Champions Online lifetime subs offer has ended
Fans not exactly pleased.
Earlier this month Cryptic announced details of limited time lifetime and six month subscription offers for its upcoming MMO, Champions Online.
Cryptic has now announced that all special offer subscriptions are now gone, leading to some angry fan feedback on the Champions Online forums. While the six month subs can still be purchased at the standard price of $77.84, the lifetime subs are gone and Cryptic says it has "no current plans to offer another Lifetime subscription plan".
Following a flurry of forum posts by angered fans, Cryptic posted in an attempt to calm the situation.
"First, we do sincerely apologise for the rather abrupt end to the promotional offers. It was never our intention to spring that news on our fans or anyone else. In short, we had an allotment of special subscription packages to sell over a fixed time (ending September 1). When we began approaching the offer cap before the date cap, we had to message. Frankly, we never suspected our special offers to be so popular.
"While we did mention that supplies were limited in an announcement post, we definitely should have emphasised our limits more explicitly in all our messaging. Again, we just never expected supply to be any kind of an issue. The community response to our offers has been... amazing."
The problem fans have does not appear to be the fact the offer was limited, but that it was not made clear that there was a limited number of subs on offer - not, as many thought, a limited time offer to end of September 1.
Cryptic concluded; "We do apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and we do sincerely hope you understand and come play Champions Online with us this September."
Via VE3D
User Comments
TiffanyB
Needless to say, there was a frenzy when they announced their little "surprise" *cough, "false advertisement," cough," and people scrambled to buy the game, thus sending server crashes that prevented anyone from even having a chance. By the time the site was back up, they were mysteriously "sold out."
In closing, since GOOD customer service is so important to our family, we did what we felt was the absolute right thing to do in this situation. We first called Gamestop and canceled our order, and then we called all of our friends who had also pre-ordered and told them about the lies that this company promoted and that we wouldn't be playing this game if the lifetime subscription offer wasn't honored as advertised. Although the majority of our friends planned on doing a monthly subscription, they also canceled their pre-orders because of this underhanded marketing scheme carried out by this company. They're calling their friends as well and letting them know to do the same.
Word of mouth is a powerful thing and there are just too many games out there that are ran properly, and by honorable companies. There's no need to promote one that lies and cheats straight from the jump.
The only way we would even consider playing this game EVER again, would be if they remedied the situation by honoring their ORIGINAL offer.