Update March 15, 2008 We’ve re-enabled the subscriptions. Amazon fixed the issue on their end and we’re all ready to roll.

We’ve just rolled out premium accounts…and they’re broken! Amazon pulled a fast one on us with the payments. Everything worked fine until we moved the code to the live server, where all of the sudden Amazon refuses the requests. We know what the issue is, and Amazon needs to check a box on their end saying that we’re “OK to go” so it’s out of our hands right now. Frustrating!!!

We’ve added a small comparison list between basic and premium accounts that should explain what you’re getting. Naturally, we will be adding more features over time.

If you have any questions or comments about the premium accounts, please post them here and I’ll try to answer. We’ve been working hard, and haven’t had a lot of time to post here on the forums, so we apologize. Hopefully we can be more responsive in the coming days.

Micah, you had said that there would be a “whole slew of stuff planned” besides the higher zoom levels for maps. At some point can you list the benefits that come with upgrading to a premium account? Thanks.

Unforunately there was an issue with Amazon’s live server so we rolled back the changes. Once we hear back from Amazon about the issue will will push out premium accounts again. There will be a list of features posted again, once we resolve this issue.

Sorry, we could not find that page.

Yeah, that page won’t be active until we re-release the subscription code. It should be very soon, perhaps within a day. It all depends on Amazon at this point…

We recently got a question by mail, and I thought it might be useful for everyone:

The premium account sign up page did show up for a while last night, which lead me to a question. I didn’t want to throw it into the forums and make a huge stink, but thought it might be something you want to discuss on there. If the basic accounts are going to be limited to 2 campaigns is this just for gm’s creating campaigns and assuming that, what will happen to accounts that have more than 2 campaigns?

Good questions! First off, sorry about the subscription stuff. At the
last minute we had a problem with Amazon payments and had to pull stuff
out. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

As to the campaign limit, we will be limiting people to GM’ing two
campaigns. You can be a player in any number. All campaigns you
already have will still be yours to keep, so anyone currently running
more than two is safe. We would never take away something like that.
However, if you try to create another, you’ll be asked to subscribe.

Very soon, we hope to offer a “campaign archive” feature where you can
archive an old or completed campaign and not have it count against your
limit of two. This way, you can run a campaign, blog about it, finish
it, then archive it and start with a new campaign. Archived campaigns
will be viewable just like any other, but cannot be edited or modified
in any way. It will be possible to bring campaigns out of the archive
and modify them again, but they will have to stay in the archive for a
certain period (like one month) before they can be pulled out again.

The reason for the limit is actually two-fold. Obviously, we want to
make some money and encourage people to subscribe. However, we also
want to limit the number of half-done, mostly-empty campaigns that are in the
system. Recently, someone signed up and created five campaigns,
and hasn’t updated them since. The descriptions are decent and could
make for good campaigns, but I doubt they’ll ever amount to anything.
It’s our opinion that with a limit, people will be more likely to
concentrate their energies and create one or two good (or great)
campaigns, rather than several mediocre ones. From our perspective, we
would like Obsidian Portal to be known for the quality of the campaigns,
not just the quantity.

Whats to stop people from signing up for multiple accounts in order to have more then two campaigns?

That seems reasonable to maintain decent campaign info. The archiving feature sounds like a good idea too. I was just slightly concerned when I saw the chart without explanation.

Whats to stop people from signing up for multiple accounts in order to have more then two campaigns?

Nothing, except for the hassle factor. We expect that someone would eventually get tired of signing up for new accounts, managing all those usernames and passwords, and would rather just pay a subscription, especially considering that they would get additional features. I could be wrong, I guess…

I’m going to preface this before going on. I totally want to sign up for a preimum account and plan on doing so. Now…

I don’t think it’d be that much of a hassle. I’d just register RobJustice001, RobJustice002, RobJustice003, etc, and bingo 6 campaigns. People go to great lengths to abuse free systems. Now, my example is a bit obvious, and with multiple accounts there are some drawbacks, but really I think limiting campaigns isn’t going to stop people from having unlimited campaigns. Now, people having multiple accounts might not be a major concern to you but I’m just pointing out the easy in which limiting campaigns could be dismissed.

Good points about being easy to abuse.

Seeing the Penny Arcade avatar pic makes me think of a strip a long time ago with a Venn diagram explaining Internet Fuckwads in relation to FPS multiplayer cheaters. I guess it sort of applies to the current situation.

Thats one of my favorite comics

I was actually talking about a different one, but the one you referenced is much better. My wife couldn’t understand why I was rolling on the floor over “Shitcock”, but then again she doesn’t play online…

RobJustice said ( above )...

I don’t think it’d be that much of a hassle. I’d just register RobJustice001, RobJustice002, RobJustice003, etc, and bingo 6 campaigns. People go to great lengths to abuse free systems. Now, my example is a bit obvious, and with multiple accounts there are some drawbacks, but really I think limiting campaigns isn’t going to stop people from having unlimited campaigns. Now, people having multiple accounts might not be a major concern to you but I’m just pointing out the easy in which limiting campaigns could be dismissed.

Figment said ( in this other thread )...

However, what’s to stop users from creating shared accounts for games that use multiple GMs? I’d think you’d rather track unique users. Multiple GM games are likely to just create separate accounts for the multiple GMs, sharing the password among them. OP will see only one GM, while the game will in rl have multiple. In fact, it was wandering this site and finding at least two games that look like they’re set up in such a way that prompted this thread in the first place.

It’s fairly obvious that some people already have multiple accounts, and the admins don’t seem to mind.

Micah said ( above )...

Very soon, we hope to offer a “campaign archive” feature where you can
archive an old or completed campaign and not have it count against your
limit of two. This way, you can run a campaign, blog about it, finish
it, then archive it and start with a new campaign. Archived campaigns
will be viewable just like any other, but cannot be edited or modified
in any way. It will be possible to bring campaigns out of the archive
and modify them again, but they will have to stay in the archive for a
certain period (like one month) before they can be pulled out again.

That, I believe, will be very useful for some of us who have gimmick games. However, that raises a question: could people still add Comments to Adventure Log posts of an archived campaign? I’d think that’d be the one part you wouldn’t want to freeze when archiving it, but it may not be feasible to make that exception.

You’re right, it would still be nice to be able to comment. Comments wouldn’t be too hard to exclude from the freeze-out. We will try that first and see how it goes.

Premium accounts are back up. Find out what we’re offering and how to subscribe here: http://www.obsidianportal.com/subscriptions/new

I tried clicking the news link at the top of the new main page, and it appears to point to http://www.obsidianportal.com/news which doesn’t have anything on it, and not to http://www.obsidianportal.com/subscriptions/new.

Tikanni,

Thanks for the report.. http://www.obsidianportal.com/news actually points to all news that we’ve posted on the site. I’ve fixed the links for this so that it now works :)

http://www.obsidianportal.com/subscriptions/new is where we currently have information about upgrading your account to a premium account.

Thanks again.

Ryan

Just a quick question on premium accounts and maps.

The maps page in the campaign says “Premium campaigns get tons of storage (enough for hundreds of maps)”, but the “Become a premium member today” page says “10”. So is it hundreds or ten? Or is it ten per campaign totalling hundreds if you happen to be running 10+ campaigns?

Ah, thanks for the reminder. I need to update that.

The official count is 10 maps per campaign. We might up that, based on demand. Like you said, you can get 100s with 10s of campaigns, but that would be a real pain.

We’ve got a major overhaul of the mapping system on the TODO list, as it’s kind of buggy right now. We’re eagerly awaiting a release of some new code from a friend that will help us streamline the whole system, as well as fix the nagging bug that many people are finding on upload.

Also, I think that people really liking OP, will do the Premium thing rather than multiple accounts. Because they like to support it

Personally don’t need more than one map(thought I needed 0, but just made one), or more than 2 campaigns – which is why I won’t get a premium of nessecity – but when I am not a student anymore, I will get one out of support! (and then I will get better resolution on the map, which is good, when you need to cram an entire GALAXY in there ;)

That said, as long as you dont block the adds, its not exploiting the free system ;)

...Idless