19.4.4 Iron Elite Memberships

What is Iron Elite
------------------
Elite Memberships are an optional subscription you may buy to receive a monthly
benefit across your characters. It provides a variety of advantages to help you
develop your characters at an advanced rate, as well as allowing you to receive
additional benefits from other promotions we may be running.

NOTE: The Iron Elite Membership is exclusive to the Iron Realms game for which it is purchased (Achaea, in this case), and has no crossover with Aetolia, Imperian, Lusternia, or Starmourn.


Advantages of Iron Elite
------------------------
- DAILY LESSONS
Every character registered to your email address, will earn 5 lessons,
everyday, upon login. You will earn these lessons the instant you login. This
will net you 150 lessons per month which is about 25 credits. If you have 10
characters, that is the equivalent of 250 credits per month in lessons.

- BOUND CREDITS
Your account will earn 100 bound credits every month. These credits can be
distributed across any of your registered characters! In addition, you will
accumulate 5 more credits every month you are on the membership (up to 150
total credits per month). 

- PERMANENT CREDIT BONUS
You will have a permanent 10% bonus to all credit purchases while on the
membership. In other words, members will have a permanent sale running. This
bonus will stack with any other sale we run.

- EXPERIENCE BONUS/DESTROYER BONUS
   Your characters will receive an experience bonus ranging from 5% - 25% 
   (see below), to help you advance in levels at an accelerated rate.
                                --- OR ---
   Your characters will receive a scaling bonus to denizen damage and critical
   hits (see below).


Cumulative benefits
-------------------
Being a long-term Iron Elite member increases the monthly benefits, based on
the length of your membership! Each consecutive month you renew, you gain an
additional 5% added to your experience bonus, as well as 5 more credits to be
used however you see fit.

In your first month, you'll receive 100 credits, and a 5% experience bonus. In
your second, 105 credits, and a 10% experience bonus, all the way up to your
eleventh consecutive month, where you'll receive 150 credits, and a 25%
experience bonus every month thereafter!

If you do not want bonus XP, you can switch to the DESTROYER bonus! This 
conveys a scaling bonus to damage against denizens and to critical hits. At
maximum benefit, this is equivalent to the LUCKY and AIM TO KILL traits. The 
two do not stack.


MEMBERSHIP BONUS LIST         - to list your options.
MEMBERSHIP BONUS <bonusname>  - to change your chosen membership bonus.


Accessing the Credits
---------------------
Your membership credits are stored in a "pool" which can be accessed by any of
your characters. To access the credits, simply log in the character you wish to
access the credits on, and use CREDITS MEMBERSHIP TRANSFER <AMOUNT>, which will
convert them to bound credits on that character.

You can check CREDIT REPORT at any time to see how many credits you have
available!

If you do not want bound credits, you can check MEMBERSHIP WARES to access a 
shop listing of things you can buy with the credits in your membership pool

MEMBERSHIP PURCHASE <ware> will let you purchase whatever you want from that list.


Purchasing an Iron Elite Membership
-----------------------------------
Signing up is simple! Just head to https://www.achaea.com/credits and follow the instructions listed there.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a recurring payment! As you sign up, you're agreeing to an
automatic, scheduled payment via your preferred payment method (PayPal or
Credit Card.)

If you're purchasing your membership via credit card, please keep your receipt,
as it contains order information that you'll need in order to cancel your
subscription.

You can also purchase 3, 6, and 12 month memberships.

With a 3, 6, or 12 month membership your characters will receive most rewards 
up front. 

The rewards which are instantly advanced are the XP/DESTROYER bonus, and
membership credits. Daily lessons are unchanged.

----------------------
For Example: 
If you purchase the 6 month membership you will immediately move to the 25% xp bonus and have 675 membership credits applied to your account (100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125 credits).
----------------------

If your account already had a membership running, and was within the grace period when the new membership is purchased, it will pick up the rewards from your current threshold, and it will NOT start all over from the beginning.

IMPORTANT: All memberships are recurring, and will automatically renew at the end of the 1, 3, 6, or 12 month period. 

Note: If you purchased a 3 month membership, the automatic renew will be for another 3 month period, the same for 6 months, will renew for another 6 months, and so on for 12.


Cancelling your Membership
--------------------------
You can cancel your Membership at any time! There are no obligations to keep
this going any longer than your wish for it to continue.

If you paid for your Iron Elite Membership via PayPal: Simply log on to your
PayPal account, navigate to the "Preapproved Payments" page, and cancel your
scheduled payment.

If you paid with Credit Card: 
   Head to www.achaea.com and log in to Achaea.com as your character
   Navigate to https://www.achaea.com/credits?action=cancel
   Click the "click here" link to cancel your subscription.

Upon cancelling your Membership, you will have a grace period of 30 days before
the cumulative benefits of your membership expire.


Upgrading Your Membership
-------------------------
To upgrade your existing membership from 1 type to another package:

1. Cancel your current membership at:
   http://www.achaea.com/credits?action=cancel 
   If your membership is via PayPal, you will have to visit your Paypal 
   account and cancel it from there.

2. Wait for your current membership to expire.
   You will get messages from the game when your membership expires and 
   can view your membership status with the command CREDIT REPORT.

3. When your current membership expires, you may sign back up at
   http://www.achaea.com/credits?page=membership

Note: There is a 30 day grace period on renewing your membership without 
      losing your benefit levels.


Changing the card associated with your Membership
-------------------------------------------------
To do this you will first need to cancel the existing Membership (see 
Cancelling your Membership above), and then wait for the Membership to expire.

Once your Membership has expired (shows as inactive on CREDIT REPORT) you will
enter the 30 day grace period, and can now repurchase your Iron Elite 
Membership via whatever method you wish.

So long as the Membership is repurchased during this 30 day grace period, any bonuses previously accrued will be reinstated without loss.


Subscription Renewal Failure
----------------------------
This commonly happens when there aren't enough funds in the account to cover a
Membership payment and it is not the end of the world.

Please do NOT repurchase the Membership, after a failed attempt the system will
retry the transaction every 3 days up to a maximum of 3 failed attempts*.

Repurchasing the Membership during this may lead to double billing.

* If your membership payment fails three times in a single billing cycle, you
will need to cancel the membership (see Cancelling Your Membership above) and
then purchase anew.

If you are unsure what to do or about any of this, please email
support@achaea.com or file an issue in game with your questions via ISSUE ME
<your question>. We will be happy to help!


Protege and Mentor Bonuses
--------------------------
Mentors will not benefit from a protege being an Iron Elite member.


Further questions or problems
-----------------------------
Feel free to contact us at any time by emailing support@achaea.com.


Iron Elite and HELP SECONDS abuse
---------------------------------
Remember that we track characters if they are logged in at the same time from
the same registration. So if you plan on switching all your friends to the same
email addy, you will effectively be limiting them to never being able to play
at the same time. Additionally, you will never be able to move them off the
same registrations, which will give them the ability to change the registration
info and effectively steal all your characters. Not to mention we will
permanently block the accounts and characters of people found to be cheating.

In short, do not try to abuse this, we will find out pretty quickly.