Wednesday, July 10, 2013

BioWare's Missed Opportunity

Ever since I started my new job, I have been a little behind when it comes to the latest news.  As such, I was quite surprised to learn BioWare was planning on rewarding its subscribers for, well, subscribing.  I am a subscriber, so I found that to be pretty cool.

It didn't take long to find out what their plans were.

As some of you have already begun to figure out, every subscriber is receiving a bonus of 500 Cartel Coins. Some of you may not have gotten them yet but don't worry, the process takes a few hours. All of you should be receiving your 500 coins today. As an additional tease, we have something coming to the Cartel Market later this month that is going to be super, super cheap and available for one day only! All I will say for now is hang on to 10 Cartel Coins and look for details soon™.

So all subscribers get 500 Cartel Coins.  The 10 Cartel Coin item turned out to be a special title for KoTOR's 10th anniversary.

First, let me say thanks for the 500 Cartel Coins.  BioWare did not have to give us anything.  I'll most likely use them on expanded storage, or an extra Cartel Pack.  So it is certainly a useful gift.  I could think of a bunch of ways they could of gone that would have been worse.

That being said, I was disappointed.  Cartel Coins just seems like the easy way out.  "Oh, just throw some Cartel Coins at them."  I was really hoping for something in game instead.  Like maybe a permanent XP buff for alts or something else functional, if you know what I mean.  It could have been something that would tempt free players to become subscribers.

A one time payout just seems lazy, not to sound harsh.  I appreciate the coins, but I think some more thought could have been put behind it.