So... EA won't LET me give them money? What?

[Mr.Fernandes]

My account is too new it seems (forgot the password to my old one - it was 7 years ago, dammit). I cna't buy an "advanced character token" because, wouldn't you know it, my account has to be 30 days old first. Bugger that with a red hot poker! In 30 days, I'll have leveled all those skills the old-fashioned way!

At the risk of commiting blasphemy by asking constructive questions on the ranting board, I do ahve 2 curiosiities:

1) Does anyone, seriously, know what the REASON for this is? WHat do they care how new I am? This isn't the first UO account I've ever (tried to) pay for, but say it was: what the devil does it matter if I just heard of the game 15 seconds ago? Will my money some how magically become less valuable due to game inexperience? I have to give them my credit card information to buy stuff, so its not like they have to worry about me writting them a bad check if they don't know me. Wouldn't it, logically, be a GOOD thing if new people who are taking up your gmae for the first time (of which, I venture to guess, there are not that many, given its age) are so enthusiastic they want to give you even more money in exchage for goodies? I'm getting back into rant mode, but I ams eriously curious to know what the business reason for this decision is. Does anyone know?


2) Is there any way to weasel around this restriction on this micro-transaction or any other?

Oh, and 3: while ion the subject of these MTs: are any of the "legacy" items any good, or would I be well advised to save my 9.99?

 

[Bazer]

they give the choice of shroud of shadows, charger of fallen, and green soulstone. So sure the yr worth it.

 

[Aran]

Steal credit card, open trial account, buy ass-load of tokens, offload tokens to random players. Bam. So long as you don't get caught, there's no way to "return" the goods bought with stolen credit, you've profited.

Make someone stick around for 30 days, there's more chance of catching them

 

[Duskofdead]

My account is too new it seems (forgot the password to my old one - it was 7 years ago, dammit). I cna't buy an "advanced character token" because, wouldn't you know it, my account has to be 30 days old first. Bugger that with a red hot poker! In 30 days, I'll have leveled all those skills the old-fashioned way!

At the risk of commiting blasphemy by asking constructive questions on the ranting board, I do ahve 2 curiosiities:

1) Does anyone, seriously, know what the REASON for this is? WHat do they care how new I am? This isn't the first UO account I've ever (tried to) pay for, but say it was: what the devil does it matter if I just heard of the game 15 seconds ago? Will my money some how magically become less valuable due to game inexperience? I have to give them my credit card information to buy stuff, so its not like they have to worry about me writting them a bad check if they don't know me. Wouldn't it, logically, be a GOOD thing if new people who are taking up your gmae for the first time (of which, I venture to guess, there are not that many, given its age) are so enthusiastic they want to give you even more money in exchage for goodies? I'm getting back into rant mode, but I ams eriously curious to know what the business reason for this decision is. Does anyone know?


2) Is there any way to weasel around this restriction on this micro-transaction or any other?

Oh, and 3: while ion the subject of these MTs: are any of the "legacy" items any good, or would I be well advised to save my 9.99?

Draconi commented in UHall just a few weeks back that a lot of the problems they have in terms of cheating/hacking/duping/account theft/item and gold farming by third parties/etc. comes from use of trial accounts. I'm sure not ALL of it comes from there, but in basically all the MMORPG's, free trial accounts are used in this capacity to some degree. (Players named szxzcvnasdjfnasdjgfalsd log into major cities in World of Warcraft, spam ads for third party sites, log out, and are replaced with some other character with a similar name advertising the same place, over and over again.)

So I'd expect to see more, not less, restrictions on what you can do with a trial account/new account as time goes on. Consider it the mandatory probation period we all have to go through to "prove" we're serious players and not bots or dupers. Unfortunate, but blame the site you bought gold from, if anyone.