What is wrong....

[Void75]

Why is the pay part of the site down? This seems odd to me that the one area that is only for people who have paid is now broken.

Is there anyway the Conquer Club can grow up and get a real system going that does not need to be re-scaled every two months.

I think the site is awesome and someone needs to make the site Primetime or some else will build a better Club House.

[disgruntledewok]

I had 4 speed games going when it went down today, I lost about 80 points.

[Splash_x]

glad i didn't have any going on...

[pepperonibread]

One area?

Premium Membership earns members the following benefits:
* Playing UNLIMITED simultaneous games
* Creating password-protected PRIVATE games (which Free members may join, too)
* Having a GOLDEN rank icon display next to their name
* Feeling that WARM and FUZZY feeling you get from supporting a website that you love

I do it for #4...

[spearfish]

Umm.... yeah I don't know if this can remain free for much longer. Or they might have to reduce the # of games for free members to three.

I think ads would do it though.

[Fruitcake]

There are many ways a site like this can increase resources. Advertising is but one.

[TheTrust]

If they reduced the amount of games playable for freemium members it would not increase their resources so much as discourage continued activity. People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

If they have to pay they will simply go to another free site.

[comic boy]

If they reduced the amount of games playable for freemium members it would not increase their resources so much as discourage continued activity. People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

If they have to pay they will simply go to another free site.

Translation

If you reduce each of my multis to 3 games I will need to create some more

[chessplaya]

lol

[detlef]

If they reduced the amount of games playable for freemium members it would not increase their resources so much as discourage continued activity. People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

If they have to pay they will simply go to another free site.

Great, let 'em freaking go. Why are they obligated to give away a free product?

The only logical reason for allowing you to play for free is to get you turned on to the site. If you like it, pay up. It's $25 for the entire year. That's $2 per month! There's not a whole lot out there that costs $2 per month.

So, assuming the issue is that they're not making enough money to keep the site fast enough (which, of course, I have no idea is, in fact, the case), then I absolutely agree that those of us who pay should not have to suffer so some cheapskate doesn't have his precious free risk game limited.

Frankly, I think that the free thing should be a demo-only deal. After a certain amount of time, you either pay or your account gets deactivated. Even if you only play one game per month, it's still half the price of renting a movie at blockbuster. Suck it up.

Oh, and before anyone plays the stupid class warfare card. Remember, a) it's a game, I'm not trying to take away your food stamps and b) Did I mention it's $2 per month?

[Fruitcake]

People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

How did they learn to play in the first place?

One assumes they played on the game board....which someone will have had to pay for...that is as long as they are over the age of about 8.

'Freemium' (a ghastly modernist expression I feel) does have its upsides, and not just for the players.

I think these problems may well serve us positively in the long run, as long as they are resolved.

It is becoming obvious this site now needs to take a deep breath, review why it is here (from the owners perspective), and start to get serious. I have posted a response on the dugs and bugs thread about this.

There are many ways resources can be increased without taking away the free sector (yes I think that part is inherently crucial) and without betraying the 'community' aspect that I have been led to believe is important.

While we all know about the hugely successful sites that have prostituted themselves in the race to profit and income, there are also many ways this site could be highly successful without doing this.

As long as some kind of real focus and strategic planning is brought to bear this site will recover from these present issues and continue to grow from strength to strength, while serving its community in ever better ways.

the other option is something none of us would want to see.

[Iliad]

If they reduced the amount of games playable for freemium members it would not increase their resources so much as discourage continued activity. People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

If they have to pay they will simply go to another free site.

Great, let 'em freaking go. Why are they obligated to give away a free product?

The only logical reason for allowing you to play for free is to get you turned on to the site. If you like it, pay up. It's $25 for the entire year. That's $2 per month! There's not a whole lot out there that costs $2 per month.

So, assuming the issue is that they're not making enough money to keep the site fast enough (which, of course, I have no idea is, in fact, the case), then I absolutely agree that those of us who pay should not have to suffer so some cheapskate doesn't have his precious free risk game limited.

Frankly, I think that the free thing should be a demo-only deal. After a certain amount of time, you either pay or your account gets deactivated. Even if you only play one game per month, it's still half the price of renting a movie at blockbuster. Suck it up.

Oh, and before anyone plays the stupid class warfare card. Remember, a) it's a game, I'm not trying to take away your food stamps and b) Did I mention it's $2 per month?

Not this again. By reudcing this yo uwill only cause less freemiums, which will cause less premiums

[lord voldemort]

yes true
the problem is getting fixed now so yer
they will reduce premium games first i think
well put a cap on anyway

[TheTrust]

If they reduced the amount of games playable for freemium members it would not increase their resources so much as discourage continued activity. People that play freemium play because they want to enjoy a game of risk without having to pay.

If they have to pay they will simply go to another free site.

Great, let 'em freaking go. Why are they obligated to give away a free product?

The only logical reason for allowing you to play for free is to get you turned on to the site. If you like it, pay up. It's $25 for the entire year. That's $2 per month! There's not a whole lot out there that costs $2 per month.

So, assuming the issue is that they're not making enough money to keep the site fast enough (which, of course, I have no idea is, in fact, the case), then I absolutely agree that those of us who pay should not have to suffer so some cheapskate doesn't have his precious free risk game limited.

Frankly, I think that the free thing should be a demo-only deal. After a certain amount of time, you either pay or your account gets deactivated. Even if you only play one game per month, it's still half the price of renting a movie at blockbuster. Suck it up.

Oh, and before anyone plays the stupid class warfare card. Remember, a) it's a game, I'm not trying to take away your food stamps and b) Did I mention it's $2 per month?

Its not the point of $2, $200 or $.25

A famous quote you will recognize:

Designed for the casual gamer, playing Conquer Club is not a time consuming process. You can take your turn in 5 minutes with your morning cup of coffee or in between classes. A game typically lasts several days, but hardcore risk takers can play multiple games at once and stay up all night strategizing their next move.

It's free to play, so what are you waiting for? Register now!


Its great to provide bonus features for paying players. I support that 100%. But some players here arent looking to pay to play. They just come here and play. They play (4 games) and if they are inclined to get that additional feature they can buy the premium, if not, they continue to play with what is available to them for free. What you are considering is requiring payment to play at all. Instead of a base experience here for free with possible upgraded experience with pay, you are saying: "Pay for the upgraded experience or dont play at all".

From a business perspective it just does not do well.

[State409c]

It is becoming obvious this site now needs to take a deep breath, review why it is here (from the owners perspective), and start to get serious.

Hahahahaha. Get serious.???! hahahahahaha

rofl hahahahah breathe hahahah

When one of these yoyos patched the server a couple of weeks ago, I got stuck in 2 no cards triples games against majors/lieutenants/captains with cooks and cadets on my team because I couldn't drop them. I've never played a triples game, and I've played no cards maybe twice before and found I sucked at it.

You'd think, if they cared about the users, they could have done me the favor of at least giving me the points back I lost considering it was their mistake that cost me the points.

Nope. "YOU SHOULDN'T SIGN UP FOR GAMES YOU DON'T WANT TO PLAY"

Holy shit? Really? With that logic just get rid of the damn Drop Game button since it obviously isn't needed.

This is on top of all the other dicking over they've done to me regarding feedback and their willy nilly application of some standard they don't have.

These guys aren't professionals, this site isn't run professionally, don't expect otherwise anytime soon. Just be happy if you get to take your turns and don't get poled in the out hole by the server or by their whacky moderation of feedback and their protectionism of their lamo buddies that spend all their waking ours here playing the games.

[detlef]

Trust, listen to what you are saying-

You're basically saying that it is bad business to not allow people who want to use your product for free and don't intend to upgrade to continue doing so.

Is that bad business? Or just bad for you?

Believe me, I understand the notion of why they need to allow some free play. Perhaps my "demo" notion is a bit too extreme. However, I don't see why. I signed up for free, played some games, realized it was a product that I wanted, and paid. What value do you provide for CC? They don't sell ad space, so the fact that you help establish some gaudy traffic numbers does him little good. So, why is somebody who does not intend to ever pay lack for the use of his game important to his business model?

I run a restaurant. One might argue that giving some food away might help drive business my way. However, let's just say that I was giving away so much food that my dining room was filled with people who were not paying. So much so, that the people who'd decided they liked my food enough to pay for the "premium" food could not get a table or get served in a timely manner because my staff was running around giving away free eggrolls. Would it not make sense for me to tweak my free food policy?

I look around the vast majority of games that I'm in and mostly see gold icons. Obviously, all of these players were, at one time free players. We all were. Which is why I'm not suggesting that free accounts be done away with. However, the only logical business rationale for allowing free play is to get somebody hooked and entice them to start paying.

This, however, is not what you are advocating. You are advocating free play to allow people who don't want to pay to be able to do so. That, is philanthropy, not, as you suggest, a business decision.

Mind you, I'm not privy to the inner workings here. Perhaps the problem does not, in fact, lie with the servers being jammed up by a legion of freeloaders. My point was simply this: If, in fact, CC can't afford the infrastructure to provide speedy games for both it's paying and non-paying players, guess which group I think needs to go...

Now, I also have no problem with also limiting the number of games paid members can play. Hell, it will help save them from themselves. It would also stop the serial jerk-offs who start 100 games and deadbeat in all of them just to piss people off. Perhaps there could be other levels of membership. $25 for people like me who want to have about 10 or so games going and be able start private games, etc. and another $10-$15 for people who want to go bat shit and play like 50 at a time. This, of course, assumes that the problem is cash flow, of course.

[TheTrust]

Interesting analysis.

But CC wasnt set up to be a business primarily (at least I dont believe so). It was set up so that people could come and play risk. Coldfirestudios and other sites do the same thing. They started up game types and accepted "donations" by people.

With time, the providers look for ways to encourage further donations. IE: Premium. They do not want to discourage non-paying members from a community and thus look for ways to appeal to others to donate. A game example would be SPACE: Glory Through Conquest, wherein moderators enhanced decorations, additional battle reports and some added features to pages that made things easier for premium players. Freemium players however were not disadvantaged in the least. They would be capable of having access to the same information as the premium players however, they would need to do all the math themselves and wait for some loadings of certain pages etc.... extra efforts not needed if you were premium, however it did not give a premium player an advantage over a freemium and thats why it fared so well.

What exactly are you suggesting as the ends to your means?

It seems like what you are displaying is a distain for people playing for free. I play CC, I enjoy my time here. I come here to participate in games with other players who do the same. Do I have to pay for it? No, thats the great thing about CC. Its the main attracting quality. Anyone can sign up and play for free.

The idea is that when you play for free and are restricted to 4 games you want to play more, so premium is normally purchased for the unlimited games. That is an example of an accurate way to encourage premium purchase. You do not isolate players that do not purchase it. For whatever reason you purchase your premium, like of the product or whatever, you are getting what you paid for. I have chosen that 4 games is fine for me, I dont have to play more than that and because I play CC only when possible (and that time declines every week it seems) I do not have the need to upgrade to premium.

Are you suggesting a policy wherein every game you see has all yellow? You pay or no play? I had been premium before (thanks to gifts) and perhaps its easy to feel after you have purchased your premium play that everyone else should as well.

But its not the case. If you can only play 4 games or less at a time and just want to be in games with other players (some can be freemium or premium it makes no difference) they just want to play with someone, it doesnt matter if the person their playing with has paid or not. Then You really dont have to purchase the premium, its a whole new game, this is like a demo as you have said, but it is an assured offer. Much like a retail store that a friend of mine works with keeps giving out samples. They do it every day, the samples cost money to produce and they recieve nothing from it but the increase in potential sales. Its worth it to keep offering those samples and not look down on people who will take the sample even if they dont feel like purchasing the complete product.

[Plutoman]

Just to put in my opinion - I"m getting premium as soon as possible, within the month.

But if lackattack started eliminating the free play (not saying he will, just an example) I would not. That would mean this site isn't supporting the ideals of being able to enjoy yourself playing once a day without needing to pay.

Sure, the site is certainly worth it. But not everyone needs to pay, not everyone can pay (part of my problem is getting my parents to pay for something online), and not everyone wants to pay.

I'll pay because I want to support the site and what it is trying to do, and for the benefits - only both. I'm not going to support a site that starts cutting out free players just because they're not paying.

[detlef]

Let the record state that I was only advocating restricting free play if the economics of the situation did not allow enough money to support the current community. Assuming this is the case and the developers feel this is short sighted and that free play is paramount to their growth and success, then they are free to invest some more of their own capital to push it over the edge of creating a viable ratio of premium and free players to allow enough revenue to support the site.

However, if a) the economic situation is how I have described and b) they are not prepared to invest more of their own capital, then they have the obligation to their paying customers to deliver them the product they paid for and if that comes at the expense of limiting free play, then so be it.

It's really that simple.

Allowing free play needs to be thought of as a means to an end, not the reason why sites like this exist. If this is what lack does as a living, then he owes it to nobody to provide them with a free source of entertainment. To be honest, that sense of entitlement seems very palpable in the statements of many people.

[lackattack]

I just want to say that I plan to keep with our model of allowing 4 free games and supporting the site solely from premium memberships.

Our current problems were not economics, rather bad timing. The server started to degrade / collapse when I was away on vacation / still catching up. I was caught with my pants down, so to speak In the future I have to be more proactive when there are signs of server stress.

[Minister Masket]

The server started to degrade / collapse when I was away on vacation / still catching up. I was caught with my pants down, so to speak

Disgusting.
There are children in the room!