All About the VIP Membership Program - Questions & Discussion

[Ransel]

I already do industry on 4 chars - it takes me about 30 mins of work each month to earn an estimated 1 mil extra profit from quickly buying stuff on player stalls to fill those specific wo's and then turn them in.
So that would be what, 45 mins on 8 chars? for 2 mil each month. And thats when i put zero effort into it.
So the whole "allowing players to sell VIP tokeens to other players enables dollar-to-cousil abuse" is moot cause we have it with this VIP system.

My initial request was to let non-VIP players have a way, how painful as it may be (tons and tons of counsils or longwinded quests or time played), to aquire what VIP players get with dollars. I do not see that being answered by anyone.
Why so eager to split your player base into two tiers?

It sort of works both ways though. On the one hand, you are worried about players with VIP going nuts and farming a ton of councils with their VIP status, but I think another poster here brought up a good point. It's cheaper to just buy another account and skip VIP altogether if you are a "power gamer" who wants to be rich.

On the other hand, making it possible to buy VIP status with in-game currency incentivizes the "farming" of councils by "power gamers" and has a large impact on the availability/rarity/price of player sold goods and the sources of these raw materials. Incentivizing this type of "farming" behavior makes it more difficult for players of all types to acquire common goods and it affects the entire gaming community.

Both choices have an impact on the gaming community, but the limited benefit VIP status doesn't have as much affect as people are making it out to have. I guess the real question is what Project Gorgon's stance is on multi-boxing. If you can make a second or third account for less than the VIP membership cost, then why wouldn't you go that path if your main concern is maximizing your personal benefit.

The only reason I can think that this is such a big deal to people is they want to have a way to use these alternate accounts to unlock free VIP time on their mains, which has essentially already been suggested by a few people here. Although, the VIP time isn't even that good to begin with. Personally, the only reason I subscribe to VIP is to support the game, I don't see it as giving me an edge in any way. I'm open to hearing other reasons why people are so upset about this, but all I can think is that the "uproar" is caused by the heavy gamers who view VIP membership as a status symbol they aren't even willing to pay for. These gamers feel that they deserve it for free because they are so good at collecting vidya game money.