In Episode 29 (which is set for release sometime next week), the M-Team discusses the online wedding celebration of City of Heroes Manticore (Ncsoft’s Sean Dornan-Fish) and his RL wife Jennifer (who will assume the roll of Sister Psyche). Other signature CoX characters will also be at the event. If you wish to attend, here’s all the information you need.
Following this announcement, NCsoft promotes their City of Heroes “Wedding Pack” which is an account upgrade you can purchase for $9.99. This upgrade gives you access to two formal wedding costumes and four new emotes.
I’m all for marriage (even a online one) and holding an event online for your fanbase to participate in is a pretty cool gesture. What rubs me the wrong way is the apparent greed shown in tying this together with a downloadable upgrade that you have to pay for. Surely that wasn’t their intent, but it sure looks that way.
“Oh you can come to the ball looking like a scrub, but wouldn’t you rather look great and have all the special /emotes too? That’ll be $9.99!”
$9.99?! And all I get is some new emotes and costumes? Pfft. For that price, I better get to take the maid of honor home after a night of chicken dancing and binge drinking.
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Okay, I’m trying to wrap my head around this one, but failing. Maybe it’s just me, but being married in real life is enough. I don’t want an office wife, I don’t want a subway wife, and I sure as hell don’t want a game wife! Now, I can suspend my own perspective enough to see that a fictional in-game marriage might have some appeal to a few people, but making subscribers pay more for the faux nuptials seems ridiculous. Is the 9.99 an extra monthly fee or a one time upgrade fee? I like to think of gaming time as my time, away from the realities and the daily grind of life. I don’t want my MMOs to be more like real life, I want them to be less so! Give me engaging stories, colorful characters, crazy weapons and super powers, but marriage? No thanks, I’ll develop that plot on my own!
I totally hear you guys. This is like the horrific fake MMO feature we made up in a past episode. You’re assigned an NPC spouse that nags you because you’ve been away from the game living your real life for too long and who then sends you on quests to do things like fix up your in-game house and other crap.
I don’t dig the first obvious step into micro-transactions that NCSOFT has taken my favorite non-fantasy MMO towards. I don’t dig it at all.
This one really cracks me up. It’s almost like they’ve taken their Valentines day event and just used it as a marketing ploy to introduce some new micro-payment content into their game. And and 10 bucks, I doubt the term, “micro-payment” applies.
I’ve attended online weddings in AC and DAoC and neither of them required anyone to purchase new crap to pull it off. Oddly, not in WoW which one could assume to mean that the fad had died off. I guess not.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m totally going to poach this topic.