If I couldn't afford at least $25 per month for entertainment purposes, I wouldn't have started playing an IRE MUD. I actually planned for $50-60 a month, to be set aside and spent during sales. I still plan to do that, except now $25 of it will go into the membership.

I'm patient, but not nearly patient enough to achieve omnitrans and artifacts without coughin' up some dough.

I started playing an IRE MUD because I can't afford $25 a month for entertainment purposes. ):

By the way, looks like getting a membership does add organization credits.

readlog geomancers

2010/05/26 00:04:29 - Credits +5. Reason: Member purchase. <-- same time I got my membership.

Might be a dumb question, but how do you cancel it once you've started?

I haven't tried canceling an order, but under the 'My Account' tab in Pay Pal, you can click 'Profile' and then 'My preapproved payments'. Clicking on 'Lusternia, LLC' sends you to the right page where there's a link for you to click 'Cancel'.

In HELP ELITES, it says to e-mail Lusternia about it.

Hah, something I might actually be able to justify purchasing for myself... once I get a steady income stream. I was hoping it would be $15/month, as I could then apply the same faulty calculations to justify this as I did to my WoW account all those years ago, but I guess I'll just have to wait until I can actually afford it.

Honestly, if your entertainment budget is $25 a month, that's not bad at all. Dinner and a movie costs waaaaaaaay more than that, and that lasts you a night, whereas Lusternia lasts you all month!

I liked this idea so much that I actually felt the need to post about it. One of the very few good things that Lady Estarra implemented in the months that have passed since I started playing again.

Besides one (minor?) complaint - now people who can afford to spend real money on a free game will not only have the lessons and arties advantage, but also the experience advantage, it's a very good idea, and I don't even plan to buy epic membership any time soon.

Though I can't help but wonder how far we are from IRE games becoming pay to play.

I highly doubt it will get to that point, Faymar. People say similar things about how Blizzard is one step away from selling items and gold because they're selling pets and mounts now. I think it's a bit of a stretch.

These games will always remain free to play, pay for perks, I'm sure. I imagine enough people will get memberships that it won't be an issue.

These memberships are IRE-wide, so I think they've been implemented by powers even greater than Estarra.

Also, I don't really think of IRE games as being "free" per se. "Free to play" is simply a marketing stratagem, because they do need an influx of funding to pay the bills, pay salaries, and turn a profit for the company. You have the option of playing completely for free, but there's a mighty long road ahead of you if you additionally wish to have trans skills and artifacts.

There are always the options of going the Iasmos/Zarquan route and coding for credits, or Barding/Artisanaling your way up. My very first tri-trans character in an IRE game got there because I was commissioned to draw something for a couple of dragons. Not only did I win 300 credits for first place, but they paid me 400 credits for the drawing itself.

Yeah. I plan on entering Bardic and Artistic contests myself.

Coding... well, if I learn to code Lua half as well as Zarquan, I'll be happy with that alone, credits be damned.

Don't worry, if you are a bit patient and like coding, you will learn Lua.

Well this is an attractive option to a players like myself who don't have obscene amounts of spare time or money. Previously I had pretty much decided that I had bought all the credits I was ever going to buy. This is still a good chunk of change, but I don't have a problem paying for entertainment.

I will have to think carefully about this, because it IS very appealing, but I'm considering whether it's entirely worth it when I only have one Lusternia character (and as of yet I don't feel the need/desire to change that).

It's an excellent program, don't get me wrong - but as general feedback I would love to see a tiered system with a one-character option and an "all-characters-on-(game)" option; maybe even an IRE-wide option if this really takes off.

PS. DOES this make all characters tied to a given address no-delete/no-suicide?

Winning contests in-game works great too. I'm three skills away from omni-trans, one of them already mythical, and have a handful of artifacts and I've bought a total of 50 credits. <,<

Tiered would be cool, yeah. Although this does vaguely make me want to try random alts. Nothing I'd stick with (I'm too much of a collector to ignore my decked out main for long), but little things for fun maybe.

My problem with having alts has always been twofold: 1. I have much less in the way of skills (partially alleviated by a membership); and 2. I start playing an alt and it's awesome-fun being responsibility-free. Then I start neglecting my main's responsibilities and people contest because "Omg (name) hasn't been online as much as normal!!!!11"; the corollary to this is that I then start gunning for things on the alt.

Juggling appointed or elected positions across 3+ characters is really kind of a pain in the butt.

I'm going to be that guy and say, the idea of being able to buy demigawd is awsome!! Then in my serious voice I'll add, when can I buy an artifact tac nuke?