[MUD-Dev2] [Design] A rant against MMORPG installs and initial user experience

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On 2/15/07, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
>
> - Right away, I'm asked if I want the $29.95 station pass to play
> all SOE's games. I say no. I'm then asked if I want to Spend $0.99
> on some random feature. I click no. In the next dialog, I'm told
> that I'll be able to trial those features for free for a month,
> even though I clicked no in the previous one. This sort of
> marketing strikes me as really bizarre.

Its 100% logical actually.  You didn't bite on the first offer so they
go to the second, a "free trial" in the hopes they can get you to sign
up.  The theory is that once your are signed up and using the features
you either will love them so much at the end of the free period you'll
want to pay for them OR you'll be lazy enough not to cancel and just
start paying for them anyway.

This sort of "staged offers" thing is used all the time in high-ticket
high-pressure sales where first they give you the top price, and then,
if they can't get that, start marking it down with "incentives."  But
they always try the top price first.  If you'll pay it, its that much
more  money in their pocket.


- I'm asked for CC details, etc. Setup asks for my state, despite the
fact that I select "Australia" as my country... Australia has states
too, but the US states are still shown in the combo box... (And by the
way, Windows knows I'm in Australia, so why doesn't Vanguard use that
info to default to "Australia".)