08/08/2015

Neverwinter gets a Subscription

It was already rumoured a couple of months ago, but now it's official: Neverwinter gets a subscription option. It's not officially called a sub (instead they call it the "VIP Program"), and you can buy it from the Zen store, so you don't necessarily have to shell out real money yourself if someone else is willing to trade you the Zen.

It offers the kind of perks you would expect from a good subscription option, such as XP bonuses, faster travel, discounts at vendors and a small Zen store perk in the form of a free enchanted lockbox key every day. It's pretty good value for money actually.

Usually I'd be all over that kind of thing, but something has been holding me back in this case and I finally figured out what it is. When a game offers me the option to play for free and be nagged about microtransactions or to pay a subscription, I expect the sub to make the microtransactions go away or make them irrelevant, to let me "play in peace". However, with Neverwinter's highly pay-to-win nature that doesn't work - you still have to grind astral diamonds until you're blue in the face or pay real money to get ahead. So this sub isn't really an alternative to playing for free... it's just one more service that the already paying players can shell out money for (even if it's not a bad service).

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