f13.net

From Lum (http://brokentoys.org/2008/12/09/and-lo-the-seventh-seal-was-opened/), who posted the news with a much catchier subject.

My take is that the current implementation selling only cosmetic items and XP potions is pretty much OK, but allowing "station credits" to be transferred between players is likely to destroy the in-game economy, as would adding non-cosmetic items to the shop-- and that's the next step.

If I played EQ/EQ2, I would probably quit over this.

Is this across all servers or just the station enhanced ones?  (edit) Because they've had RMT of sorts on certain servers for a while now.

All servers for EQ and EQ2. That's another reason why I feel this is a bad play. The old station exchange was an awful ideal too, but at least it was restricted to exchange-only servers. You had to opt-in. There's no way to opt out of this.

Station exchange didn't create items, either. It just allowed players to utilize out of game resources to trade for resources generated via normal processes. This is a real honest-to-goodness item shop; its inventory was created from nothing and sold for real money.

pretty sure Lum predicted this in 2001-2

I love the "internet explodes" rage. Please. If this was 2003 maybe. Nowadays nobody but the players of <2004 era MMOs really care all that much. There's a whole crop of people that have shown up since without anywhere near the biases us veterans have long had. We're talking tweens playing mtx games with real money.

Besides, this is EQ2. How many people even here are playing that with anywhere near the fervor or consistency as Eve or WoW?

As to the impact on the game, yea, just as it is in most games that use this model (though most of those are f2p+mtx not gouge-with-subscription/get-them-again-mtx) rely on XP boosts, and maybe some buffs or cosmetics. Nobody is selling Tier 7 raid gear for a few pennies. That would substantively devalue the time-/social-based achievement.

Damn.  I was thinking of going back.

It's EQ1 too. Can you imagine how hardcore those guys must be to still play EQ in dec 2008?

It's not OK to do something like this years after release. It shows a marked lack of respect for their customers much akin to (hush, now!) the SWG NGE.

How would it negatively affect your enjoyment?

The way I see it, who cares.  If someone wants to spend real world cash for virtual trinkets, even xp gain potions, so be it.  A fool and their money are soon parted.

The usual reasons. Devalues my own achievements, makes me feel like a chump for playing the "normal" way, will damage the economy once trading is in place, slippery slope, and so on. Do we really need to go over that list on F13? Lets go back to being snarky cantankerous smelly old bastards and take grim delight in schadenfreude since we quit EQ when that goatfucker Abashi was hired. The moral high ground, as always, is located whereever we decide to take a seat.

LOL!

I guess I can sort of see your point.  Suppose my viewpoint on it is different because my outlook on playing an MMO is different.  The rewards (The Sword of Doom or whatever) are just side effects of doing something I enjoy.  I don't worry what other players have, or how fast they advance, etc.  I used to, though, don't know what happened.

I dunno about EQ1, but this makes some sense for EQ1. How many of you old school EQ1 players wanted to level up a new alt to fit X role in your guild/raid group, but were dreading the 3 weeks it'd take you to grind your ass up to raid capable status, nevermind getting equipped so you just wouldn't be a perpetual mana sponge at a raid?

Sure, because there are no other possible solutions to that dilemma other than selling XP potions for real money. Mechanisms like sidekicking/mentoring and refer-a-friend or simply lowering the XP requirements to level wouldn't address that very real issue.

Lets not be pedantic assholes, OK? This move was clearly driven by revenue.

Maybe they are idiots and it will be the next step, but in Asian games I've played with item shops that's NOT the next step. They can extract more cash on junk than they can on selling actual phat loot. And the economy is different, but it actually seems to enhance the player to player economy a bit if you have two different kinds of currency. It works very nicely in Puzzle Pirates.

OTOH I agree with Lum that this is really questionable for a subscription based game. It was stupid of SOE to do this before WoW did.

As long as it's limited to fluff and +XP limited time abilities, it doesn't bother me.  When one can buy +5 sword of whatever with real money, I'm out. 

Oh wait, I don't play either of these games regularly.   :awesome_for_real:

I don't think it'll end at just xp potions.  I pay a $15 subscription to play a premium game. If there stuff to purchase to make it "better" than I am not playing the premium game.

Ok, I'm avoiding comments in line on most of this since you are all entitled to your own opinions and I can't do anything save for come off as a corporate shill on this topic; but if you will forgive this one intrusion...

Why is doing this before WoW stupid, but after a good thing?" Innovation -- Numtini endorsed only at Blizz???"

This is not a 1 + 1 = 2 statement. If it's stupid now, it's stupid when WoW does it. If it's not stupid when WoW does it, it's not stupid now.

Can you provide some more detail there?

One aspect many of you are missing is that SOE plans to allow players to trade station credits. So I could indeed sell my longsword+5 to you in-game for real money. That's the inflection point where the economy is significantly impacted. To what degree is difficult to say; I probably exaggerated before when I said it would be destroyed. EVE online has something similar with real money buying game time or something, and its economy appears to function. But it'll definitely change, and for the worse.

I would be surprised if anyone - a single person - quits over this. People playing EQ2 at this stage are in it pretty deep. If you are a soloer, then why do you care about this? Boosting exp gain sounds pretty nice! If you are a raider, then why do you care about this? If you are an aspirational raider, you might actually like it depending on what becomes available. One can already by cloaks and mounts for real money through LoN and no one screamed about quitting over that.

This is not the actual case. The currency is not currently transferable. You buy it, and it's yours. The FAQ states the intent for it to later become something that can be given as a gift, but that's not currently a feature, and is not exactly trading credits. The items you can buy are not able to be traded either, so you can't buy one and give it to a friend for a million plat. You buy it, you get it, you keep it.

The system is also closed. So if you gifted me 50000 in Station Cash for my +5 Sword of Epic Doom (at some future point when that's an option), I can't turn that into actual dollars. I'd still just have a gift of Station Cash that I can only use for items in the marketplace.

Guess I'm a liar, but I didn't want this incorrect statement to be interpreted as accurate. If you are not going to like a system, make sure you don't like it for the actual features it offers.

I can't imagine this impacting me at all. I went back to EQ to play the old fashioned way, and I can still do that. (Well, mostly.) If these things were mandatory, I would be quite quite bothered, but they're not, so I'm not. Other people can have fun with their XP potions. My drood is doing just fine on his own for now.

Right, that was my understanding also. Even assuming that the item shop doesn't expand its inventory past cosmetic items and XP potions, we all know that people like to look cool. Rare items like house decorations and clothing had incredible value in UO; the same applies to current titles with players camping spawns for days to get a rare mount or pet in WoW. And of course XP potions let players level faster, they possess immediate intrinsic value. Surely you see how this could impact the economy?

Whomever lets the cat out of the bag with subscription MMOs selling in game items gets to be the bad guy.

SOE doing it first means it's them, and anyone copying is doing just that.  Had WoW done it first, then they could be the bad guy.  Of course SOE'd have to deal with people saying they're only copying Blizzard, but at least it's not another feather in the "SOE hates their players and are money grubbing, soul sucking leeches" cap.

Oh sure, it'll do something to the economy. It's no different than when we put a free housing item in a magazine or something... a good number of EQII players go completely bonkers to have all the cool things in their houses, and no guild halls. So those items pick up a good value on the broker for folks who missed the initial option to get them.

Same for the Legends of Norrath loot cards that are housing items. Totally trivial in terms of gameplay, but very important to a lot of people so they carry lots of secondary value.

I think that's a good thing and don't mind how each server sets their own prices based on demand. I just wanted to correct you when it looked like you were saying that it was an open system that could be used to pass real cash around for items. That's the LiveGamer service (yup, formerly Station Exchange) and is still limited to select servers.

Not quite the same thing and it's important to note that. :)

:star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

Yep.  You're playing the gimped-down version only losers play because they're too cheap/ poor to afford the real XP-gains system.  Much like playing Dungeon Runners on freeplay instead of paying your $4/ month.  You can do it, but you're sure missing out on a lot of stuff.

Ahhh, so it's avoiding the negativity.

To be honest, every single Western MMO could push an item marketplace live, and SOE could be the last one and we would still have angry customers. You can't avoid that, so why bother trying to hide behind another company. If it's a good idea and you are going to do it, your timing should not factor in ideas like "Gosh, can we hold this until someone else does it first?"

Angry customers are a constant, for any game and any game company. Not all of them mind you, but a subset. You could announce that you are giving your players a stack of cash for playing the game, and someone would complain that it's should have been twice as large and is a slap in the face.

In my line of work that's everyday and it's really no skin off my back. I prefer happy people, but my team's job is to make sure we do our level best to inform people about what's happening in the game (as soon as the plan allows) and then making sure they know how that something is going to work to the best of our ability. If we tell them those details, truthfully, and they aren't happy -- it's still a job done right.

Other folks get to worry more about reception :)

It's not about innovation, EQ2 has led that in every way for years. It's about perception. Bluntly SOE has a horrible reputation. Deserved or not I don't want to argue, but it's there. Particularly a reputation for being greedy and putting $$ over players. On the other side, no matter how long the queues are, no matter how many centuries it is between expansions, and no matter how many of their new innovations are taken directly from EQ2, people love Blizz absolutely to death.

This was so not a "go Blizz yay" comment. I'm an EQ2 player and its twice the game WoW will ever be. It's that Blizz can get away with things that I think others can't. And if I remember, there was some evidence floating around that they're planning to do the same anyway. Let them take the hit from players being pissed about it before they've even seen it.

Thanks for that, I better understand your point. :)

That's a pretty simplistic way to describe community management. It's so oversimplified that I'd entirely disagree. The CM team's job is not just to facilitate communication between the suits/devs and players, but to do so in a politic manner. Abashi got his point across just fine, but he lacked the soft skills to do the job effectively.

Obviously it wasn't your decision, and nobody's blaming you for it. Or maybe they are. Hell, they probably are on the official boards, but we aren't. Your closing statement stuck out. As a CM the players' reception is obviously your responsibility. Otherwise what are you there for, your sweet ass?

This is the problem with applying a player's understanding of how the world should work against the method by which an actual paying job is described. Grimwell is not making that shit up. That's probably in the Job Description :-)


Yes there are other methods, but yes this is driven by revenue. SOE has always led the charge in applying experimental methods of microtransactions. This is the same company that charged for features on guild forms, were one of the first to charge for name changes and character transfers, one of the first with an all access pass, and so on and so on.

That's why I don't get neither the anger nor the surprise. Jeezus guys. This is SOE. Say what you will about EQ2 but SOE has never been a company about making games just for the sheer joy of doing so. They're a division of a multinational public company. If they can prove people will pay for something, they actually are required by charter to their shareholders to go do it.

And the thing about WoW doing this first and not being evil? Come on. This is not their method. Their philosophy is to make people pay what they can but retain them with improved gameplay. How many MMOs have made it EASIER to level up over the years? And that's along many examples. This doesn't mean they're altruistic. Far from it. They too are a public multinational. But Blizzard uses the better game=more accounts=more money formula. SOE has always been more ways to collect money=more money formula.

People should care. If this succeeds this pretty much means that all future games will be designed to encourage** purchasing. Good design will be about how to design bottlenecks into the games so people shell out more cash. Hell levels, impossible drops, rare spawn camps - they will all come back with vengeance. This is HUGE setback for the industry.


** By encourage I mean making it uberable until you cave in and shell out more money to get around designed-in suck.

Glad you asked.

MMORPGs are business, and like all businesses they are looking to maximize profits. How do you go about maximizing profits? You get as many people to pay as much as you can. Right now "as many people" is pretty much nailed down, "as much" is what they are trying to change. Sure it all starts small, but corporate greed has no bounds and we all soon be boiling frogs.

If this succeeds expect future mmorpg to have "buy out of suck" designed-in bottlenecks. Your subscription will be monthly fee + mandatory purchases.

I definitely over simplified sam. You win there.

My intended point was that it's impossible to please all of your customers at any one given moment in time. Some of them are going to be jubilant, others are going to be angry, and most are going to just be playing the game and wondering what all the extra chatter in level chat is about.

Given that reality, a Community Manager's first responsibility is to focus on getting the community solid information about things like this, as fast as a corporate timeline will permit. We can't worry that some folks are going to grab the pitchforks and torches -- that's inevitible. We can worry about making sure our information is accurate to the moment, clear and easy to understand, and immediately useful to the reader.

The skill in the job is knowing how to do that without angering folks who are not currently angry. If my team had simply gone to the EQ and EQII communities this morning and posted "Station Cash, now live, deal with it." I would expect a huge spike in the number of angry people, most of which would be angry over the nature of the delivery and not the actual content.

Instead we were able to go live with a full FAQ, links to a live website, and make it clear what was happening, and how to learn more about it.

From that point, where we have delivered clean data to the community, the job reverses to a reporting function. We start collecting feedback, positive and negative, and relate that to the appropriate internal teams who can act on the feedback, or at least consider it on future renditions. If there are questions that we can answer in the community, we take care of that too, but it's less about trying to convince everyone to be happy, and more about making sure they know the actual details and can make informed valuations about the topic of the day.

Some people are not good at this, and others are. It's definitely a specific skill set to be able to bring people news and deliver it well, but that's what we do.

If we pretended we could somehow tell every customer something to make them shit flowers in joy over whatever it was that made them angry, we'd never have time to just tell them the truth of things and help them understand that so they know the real score.  :awesome_for_real:

Hopefully that makes some sense? I think I need to go blog some tonight. You have me going now. :P

Look to Asia for the realities there. Companies that make it almost mandatory to buy things to get ahead in their games do not lead in that market. The big revenue comes from a more benign design model.

I don't think there is any sugarcoating to what amounts industry-harming money grab. No, nobody blames you personally for this, but you represent company that did this and that where blame is.

There is no degrees to this - companies will do as much of it as they can get away with. If you think that your product worth extra - raise your subscription fee. Money grab is money grab.

Asian cash shop games are usually free to play otherwise aren't they?

We may have to agree to disagree as to what this is.

I'm not outraged about this but I hope lots of other people are, hopefully outraged enough to hit cancel.

I don't particularly care and can see buying some of the xp potions. But I turned on vent to hear people in my guild melting down with lots of expletives flying. Whatever we say here, it's not a popular move.

Well, I'm not outraged because I'm not a SOE customer.

Like someone said earlier, subscription MMOs are a premium service. That subscription pays for such things as customer service and a live team to fix issues as they arise as well as freedom from intrusive advertising and a level playing field. When those things are compromised to monetize a product at gameplay's expense, I hope people do get upset. As consumers we need to remember that these huge corporations don't care one iota about the quality of the entertainment or utility they provide except where it directly and unmistakeably impacts their bottom line. Vote with your wallet.

Subscription fees are a basic service. The basics needed for you to have the most basic experience. I'm sure SOE internally convinced themselves by equating to the Cable TV model.

Cable: Basic Fee. SOE: single game fee
Cable: Plus Fee. SOE: station pass
Cable: On Demand/PPV. SOE: microtrans


Ok, couple of points here:

• You're applying emotion to evolution. If (and it's a big "if") this works, it's evolution of the business. Nature doesn't care that we don't need our appendix anymore.
• The games are already designed with bottlenecks. We had this discussion years ago when determining why RMTing existed. It's because the games draw in players who are predisposed to achievement but unwilling or unable to see that their lifestyle does not support their own achievement in the same way it does their peer or personal idol. So they look for equal fulfilment and ways to cheat the system, hence the secondary market which SOE has for years wanted to make the primary one. If you changed the paradigm of the game, you'd remove this compulsion which would remove the secondary market. And yet, in that time we've only seen this model grow.
  
• "Setback for the industry" is a red herring. It's merely a setback for the current playerbase. Kinda like armaggedon scenarios. Is it the end of all life or just the end of human life. Similarly here: has the traditional subscription model plateaued such that a new model is needed to get back to growth?
  
  

This is what this is about. It's the same discussion we're having in the world PvP and sandbox thread. SOE (and most others existing and coming) cannot compete with WoW. So instead of doing so face on they're compelled to try different things to redefine the metric of success so they can be the dominant player in that model.

I won't call mtx "blue ocean" thinking because it's been done to death already. But the premise is the same. They don't add more resources to making a better game, instead applying resources to trying to develop new business opportunities that make WoW's clear competitive advantage less relevant.

I don't think it will work though. SOE's audience is not growing by leaps and bounds and doesn't really have a shot of doing so unless they take on SWTOR or continue shifting their focus to the non veteran MMO market.

Let me first say that I know almost nothing about the current state of EQ and EQ II. That being said...

I'm surprised SOE is offering XP potions right off the bat. To me that's a tacit admission that their game design sucks. I.e. that's like saying, "Hi guys pay us *more* money and we'll let you get the fun stuff sooner." If you are going to admit that you might as well offer "pre-leveled" characters for sale as well.

Item shops are VERY common with Asian MMOs. It's a more efficient way to get people in and playing. People don't want to commit to a monthly subscription but don't mind anteing up for stuff once they're in the game. The trick is to not bleed people to death over it, and give value equivalent to the money given. The key figure here is ARPU (average revenue per user) - as long as your ARPU per user is high enough, you can keep the game running at a profit.

I think EQ/EQ2's item shop as implemented would be great.... if it were F2P. Which might be the next step, who knows (well, SOE does I guess :D ). 

As seen by TOR's announcement, I think you'll see a lot more MMOs moving to a F2P model. It's a way to reach beyond the hard core of gamers who don't mind shelling $15 a month into perpetuity. Right now the market has been dominated by Asian games (most of which have been justifiably dissed in the west due to shoddy localization and questionable design) but that's likely to change.

However if a game like Giant Online comes out in the West that just tries to milk as much from every user as utterly possible -- I suspect most people simply won't play. People tend not to be stupid when it comes to their pocketbook as a general rule, and F2P games especially have to justify everything they sell. Note that most of SOE's item shop are "fluff" items aimed at regular players.

Totally agree. It would be absolutely fine if the game were free to play. Hell, it might even be fine if it was implemented in a new game with a subscription fee, because consumers would have the chance to make an informed decision before committing. Adding an item shop to an existing title with an established player base and not making it opt-in (or even allowing opt-out!) is simply not OK. I hope their players feel the same way and act appropriately.

I think the backlash that SOE is or will get from this comes down to the fact that SOE is not exactly known for being truthful when it's comes to its customers. 

It may not be the case today, but that may change by tomorrow.  And I'm not saying SOE shouldn't change their opinion or methodology or business approach, but I AM saying that you guys shouldn't put out blanket statements like that so that you can be burned by it in the future.  But hey, it's Smed ship to run into the ground.

I have a feeling that my 10 years playing MMOs are about to come to a close.  I really do love the genre, but buying 1s and 0s just makes me feel smarmy.  At least with a subscription fee I could blame it on needing to keep the servers up and running... but I'm not buying into the item shop craze.  There's this mental difference I have between the two.  Paying per month makes it feel like a necessary bill like cable or water.  But if I were to think "I need to spend $10 in American Dollars for some armor", then that disconnects me from the game.  I can't exactly say why, it just does.  Instead of spending the $10 ingame, I'll spend it anywhere else, like buying a gyro, or a CD, or anything more tangible than a sword comprised of 1s and 0s. 

Hell, I'd be happy to pay $25 a month to play on a level playing field with no item shops. 

I don't care about the money at all. I just don't want to feel like a schmuck.

Details? :awesome_for_real:

The problem comes in when one starts mucking about with things we think are irrelevant, but actually have a strong impact on the system.  Like appendices which we have learned help the intestines repopulate beneficial bacteria.

This will be a disaster for the industry.  MMOs, whether PvE or PvP, are built on one premise:  letting people feel that they are better than other people in the game (in other words, e-cock).  In that sense, people expect MMOs to operate like a sport- everyone is on the same starting terms.

We wouldn't accept it if in baseball, any MLB team could pay $500,000 to start a game up 2-0.  That's where the industry is headed here, and people simply won't play games if they feel MATERIAL advantages (I don't think a little fluff like the card game stuff in WoW, an option to buy a slightly different shade of dye that isn't available otherwise, etc. is necessarily the end of the world) are available to those with the most cash.


EDIT:  Also, making people dip into their wallet at smaller time intervals is BAD.  At least with a monthly sub, its basically fire and forget until you cancel.  Do you really want popups every two days saying "QUEST FOR SPECIAL RARE BROWN LIGHTSABER CRYSTAL: $3.50?"

I don't claim to be an expert in consumer/marketing psychology, but (personally) it bothers me less to pay $15 a month than to pay $2 every two or three days.   If someone can point me to a study showing the opposite is true for most people, I am all ears.

DOUBLE DOOMCASTING EDIT:  The SWTOR announcement, in particular, seems to leave the door open for charging hourly.  FUCK. YOU. if that is true.

It will depend on whether people feel they can advance at a reasonable pace for what they pay, and whether or not they feel as if they're at a competative disadvantage.  While it won't bother me if the base game is fun, I do agree it has the potential to disuade many customers.

These sorts of games have never been "fair".

How am I being a pedantic asshole here? I cited an example without insulting anyone.

To counter your point, after leveling up my 5th toon to 60, I got rather tired of it. Sidekicking/mentoring would not have helped one bit, since I'd still have to grind through the content I've ground through for the last 4 years. Lowering the xp requirements would accomplish the same goal, true, but I do not feel this 'ick' that you must be feeling about paying money for it.

Is it because 'rich' players now will have an edge? You won't pay so you fear you'd be cast as a 'poor schmuck'?

If you think catassing your way to level 80 through the 'sweat of your brow' in one of these games gives you a badge of honor, you might want to reevaluate what things make you feel like a schmuck.

It doesn't have to be for "most people", it just has to be for "enough people".

The basic economic idea of microtrans is that players can pay what they feel like (http://economicsofvirtualworlds.blogspot.com/2008/10/rarest-of-lawyers.html). A sub model is fixed at the same price for both your hardest of hardcore players and the lightest of casual players. Under a microtrans model, however, you might get players who pay $40 a month to play - that's a nice return, and one that balances out a number of players who might play for free or only plonk down a dollar or two a month.

Anecdotally I've heard of players burning themselves out on sub models because they feel they have to get their money worth out of $15 a month, or the fact they have to buy box copies, whereas microtrans might not pay anywhere near $15 a month and play when they feel like it, or see more frequent content additions because a microtrans game needs to keep players paying more frequently.

It's a value for money argument - under microtrans, the game is paid what the players think it is worth. Under a sub model, all players are locked in at the same price (barring having additional microtrans, like EQ1, EQ2 and CoH/V have). Both payment models have their advantages; I personally favour a low sub fee ($5 a month) and some cosmetic microtrans hybrid, but no-one has gone down that route that I'm aware of.

Maybe next week they can sell a potion of framerate +5.

Only if you all start selling a potion of "alleviate soul sucking grind."

Quid pro quo, Clarice.

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/39720/miscellany/ot/hannibal_prison.jpg)

Good points, all.  But as to SWTOR in particular, I would be very surprised if they didn't charge normally to purchase the game.  Some seem to be assuming this means release will be a free download.  Free to play!=free to buy.

CoH sells a few extra things even though it's a subscription game. I've never bought them since I feel it's a bit of slimy double dipping to have micro-trans and a sub, but I recall the devs saying they did decent sales. If I was still playing EQ 2 I'd feel the same way.

UO added all this shit years ago (decorative items, characters pre-built to 80% skill, etc.) and nobody inside or out of the game really gave a fuck. EQ1 and it's failure of a sequel doing the same thing is hardly news. Much ado about nothing.

EQII has for years had optional 'adventure packs' which were basically selling packets of experience (exclusive quests and mobs to kill) as well as exclusive loot tables.  People got indignant over those and the 'SOE is evil' was acknowledged.  When they started the exchange servers many purists left and the "SOE is evil' was acknowledged.  They have been selling some items (the items you could get from collectors editions and stuff) for a long time already as it is.  They have had xp potions in the game as veteran rewards for ages as well.  They have web services you can pay for, they had exclusive servers in EQ you could pay extra to play on(I forget what the benefits where).  It was never a case of should SOE have an item shop but when.

I'm surprised there are still people that get all indignant still, is there really any confusion over what type of company SOE are?  I can't see many cancellations happening, with their 'bad reputation' and all they weeded out most people that would have been offended by this years ago.  They cater to a different more focused demographic than wow, one that doesn't mind as much that certain services get labeled as extra and charged for on top of the subscription fee.

Meh, in a PvE mmog you don't need that shit to compete, and regardless there will always be people more powerful than you, and people less powerful than you.

I can't summon up the energy to care.

If EVE was selling t3 ships, WAR was selling capped out characters, or even atitd was selling flax, I'd cry some more along with everyone else. In the EQ model... meh.

No, it's much ado about something.

On the simplest level, it's institutionalizing a pay-for scheme that allows you to shortcut around the 'basic' difficulty scheme. If players start thinking that their devotion to the game can be undercut by simply buying an advantage, it does some handy illusion breaking.

Even players who play WoW and not anything by Sony, they really don't want this system to get a foothold.

I personally won't pay another cent to SoE because of their way of doing business. Many others that I know feel the same way.

If Blizzard were to adopt a "let's shit on our customers and bleed them dry" attitude, then they would be the next company going from market leader to floundering has been, struggling with innovative ways to try and improve their dying market share.

When Archlord launched a couple of years ago, there was a (very brief) period where the game had both subscription and microtransaction. There really were no full free to play games in the west, while some really wanted it to go full free to play, the risk was seen as too large. It was decided the game would launch with a blend of both models. Players were expected to subscribe (at a lower than average subscription rate), and then purchase items on top. Available items were all consumable or cosmetic. However, the entire community went into complete meltdown as soon as this business model was announced. The subscription requirement was dropped very quickly and the game went full free to play. Its doing very nicely now.

There are a couple of key differences. Archlord was launching with this model. Customers were told about it before they had any investment in the game, their characters or the community. Its much easier to keep a user than it is to get one in the first place, people who have been playing the game for more than a year will take just about anything you throw at them (well, except the NGE). People who play either of the EQ games are already hugely invested.

Archlord is also a very competitive game. The strapline was "Raise and Army, Rule the World". Full open PvP and one person on each server can become the Archlord and kick the crap out of everyone else for a month. When microtransactions are introduced into a highly competitive game there is an immediate fear (often rightly so) that all balance will vanish and the person who spends the most money will win. Both EQ games are really very PvE focused, they only have indirect competition (guilds competing to kill new raid mob first) and spending large amounts on microtrans offers no significant advantage. People generally don't care about things that don't effect them directly.

I don't see SOE losing any significant number of players over this. If they lose 10% or even 20% then this is going to be easily covered by the additional revenue from the microtransactions. Its much better to have 100,000 people paying $30 per month than 200,000 people paying $15 per month.


On a sidepoint, the items are way overpriced, which is going to hurt their revenue potential. My understanding is that the items stack. So taking the tier I, II, and III experience potions at the same time will give 85% XP. If you want that for 4 hours then it will cost you $24. The cosmetic items seem more reasonably priced.

...

Irrelevant. As said numerous times, this has been going for years even in the West. It's just mostly tied to games currently enjoying fifth through thirtieth place in the genre so nobody's really cared. That SHOULD be the case here too (hello?! SOE. EQ2.), but eh, just the normal cycle of the establishment not preferring the change that the industry thinks is needed, since competing as equals against the current leader is not possible.

Look to the tween and teen virtual worlds. They're all over the place and with an audience that doesn't mind. This isn't about beating American heads with Korean business models. It's about looking at the next wave of gamers coming and seening what could work for them. Ya know, kinda like us, 10-15 years ago.

Not necessarily. That is 100,000 fewer people recruiting their friends, writing fan websites with up to date accurate information, and available in game to offer a wide diversity of grouping and playstyle options at different times of day. Being popular is a reason to play a game in and of itself because of everything that it adds to the game.

I just reupped EQ2 after leaving in July. I didn't want to leave, but I simply couldn't find a guild that met my time requirements (serious attitude, light & early EST time commitment) in EQ2. I knew of several in WoW. SOE lost me as a customer because they weren't as popular.

For what it's worth, I shelled out 10 bucks for the seafury buccaneer armor set and it looks kinda badass. Granted, they took SWG's Mandalorian leg armor textures and updated them for EQ2, but hey. Half of the shit I buy on the brokers is stuff to bling me out anyway 'cause the standard crafted armor (which is better than most of the shit you can loot, btw) looks kinda assy.

It costs money to support people.  More players == more cost.

No, but perceptions drive player behavior.  See Numtini's worry about SOE doing this before Blizzard.  She didn't have to elaborate for me to quickly understand why she feared the move, because of the common perception of SOE's business practices.

I don't really see what the big deal is.  If people want to spend more money to get more stuff faster, that's fine with me.  It's a PvE game... the only person I'm competing with is myself.  If they start doing this kind of stuff in games with a significant pvp component, then I could understand the outrage a bit more.  The key here is to make the pricing scheme VERY clear to the paying customer.  You get one service at rate A and additional services at rate B.  Seems to me like they are just creating an a la carte menu.  In the future, this model will be more successful if players know what the pricing is from the start.  Adding it midstream is likely the crux of the issue.  It creates an aura of "bait and switch". 

IMO the stuff being sold just doesn't really matter enough to cause the nerd rage. 

Remember these are the same people who say their achievements are 'trivialized' every time a new expansion is released.  Their self-worth is intimately entwined with how long they cat-assed to get the +1 sword of foozle whacking, heaven forbid a random drop in the new area is more effective than their 3 week grind reward.

They are selling 2x exp potions that last for a few hours right?  I don't play SOE games and I don't see anything on the horizon that change will that, but making some cash seems like a good reason to keep grindy gameplay to me, (not that anyone needed a good reason before).

Right. Which is the reason you only see the legacy non-frontrunners doing this. In the four years of everybody talking about, and almost everyone playing, WoW, whoever's still playing older games are so very much there to stay. So the risk of them quiting over something like this is actually less.

For $10 you get 2 hours of +50%xp, which doesn't stack with other potions, and applies only to kills which are about 1/3rd to 1/2 of your XP.

Those will fly off the shelves I'm sure. :ye_gods:

Ok, that is total fail. If you're going to make an unpopular move, at least do it right.

Geez yea. MTX only works when people want the extra.

But again. SOE. This is the company that charged $14.99/mo for Planetside. Check your shock and expectations at the door.

And over on Tobold's blog there are people reporting that the potion doesn't survive the death penalty. So you may be out of your purchase even faster than the listed expiration limit.

Working as intended :awesome_for_real:

If quest exp doesn't get the bonus than they are a total waste.

They are a total waste :) If they were a buck each for the 50%, they'd be sort of ok if you were really really working on grinding an alt for raiding or something like that.

I still have a couple of the vet reward ones kicking around. Since they don't do much for soloing, you try to save them for Really Good Groups who you think are going to last a few hours and I found few enough of those that I hit 80 without using all of the ones I had available.

The incredibly stupid cost, duration and loss on death won't stop them from selling.  I know this as sure as the Bengals and Lions still have season ticket holders who say to themselves, "No, I shouldn't give up the seat license, they'll do good next year."

I had that exact discussion with my friends who've had season tickets going on 20 years at the last Lions game.  Maybe I should go buy EQII and empty my bank account buying rmt crap from Smedley.

I'm all for it as long as they add grow/shrink potions that stack with other size alteration effects.  Waddling around Freeport as a 20 foot burynai is  :awesome_for_real:

This is because nobody gives a fuck about UO in general. Well maybe you do, but then you are not normal in any definition of the word.

I am calling out PR shill and asking for account ban.

OMG WoW is dying and evil they're charging $15 for character recustomizaton!

You may need to log in to see this (https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/character-customization-intro.html).


Yes, I know it's here too (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15562.0). No, not everyone here goes there. And yes, I didn't check there before posting here because I just got it barked at me in the WoW launcher :-)

Did Trammel really hurt your asshole THAT much? The length of time you've been chasing me around this forum saying stupid shit like this has now lasted longer than the entire pre-Trammel existence of UO. All the other howling butthurt ex-PKs settled into Eve and finally shut the fuck up years ago. What's your damage?

Not sure why you are outraged, did you look at the items they are offering?

Yes, my post in the bad design thread just screams SOE fangirl.  Clearly I am being paid phat stacks.

I think that was a joke, welcome to f13.

He's a former UO PK and thus not to be trusted   :evil:

Fixed.

I haven't forgiven his ilk for cleaning out my Baja two-story.  FUCK YOU, SINIJ.

P.S. John Smedley paid for my last car.

You get royalties for the use of your isle/moon?

I had to chop up your furniture because I couldn't carry all of it.

In all seriousness UO at this point irrelevant for the industry. They can do pretty much anything and it will be dismissed as rigor mortis.

note the not.

Bank-ganking me for my key?  Smashing dozens of hours of decorating work into kindling?  Running off with all my rare knick-knacks including an event-dyed table from the first week of release?

All this I could forgive, but you bastards killed Donny.

Donny was possibly the last of the original tame-able human NPCs.  I rescued him by stabling him during the purge of his kind and every subsequent world reset.  He survived in our house for months as the Omega Mensch - my guild's mascot and Man Friday, unswervingly loyal to me and to his beloved fishcakes until I recalled home to find little piles of wood in place of his chair and dresser. :sad:

I choose to believe that Trammel was birthed by Donny's spirit whispering vengeance into the developers' ears, and that when it arrived he drank in every one of your sweet, delicious tears from his place in the digital ether.

I don't understand how your story of what sounds like a really great time in UO got into a thread about SoE and the SADIM touch.

So what you did was exploiting, and what Sinij did was (at the time) legal.  How is he the bad guy again?

Tell that to Donny, Mr legal beagle.  The killers got the keys via exploit so we're all sinners, but they're the ones who cut down an innocent man. 

It's meta-commentary on the irrelevance of rmt flavor items and crappy potions.  Or it's a meandering derail.  Either way, I blame Sinij.

Did I just walk into a nearly decade old RPG grudge? What the hell?

kERRA is the kind of person who would have filled a barrel with water.  How can I ever agree with someone that vile?

And also, I think its much more likely you had your key stolen and don't want to admit it.  I stole more housekeys than I can count- a minimum amount of bank security would've solved your problem. 

Oh, I filled several.  But nope, a Donahue clone got the guards to smoosh me while I was yakking in the Vesper bank.  Now my boat keys, those were stolen....

It wasn't actually Sinij.   :oh_i_see:

Unless by startling chance he really was that Donahue in '98, in which case GRRR!

I still think Kerra is a shill, lets ban him/her just in case. Puppies avatar? Derailing Serious Business thread into UO reminiscence thread? Damage control much?

 :mob:

You might be on to something, sinij.  Kerra started posting about the time you showed up again... ;D

I thouht that by definition one couldn't derail a serious business thread.  :why_so_serious:

It's rare, but can happen.  Usually by it being moved to Politics.

That sounds pretty cool. How much?

1000 SC

Drink Pepsi^® !

Meanwhile, WoW has rested xp. And has increased levelling from 20-60, and now 60-70.

Yep, SOE is banking on their players being in it for the long haul, and a "whoever is leaving has already left" mentality (as shown last time they raised their sub fees).

Ah well...
 :awesome_for_real:

So does eq2 IIRCC, they also have a very robust mentoring system.

If anything the levelling in EQ2 is a bit too fast at times, I found myself outlevelling a lot of quests.

Tradeskill xp potions, now there's a valuable commodity. Too bad tradeskilling is so repetitive, it's a great way for solo players to get decent gear.

And that damn loam.  <rare sound> "Yay!  A rare harvest!  Fuck, it's LOAM!  Again.  Give me metal you piece of ... ... ..."

.

Never played EQ2, or do you not understand why I got on my tangent?  The latter because I just re-upped and Sky brought up tradeskilling at a convenient time for me to vent.

None of the above, i am just wondering how many people that are playing eq2, will instantly try to click that "?".   :grin:

(i played eq2 for about 1.5 years i think, ran a guild too, good stuff)

I had both an armorcrafter and a weaponcrafter. Actually all the trades, but those two were painful. Gave up on the weaponcrafter.

I'm probably jumping in on this conversation way too late, but...While I realize that in game item shops are a new way for small subscription base games to pull in extra revenue, I have always felt as a player that there is very little difference between this and buying gold from some third party.  Even when it is a part of the game, it feels like cheating, cheating myself that is, of the very thing I play the game for.  Just the idea that I'm in a universe where others don't have to work for prestige or items corrupts the world and makes it seem trivial and unimportant to accomplish anything. 

I played a Korean mmo for about 3 weeks last summer that sold in game power boosts and weapons and such, and while i was on a budget and determined to do nothing but enjoy the free aspects of the game, I was always constantly aware that I was playing a completely different game than those people who spent lots and lots of money on items.  Its like being an athlete who refuses to do steroids even though every day he has to compete with those who do.  Maybe I'm just too much of a purist.

You're not being a purist at all. You are a player who wants to compete in a fair way in an environment that promotes healthy competition and a sense of achievement. Other people haven't got the stones to compete in a fair and equal competition, so they find ways to alter the play in their favor. This of course is why they will never amount to anything in their lives.

Some game publishers have equally low moral fiber and they are catering to these equally weak brothers by allowing them to cheat, whilst also getting some extra money of these poor losers.

Of course it seems these same game publishers have cheated in other ways too. They pretend to sell you a game in a box, but actually it's usually a steaming turd full of bugs and the box cover is just a pack of lies.

Lol where did all this anger come from. Ahh fuck it let's hit post anyway

Look, I don't like the trend either and it's not something I support or want for myself, but this drama club shit is a bit overboard.  Man up.  If you can't live with it, quit paying the companies to do it to you. 

I think the key to making this type of model work is to not make it an uneven playing field. Obviously, XP potions fail that. But there are ways to do it. Require a paid token to "ascend to the heroic levels" is just another way of saying pay to level, but you still need to get the xp and stuff. Which effectively becomes pay $x for every so much gametime. If you play infrequently, that can turn into a real bargain. If you're a catass, it will kill you.

Or Puzzle Pirates has the "badge" system where in order to take on certain roles in game, you need a badge which is purchaseable with real $. It's not uneven, it's the only way you can do that stuff. You're unlocking part of the game for 30 days.

Where you get interesting after that is if you allow people to buy and sell the purchasable tokens. If you let them, then you effectively let catasses (and people who are good at making money) play for free. I didn't find that corrosive in Puzzle Pirates, perhaps because I was making a lot of ingame money and always had enough for my Dubloons.

Firstly let me state I've never bought gold or plat.

Secondly, I used to think similarly to you, though without the competition element.
These days, I have a job. A good job, but one that requires a lot of time invested. At this point in my life, I'd gladly buy 10,000 gold in WoW so I can buy that Mammoth I want without having to grind gold like a motherfucker to afford it. Not because I'm competing with anyone, as I'm not a catass and I don't really give a fuck either way about anyone else besides my friends.

I'd buy that gold because my time is worth more to me than the little fuzzy glow of knowing I catassed for 102 hours or whateverthefuck to get a mount. I'd rather catass my actual, paid job for, say, 3 or 4 hours to get the same sense of achievement.

Basing achievement in a game to "achieving something in life" is a pretty obviously skewed/fucked up sense of priorities. I've achieved plenty in my life, and if I were to spend some RL$ to buy a mammoth to skip the in-game grind cockblock doesn't negate a damn thing. Maybe if I wanted the mammoth as an e-peen measureing stick, but the only thing it measures is time spent in-game and grinding gold. Not exactly the kind of thing that says "I am somebody and my life's achievements are now especially outstanding".
 :why_so_serious:



Oh. Why don't I buy the gold?
Because the goldsellers are a bunch of fucking hack merchants, and I don't trust any of them in the slightest.

Why doesn't any western MMO go back to $/hr system?  Say it could be free to play for X hrs/month, then one could buy hours after that?  Why all this store stuff?  The $/hr system would not give anyone an unfair advantage, aside from the standard one of the more you play the faster you level/get items.

Some MMOs have that payment model in the East - WoW uses phonecard type game time cards for example. I think there are several reasons it's never taken off in the West. Firstly you want to reduce the number of subscription decision points that a customer has. Every time he buys a game time card or resubscribes, he has to decide whether that's what he wants to spend his money on and there's a risk that he may decide that it isn't worth it for him. That's why MMO operators in the west offer automatically recurring billing and discounts for long subscription periods.

Secondly, it doesn't match the way that Westerners typically play games. In the far East, MMOs are routinely played in cybercafes with all the people in the cafe playing together. This reduces downtime massively meaning that the vast majority of the time actually logged in is productive as all the faffing and organisation is mostly done out of game and face to face. If sitting around looking for a group or waiting for your tank to finish putting the kids to bed wasn't just wasting time but also costing you money then I think a lot of people would quit sooner than they might otherwise have done.

... are we still talking about MMOs?  :why_so_serious:


This. I won't buy from goldsellers, but official, in-game RMT? Bring it. That's 1) the way to you get rid of external RMTers in your game and all the associated negatives of their existence and 2) the way that the time poor / money rich crowd can keep up with the time rich / money poor crowd.

How do the money poor/time poor keep up with them then?  And what about those time rich/money rich people?  Now they have two advantages!

How about just making a game fun on its own merits?  If one needs to grind for anything and there are pay methods to reduce it, I would argue it's a bad design.

Micro transactions are about Options in play.

Even though you can officially buy and sell characters or ISK in EVE, with all the support benefits that entails, there is still external ISK/character/item sellering with all the chances for fraud that goes along with it.  I will say it is generally much less of a problem in EVE though, usually the sellers are met with derision, and you can often go for weeks without seller spam.

Simply having official in game RMT isn't sufficient to remove the problem though.

Eve does a horrible job of letting you know that you can legitimatly purchase characters, unless you're hardcore enough to read their forums. (Which, previous Devs have told us at least 50% of your players never do.)

You also can't straight-out buy ISK, you've got to go through the whole timecard process which is a pain in the ass method of doing so and even less well advertised.  I imagine it's to protect CCP from some sort of lawsuit around virtual item sales in the future.

Sure there is.

The problem with official RMT then becomes the fact that they would then have even more motivation to add in these additional high-priced items that may be either status items (Motorcycle, Mammoth) or genuinely useful (Mammoth) purely to get you to buy the official gold to buy the ingame item with..

I get all the time/money arguments etc. that constantly come up, I truly do.  I am of a rare breed of people that don't have lots of time or money, and part of the reason I enjoy MMO's is that for the most part, once you make the initial investment of computer, box and subscription you have endless entertainment for months and months.  All I do ask for from a game universe is that it gives me a reason to want to be a part of it, and I can't do that if everyone plays by different rules.  Perhaps the divergence of opinions is primarily based on the fact that i see games, all games, even online multiplayer games as competitive endeavors, where those who would buy items or gold see them simply as places to hang out in? 

How exactly? What is the difference for example of me starting a free game a month before you do and staying one month's worth of exp ahead of you our entire mutual game playing career, and the two of us starting the same day, but I buy some potions that give me an effective "month's head start" on you?

How in any way whatsoever is that an uneven playing field--the fact that someone gets to an exp level ahead of you?


I may not be following your argument very well, but how in any way would this be different then the "uneven playing field" you mention with XP potions? If you take the first example as uneven, how can directly buying levels be anything but more uneven? At least with the pots, they still have to play the game.

Time poor / money poor people can't be helped. They aren't a market you want to go for in MMOs and designing for them would actually drive them away (since time poor / money poor people probably like to think that one day they'll be rich in something).

A game can be fun on its own merits. See the entire non-MMO gaming category for that. MMOs need something to keep people playing and paying, so if grinding and paying are ways that work, it isn't a bad design. This isn't an absolute, of course - you can drive players away under either model - but if a dev studio can get the right balance then they have successfully met their design goals i.e. keep players generating revenue for them.

The fact that you did not understand what's wrong with what you're doing when you brought up the SE servers is why I left the game in the first place. The fact that you STILL don't get it explains why your subscription numbers are still going into the tank. You're going to drive yourselves to the point that Sony corp comes in and starts mass firings (I cant believe they havent already) and then you're going to complain "How were we supposed to compete with WOW?" to which the masses of the internet will laughingly reply "You weren't"

Tell us now how amazingly successful all those SE servers were... That those of us that quit because of them didn't really matter because you made so much money off the remaining players. Or those little mini $5 expansions... how'd those work out? Make lots of money did ya?

The adventure packs were sweet. I gave away at least 10 of them while a guild leader there. So i must be the dirtiest of the dirty, because i gave away whole zones of content that i bought for real money.

 :oh_i_see:

Sorry, I'm not being clear. You don't buy a level in the sense of "go to the website boom I'm 50th level" you instead buy an item that allows you to advance past a certain point. For example, in Grenado Espada, you need a specific scroll in order to advance over 100th level. You still need a whack load of experience to get past there, far more than I was able to tolerate. But everyone needs the same xp.

Really it's just a way of making the meter tick by the mile instead of by time. The advantage is you get people trying your game for free and you let people keep their characters active, increasing the chance they will restart play on a whim.

Blizzard disagrees with you, as does the majority of f2p mtx games. The headliner activities there sure are the same veteran hardcore players we here are. But that's not 2.5mil people in the US and another 2.5mil in EU playing that way. The way gaming media and mass media report things, it's more like the oboards of any game than a true insight into the "Average".

In my opinion, WoW's size and marketshare was built on the bottom of the player pyramid, the masses that come through awareness and word of mouth and enjoy it 5 hours a week. Ignoring the true masses to appeal to the core is why the genre was only as big as it was until 2005.

They're a bunch of freeloaders, Darniaq.  Don't let that bottom of the pyramid fool you.

I mean, let's look at WAR for an example.  It's done just fine by chopping off the lower layers so that only the top of the pyramid is left, right?  More players would just make the game suck.

My point was that the time poor / money poor players came along for the ride that better suits time rich players because they have something to aspire to. WoW wasn't built with the bottom of the pyramid in mind. That WoW was casual friendly enough to attract a lot of time poor players is testament to Blizzard's design.

No-one has come out and said, "This MMO is for the bottom of the pyramid!" (in nicer terms) because they aren't a group you can rely on. Sure, you want them to come along, but you don't design a title expressly for them.

Ok, so on WoW itself I completely disagree. But that's something of a small issue. While WoW was absolutely intended to cast as wide a net across the pyramid as possible, it isn't even the most successful to do so.

Mtx games are way more so, because they need to be. You get a couple of hundred million people into a f2p game and some of them are going to pay deep. Those games don't have the same take as WoW does, but they don't need to because they cost way less to make, probably way less to run, and the amount they do take is more than enough to keep banging them out.

Back to the point, you need the bottom to support the top. You don't have masses to be lead or inspired by guild and raid leaders, they don't stick around to achieve. They don't stick around, they don't meet friends, they don't form social ties, they don't pay their fee. Without them, you're relying on a small minority of players with a specific mindset. We know which games have done that and know how they have fared as a result.

Games are not financed by the minority of players who consider uber endgame achievement above all things including their lives. Those players are just an integral part of a much greater matrix.

as someone already said SOE will make more off the decorative shit even more so than selling uber shit. people buy friggen boxes and boxes of legend of norrath cards just to try and get ONE specific loot card.  I can see that being the same way with this station cash, those people who spend so much on the LON cards will be happy to pay the extra cash so they know FOR SURE that they are getting the item they want.

i don't see this as a bad thing, though i don't like pay for items shops ... unlike some though i dont see them selling 80 characters or raid loot.

As a harcore EQ1 raider veteran (1999-2006), I have no problems with the SOE shop. In fact, I'd say bring it on! Start selling the uber raiding buffs / gear / potions etc. You can't screw this game up any more than it is screwed already. This game has long gone past its mudflationary swirl down the toilet - more sludge from the store won't matter at all.

Really, I look forward to the day when we have games BUILT around micro-transaction all the way - gear and everything - no raid or mob drops. Just stuff where you buy from shops; no more dichotomy between time poor and time rich. An "even" playing field of the wallet and skill in the game....
 :why_so_serious:  :why_so_serious:  :why_so_serious:  :why_so_serious:

Just being bitter...

PS: a blast from around 2001 IIRC
Its not a new idea from SOE you know - for $50/month you had the privilege of playing on a 'PREMIUM" server. How that worked out is another story altogether.
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/miscpix/legendarybefallen.jpg)

Should have turned on Amazon One-Click looting.

Mountain out of a molehill.

SOE just didn't know what "premium" meant. I didn't play there but those that I know that did said it was the same, just less people.

Did I just see the "casuals aspire to be like poopsocks" argument get floated earlier in this thread? I know that's what poopsocks say to console themselves now that Blizzard has somewhat marginalized them, but come on. You could have deleted Sunwell and the 5% everyone who ever saw it during BC and the rest of the game would have chugged on oblivious.

Now that's not completly true, WUA.

I'd have noticed their deletion because I wouldn't have been able to sell Herbs at ridiculous prices anymore.

In theory it was also supposed to have better support/in-game events/etc. E.g. my server's head GM (on Luclin) moved over to the Legends server cause he was so good. That was a very sad day for us. It was because of him that Luclin didn't have most of the uber guild politics that many of the other servers had. E.g. he was the one that mandated a sign-up/rotation list for the main Kunark epic mobs, even though there was no official policy on that, so we didn't have any of that shit of people racing/griefing/camping those mobs. As a side-effect of that we had a Ragefire sign-up list for the Cleric epic as well that everybody followed, which was remarkable given what was going on on other servers.

I think SOE lost (and tainted for anyone else) the chance to build a really high end game around the premium server. They could have put together all sorts of crap, live events, solid support, and the whole nine yards, but instead they just took people's money and gave really nothing much else other than putting people to the front of the CSR queue.

Yes. And I feel for Trippy even all these years later. It was only by virtue of some really longtime veterans who also happened to be uber who also happened to know everyone at the top end of the other guilds and alliances that there was even the percentage success they had on my server (Bristlebane). And I say "they" because while I was in that alliance, I was never really part of that level of the endgame.

That sort of thing is why SOE doesn't have much in the way of goodwill from the MMO-playerbase, even including EQ players.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/slowpoke.gif)

I'd agree with you. If a game was set up as microtrans for fluff like Gaia Online, that's fine. But anytime money exchanges hands for practical in-game rewards, I'm instantly turned off.