Veteran Reward Programs – Do They Work?
In scooting around City of Heroes lately, I was struck by how many players have built up a truly impressive amount of veteran rewards. The game rewards players’ continued loyalty (aka “subscription feeds”) every three months, generally by unlocking new costume pieces, pets, abilities, titles and soforth. None of it is game-breaking to have or not have, but it’s all certainly nice to acquire and it carries over to any new characters you create in the future.
Likewise, Star Wars Galaxies offers players rewards based on 3-month stints in game (mostly house decoration objects). Other MMORPGs that dish out vet rewards include Tabula Rasa (although fat lot of good it’ll do to have them now), Ultima Online, EverQuest 2, EverQuest, Anarchy Online and Vanguard. Looking through this list, it’s obvious that SOE has a lot of warm fuzzies toward the idea of Veteran Reward programs — and they should be commended on it.
We see lots of examples of loyal consumer rewards in the real world, after all — buy ten cups of coffee, get the 11th free; bank freebies; magazine discounts after you’ve been a multi-year subscriber. It’s one of those win-win situations you don’t often find in the business world: companies win, because they get more in the way of business and usually aren’t losing a lot of money through the promotion, and consumers win because they perceive that they’re getting something for nothing (or something for what they were going to do anyway). It creates goodwill between the two parties, and in the MMOsphere, it helps to prevent players from jumping ship.
I do find it curious that some companies, such as Blizzard, Mythic and Turbine, don’t have much in the way of any veteran rewards program. For MMO companies, the cost of implementing something like this has to be minimal — they’re just creating fluff and little bonuses that have no shipping cost whatsoever.
Perhaps achievement systems are the subtle “new wave” of veteran rewards — giving you goodies for things that take you a while to do (and thus keep you subscribed), but it isn’t quite the same. I wonder if more of these titles might see a bump in subscribers — particularly the older titles — if they’d hop on board with this idea.
- Posted in: City of Heroes ♦ General
Guild Wars was another MMO with veteran rewards. They dropped “birthday presents” into the character’s inventory every year after the character was created. These gifts included a random miniature pet of varying rarity. Some might be awesome, others silly or mundane. But it did encourage one to fill out your character slots, even if you didn’t play the characters.
I’ve got no issue with loyalty programs like ‘Veteran Rewards’. I only worry that it makes gamers more accepting of the subscription based business model, which I really hope disappears (or improves).
WAR had some veteran rewards for DAOC players, at least — Pendragon’s Knot — but that’s about all I’ve seen. I’m looking forward to Guild Wars 2 and the way they plan on building up your previous characters in the Hall of Monuments, which should be neat.
-nick / reroller
I’d love to see veteran’s rewards in WAR. Even if it’s something simple like a title or trophy, I think most players would appreciate being rewarded for their loyalty.
Veteran rewards exist to persuade players to maintain their subscription and are of most use (business wise) to those MMO’s which are not “big players” – and I use that term simply to put the likes of WoW apart from EQ2 for example.
In WoW you have loads of new accounts being opened all the time – an influx of new subscriptions. In the older, more established games you do not have this regular influx apart from when a major update is made – in City of Heroes this was when City of Villains was launched.
I doubt that Blizzard cares all that much whether or not some vets get bored and cancel their sub – the other games however want to keep these vets and so offer them an incentive to keep their sub going even if they are not playing the game for a few months.
It’s a great business plan in my opinion providing that the rewards do not unduly enhance the vets – from what I have seen in City of Heroes there is no balance problems to worry about.