Premium Servers?

[Pirotess]

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?

[Delvie]

When I reach end game I believe that I'd be very tempted by a Premium Event Server. But I think I'd be happier if efforts were focused on an expansion at that time. I'm not sure there's any way to implement a Premium Server with new content in a way that doesn't cause resentment.

One thing I posted in the Premium Server thread is that I would definitely pay extra for a strict language policed server. I really get aggravated at the bozos who go out of their way to get around the language filter - I don't mind seeing the special characters that appear when people forget in the heat of the moment. I'm talking about the ones that purposely go out of their way to get around the filter. I think this kind of server would not cause any resentment because it has nothing to do with added gameplay. And I would expect to pay more for such a server cause it's going to cost real money to hire people to handle it.