Still there are some meaningful benefits for a veteran players:
- 10% exp and at least one weekend with extra 10%-20% VIP bonus - this makes your TR trains quite shorter
- opening elites on hardcore
- 500 TP
- extra saga skip (makes GH madstone + crucible skip combo possible etc)
- gold roll once a week (well it's still something)
- extra character slots on top, extra shared bank slots on top - you cannot get them in any other way
- least but not last - customer service priority!
after a few reincarnations that 10% is barely noticeable. . . given that the base xp for quests is actually pretty minimal. The only reason why my characters ever get decent xp is due to greater tomes of learning, guild buffs, and xp pots. That 10% which gives me between 1 and 100 xp usually and that it really doesn't impress me much as a sub benefit. Now, if they got rid of the need for more xp with reincarnations as a sub benefit I would get behind that as a massive improvement, but I don't think they're going to rework their system.
Opening dungeons on hard or elite, yeah. . .doesn't particularly matter to me, I can run it on normal, then hard, then elite. . .and since I've never noticed a real increase in loot drops ever in over a decade based on dungeon difficulty, regardless of what's displayed and said about the percentages going up, such a thing simply doesn't matter to me. Unless hard dungeons gave me a 50% chance at a named item, and elite a 75% chance at one, and it actually worked that way, then the difficulty setting is just a training ground so that I can deal with harder upper level dungeons ( though calling them harder is a bit of a stretch). I know some people like the challenge, and it was more challenging before the mobs started playing ring around the rosey with characters and setting off dungeon alerts that never go away, not to mention dungeons that freeze and you have to start over because the npcs have suddenly decided they want to mill about unhostile and leave the door closed with no way to open it. . .there's a whole list of issues, but I digress. . .
I know some people really love opening dungeons up on whatever setting, and to be honest, that should be a free benefit so long as you aren't on your first life.
500 ddo points, I seem to get them every other or every third month, not every month. Not sure what's going on there and my experience with support has been 90% of the time less than satisfactory. . . I realize they have a small staff, so I don't mind waiting a few days on a reply for a ticket, but more often than not the reply is 'that has been forwarded to so and so' or 'sorry we can't help'. Take for example if you want to transfer a toon, if you have a guild you made, pets, mounts, and such you need to kiss all of that good bye, even if you spent cash on any of it. Support will tell you to look at a faq or they can't help or, 'too bad you should have known better' sort of bs. This sort of thing is an issue that needs to be fixed as a whole, especially if some one has spent money on it. By the by, if you sub to swtor you start with 500 points of game store currency which increases every few months, not to mention you can get a grant every month for free store points by using their dual authentication app, and subs have access to
all content in the game, old and new. Now, ssg could still offer the bonus content - mounts, hirelings, sentient gems, etc. - but they really need to start evaluating what they're charging for things given the economy today.
The isle of dread ultimate bundle costs around $130 before any tax is applied, this includes two pets (cosmetic), hirelings (2 - low and legendary level), cosmetic outfit, a one time use heroic otto's box, a one time use epic otto's box, the isle of dread content (which was poorly done and illustrates a lack of attention to detail or effort), a destiny tome, and a teleport item (which isn't even needed).
So, for the price of a full triple A game plus subsequent expansions you get a pittance of things which are no where near the same quality and some of which can only be used once on one character. It's a rip off.
The gold roll use to be once a day, but apparently that was too much for SSG to keep up, honestly I don't think missing out on a $1.5 a day from a rng roll really hurt SSG's pocket all that much and it was just an excuse to take something semi nice away from subs. If they're making that much money off their gambling rng rolls then they're using a pretty sleazy tactic to generate income.
I'll quote something from a law agency about this, but mind, the us currently doesn't have set laws federally against the gotchapon/gambling addiction practices in mmo's like europe does: "Several consumer protection laws, such as the Federal Trade Commission Act and state consumer protection laws, may apply to gambling in video games. These laws prohibit unfair and deceptive practices, and they may be used to regulate gambling mechanics that are seen as misleading or manipulative."
So, if a customer or group of customers actually got tired of being fleeced there could potentially be some real legal issues for SSG.
Character slots. . .one? Two? I really have no clue how many you get with this since I buy a slot for each of my characters.
Shared bank is a nice aspect, I have no complaints about that except for the small size and upgrade costs.
I'm not sure what sort of customer service priority there is for being vip sub, are ftp players completely ignored for weeks on end or something? Response time as I have noticed is between two and ten days, regardless of my sub. And more often than not it's just forwarding and that's it or they can't help (90% of the time they can't do anything, so why are they even there?). There's no real in game support, no gm is going to appear if you log a bug and get stuck in a dungeon (unlike other mmos). The stuck command has an hour cool down, so better watch out for those spots that have been borked for over a decade. Honestly the 'customer service' is anything but. I've had to go so far as to pm cordovan before to ask what was going on over there with tickets, so I have no clue what you're even talking about with priority.
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I get it, there are current benefits, and they're not horrible, but they're not good either. As a vip you get limited access to dungeons which ftp don't have (unless they bought the packs). You get to open things up on a setting you like (which should be free anyway). Maybe you'll get a monthly grant of ddo points (this doesn't seem to always happen).
I pay for six month intervals, so not like I'm going to get a refund. But, maybe I won't get the next six months, maybe I will. It's a question as to whether or not I think the cost is worth what's offered, and right now. . .it's not.
. My usual experience with CS in other games is yelling into a void or getting a response akin to "tough, but we won't do anything about it".