No More DADDI Wipes?

[Guest]

As it is now the case that if you stop paying for an account, it reverts to a free account, and the first sim still remains playable with the others greyed out, does this now mean that sims will not be wiped from accounts unpaid for 3 months? Or will the greyed out sims only be wiped? Or will the account be wiped if you don't log in at all for 3 months? I haven't seen this clarified anywhere and would be interested to know.

I am also assuming that if we resume paying for a lapsed account, that greyed out sims will be reinstated and become playable again?

It would be very reassuring to know that our sims are permanently "safe" if we stop playing for a time: 3 months always struck me as being a cruelly short time in view of the fact that most other games will keep avatars on lapsed accounts for years, or forever.

 

[Guest]

I agree it would be very nice of them, example my toontown account sat 2+ yrs and in fact all my toons were safe. Another example my sl chars were safe 6 months if not longer, and my WOW chars, well they set for AGESSS and they are all in fact safe and sound. Maybe if they gave us an option to pay a lesser fee just to keep them alive so to speak if we MUST leave them for short periods of time I'd be willing to pay. Summer is just around the corner and honestly with kids school break , work and summer holidays I am not on hardly and would love to be able to set them as free for the time i'm off. JMO

 

[Guest]

i dont know but with all the repercussions of free vs paid accounts im making sure my accounts never go unpaid. Id go a couple of months without paying but iwth all the new changes im making sure i always have em paid lol

 

[Guest]

I could not agree more!
Storage space costs nothing nowadays. Sims (those that have ever been a paid account) should never be deleted.
I've lost so many sims in the past, some even before the time was up.

 

[imported_ChipsAhoy]

I vote to keep 'em safe!

 

[imported_Danny Dots]

<blockquote><hr>

I could not agree more!
Storage space costs nothing nowadays. Sims (those that have ever been a paid account) should never be deleted.
I've lost so many sims in the past, some even before the time was up.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree.

As a returning player, I was upset that my si.. uhh avatar was gone. Of course, I knew it would be, but I was still upset.

Now with free accounts, I think if you stop paying your main avatar should be kept safe forever and ever! It would be better for EA because if someone wanted to rejoin after 90 days, they wouldn't have to worry about reskilling or gaining their job title back.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Now with free accounts, I think if you stop paying your main avatar should be kept safe forever and ever! It would be better for EA because if someone wanted to rejoin after 90 days, they wouldn't have to worry about reskilling or gaining their job title back.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. I also feel that i would be much more likely to come back to the gme if i was SURE my err simatars were safe. If would more than likely just not rejoin if I knew they would not be. Good was for EA to ensure people keep coming back for more. There's always a time in rl that calls for a game break, bills, family emergencies,trips,work. RL can be drag but it's not going aywhere, wish our simatars were guaranteed the same... just my 2 game currencies worth

 

[Guest]

Posted in Accounts, Update by lfancey on the March 17th, 2008
Hello,

First the Feature:
Soon we will be releasing an update that will allow you to designate your primary avatar. Even if this avatar is not your oldest you can select any avatar to be your primary. The purpose of the primary avatar will be to receive your gifts, subscription bonus, and general communications. It will be the avatar that remains if you choose to go from a paying customer to a free player.

The Bug Fix:
As you know free players are only allowed one avatar on EA-Land and one avatar on Test Center 3.

We have had a bug which has allowed free players to have more then one avatar per city. Once we have allowed you to select your primary avatar we will be releasing an update which will gray out all but the primary avatar. We will then purge the remaining avatars using the current avatar purge mechanism .

Cheers,

Lee

I think this Blog entry might answer some of the questions being asked.
I may be wrong but I interpreted it to mean that after the primary avatar had been chosen on a free account the grayed out ones would be wiped, or in their words, purged.

 

[imported_remflyer]

On March 17th, on the Dev Blog, Lee posted the following:

"We have had a bug which has allowed free players to have more then one avatar per city. Once we have allowed you to select your primary avatar we will be releasing an update which will gray out all but the primary avatar. We will then purge the remaining avatars using the current avatar purge mechanism."

On the blog I asked him:

"I too would like clarification on what you mean by your current avatar purging mechanism? Do we still have 90 days to re subscribe before our grayed out avatars are deleted?"

He did not post an answer back. So I my avatar trotted over to Town Hall and I asked Parizad, basically the same question "If we set our paid account to free, will the grayed out extra avatars on that account be deleted?"

Her answer was "No we will not delete those avatars."

As you can see there is some discrepancy in their statements which is understandable since the game is going through so many changes now. It would be very nice if they would communicate to the community in writing their official policy in regards to this. As others have posted here rl may force you to go to a free account for awhile. It would be terrible to lose the other skilled avatars on your account because of a lapse in payment. If you know you could retrieve them again by another payment on your account that is an incentive to go back to paying. How long they should keep the avatars stored I don't know but I hope it is at least 90 days if in fact they intend to purge them.

 

[Guest]

I think this is pretty scary stuff, at least if it's done automatically in the future.

What if the credit card bounces one month, and you come in the next day and find everything irreversibly gone.

We should have a way of "putting our account on hold", saying I can't pay this month but I'll be back so don't erase my existence...

It's just so unnecessary to have these concerns, since as I said storage space is incredibly cheap these days.

Think of WOW:
They have 10 million subscribers worldwide.
Yet they promise the players that if they cancel their account, their toons will NEVER be deleted.
EA Land has 30 thousand subscribers (probably like 10 thousand actual players) and they wipe every sim the next day you stop subscribing.

I think that's outrageous.
And they are very much underestimating how much it means to the players.