Sure, being an elite member sounds great - but just how much content are you getting by subscribing?

Free Play

* Does have customer support but it isn’t 24/7 premium customer support. Being ‘just an artist’ I don’t know all the specifics here.
* Can play with elite players in all areas of the game that come with the shipped game but not in new areas added post launch.
* Can not use ‘elite’ items. It should be noted that elite items are not more powerful/unbalanced items but rather have flashier appearances or simply new items that still fit in the overall balance scheme.
* Includes patching/balance updates. (in case that’s not obvious)
* On the same secure servers as ‘elite’ players.

Elite

* Regular content updates, small ones every month and large ones every three months. (ie. new quests, dungeons, weapons, monsters, etc. that can only be accessed by elite players.)
* Elite content will access higher
* Can create guilds.
* 24/7 Cust. Supp.
* More character slots/larger shared stash
* Additional play modes, hardcore, pvp, rp, etc..
* Hopefully there will never be server ques but -if- there are then elites get priority.

Right now, as it stands, even with Stonehenge, the subscription to Hellgate is more or less a complete joke. $9.95 a month to supposedly ‘help maintain the servers’. They have what, two US servers?

Minor content updates every month, like what? Since Hellgate was released in November there has been plenty of bug fixes but apart from this week’s release of Stonehenge, not a single content update. Every three months for a content update the size of Stonehenge? Well, I guess they are delivering as promised, but it’s not that large and overall, rather disappointing. At least code it so that subscribers and non-subscribers download a different patch and make the server accept the two different client versions. Why download new models, textures and terrain when you have to pay $9.95 a month to access it?

Also, you can’t just subscribe and then expect to continue playing after you unsubscribe. Sure, if you plan on being a subscriber for a long period, then that’s fine. But if you’re like a lot of other disappointed people that choose to either quit or return to free mode, you lose your paid month the moment you unsubscribe. It doesn’t matter if you subscribed a few hours ago or it’s been two weeks into your paid month, the moment you confirm it you lose it and aren’t allowed to access the subscriber content.

Flagship fails. Ok ok, the basis of this post (or rant) was mainly to voice the last paragraph. The subscriber content that they release is indeed pretty decent and coming from WoW that charges $5.00 more it really isn’t that bad. Though their updates are just as sluggish as Blizzard. Right now though, I wouldn’t recommend subscribing, I’d wait till they release a bit more content.

I understand the quote is a tad strange - please click on the title to view the post properly.