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Allowing free accts. to essentially play the same game in TC3 as paying subscribers in EA Land was a major mistake IMO...the free players are flocking there in large part it seems to me, or current subscribers cancelling when they realize they can get a free ride in the test city. This does nothing to help the games future as I doubt many even go near an atm. In the big picture, it puts the future of both in jeopardy...and a few perks for subscribing don't mean a damn thing to new accounts who just wanna play and can do it for nothing.
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You have a point, but the flip side would be that if they can't play anywhere with full benefits then it would not giv them any kind of first hand idea of what they are missing out on. Also, the free accounts puts PLAYERS into the game, and what made alot of people cancel their accounts in the first place wasn't the lack of updates and communication as it was simply the lack of people around them to play with. I was one of those people. I figured if I wanted to play a game alone I would just play offline, so I started playing TS2. When I started seeing around the boards and in game how many more people there were, I reinstated my account paid and recently talked hubby into reinstating his, and we are thinking about reinstating a 3rd if we can figure out a way once the tax check comes in and we can get some bills paid again. That's $20 extra in EA's pocket. And I know that there were other players who did the same thing, so that's even more. And with Amnesty and the further differentiations between accounts, there is beginning to be more and more incentive to get off free status, which is why we as premium players have GOT to push the URLs for Stratics, the blog, and the Wiki in game and particularly the post about Amnesty so that nobody that is in our presence can say they did not know. I believe the differences in avatars and the loss of the accumulation of skil locks are going to be the kickers.....I was talking to several people in game about that tonight and they were like 'oh [censored], guess maybe I should rethink not upgrading to premium, I hate skilling and don't want too much decay!' So EA might just see a real subscription boom here in April for the cut off date.
