WarLight has just been updated to version 2.09.1! This is a small update which adds just a few small features and enhancements.
Yearly membership option
WarLight memberships can now be purchased for one year, at a reduced price of $14.99. This will get you all the membership benefits, such as the ability to play without ads and the “M” next to your name for one year.
The lifetime membership option is still available for purchase, but its price has been increased to $34.99. If you already purchased a membership before this update, you’ll still retain your lifetime membership.
Membership also comes with full access to all WarLight ladders, the ability to set the luck modifier in games you create, the ability to create 20 player games, and extra vacations. If you purchase one year of membership, these benefits will continue forever as a free gift — they will not expire after the membership expires.
You can purchase a year of membership via this link!
Top-right account bar
WarLight.net now shows an account bar in the upper-right corner that shows information about your current account. This is similar to the bar that always existed on the single-player and multi-player tabs, however it’s now present on other pages of the website as well.
It shows your name, level and level progress, whether you have unread mail, and contains links to sign in or out of your account.
This is a first step towards a larger WarLight.net redesign I hope to do in the future. Eventually, this top-right bar will probably be the only way to sign in and out of accounts.
Other Changes
– The automatic boot timer can now be set to lower values. Previously, the auto boot timer could not be set to values lower than 5 minutes. Now, it can be set to values down to 3 minutes. This is useful if you’re combining it with banking boot times, where it’s common to set the core boot time to a low value and increase its flexibility with the bank.
– Profiles of players in the United States now show which state they’re in when hovering over the flag on their profile.
After taking away member benefits you increase the price. Awesome. I hope some new member only features are added simply to make the M worth buying.
Member benefits have never been taken away. Anytime changes are made, everyone that purchased before the changes are grandfathered in so they never lose anything they purchased.
Taking away benefits is a misconception. However you certainly reduced the cyber value of a membership – with the removal of the exclusivity of features. My point remains.
I`ll have to argee with Arun. The value of a membership has decreased, yet you just announced to increase it price. Also: “if you purchase one year of membership, these benefits will continue forever as a free gift — they will not expire after the membership expires.” If that`s the case, then what is the point of buying a full membership?
When it says “these benefits” it is referring to just the benefits named on that line. The other membership benefits do expire.
You say the value of membership decreased, yet membership gives more benefits now than it ever has before. The only reason you feel it may have decreased is because there are other ways to earn some of the benefits that memberships offer. To people who haven’t earned those, membership offers more now than it ever has.
I feel the inclusion of map modifications obtained only by leveling as opposed to membership was a serious hit to membership…
local deployment is a great idea, and point farmers got to use it before dedicated players by playing the system, despite the dedicated players having been with warlight for years prior…
Imho, 100% leveling should give at most 90% of the benefit of membership… not the other way around… leveling should be the *alternative* to getting features, as opposed to the preferred method.
The thing is that while you may not be extracting features from membership, you are making it easier to get all those features without buying full membership. The yearly membership is a great idea, and will work. But having features such as ladders and luck modifications stick to them even after the time is up is a very bad decision. Lots of people will just buy their one-year membership because it’s cheaper, but those same people won’t buy the full membership or another year after it’s done, since they just wanted the ladder.
Membership does offer less and less every day, simply because it’s a walk in the park to get to a level where you get 90% of those features. Especially the dedicated players will get there quickly, and they are the ones who should be spending their money on you!
As a member, I strongly recommend you to remove all permanent features from the yearly membership. You will lose money on it in the long run.
If the “some benefits don’t expire” feature convinces a lot of people to get one year of membership (instead of never spending any money at all), that’s still a plus. Besides, there are additional benefits:
The higher number of “M” icons all around will mean more people know there is such a thing as a membership. And to people who know it exists it will not look as something very exclusive, something “not meant for the average player”.
Psychologically there’s a huge difference between never having had access to something (only being vaguely aware it even exists) and having had access, having experienced it fully… and then no longer having access. If you /know/ what you’re missing out on, you’re much more willing to pay for obtaining it again.
Are you old enough to remember traveling before Schengen? Even when only going to Germany, you had to stop at the border and show your passport. Back in those days we just accepted it, because “that’s just how it works”. Then we got a “membership” in Schengen. Some people were vaguely happy, a ton of people didn’t actually care all that much. But now that we’ve experienced how awesome it is, there’s no way people would be willing to let it ever expire. (And once a few countries had set the example, suddenly everybody else thought it was cool and wanted to join too, which ties in nicely with the previous point. 🙂 )
I’m not sure whether Fizzer would be willing to share how many people, after their one-year membership either (a) don’t extend (b) get another year (c) go for the lifetime membership. But I suspect that last number will be way higher than you seem to expect. I’m no expert, but I think the real trick is to get people to pay anything at all; once they’ve done that, getting them to pay again is relatively easy. (The success of the “micro transactions” concept seems to agree with that thought.)
Not to be contentious but what benefits does membership provide over a leveled up non-member? It used to be that ladder and modified luck were only available to members but those are now free, as is most every functionality I can think of.
What does a member have that a level-60 non-member doesn’t? (Other than the fancy little ‘M’)
Ability to play without ads, an “M” next to their name, more vacations, more open games, access to APIs.
Plus, consider that less than 0.5% of WarLight players are over level 50, so you’re talking about a very small segment of people. Most people will gain far more.
Can I instead answer the question “What does a *level-60* member have that a level-60 non-member doesn’t?”:
Way more options (and thus, very probably, much more interesting games) *on the way* from level 1 to level 60!
Players with membership worry too much about cost of something they have. What about privacy?
Email can be hidden from view. Color can be changed. Flag shows country. In US flag now shows state. Next update, flag shows city? Following update, flag shows image of gamer behind computer in house? When will flag be optional, like email and color?
There’s millions of people living in each state. Are you really that paranoid?
Flags already show city… if you’re playing from the Vatican (or Monaco or probably some other micro nations).
It’s not that I don’t see your point (and heck, on some level even kind of agree with it), but there’s a detail which you’re overlooking: that information is NOT guaranteed to be accurate!
The only thing it does is look at your IP address and look in a database where that IP address is registered. That does not necessarily have all that much to do with where *you* are. Sure, on the level of which country you’re in, it should be right a lot more often than being utterly wrong, but on the small scale (such as pinpointing a city), that’s a completely different story. If you want to stalk me, most GIS databases locate my IP to the city of Utrecht… which is roughly 70 km (45 mile) from where I actually am.
If you travel abroad and use your cellphone to play, depending on some technical details, it’s very possible for “The Internet” to still see the same IP address you have at home (and still list you as playing from “USA – some state”, even though you’re on the other side of the planet). The same is true if you’re playing at work in some multinational corporations, since (out of security considerations) some choose to connect their internal network to the actual Internet only in a very limited number of places.
I agree that flags should have an option to be hidden, or chosen.
Also, the account bar doesn’t show up on the multiplayer tab. Is this intentional?
I like the addition of the yearly payment, but I do have to agree somewhat with Arun. There should be more member-exclusives, and I don’t mean things that can be attained through leveling. Please don’t think I’m complaining about not having enough features for myself. I paid for my membership for a reason, when it had less features than it currently does, and there’s a reason I was the first to purchase a clan. I love what you’ve done, but honestly I think more exclusive functionality for members and more functionality for clans (competition, rankings, etc.) are the two things that would have the most positive value for the already dedicated sectors of the WL community. I understand there has to be a balance between that and catering to new players and not turning them off, but the ‘noob’ side seems to be getting more attention with some of these updates.
That being said, I appreciate the fact that you’re still evolving the game and looking for the future, and I have yet to be actually let down by one of your updates, even if it wasn’t ‘perfect’ for me.
I like the account bar with the new drop down option. However, it’s obscuring the sub headers under community i.e chat, clans
This is informative even if just to see that you (Fizzer) genuinely believe the Membership is better than ever whilst most members, including me think the complete opposite.
Though I am happy I have my membership and wouldn’t refund it for money if I had the choice. And I’m sure most members would say the same.
The discord between your opinion of membership and the people who have it is interesting.
Regardless of that, you’ve made a great site and we all appreciate it.
Fizzer, I think you should focus on adding a few more benefits for members. It seems most players don’t think it’s worth the money. As I recommended before, I think you should add a card-to-slot feature! Where you can assign cards, card pieces, a card properties to different individual slots in custom scenarios! Think about it.