In a few weeks we’re going to release a significant update to the “payment” system, which is going to allow two critical things: It will allow you to bulk buy periods of time at a discount, and allow you to keep access to the game once your subscription expires. The subscriptions will give you access to download updates, but you’ll still be able to keep access to the game. If you’d like then you could buy a month, skip for a few more months, and buy another month to catch up on the updates.
The game likely won’t have a lifetime subscription option for a long time, because in order to make that work, we’d need to charge too much. I personally plan on updating the game for over five years; as more people buy the game we can afford to make more content even faster. Imagine every week, there’s new enemies, new weapons and armor, new areas to explore, more quests to do, and more - it makes the subscription a lot more valuable. Even without the bulk discounts, after an entire YEAR you’re still only paying what you would play for a new game.
Bandwidth is our largest expense. This game isn’t small, like most indie games - it’s several gigabytes, and it ends up costing a good portion of that subscription fee just on bandwidth alone.
We’ve had a notable amount of feedback on the referral program; there’s mixed results regarding it… but once we switch over to the new payment server in a few weeks, I’m probably going to reduce references to the referral program.
Thanks for the feedback! It really helps us to craft a better game!