Greetings future adventurers of Terminus,
Disclosure: This probably has been discussed previously, but I could not locate a thread. :)
I have pledged at the Champion level as of Jan. 2019 because I believe in the passion, ideas, and team that Visionary Realms has established. I also have recently decided to let my WoW subscription lapse. So, that is 16 bucks a month that was just billing to my credit card and I really won't even notice to be honest. That got me thinking... what if I could just set up a reoccurring, monthly pledge to VR (sort of like a sub) for that $16 dollars I was sending to Blizzard? Hmmmmm.? I would not miss it and while $16 is a small amount of cash, it could aide planning/budgeting for the development of Pantheon. As it accrued over time, perhaps the dollars could accumulate and bump my Champions pledge to a higher tier? To my knowledge, this is not currently possible. Or is it? Is this a good idea? Why or why not?
Thanks,
Militus - Standing in Fire Podcast
It is a good idea but they currently have technical issues making it very difficult for them. They used to support this until November 2017 and may fix the issues and support it later, but they do not currently.
That is my understanding of where it stands from what I remember seeing a while ago.
You can set up a monthly pledge for $5-$15/m. The only thing is it's primarily to benefit the team if you have already got a higher tier pledge. These pledges were initially just for support and granted access to the forums. You can see them here. Your call if you want to add to the coffers. Just know it's a support the dev move only and you're good.
Also, as OneADSeven noted, you can upgrade your original pledge as well. I did this a while back. It just takes a bit for it to update as they do them manually.
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/join/community/
As far as I know they haven't determined their business model yet. Which makes sense - it won't be especially relevant until right before release and who knows what will change in the MMO world between now and then.
They have indicated that the model very well might be partly or fully subscription based, and I certainly expect that, but actually selling prepaid subscriptions would lock them in to that.
Not to mention that many of us are quite willing to give them money either just to support the game or for pledge perks that cost them far less than giving us more subscription time. They are probably more likely to use that model if they ever add to the current package of pledge rewards to encourage increased pledges.