Special Account Upgrades stealth removed, don't be fooled!

All across the net you'll find information about the "stepped" upgrade offers for Anarchy Online that seem EXTREMELY tempting for people whom, like me, don't feel Anarchy online is worth a $20 "expansion" upgrade & $15/mo for 100% access to the game.

 

The most popular of these upgrades was the "Sloob" upgrade, or the SL only upgrade for $10, and $5 per month subscription. This was the most popular one for Froobs who wanted more from the game. Unfortunately, I come to find out last night that the "Sloob" option, and subsequently the "other" upgrades were completely ripped out of the account management page leaving several unfinished-link holes throughout their already mismanaged & disorganized account system.

 

This means that if you want to get off of Rubi-Ka as a Froob you are now forced to pay their $20 expansion cost & $15/month for an old as hell game. Seriously though, I still love AO & wondered why I left after playing with my friends the past week on our Froob accounts. However, I'm quickly reminded at the idiocy levels that is Funcom's staff.

 

Funcom's reason for removing these options? Oh, it's quite simple my dear Watson! These "Upgrade Packages" weren't as "successful" as they had hoped. Meaning, people didn't care whatsoever about anything past SL pretty much (one would think this is a warning sign about their newer content, but I digress!). So what do they do? They COMPLETELY rip out their different tiered packages that eased players into different expansions for a LESS favourable approach of blocking players completely who don't want the full package.

 

Literally, I know people who have been lvl 220 for more than a YEAR, and have STILL yet to finish the Expansion after SL, or SL for that matter. How in the hell they justify forcing Froobs to upgrade to a 100% full expansion account is beyond me when they most likely will stop playing far before even getting near SL's completion let alone the other two expansions after SL?

 

So let's recap RQ:

-Funcom offers new "Free-To-Play" players the "Tiered" package system of choosing what expansion they want to have, and a low subscription cost tailored to that specific expansion based on age (best deal vs time pretty much).

-Funcom, a year or so later, decide to rip these tiered packages out completely without telling anyone that results in broken links everywhere in their Anarchy Online account management page.

-Funcom is now getting $0 for new "Froob" players who wanted the SL $5 upgrade, but don't want to upgrade to a FULL account that costs $20 for the initial expansion package upgrade & also get charged $15/month so they up & quit instead. (Literally, I saw two "Froob" players complaining in OOC last night about this, and ended up quitting after they realized the $5 SL option was no longer valid)

 

 

The Icing on the cake today is that I cannot legitimately start a discussion over the subject on their forum without upgrading to a full account (again, $20 + $15 month fee) in order to activate my Forum account hehehe ^--^.

 

Oh Funcom, why you anger me so?!