Frequently Asked Questions

Payment and Billing

Is it possible to just subscribe for a single month? I want to try the game further.

Yes, it is possible, via a couple of different methods. For one, PayByCash payments are not recurring, so if you purchase a month via that system, that's all you get. For another, you use the direct credit-card billing system and purchase a "single-month, recurring" plan ($9.99), wait a few business days for the charge to go through on your card, and then cancel. Previously purchased time will remain on your game account until it expires, cancellation simply prevents the system from doing recurring billing. When the payment expires, you can then choose to continue paying, if you wish.

Can I put my account on hold for awhile?

Yes. If you cancel recurring billing, we guarantee that nothing will happen to your characters for at least three months from your last billing period. Beyond that, it really depends on how often we're cleaning out expired accounts. So, that allows for at least a three month "break" between payments. You can also subscribe for a month, then cancel for three, then subscribe for another month, and so on, to guarantee your characters will remain intact over a longer period.

Is this transaction secure?

The short answer is "Yes", but this is not a question that is easy to answer accurately in a brief space. The basics: Your browser should show a little "lock" icon in the lower-right-hand corner of the application window. This indicates it has established an encrypted connection to our billing server. The billing server will then establish another encrypted connection to a credit card "clearinghouse", which will do the actual verification of the information and send the "charge" to the credit provider or bank. The number is then stored in our billing server's database (again, encrypted) until you choose to cancel recurring billing: if you choose to cancel, the number is immediately purged from our records. The billing server itself is the most secure machine on our network (not a minor thing, we're pretty paranoid), with administrative access severly limited and heavy cryptographic authentication required for all access. Your credit card data does not leave the billing server, except during the "charge" period when it is sent to the credit clearinghouse via a secure connection.

The important overall question, however, is "what does this all mean?". Credit card transactions are basically the same, whether they take place online or in person in a traditional brick-and-mortar retail outlet. You are trusting the retailer, whether it's Big Ed's Corner Gas Station or Amazon, to keep your information secure, since they must possess the information in order to bill you. That trust is no more likely to be violated online than it is in the "real world". The only way of preventing fraud is to carefully examine your statements and be sure they are all purchases you made, and if not, report them to your credit card company. Fraud can happen to anyone, anywhere, there are no certainties or absolutes, and any added concern over "online" versus "real-world" sales is usually misplaced. As long as the online vendor is a reasonably upstanding, established business, your card data is probably *more* secure than when you hand it to the guy at the gas station.

Do you accept PayPal?

Yes, we accept PayPal and many other payment types via PayByCash, an independent company who handles more "unorthodox" monetary transaction methods for subscription companies like us. There is an additional surchage for PayByCash transactions. You can visit their website for more information here: http://www.paybycash.com/customer/.

Why do PayByCash transactions cost more?

PayByCash is a separate company who specializes in more "unusual" financial transaction types. For instance, they accept personal checks via fax, cash payments, bank transfers and many more. This means they must maintain a support staff to handle these diverse individual payments, and also requires them to be liable for more types of potential fraud. Because of this they charge us an addition "service charge" fee for each transaction, this fee is then passed on to the consumer. On the upside, there's a lot more transaction types available than we would be able to offer on our own, and the added fee is relatively fixed and small, so it becomes negligable for larger blocks of time. As a side note, PayByCash can take longer to approve a transaction than normal payment systems, so be sure to budget several extra days when sending your next payment, or there may be some delay while your account is unpaid.

If you have addition payment-related questions, you can contact us via Customer Support.