I have yet to see any of the people arguing against the hold start with the person that defaulted two to three months ago and was about to pay for their subscription before it idoc'd. They got flooded, lost everything, perhaps even a loved one. The hold gives them an additional 30 days to tend to their hardships as apposed to the couple of days IDOC takes.
People are using this baseline because it is a critical distinction to understanding what effect shutting off September housing
actually has regardless of what its stated purpose was or what intent was behind it.
Anyone who defaulted two to three months ago forfeited the ninety day safeguard that was already in place. It doesn't matter if they were doing the "ninety day game" or not.
They already had two to three months to correct it. They didn't. Broadsword shut down a core functionality to all customers, worldwide, for a service they are
currently paying for, to benefit a very small number of what at this point are technically
former customers who
may have been about to resubscribe.
You can't say out of one side of your mouth that UO housing is important enough to take steps beyond the normal safeguard to preserve and out of the other side of your mouth that it's not a big deal to cut off most of its functionality for a month--especially when it benefits unpaid accounts at the expense of paid ones. It is not the responsibility of the currently paying customers to give up part of what they paid for when there was already an adequate safeguard in place just because someone chose to forfeit it and then got caught unawares at the last minute. That is what the ninety day buffer is there for.
And again, if they had
only turned off decay, I doubt anyone would care. I wouldn't. Nothing would have been taken from paying players to benefit ones who hadn't paid. But that's not what they did. They prioritized non-paid accounts over paid ones. They prioritized former customers over current ones. They preserved a very small number of unpaid houses at the literal expense of everyone's paid housing functionality. They legitimized non-payment in a way that penalized those who paid.
I've seen variations of this being worthwhile "if just one house/account is saved". That is demonstrably mathematically untrue. If just one house on ninety day pay is saved, but just one person closes a monthly account because they feel slighted or this is the last straw or they opened that account solely for housing or whatever, then no, it is NOT worthwhile, not to Broadsword, and not to the rest of us who are now that much closer to watching the lights go out. You can't look at what is saved without also considering what could be lost with a given action, and the implementation of this one is almost certainly going to lose some accounts.
A monthly paid account is worth four times as much per year to Broadsword than one paid every ninety days.
How many
actual hurricane victims' UO houses do you think were saved by this move
and represent accounts that will go back to paying at least once every ninety days?
Now how many accounts
worldwide do you think will either reduce payment from monthly to every ninety days or cancel entirely at least in part because of this?
For ONE account cancelled because of (or partly because of) this move, it would take FOUR accounts having been legitimately preserved and guaranteed to pay again to break even on the loss. No matter how you spin it, unless four times as many accounts are saved as decide to cancel or downgrade after what amounts to an official legitimization of paying every ninety days at the expense of everyone who was paying monthly, then BS comes out worse than they would have if they had done nothing.
Do you think there are
four times as many
hurricane-affected accounts that were at the end of their 90-day buffer with houses saved by turning off September housing as there are accounts
worldwide that are now in danger of being downsized or cancelled at least
in part because of it?
I don't.
Obviously I don't know the account numbers, but my impression as a player is that we are steadily losing accounts faster than we are gaining them. The game can't last like that. By prioritizing a tiny fraction of unpaid accounts in a relatively small part of the world over all currently paid accounts worldwide, Broadsword just gambled with
all our UO houses at very bad odds. They made a bet that all customers, worldwide, would be okay with not getting the full use of their paid accounts for a month in a way that benefits only people who hadn't paid for over two months, and I think they will lose that bet. I think BS will lose more money trying to cater to people gambling with their already generous safeguard than they retained by saving a few houses for a few of those people.
It's not about compassion for hurricane victims. The game
already compensated for contingencies like this years ago when they added the ninety day buffer to account for
anyone's unforeseen circumstances or hardships. Over two months already unpaid is not unforeseen. Artificially extending it served only a small fraction of those who had
already chosen to forfeit it, and the
way it was extended devalued a month of
every account worldwide that had not.
Now they have lost revenue, irritated current customers, and set a precedent that they can't realistically keep repeating and that will likely create more resentment and cries of foul play if they don't when the next disaster hits.
That doesn't make sense and is bad for the game.
Intent is not magical. I'm sure they
meant well with this, but they didn't think it through and ultimately I think it will do more harm than good. If misprioritization and shortsighted decisions end up resulting in paying accounts dropping below whatever threshold is required to keep the game going, then we will
all be without our UO housing, including the hurricane victims.
And why would I email that clown, that is kind of like peeing against the wind unless you are in her clique.
