Platinum subscription

Platinum, also known as "Plat," is a subscription option that has its own dedicated game instance/server. It was intended to be for extremely dedicated roleplayers who wanted item droppage upon death and a smaller community. The world is similar to Prime, however, due to its pricing level much fewer people play there. Platinum also gets its own unique festivals and storylines, and often gets to beta test new system mechanics.

Pricing

The current pricing for Platinum is $49.95 per month, and allows for 16 character slots in Prime, as well as 26 character slots in Platinum.

However, a free trial to join Platinum for a month is available.

Community

The community consists of much fewer people, typically fewer than 40 on at any given time. Therefore most everyone knows most everyone else. Further this community tends to be very close knit, as many of the Prime player organizations are, however it encompasses the virtually the whole world. This closeness is further assisted by the portal which will be described later.

Role Playing

Most players who have been in the game more than a year know the main RP roles of virtually everyone else. This can give a more stable RP environment where people can't drastically change from day to day. Further individual RP can be explored in great depth, especially during events, which will be explored later.

The primary difficulty with this smaller community is that there is not enough people of a given profession to adequately help players at all times. There are times when people cannot find any wizards at all to do any enchanting, empaths to heal when someone is wounded, bards to sing, rogues to pick, clerics to raise, etc.

Events

Events are somewhat different in Platinum. Platinum usually gets every event that Prime does as well as the occasional other event that is solely for Platinum. Platinum events that Prime also get are usually identical with only timeline and individual player RP differences. Further, events can be more personalized and involve a greater number of players per capita than prime. Even very low level characters have been directly involved in storylines.

However, some events can overrun Platinum when they are not tweaked just perfectly from the Prime event.

Merchant events are very special to Platinum. Whereas in Prime any one merchant is flooded with people of which only a fraction will be serviced, in Platinum it is very common, if not expected that everyone in the room will receive the services of a merchant. Merchants giving away limited release items still exist perhaps as often as in prime, however as there are fewer players vieing for them, players have a much greater individual chance of obtaining one of these coveted items than in Prime.

Portal

A Portal system exists beneath Wehnimer's Landing which allows people to travel across realms instantaneously, for a price. This portal has allowed the Platinum players to rescue each other so that decaying is not necessary. As there are so few players on at a time, it would be nearly impossible to rescue those in other realms in a reasonable time. Further this has allowed platinum players to gather rapidly in the case of an event, especially invasions. The Portal system also allows people to hunt in distant locations but still congregate with others while they rest.

However, this portal has also led to a lack of use of other systems within Elanthia. While short range travel systems like the gold ring are still useful, long range systems of travel, such as the Sorcerer's Planar Shift (740), are less useful than in Prime. However they are still a good device for RP, especially as the price of chalk in Platinum is much lower.

Economy

The economy of Platinum as compared to Prime is drastically different, on the much slower side. Decent to excellent items tend to stay with a player for very long periods of time. Further when these items do change hands it is usually only for another item(s). It is almost unheard of for greater than decent items to be traded for silver, and therefore silver has become almost worthless.

This "problem" with the economy has been brought up from time to time with no resolution to date.

GameMasters

Platinum only has access to GameMasters, there are no GameHosts. Potentially the GameMasters have a greater depth of knowledge to draw from, however there are fewer in number so ASSISTance may not be available as often.

However, the chance of personal attention given to Platinum players by GameMasters tends to be higher than in Prime.

Resources

• Platinum, on Play.net
• GSGuide Wiki
• Officials main folder
  • Announcements
  • Questions About Platinum
  • General Discussion
  • Platinum Events and Logs