SOE adds item shop to EQ, EQ2

[Numtini]

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.

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.

[Venkman]

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).

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.

[Lantyssa]

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.

[UnSub]

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.

[Venkman]

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.

[Ravanos]

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.

[Ubvman]

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....
      

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.

[Righ]

Should have turned on Amazon One-Click looting.

[Mrbloodworth]

Mountain out of a molehill.

[shiznitz]

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.

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.

[WindupAtheist]

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.

[Merusk]

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.

[Trippy]

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.

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.

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.

[Numtini]

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.

[Venkman]

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.

[Azazel]

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

[Ratman_tf]

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.

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.