could've made $2000 on my PC at the time. Silly me, I had integrity. Didn't do me a lick of good; the game only has maybe a couple dozen actual individuals playing it, all trading items and characters back and forth for money, and the script-jockeys are still at it, gathering their mana-bots around them to enchant items that get sold in turn for even more money. One player with 1 high-level wizard on a premium account, plus 1 other player on a premium account with a cleric - and then the wizard has 5 other characters (you can have multiple characters on one account) - those 5 characters channel their mana to the cleric, who can receive it at 100% because he's a cleric. then those guys log out and the wizard logs in - and the cleric channels all that mana to the wizard, who enchants the item, and they sell it and split the profits. It's a HUGE money-making business...and they've been doing it at the very least since the days of Prodigy. There was even a write-up about how one guy was averaging $100,000 in a YEAR profiting off the items and character sales business. That is why people pay to play those games. If you think otherwise, you're very naive.