If you're going to keep giving these away at conventions - set up a means for the player who receives it to apply it directly to their account at the booth. Give them a souvenier card as a keepsake if you want, but give them the code and watch them apply it on the spot. I think the European folks did something like this at Games Con didn't they?
It makes no sense to me for NCSoft to deny these codes to non-attendees (particularly since all their cons are on the west coast), and yet they allow so many of them to fall into the hands of scalpers that people have multiples of them listed on eBay for exoribinent prices.
I'm not opposed these codes being convention exclusives (although I think it's unfair that they are limited to such a small area of the country), but if you want them to be exclusive, then make them EXCLUSIVE using the method above, or something similar.
Certainly it would be possible for someone to "presell" the codes on eBay if the buyer is willing to give the seller their account information, but I don't know how many of us are that trusting, desperate, or stupid.
Alternately, make the codes more widely available so that players don't have to resort to paying $60, $80, or $100+ to a scalper on eBay who somehow managed to snag three or four of them. And no, I don't mean raffle one off every three months to someone lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
If you're going to keep giving these away at conventions - set up a means for the player who receives it to apply it directly to their account at the booth. Give them a souvenier card as a keepsake if you want, but give them the code and watch them apply it on the spot. I think the European folks did something like this at Games Con didn't they?
It makes no sense to me for NCSoft to deny these codes to non-attendees (particularly since all their cons are on the west coast), and yet they allow so many of them to fall into the hands of scalpers that people have multiples of them listed on eBay for exoribinent prices.
I'm not opposed these codes being convention exclusives (although I think it's unfair that they are limited to such a small area of the country), but if you want them to be exclusive, then make them EXCLUSIVE using the method above, or something similar.
Certainly it would be possible for someone to "presell" the codes on eBay if the buyer is willing to give the seller their account information, but I don't know how many of us are that trusting, desperate, or stupid.
Alternately, make the codes more widely available so that players don't have to resort to paying $60, $80, or $100+ to a scalper on eBay who somehow managed to snag three or four of them. And no, I don't mean raffle one off every three months to someone lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon