EntropiaPlanets - Store, paid subscriptions, banners and more

Hi everyone. The last few days, we've been working hard behind the scenes, and we're proud to present the fruits of our labour to you today.

Buy goodies with your EPDs!
First and foremost, we're putting your EPDs to use. We implemented an EPD store, which is filled with all kinds of little gifts and goodies (BEER!). You can find it in the lower navigation bar, inbetween "My Threads/My Replies" and the Calendar.

We've decided to combine the store release with the announcement of our subscription based membership. Rather than coming up with all kind of different schemas, we've figured we'll stick to three of them.

EntropiaPlanets subscriptions
So secondly, the table below will contain an explanation of the three different ways to get involved on our site. I'll try and explain a bit more about the various options after the table.

[TABLE="head;width=100%"] | Registered user | Wiki contributor | Paid subscriber
Standard forum functionality | | |
Max stored private messages | 200 | 500 | 5000
Max amount of PM recipients | 5 | 10 | 20
PM users who reached PM quota | No | Yes | Yes
Can open / close own threads | No | Yes | Yes
Max profile picture dimensions | 150 x 150 | 300 x 300 | 400 x 400
Max profile picture filesize | 65kb | 125kb | 250kb
Max avatar picture dimensions | 80 x 80 | 120 x 180 | 150 x 250
Max avatar picture filesize | 25kb | 80kb | 200kb
Can use reward system | No | Yes | Yes
Max reward | N/A | 250EPD/post | 500EPD/post
EPD system | | |
Weekly EPD paycheck | 50 | 150 | 500
EPD Shop Discount | 0% | 10% | 25%
EPD accelerators | 100% | 150% | 250%
Give anonymous gifts | No | No | Yes
Auction system | | |
Max amount of auctions | 5 | 5 | Unlimited
Auction pictures on frontpage | No | No | Yes
Yellow pages | | |
Multiple Services in Yellow Pages | No | No | Yes
Arcade | | |
New arcade games wait period | 4 weeks | 0 | 0
| | | |
Price per month | Free! | Free! | USD 3.50
Price per year | Free! | Free! | USD 35.00
[/TABLE]








As promised, a quick explanation of some of the features.

• PM users who reached PM quota - This means that if a registered user reaches 200 PMs stored, wiki contributors and paid subscribers will be able to send that person a PM anyway, where registered users cannot.
• Can use reward system - Wiki contributors and paid subscribers can award users for helpful posts. This means the user will be paid EPDs, from a common account (taxes paid to the system), rather than their own EPD balance.
• Max reward - The maximum amount of EPD the user can award per post.
• Weekly EPD paycheck - The amount of EPDs you will automatically get per week if you are active on the forums.
• EPD accelerators - Every action you take to participate on the forum (referring friends, rating threads, posting regularly (which does not mean spamming), replying, starting threads, using the rep system), etc will grant you a certain amount of EPD. The accellerator means that Wiki contributors and paid subscribers will benefit extra from these (and suffer extra in case of spam or abuse of the system).
• Auction System - At this moment, the auction system is not configured for a distinction between usergroups, so for the time being, everyone can post an infinite number of auctions, and include pictures that will be shown on the frontpage of the site (also see "fourthly"). This will change when we upgrade our auction system, after which the listed criteria will start applying.
• New arcade games wait period - From now on, when we add new arcade games, registered users will not be able to play these games straight away. The games will be made available after the wait period expires. Existing games will remain available for everyone as is.

Apart from the auction changes described above, we have absolutely no intention to start charging you for any existing functionality you enjoy for free at this moment.

We have done some tweaking over the last few days, so should anything have changed, or the information above not be 100% correct, please PM me with the details.

Wiki contributer benefits
The Wiki contributor is a free subscription method that we want to use to reward those of you who invest your time to help us improve our wiki. Not only will the articles you update or enhance be visible on our frontpage so everyone can see you're working and contributing (as well as keep an eye on what has recently been added or changed), but if we spot you putting in countless hours, you just might be rewarded for your efforts. So it is our way to say "thank you" for helping us out. Please realise that spamming the wiki with garbage or bogus edits to try and qualify for this subscription model will not get you anywhere, as we manually add people to this group.

For those of you wondering how we came to a price of 35 USD per year, we plan on upgrading our VPS to a faster and more powerful server somewhere in the near future. The plan we will be subscribed to then will cost us 35 GBP (British pounds, as our host is located in the UK) per month. 35 USD does not equal 35 GBP but it'll be close enough for us. So in other words, by buying a paid yearly subscribing to our site, you will keep the hamsters up and merrily running for one month.

Banners to promote your services
Thirdly, as you probably noticed, we now have the ability to host your banners as well. Should you be interested in seeing your own banners (standard sized banner (static or flash)) featured on our site, we offer these to you for the following prices:

[TABLE="width=50%"]1 week | 15,000 EPD or 50 PED
2 weeks | 24,000 EPD or 80 PED
4 weeks | 45,000 EPD or 150 PED
[/TABLE]

The mathematicians among you will have quickly deducated that this means we estimate 300 EPD equals 1 PED. This is not guaranteed by us, as we do not buy your EPD for PED (ahh, the no guarantee clause!).

If you are a landowner, or society leader, and interested in getting your banner up here, please PM us. We might be able to make you a lucrative deal and get you your banners up cheaper.

I want more EPDs!
Of course, if you currently lack EPDs or PEDs, but want to advertise here quickly anyway, let us know. We are looking into purchasing a paid add-on to the store, which would allow you to quickly add more EPDs to your account. At this very moment, the only option would be to use the Donate button (which is located in the very low-right corner of the forum), and which will allow you to make a paid donation to the site, using paypal. The EPD will manually be added to your account upon receipt of payment.

Your auction images on the frontpage!
Fourthly, you might have seen that on our frontpage, we now show images included in your auctions. A nice little gimmick to draw a bit more attention to the items you are trying to sell. (Note: abuse can/will lead to termination of your EntropiaPlanets account).

Expiring ingame auctions!
Lastly, we've been working on adding the ability to host expiring auction items from the in-game auction on our site. We have all the items being pulled into our database already, and now we just need to figure out where (and how) to show them to you. Feel free to suggest where you think they will be most useful and non-intrusive for you.

yourname@entropiaplanets.com
We can also offer people the option of purchasing an @EntropiaPlanets.com mail address with their forum username. So if your username is user1, your new mail address would be user1@entropiaplanets.com .

We can set it up as either a plain forwarding account to an e-mail address of your choice (easiest of course is the one you have on file with us), or an actual mail address with webmail access if you would prefer. Space limitations on the actual mail addresses will apply to ensure the server will not get bogged down with huge mailboxes.

We're charging a minimal fee of 25 ped for a forwarding account, and 50 for an actual account. The account would be valid as long as the website is up and running.

Members subscribing for a full year will receive a forwarding address to their on-file account tossed in with their subscription for free.

That's it for today, folks

Buy your subscriptions and banners in-game!
As off today, it is possible to buy your subscriptions and banners in-game as well. More specifically, you can head to our shopping booth: Omegaton Epsilon building, Booth #5. The easiest way to reach it is by taking the TP to Omegaton West, running south to the service center, and from there, running South-East to the Epsilon building. If you enter there, the booth is the first booth on the right. Coordinates: 25630 / 37445.

We have placed Mind Essence cells there that carry a market value representing the subscription and banner costs as mentioned above.

When making a purchase in-game, please drop me a PM on the forum to ensure the fastest possible activation.

Thank you :)

 

Reserved...

 

I R NOOB!

I missed a setting under the new store, which most likely prevented you from being able to buy any of the goodies from the shop.

This should now be fixed, and you can buy and send little gift icons to your hearts content.

Our apologies about the messup. My only excuse is that I've been sober all day. Mistakes like this are bound to happen.

 

You're a subscriber

 

Wait till we implement little devil pets, and what they will do to your penguin!