I mentioned last night that all of a sudden there was an impending shortage of discounted long-term subscriptions. And then Margie read the comment from Solonor that, in fact, they had “run out” of said discounted 6-month subs.
Now on the one hand, these sorts of things are (or should be) carefully calculated as part of the business plan. We need Y money over the first six months, so we can afford Z discounted subscriptions. No problem there.
But … if that’s what you’re going to do, then you let people know. “Hey, everyone — we have a limited number of 6-month and lifetime subscriptions. Not only are they a great deal, not only are they available for a limited time only, but we only have so many so order yours today!”
On the other hand, if it looks like you’ve been sucking people in and all of a sudden are cutting people off from a deal before you said you were — well, if you’re lucky then all that happens is someone calls a state attorney general for false advertising. If you’re unlucky, then you alienate a whole bunch of your prospective user base.
Evidently the latter is what happened, as Margie reported that there was a metric tonne of protest on the game boards. I’d quote some of it personally but … mysteriously, and without any announcement or warning, the forums are down. In fact, “The Champions Online™ website is currently offline for maintenance and will be back soon.”
That seems … odd.
Oh, Margie wrote Cryptic:
Please honor your offers. I would like to enjoy this game, but with the extreme problems of the Open Beta download and your inability to communicate with customers timely and accurately, my trust in Cryptic is very low. I will suggest to my husband that we cancel our pre-orders and wait and see if Cryptic can get it’s act together. It is not the price or the product, but the policies that will keep me from signing up.
Heh.