Win 30 Days of Unlimited Access
 

Win 30 Days of Unlimited Access

Celebrate Summer, Courtesy of Comcast June 4, 2009

Throughout the month of June, our friends at Comcast are giving you achance to win 30 days of Unlimited Access to Pirates Online! With Unlimited Access, you can fully customize your Pirate, captain bigger and better ships, and access all the Caribbean has to offer!

To enter, just register your account for the chance to win. Make sure to provide a working e-mail address so that we can let you know if you've won. Hurry though, 10,000 winners will be randomly selected throughout the month of June - time is running out! Enter today!

This is .... how you say, convenient? Nice way to make up for everything Disney ^_^

LOL 10,000 members!!! I might as well enter just for the heck of it -.-

On a more positive note, it could positivily affect me positivly. I am basic, see atleast ONE of us is happy right? Although, what about the paying costomers?

I'm paying and I submitted anyhow.. who knows if it will work :) Oh well lol

Hmm... I guess that they want to beat my Rave, well then, I will enter this contest, and if I win, I'll join the seas of Abassa and shout my Rave to all of POTCO.

I'm game for this, what with summer and all and no transportation till 2 and all.

Doesn't make up for the bull. But I entered both my accounts.

Well, are they going to market this toward people who AREN'T currently playing?

Hmm great contest! For people who are basic or their subscription is about to run out. The rest of us, not so much.

How so? If you're currently paying, I'm sure Disney will just not charge the account for a month after the current billing period is over; and then resume billing as normal after the 30 free days.

Each time we 'renew' it sets the expiration date (At which time it will again renew).

So I would think they would simply add 30 days to your account extending the expiration date, which will then auto renew (as it usually does) when it hits the expiration date. ;)

I entered :pirate2:

hmm.
10000 winners
10.00 for 30 days.
Some how i doubt disney can give away $100000

I have unlimited, but hey.... what can it hurt!

I think it's just a little less lol. But still, that's quite a sum there. Clearly they have the cash to do this.. so why not those updates too?

FYI official rules state one entree per person or address!

This will be sweet should I win, as I can create 2 or so more arms for the Guild Circuit, not that it's active or anything.Ooh, some people have already broken said rule. I always wait till the last second, as I like my entrees to be up top, digital or not. It helps when I catch others making mistakes too.

Knowing Disney, they will probably charge you triple for just entering...

For those talking about Disney paying for this...

Comcast cable is paying for a bit of it, they are the partner involved in the contest venture although im not sure what it is they are getting out of it. The contest itself is advertisted on POTCO as an "AD".

Disney may be getting them to pay for it in return for the advertising on the Basic Access game play screen. Up 'til now I have never seen an ad for an actual business other than POTCO ad's to buy Unlimited Access. Now this does kind of make my small minds gears turn to the fact that they recently got rid of the linked accounts because of Basic people "taking advantage of it" by being linked to Unlimited accounts. They want Basic people to see these ad's so they can make more money perhaps? I never really linked a Basic and Unlimited account together to do that, I had 2 Unlimited accounts linked though... If I had known I could have done that, I wish I had of lol...

:SkullBullet1:
Larence Tuppington

Wouldn't that mean Disney is rick-rolling us by 5 dollars for those of us who pay the $10 a month?

Actually its 4.95 for the first month. And really disney isnt paying all this money. The servers are already set up, and there is room on the servers. And most of the winners will be people that already have basic accounts or paid accounts.

The end result:

Disney has taken the attention off of the latest update. By posting this "AD", they have changed the main topic of conversation away from the raw deal that they gave all the families that use(d) linked accounts.

If they think that giving a one month free access to all those who use the tabbed accounts is going to make up for taking the tabs away, they are dead wrong. They could give a free 6 months and still not fix the problem they created. Families used the linked accounts to make and play 2, or more, pirates that could be played as 'unlimited' at the same time. Giving a month of free access to the 'basic' account doesn't let them play the pirates that are all on the one account at the same time!

Secondly, we all know how Disney does the automatic billing thing. Once you have set up your account, they automatically bill your credit card when your account is due.
We haven't seen exactly how these 'free' one month upgrades will work, so don't be surprised when they require a credit card to activate, and then start an automatic renewal billing if the person forgets to cancel the account at the end of the month. We will be hearing of this here on POF at the end of July, or whenever the 'free' month ends.

The trick here is "actual money" vs. "service cost"

I do some computer work for my mom, it take me two hours - its value is $100 (cause if I was "paid" for the service at $50 / hour that what I would charge) but in this case 1) I'm there visiting 2) shes family 3) I'm bored, etc. etc...

Its the same here - the "vaule" of the prizes if purchased by 10,000 people would be $45k - but 1) 10,000 people wouldn't probably sign up (and in fact they are probably losing players - see #2) 2) By having 10,000 players play a month for free they may get 2,000 or more that stick around - so they actually DO get money for those accounts after the promotion 3) if they release something big just as those accounts are running out - they will probably keep many more of those players and get more paying again...

Hence, theres no "cost" to them (the game is in place, the power, servers, equipment has to run for us here anyway) and because of the sponsorship they do get some return funds.

Overall - marketing :)

Not really - because they are pricing that in as maintenance only - hence the servers, power, etc. is already running. Since they a) have people to pay and b) servers, power, etc. (hardware) to pay - this basically is the valued cost out of $10 to cover staff maintenance :)

Just how has this taken the attention off the latest update? Its an ad on their main page, and it actually varies and doesnt always display, opting for other ads from other sponsors occasionally. They didnt even post this in their news (other than the launcher).

I dont think this was a diversion, just timing.

Edit: I stand corrected, they put it up on their Grog blog today... several days after they began accepting entries.

Hmm, just realized this, but I could pay 5 dollars a month by just cancelling my subscription every single month, besides, with the great updates, I'm still not sure I'm fully down with downloading the client anyways, just a laggy old piece of dirt.

Actually you couldn't. The fine print on that $5 says for the first month only, per e-mail. I don't know where I read that, but Disney keeps paying member info on file. You'd be charged the $10 the second month. See, even over in PH once you're a member you keep all your stuff, you just loose access to the stuff you did as a member. To do this they have to keep you on file.

I don't think you'll need a credit card to win this. I'm guessing it will work more like the gift cards. You know, give a month of Pirates, give a month of PH. They make them where you need no credit card. The access ends after 30 days, end of story. If you want to go on you have to pay then. And I'm sure they'll do it so you don't get the $5 rate. (See above.) And THAT'S how they make the money. They suck you in with a free month, tease you with what's to come, and at least in PH, never does or is somehow different, then slap it with double the price. Me, I'd rather pay PH, it's half the price of Pirates.

I already have more than one PH membership, so I'm NOT paying for pirates till those run out and then only for a month and ONLY if I don't win. But I did enter.

June 8th.

Has anyone heard of a winner yet?

The June 8th winners won't be notified until the 12th.

Official Sweepstakes Rules

Wow super large contest, you save a whooping $9.95!!! omg!! thats so much money!!

unfortunately in some families, that's a lot of cash. Sometimes that's all a family may have for a whole week or even month.

Yea, that's true.

Ten bucks may be a lot for some people, like kids who have an allowance of 5.00 per month or something.

It's nice to see Disney doing something. While I think they have missed more then hit when trying to make it up to us, this is a good gesture.

Zeke

After taking a huge break from the game, I missed whatever happened that made some of the players mad and what disney is trying to make up to us.

So, what exactly did they do in the first place?

A quick review of this thread, and the last couple update news threads would shed more light. In summary there has been outrage due to them disabling the linked accounts feature. This has created quite an issue with families playing the game, and has also apparently eliminated one of the loop holes that banned players were using to work around their bans (The reason they were said to have been shut off). Probably would have gone off alot better had they made some form of alternative family solution prior to shutting it off.

Many are playing on, several are hanging on.. barely, quite a few are quitting, and some have no more access, it varies depending on each individuals history and patience with Disney/POTCO.

Keep on Plunderin' mateys!!!

The linked account thing affected me in that, all my dxd friends now have to friend both player accounts.... but still they could have found a better way than making people mad and driving them off from the game.