Theres a
thread on the official vanguard forums right now posing the question of whether or not Vanguard will have premium servers. Brad McQuaid responded that while they dont plan on having premium servers right now they arent totally against it as Sigil sees them as a means of increasing cash flow which can then be used to make a better game. He goes on to ask how can a premium server be done right. I had a few ideas that I've listed below for us to discuss.
I dont like the idea of persistant premium servers, but I do like the idea of premium events servers. These servers would regularly run events like the BoTB tournaments back in EQ1 or allow guilds to goto war with each other in a controlled environment. You could allow people to opt into various different events like that for an additional monthly fee. This fee would allow them to the enroll in the event (entry fee), copy their character(s)/guild to the event server, and have any titles and rewards won at the event transferred back to their normal play server. Yes its still a premium server but no one actually plays there regularly so no one feels the server is just a place for all the little rich kids like they did in EQ.
Basically Sigil would get the advantage of extra cashflow to make a better game and we reduce the resentment in the community. Win-Win.
Do you have any additional ideas? Would you participate on a premium event server?