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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hammerhead" data-source="post: 5139071" data-attributes="member: 73">Charging three dollars per month for a signature seems quite pricey, and many people in the community will (quite rightly, might I add) feel that they're losing a feature. A feature that's free in every other message board I've been a member of. And while I'm not a subscriber now, I certainly wouldn't pay extra money just to have one. On the other hand, if this change funds a better Gamer Seeking Gamers function of EN World, I'm all for it. I think many of us could gain far more from finding people to play with than reading some pithy unrelated quote. Surely, however, there's better ways to increase profitability at EN World than taking away features from the community, then finding a way to charge money for them. First, I wonder if EN Publishing (and WotBS, etc.) even make any money at the end of the day, or if it's just a "vanity" project. Obviously, I haven't seen your financials, so I don't know. Also, EN World provides a huge service to the game creators like WotC and Paizo by creating a popular RPG community. I don't know whether EN World has kept me playing D&D but reading and participating discussions about D&D has certainly raised my overall interest, and doubtless resulted in the purchase of more gaming products overall. Why not charge game companies for game-related forums (probably at a monthly/yearly rate)? I'm sure that the 4th Edition forum has some value to WotC; ditto for Paizo and their own flagship product. The main stumble here would be to make sure that WotC buys the forum. Finally, the ads on EN World kind of suck. Well, for the most part, they really suck. Civony (the one with the ads that are practically softcore porn) being the most egregious offender. If there were some kind of quality standard for these ads, you could charge more, and you probably wouldn't have to make turning them off a bonus feature for subscribing. They could actually add value to the community (hey, here's something we think the typical EN Worlder may be interested in!) instead of being some garish eyesore.</blockquote>

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