This is a subject of some kind..

[Dubious_wolf]

ok just so long as you understand that you have no right to the internet. It is a business, not vital for life. If a company online can set up a template for web-based content that makes money then they should be able to execute it. and like Kathleen said, which I proceeded to quote.

SPACE COWBOY.

I see no problem here.

[Machalllewis]

ok just so long as you understand that you have no right to the internet. It is a business, not vital for life. If a company online can set up a template for web-based content that makes money then they should be able to execute it. and like Kathleen said, which I proceeded to quote.

SPACE COWBOY.

I see no problem here.

There isn't a problem with them doing it, it just sucks that we now have to pay for something that before was free. Or possibly not. It depends on whats released.

[MattAn]

ok just so long as you understand that you have no right to the internet.

You make it sound like the internet isn't a gigantic cesspool of garbage outside of anything like LoadingReadyRun.

The internet is well known for its stupid decisions and completely idiotic vocal extremist fanbases on most internet communities. LRR is an exception to this rule. It's also another reason why several friends of mine refuse to participate in any (or many, depends on the majority of the members) forums/communities, solely because of the sheer idiocy of people. The Escapist is a major contributor to this. Very few cool people, thousands and thousands of morons.

And yes, as Machalllewis said, it's not that they did it. It's the execution of it.

I have no problem with Sony's PS3 Premium, because it has a neato premise. MMO's are the same. Final Fantasy XI had some BRILLIANT version update announcements.. But they were poorly executed and subsequently ruined by the playerbase.

Hence why I have very low tolerance and/or chance of believing that anything new will work.

EDIT: Dare I say it? The Escapist: It's The NBC of the Internet! LoadingReadyRun is Conan O'Brien. There's your analogy.

[Dubious_wolf]

I still haven't noticed a lower quality on any of the videos. I must just be a fucking numb skull....
I'll wait for ENN... like I said I read through the advertisment article and it seemed like the site was remaining the same for free users....
nope still don't see it...

[teeb]

Hot diggity, if I pay the $10 I get a new exclusive forum badge?

That's me sold!

[MattAn]

I still haven't noticed a lower quality on any of the videos. I must just be a fucking numb skull....
I'll wait for ENN... like I said I read through the advertisment article and it seemed like the site was remaining the same for free users....

...Have you not read anything Arius or myself have said!? We KNOW that the quality isn't being lowered! That's fine. It's every other fucking thing that's going on around it. There are things in the premium.. "Thing".. That should really be standard on any website. It's common elsewhere. There are many other things they could've done that would've been just fine. I wouldn't be complaining if I didn't honestly see a severe problem. I have experienced this kind of shit before on gaming podcast sites and the like. It failed miserably. They lost well over half of their faithful listeners and it's just been dead since.

Hot diggity, if I pay the $10 I get a new exclusive forum badge?

That's me sold!

That's also a severe pet hate of not only myself but MANY of my friends. After what SquareEnix did to FFXI, giving out shiny gear simply for paying $10 for a half-assed, absolutely pointless add-on story scenario.. RAHH!! God, it's fucking irritating! >.<

[Dubious_wolf]

let me add though I'm not paying for it for entirely different reasons.
They won't accept paypal, only Amazon. I am not setting up another payment thing with amazon just so I can hand 10$ to The Escapist. once they have an alternative I will probably have a membership.

Ok I haven't had time t read all the posts I'm only posting now because I don't have class until 4:00 so sorry 'bout that...

So why should the perks be available? I'm still not following that particular line of logic.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. They discontinue the fancy membership. and revert to the old free site. people will then begin to come back to the site if they left....
or they die and something else fills the void.

[Rikadyn]

I have no problem with Sony's PS3 Premium, because it has a neato premise. MMO's are the same. Final Fantasy XI had some BRILLIANT version update announcements.. But they were poorly executed and subsequently ruined by the playerbase.

Only problem I ever had with FFXI's updates was the downtime to fix the version update after they installed it...that and all the people bitching about the downtime even existing in the first place for the version updates...

Anyway, really, this is making a mountain out of a mole hill, save your cash, give it to LRR for DVD, ignore the escapist

[Machalllewis]

I have experienced this kind of shit before on gaming podcast sites and the like. It failed miserably. They lost well over half of their faithful listeners and it's just been dead since.

Yeah man just look at webcomics weekly. They tried that for like three days and no fucking soul signed up. Now its back to being free.

[MattAn]

You may have seen the announcement about our exciting new Publisher's Club membership program and thought that your prior membership as an Escapist should count for something. We agree. In appreciation of your loyalty to The Escapist, we're granting you access to a limited time offer. Until April 21st, you can join our new membership program at 50% the regular yearly rate. You'll get all the same features, including all your favorite videos in a new high quality format, video podcasts for your iPhone or other MP3 player, exclusive member content like behind-the-scenes videos and early drafts, Member Forums, Custom Titles, and Ad-free viewing, but you'd be getting them for half of what everyone else is paying.

But only if you subscribe by April 21st. After that, you'll be just like everyone else. And who wants that?

For more background on the Publisher's Club program, and details on the features, take a look at this month's Publisher's Note. Or head right over to the subscription page to check it out.

And now the promotion messages start coming. The attitude the whole thing uses is rather insulting as well, as Arius said. Fuck The Escapist. I'm not supporting them. LRR's the only site that deserves any money. I'm not repeating what happened on aforementioned gaming podcast. Hell, it was only a once-off donation for them. Yearly subscriptions are complete bollocks.

[elvor]

...why shouldn't they promote themselves?

[MattAn]

As was covered a few pages ago (by Arius, I believe), if they repeatedly spam out System Messages trying to convince people that it's SERIOUSLY AWESOME, just because they said so.. When you're getting a bunch of gimmicks..

In fact, in hindsight, the gaming podcast I mentioned actually did theirs a lot smarter. One time donation of anything $5 and up and immediate permanant extras. The Escapist is just grabbing money I'm sure they already have. They know that their fanbase is gullible enough to buy into it.. Luckily, there ARE some smart people out there though.

[Dubious_wolf]

And I'm done. All I'm hearing is... yeah. If you look at the publishers club article, it seems to be going ok and people are signing up for it. Again I would be as well if I could get my money to them.
so I'm invoking rule 14 here.
deuces peeps.

[tak197]

EDIT: Dare I say it? The Escapist: It's The NBC of the Internet! LoadingReadyRun is Conan O'Brien. There's your analogy.

LoadingReadyRun isn't a whiny ginger bitch trying to play to the lowest common denominator! Let's try this analogy again...

The Escapist: it's the NBC of the internet, and LoadingReadyRun is "Law and Order".

As for the whole "OMG Premium service for the Escapist OMGFTLWTFBBQ" thing, I have to side with LRR on this all. The Escapist has the right to set up a service like this, and as long as it is fair to their ENTIRE fanbase, then there should be no issue. I rarely do anything on the Escapist because I feel it isn't a community that I can be a part of. However, as far as ZP, ENN, LRR, and Unskippable go, I would support them by purchasing their merchandise.

I haven't met any of the crew, but from being a part of this forum for going on 3 years or so now, I have come to trust that they won't dick us around, so I know that if they found out that the Escapist was going to do this in a more extreme way a la IGN, I believe that Graham and Paul would have talked to Russ about it immediately and voiced our concerns with them. In short, if LRR says that they are not going to worry about it for now, then I won't either.

[MattAn]

EDIT: Dare I say it? The Escapist: It's The NBC of the Internet! LoadingReadyRun is Conan O'Brien. There's your analogy.

LoadingReadyRun isn't a whiny ginger bitch trying to play to the lowest common denominator! Let's try this analogy again...

The Escapist: it's the NBC of the internet, and LoadingReadyRun is "Law and Order".

W.. Whiny, ginger bitch!? Those are fighting words! He's leagues ahead of Jay or Jimmy!.. But you have a point. Law & Order is more fitting in this regard. But don't you dare insult Coco! O:

..NBC is still shit.

[tak197]

EDIT: Dare I say it? The Escapist: It's The NBC of the Internet! LoadingReadyRun is Conan O'Brien. There's your analogy.

LoadingReadyRun isn't a whiny ginger bitch trying to play to the lowest common denominator! Let's try this analogy again...

The Escapist: it's the NBC of the internet, and LoadingReadyRun is "Law and Order".

W.. Whiny, ginger bitch!? Those are fighting words! He's leagues ahead of Jay or Jimmy!.. But you have a point. Law & Order is more fitting in this regard. But don't you dare insult Coco! O:

..NBC is still shit.

Sorry, dude, I'm firmly Team Leno. I won't cause a huge fight about this here, but I really never found Conan to be a funny person. Pretty much the only reason I'd watch his show is if Triumph was on.

But we'll go with the Law and Order analogy for now.

[Metcarfre]

The Escapist is just grabbing money I'm sure they already have.

Yes, I'm sure they're all just ROLLING in the dough from all that ad revenue...

[MattAn]

The Escapist is just grabbing money I'm sure they already have.

Yes, I'm sure they're all just ROLLING in the dough from all that ad revenue...

Yes, and they all get to travel around on magical carpets for free, hm? All the conventions, Yahtzee being flown to America for GameX.. I'm certainly sure they aren't struggling. They're a gaming website, please use some logic.

[King Kool]

Not to derail, but is this the big announcement Matt was hinting at yesterday?

[Jillers]

While there are a few valid points being made hereas for reasons to be opposed to the whole thing (and I mean few: Hileict, turn it down a couple of notches, because a lot of your posts, to me, came across as you sounding like a whiny ginger bitch), and I was, at first, one of the outraged few, I settled down and said to myself:
"Hey, Jill, you only ever watch LRR, and maybe, sometimes, ZP... this really doesn't effect you at all... or is it affect. You never could get those two straight."

Look, it's all well and good to be against it, and have solid reasons for it, but the bottom line is you being against it doesn't mean a thing to the escapist since they weren't going to get your money anyway.

I know I pay a subsciription fee to roosterteeth for HQ videos, bonus vids, access to a member's obly forum (which I never use), and I'm sure other things I don't use. And I'm cool with it.
Now, of course that money goes to RT themselves, however, that money is used the same way I'm sure the escapist is going to use the subscripstion money: to pay the people who produce content, pay for more bandwidth, pay for toher things I have no idea about.

In other words: I don't care about what goes down on a site I don't frequent. As long as I can still watch the videos I want (which I will be able to, HQ or not doesn't bother me), which LRR has already assured us we can.

[MattAn]

Not to derail, but is this the big announcement Matt was hinting at yesterday?

It can't be. Matt and Graham both stated that this is the first time anyone at LRR has heard about this idea at the Escapist.. You'd think they would've been notified.. That's another reason why it just sounds shady..

[Vanguard]

Okay, Hileict, my friend, you need to tone it down several notches, because honestly at this point my opinion of you is slipping the longer this angry diatribe of yours continues. In the grand scheme of things it really isn't that big of a deal.

[epocalypse]

their sample video really does prove how ironic this move is, as even some of the best escapist series gain NOTHING in HQ. The only one which I could really notice a difference in was... you guessed it, ENN.

That's because we're HD ninjas.

The thing is, I look amazing in HD. High res video will be epic. Now all those escapist people will know I'm totally the ravishing creature they imagine me to be. Crap.

Um.. Fixed? I think?

indeed. Also though, even on ENN (having looked at it a second time) there are some issues. Look at the artifacting in the black of Graham's jacket. this issue is not apparent in the original videos, implying a compression problem to HQ (which isn't, and shouldn't be full HD), and to have that in their demo video is a stupid mistake. (Note that there is some artifacting on the original LQ ENN videos, but it's not nearly as bad).

[Graham]

OKAY.


I thought SPACE COWBOY was enough to stop this thread, but apparently not.

"LoadingReadyRun wasn't told! It's shady!"

They'd told us a while back that they were considering a subscription model for bonus content.
Did they give us all the details? No, because it's their site.
Did they tell us when they were rolling it out? No. Does this matter? NO!
Because it barely affects us, or you!

"This will kill their ad sales and The Escapist will die!"

That's not how ad sales work. The community manager at The E explained this neatly in a thread over there. They're not idiots and they wouldn't do this if it was a stupid idea.


Look:
If you choose not to pay them, then you are still giving them $0.00 for the same content you were getting for free before.

I can understand some objections, but it is not worth overreacting this much. Especially you, Hileict. I thought we'd talked about this.

If anyone wishes to bring up a reasoned issue with me, I will glady respond.

[Machalllewis]

Umm. question Dad-Star. Like I said earlier I'm being reasonable about all this and waiting till it gets implemented and stuff.

I was just wondering if this bonus content was stuff like when Doomsday Arcade used to put out outtakes or was it new stuff that they're doing now that they never otherwise would have done.

You may not really know the details I was just wondering if you had any insight.