Graphical MMORPGs with monthly subscription fees have been around for a decade already, and many a player has started and stopped playing multiple of them. So it isn't surprising that veteran players frequently get all sorts of offers sent by e-mail from game companies that want ex-players to reactivate their accounts. Usually you are being offered just some free playtime, but with the competition heating up, game companies are even willing to offer you other in-game goodies if you just would resubscribe. World of Warcraft even offers you free playtime if you can persuade a friend to reactivate his account, if he subscribes for 3 months you get one month for free. But the most interesting and effective way to get your players to resubscribe has been found by CCP, makers of EVE: Just plain lying!
Potshot received an offer, that if he were to resubscribe, he would find his account credited with 3.4 trillion ISK. Now that is an extremely high amount of ingame currency. So he resubscribed, looked at his character, and what he found was 340 million ISK. Still enough to buy a one-month subscription via PLEX, but only one thousandth of the promised amount. Response by CCP: "This was actually a typo on the mail sent out". The inofficial version is "ha, ha, we fooled you into resubscribing", but they couldn't possibly admit that publicly. Somehow I don't think this method is going to result in many lasting resubscriptions.
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