SOE has always used the station access to its benefit as far as subscribers go........If they have 100k station access accounts then they would count all of those as active subscribers in every game........Its one of the downsides to having a program like that because you never actually know how well their games are doing........Alot of us have always wondered jsut how many subs games liek Vanguard, EQ1, and EQ2 would have if it werent for station access.

Originally posted by Theocritus

If they have 100k station access accounts then they would count all of those as active subscribers in every game

for this Free Realms announcement  - they said  they did not

forums.station.sony.com/freerealms/posts/list.m

we're only counting existing Station Members (and Station Access subscribers) who have actually come to the Free Realms website and registered an account.

Pex

Free Realms Community Manager

Originally posted by TdogSkal

Originally posted by Wolfdor

Huh, I just checked my SOE account and it has me listed as an active member of Free Realms as well.  That 1 million number doesn't seem so special now.

 

Yea your account is "active" but it is not counted.  You have to have a charater created to be counted.  But keep hating on SOE as I am sure they are the only compane that pads their numbers.

You guys need to get over the NGE thing already.  Dam

If they're not counted, why have they even been registered as active players?  They're not active in Free Realms; they've had nothing whatsoever to do with this game, but here they come to find out that SOE says they're playing it.  Then they read how great Free Realms is because there are so many people playing it.  What are they supposed to think?

Who says they weren't counted?  SOE?  Well, since SOE apparently has them listed as playing a game that they are not, why would anyone believe them?

Sony got their butts kicked by the State Attorney General for screwing with radio ratings to make their artists look more popular than they actually were.  This smells similar. 

Originally posted by todeswulf

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

Originally posted by todeswulf

Originally posted by Bob_Blawblaw

I'd urge all of you who have had station accounts in the past to go and see if you are a subscriber of FreeRealms. I checked mine (looking for a SWG vet trial activation) and discovered I'm 'playing' FreeRealms. I reported this on other boards in cyberspace and others after checking have discovered the same thing.

Now, I personally don't care if they send me an email saying they've activated my account to make it easier for me to log in and give it a go, but that's not what they're doing here. This is sleazy (as per SOE usual).

This is padding the numbers to convince people that 'everyone is playing FreeRealms'.

Not cool.

 

You are a lair.

They are only counting those that have logged in the game and created a Character.  Give me emperical evidence to the contary or be exposed as a Compensated  Anti-SOE Shill.

To say I'm a shill would imply I'm getting paid for this, when I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart ;)

I don't frequent the FR boards, so I would not know of any statement to refute my statement other than what the second and third posters replied with.

Quite honestly, I would LOVE to be paid for bashing SOE (if there is somebody reading this who is willing to pay me for it please send me a PM and we'll talk).

Also, I don't lie. I make assumptions based on the evidence at hand, but I don't lie. Good thing about being a 'paid anti-SOE shill' is that I'd never have to lie, just show facts.

Yes facts where is your proof again? show us proof that SOE is counting more than those that logged in and created a character in that 1 mil and you will have credibility.  If you can't you are just a sad waste who is throwing a tantrum because SOE broke your Wookiee, as well as a lair.

I think you may be missing something re. your Wookie comment.  People have been upset with SOE over the years for far more than one game revamp.
 

Consider those playing EQ when Smed said that he was personally against RMT, and that there were no plans to implement it.  Now, of course, the game has RMT.  People felt understandably misled. 

Consider those who signed up for Vanguard partly due to the list of advertised features: features that were not actually included in the game when it went live.  Did you read the apologies for that?  Did you see the back-pedalling and denial that any of this marketting was intentionally false?

Consider those who actually enjoyed the combat of the NGE system, only to have it changed out from under them with what has been called the chapter 6 combat downgrade.

Consider those who have expressed anger over spending hundreds of dollars on virtual trading cards hoping to get rare performance enhancing loot for SWG.

Consider those who purchased subscription time for an SOE game based on Stratics Chat promises, only to see professions that were promised revamps get deleted altogether.

Consider those who purchased an expansion for an SOE game because of promised features, only to find out the day after the expansion went live that these features would be deleted, and that SOE had been working towards an entirely new game system for months, without ever mentioning this to the players.

You've seemed in times past like a reasonable person.  I trust from just these few examples, among many others I could list, that you can see this has never been about something so trivial as a broken wookie.

Now it seems SOE is boasting about sub numbers to market their new game, and people are finding that they're listed as having active accounts with a game they've never played.  Questioning this makes an awful lot of sense to me.

 They didn't invite my old SOE account to the party! Not like I would play this garbage anyway though.

{mod edit}

I know there are other long weekends in North America but I did not realize that this weekend was one, I though it was next weekend in Canada too.   My mistake.

{mod edit}

Did SOE pad its sub stats? Probably not. The only source I would have trusted on this is Pex. SOE reactivating my dead account was a bit much and is concerning - perhaps in a bit of a foreshadowing nature.

The game seems solid enough at least according to a friend of mine. It may do reasonably well should its target audience cough up cash to support it. If it fails, then I think the kid friendly pseudommo genre may well stay as a niche. Will probably know one way or the other by the end of the year.

 As there is no evidence to substantiate the theory expressed by the OP, and the fact that nobody can seem to stay on topic anyway, I'm closing this thread.