EVE Online Multiple Character Training Deal

Weren’t we just talking about deals and things for veterans versus things for new players?

Anyway, here is something for both new players and bitter vets, CCP is offering multiple character training with any multi-month subscription.

While there have been other subscription incentives in the past… price breaks, special SKINs, and the recurring second account deal… this is the first time I think they have offered up a second training queue as part of an offer.

I am a bit surprised it took this long to get that sort of offer (unless I missed one from the past) as multiple character training has been around for a few years now. (It came it with the Odyssey expansion as Dual Character Training in June 2013 and then got its own in-game token and became Multiple Character Training with the Hyperion expansion in August 2014.)

And this offer does appeal to me.  On every account I have ever had for EVE Online, there has always been a “main” character who gets all the training, and then an alt character or two that linger, hoping for the day when that main character has enough skill points.  But as we all know, there is never enough.  Well, I haven’t gotten to “enough” on my main yet, and he’s past 170 million skill points.

Of course, my perception of what this offer was clashed a bit with the details.

You get SOME multiple character training time

This is not CCP’s fault, but my brain jumped from the initial banner/statement straight to thinking one would get multiple character training… MCT… for the duration of the subscription.  But you do not.  You get some MCT time… which is better than no MCT time… but it is equivalent to one third of the subscription length you choose.

Not what my brain wanted, but still better than no incentive at all.

And while we’re on the subject of where my brain leaped relative to the reality of the situation, there are a some additional notes on this offer.

The fine print

You don’t, as you might have expected, get the token for MCT, which you could squirrel away for later or sell on the market.  Instead the second queue starts right up the moment you take the offer.  So be ready before you buy.

And, finally, there was some griping about the deal showing up without any preamble, so that people who had just done their subscription were feeling left out.  CCP rolled the offer back so that if you subscribed within three days of the start of the offer, you get the deal. (Though I hope you noticed that you got it!  And what happens with auto-renewals?)

That still left some people grumpy, because you know somebody hit the button four days ahead of the offer and now feels cheated because the people who did so three days got a break and they did not.

But here is the thing.  You can subscribe again and add more time to your account.  That might not seem like a good plan if you like to subscribe for a year at a time to get the best discount, but if you’re in for the every three months offer, kicking in for another three months early to get something that has the value of one PLEX won’t kill you.

My own second account isn’t due to renew until April… there was some deal last year that got me to renew it for a full year… but I am thinking about adding on another three months to get 30 days of MCT.  There is another cyno alt in that.

You can find all of this right now on the Add Game Time page of the EVE Online site.  This is, of course, a limited time offer, so act soon or lose out.  I am not sure when it actually ends.

And since item has ballooned from what was going to be a single entry on a bullet points submission to a full on post of its own… any item that passes 500 words can stand on its own in my book… I am going to ask a general follow on question.

Does any other MMO with a subscription option throw out as many incentive offers as CCP does for EVE Online?  CCP has something running… a special SKIN, a bonus item, a special discount, a two for one deal… about every couple months is seems.  It used to been more frequent, but they now have PLEX and Aurum deals going when they aren’t doing subscription deals.

The one similar event I recall was the World of Warcraft offer that got you a free copy of Diablo III if you subscribed for a full year.  And Daybreak recently had a special “subscribe for a full year” deal that offered a serious price break.  But I don’t remember any others quite like that off hand.

Then again, I don’t subscribe to that many MMOs any more, so I likely missed them if they were out there.  So what compares?