Achaea Promotion

Leviticus

     Good Morning! Can we get a promotion list that is like a year out (or a few months)? Even a general plan would work. I like to start planning on which promotions I need to save up my monies for! @Tecton‌ @Sarapis‌. Thanks a lot. I know currently it is post at the end of each month, but that doesnt help me that much!

Klendathu

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

Sena

Part of the reason they started doing monthly promotions (instead of just promotions/sales on special occasions) was to stop people from saving up for the good promotions, because it's better (more reliable and predictable income) to have smaller purchases spread evenly throughout the year than to have it all clustered in one or two months.

Leviticus

oh .. I see the business standpoint.

Jules

I wonder how well this works, although I do understand the sentiment.  I always just wait for the promotions I actually want, period (which are nearly always the 30% credit sales, and occasionally, crown sales) - which by the way is what you can do too, Leviticus.  Just wait - unless you really want/need credits sooner.  It rarely bothers me to wait, but if waiting really cramps your style and you can afford it, it's not necessarily "silly" to buy now, so long as you're doing that consciously.  I also have Iron Elite, and I definitely make sure it's active when I buy big credits.  I might cancel my Achaea one though, at least for awhile, which does mean I'd lose the accrued benefits, of course, but it's really superfluous with the amount of gear and extra credits I have, and how little I'm interested in Achaea compared to Imperian right now (with a bit of Lusternia, too).  

EDIT:  in fact, if money were tight for me, where they'd likely lose money would be if they had an unexpected/new kind of promotion I was interested enough to take part in, but which blindsided me.  I'd miss out on the promotion, and they'd miss out on my money.  If I didn't already have so many mounts (and if any of the horses had been Legendsteeds with an "extraordinarily powerful" rating and a heavy curb weight), the Bridles would have been a good example of something like that.  

Sarapis

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

Faur

Sarapis said:

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

Everyone born in Feb-ru-ugly gets 5 free credits (unbound) on their birthday, if it's registered? (Because face it, in North America, Aquarians like myself are pretty much screwed on their birthdays due to weather.)

Valaria

Faur said:

Sarapis said:

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

Everyone born in Feb-ru-ugly gets 5 free credits (unbound) on their birthday, if it's registered? (Because face it, in North America, Aquarians like myself are pretty much screwed on their birthdays due to weather.)

well i just had my birthday on January 13th, i got happy birthday gift from Lusternia and Midkemia. However, i get none from Achaea.

Kayeil

Sarapis said:

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

The chocolate hearts like you had a couple years ago?

Kyrra

Would totally spend another couple hundred dollars on those chocolates.

Trey

Kyrra said:

Would totally spend another couple hundred dollars on those chocolates.

What did those things do again?

Antonius

Jules said:

(which are nearly always the 30% credit sales, and occasionally, crown sales)

The 30% sales are rarely the best time to buy credits if you usually, or at least can, buy larger amounts. Take the tiered promotion from a few months ago, which worked out to be about a 50% bonus on 2000 credits by the time you were done if you wanted/bought a pet and traded in the clod of elemental clay. Only issue is you did have to buy a multiple of 2000 to get that.

Kyrra

Trey said:

Kyrra said:

Would totally spend another couple hundred dollars on those chocolates.

What did those things do again?

Hmm they bestowed a temporary boost to stats or a permanent boost to experience, I think. I bought so, so many last and I hate enough that I think I went from level 86 to 89 or something like that.

But if you bought them and gave them to someone else, it was an increased effect. So I bought a crapload of them for Earionduil and he gave them back to me >.>

Jules

Antonius said:

Jules said:

(which are nearly always the 30% credit sales, and occasionally, crown sales)

The 30% sales are rarely the best time to buy credits if you usually, or at least can, buy larger amounts. Take the tiered promotion from a few months ago, which worked out to be about a 50% bonus on 2000 credits by the time you were done if you wanted/bought a pet and traded in the clod of elemental clay. Only issue is you did have to buy a multiple of 2000 to get that.

Hmm, I'll have to watch for that one and check it out in general when I get home. Most promos aren't very good bang for buck if you're trying to get max credits - especially if you don't want to gamble. That said, *some* of the gambling type promos seem to have a high rate of return (but as a customer you can't really know). It sounds like this one isn't gambling based and just has a high total value (which I'm definitely interested in).

Jonathin

Valaria said:

Faur said:

Sarapis said:

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

Everyone born in Feb-ru-ugly gets 5 free credits (unbound) on their birthday, if it's registered? (Because face it, in North America, Aquarians like myself are pretty much screwed on their birthdays due to weather.)

well i just had my birthday on January 13th, i got happy birthday gift from Lusternia and Midkemia. However, i get none from Achaea.

Woah woah. 1/13? same day as me. Small world.

Trevize

Jonathin said:

Valaria said:

Faur said:

Sarapis said:

Klendathu said:

I think that's a Bad Plan. Why? Because you don't want people saving up for the "special" promotions, you want people buying credits as and when. Bills have to be paid every month.

You're correct on the effect, and is well-established logic in retail sales. However, we don't schedule really schedule promos in advance. As an example: We have no idea as of this moment what February's promo will be in Achaea (true story). I'll also say that while they are incredibly important and are literally one of the keys to being able to stay alive as a business making MUDs in 2015, the promos are probably universally the most hated part of a producer's job. It's like banging our head against a wall sometimes coming up with new promos that fit our criteria (which I'm not going to discuss for obvious reasons) and that are actually successful.

Everyone born in Feb-ru-ugly gets 5 free credits (unbound) on their birthday, if it's registered? (Because face it, in North America, Aquarians like myself are pretty much screwed on their birthdays due to weather.)

well i just had my birthday on January 13th, i got happy birthday gift from Lusternia and Midkemia. However, i get none from Achaea.

Woah woah. 1/13? same day as me. Small world.

Look up the birthday paradox. Takes a lot less than you'd think to hit a decent chance of the same bday. Sample chart:

Num - Chance

5 - 2.7%

10 - 11.7%

23 - 50.7%

30 - 70.6%

40 - 89.1%

70 - 99.9%

Nim

That's a slight misunderstanding of the paradox how it applies here.

In this case, the mystery is that someone has the same birthday as @Jonathin, not merely that a birthday happens to be shared.

The difference between the two is that, as the number of people grows, the probability of the latter eventually reaches 1, while the former, the probability never quite reaches 1.

This is because the latter is a pigeon hole problem, or something like that. I'm a programmer, not a math major, so I basically understand this from sets and maps, and even then, most of the time I pretend these problems don't exist because someone else already did an adequate job of solving them for me, yay. Being a programmer is awesome.

The former, however, is kind of like playing a dice game and seeing if you get a certain result. In this case, the dice is technically some weird 365.24ish sided dice, but we'll stick with 365 sides for simplicity, and be mega biased against leap year birthdays.

This means that every person rolls this dice, and it's completely and totally possible you could have a billion people roll the dice, and never get the same result. Well, it would be possible if it were totally random, but birthdays are actually more chaos theory random than pure random, or something like that. Again, programmer, not math major.

Because of this, we can find the chance that someone has the same birthday by subtracting the chance that no one does from 1. The chance no one does is (364/365)^n where n is the population (excluding the person in question, aka @Jonathin).

If n is 70, the chance is around 17.5%, rather than 99.9%.

Jonathin

You guys over complicated the whole thing.
You don't need any silly paradoxes.

You just have to realize that the active forum community is tiny.