SOE adds item shop to EQ, EQ2

[kERRA]

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....

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

It wasn't actually Sinij.   

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

[sinij]

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?

 

[Lantyssa]

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

[Rishathra]

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

[Lantyssa]

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

[Dtrain]

the "SOE hates their players and are money grubbing, soul sucking leeches" cap.

That sounds pretty cool. How much?

[Lantyssa]

1000 SC

[kERRA]

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?

 

Drink Pepsi^® !

[Azazel]

They are selling 2x exp potions that last for a few hours right?

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.

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...
 

[Mrbloodworth]

They are selling 2x exp potions that last for a few hours right?

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.

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

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

[Sky]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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 ... ... ..."

[Mrbloodworth]

?

.

[Lantyssa]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

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

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

[Sky]

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

[Senses]

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.

[Rake]

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

[Hawkbit]

This of course is why they will never amount to anything in their lives.

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. 

[Numtini]

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.

[Azazel]

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.

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".
 



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.

[Sunbury]

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.

[IainC]

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.

[UnSub]

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.

... are we still talking about MMOs? 

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.

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.

[Lantyssa]

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.

[Mrbloodworth]

Micro transactions are about Options in play.

[Murgos]

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.

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Yegolev]

There's no way to opt out of this.

Sure there is.

[Azazel]

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.

... are we still talking about MMOs? 

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.

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.

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..

[Senses]

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? 

[Stephen Zepp]

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.

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?

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.

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.

[UnSub]

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.

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.

[CharlieMopps]

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.

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

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?

[Mrbloodworth]

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.

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

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.