EQ 'Next'

[Falconeer]

Yes, according to that. And you have to pay 100USD (120$ from Italy, due to taxes apparently) to be part of it.

[Merusk]

Yeah, Euros get to pay the VAT on top of the price.

Hilarity, thy name remains SOE.  $40 upgrade to get in 2 days early and stake your claim.

[Engels]

In a beta. Which will be wiped.

[Ingmar]

Not clear to me that they're wiping after open beta as well.

[Falconeer]

Let's be serious and avoid confusion: that clearly means they won't be wiping the open beta stuff. This is unusual for old school MMORPGs (like EQ, hah) , but absolutely the norm for more recent F2P ones so obviously SOE is riding the wave of what is known these days: your open beta stuff will not be wiped.

EDIT: I could be wrong, eh.

[Ginaz]

So, soe is doing its own Kickstarter.

[Paelos]

Well, we knew they've fuck up the launch. It was just a question of how.

[Kitsune]

So yeah, not planning on putting real money down for EQ Minecraft.  If that was an offer that extended to Next as well, I'd be more inclined to bite.

[LC]

What will be amusing is when people find out how they will monetize this game. I can imagine a system where you get 1000 build points per day, and for a low low price you can buy additional points:

$9.99 - 2000 additional Build Points
$19.99 - 4500 additional Build Points
$29.99 - 7000 additional Build Points


100 build points buys you one stone block or something ridiculous.

[Numtini]

I don't mind paying for early access, but that's kind of pricey.

[Shatter]

So pay up to $100 to get into landmark beta to have a chance at making stuff for SOE's actual game that they will take 60% of the profits from and this doesn't even grant you anything towards EQN....did I miss anything?

[Merusk]

Not clear to me that they're wiping after open beta as well.

In a beta. Which will be wiped.

Yeah they specify that wipes will happen between Alpha-> Closed Beta  and CB -> OB... implying that OB -> release won't wipe.  It's not specified, though, but there's little reason for the head start if so.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'll just wait for landmark to launch. AFAIK, that's sometime in December, for free. Unless that also changed.

[palmer_eldritch]

I'll just wait for landmark to launch. AFAIK, that's sometime in December, for free. Unless that also changed.

This is Landmark. It's true they once said it would launch or be playable in some form in December, but it now seems that Alpha is likely to begin in February.

If we were talking about EQ Next itself than I'd be far more willing to pay a bit for early access.

I think Shatter has it right - Landmark is really about getting players to help create assets for the "real" game and personally I don't have any problem with that. It seems like a good idea. But charging players for the privilege of getting in early seems a bit cheeky.

[Merusk]

Given the history of gaming and game funding over the last several years, NOT charging shows less business acumen than charging.

The only people to be mad at here are In the gaming public.  I'll never slight a businessman for taking advantage of a market condition the consumer asked for.

[Margalis]

I hate how companies now try so hard to monetize well before a game is released.

Paying for early access and beta....they should be paying you.

[Furiously]

Free to play never made less sense to me.

[Numtini]

It's also SOE, who pioneered the Free to Play with a Poison Pill forcing you to subscribe, so who knows what they'll come up with.

[Paelos]

It's also SOE, who pioneered the Free to Play with a Poison Pill forcing you to subscribe, so who knows what they'll come up with.

Which particular poison pill do you mean?

[Falconeer]

Right, how's Free Realms doing these days?

[Numtini]

Which particular poison pill do you mean?

From memory, when it was released there was a plat limit and it was set below the cost of even moderate end game items and you had limits on gear and spell quality and none of those could be removed other than by subscribing. That had to go on for a more than reasonable amount of time because it was like a year later that I resubbed for a few months and if I could have, I definitely would have gone the cash shop route even if it cost more up front.

[Merusk]

That's what I recall, too.  Kids were all jazzed for it until they ran in to many problems of pay walls and no way around it but a subscription, which I refused to do.  I'd have bought the individual games for the one time outlay, but I couldn't manage another monthly payment at the time.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'll just wait for landmark to launch. AFAIK, that's sometime in December, for free. Unless that also changed.

This is Landmark. It's true they once said it would launch or be playable in some form in December, but it now seems that Alpha is likely to begin in February.

I know its landmark, and I don't care about "Alpha". I'll let others pay for the privilege.  

The only sad part is the push back on the date. Oh well, by then, ill maybe have some time for it.

[shiznitz]

I paid $40 for early access to PS2 and it was well worth it for the 180 days of +50% exp.  It is not a crazy business model, but I have no interest in Landmark at all.

[Zetor]

Early access moneygrabs are the norm nowadays. Early access moneygrabs targeting people who create content for your game is something else entirely.  

(Neverwinter sort of had this with the insane 'premium' packages giving instant Foundry access... but that was just a relatively small part of the package. Also, getting to level 15 was so trivial that in the end it didn't matter.)

[Falconeer]

I paid $40 for early access to PS2 and it was well worth it for the 180 days of +50% exp.  It is not a crazy business model, but I have no interest in Landmark at all.

Again, Planetside 2 Early Access gave you much more stuff than Landmark does.

[Threash]

Buying it early usually means you pay less and play earlier, i fail to see how that is not win-win.

[shiznitz]

As hard as it can be for some of us to believe, almost every MMO - regardless of quality - has some fans chomping at the bit to try it.  In fact, there are always some chomping so hard they are willing to pay to be first.  Good for them and good for the companies that can make bank from it.

[Threash]

Not sure what is so hard to understand about "playing now" being better than "playing next year".

[Margalis]

Buying it early usually means you pay less and play earlier, i fail to see how that is not win-win.

Increasingly buying it early means you pay more.

[Sky]

Not sure what is so hard to understand about "playing now" being better than "playing next year".

Paying more money for an incomplete version of a free game.

Right on.

[Bzalthek]

The "playing" part.

[shiznitz]

I wonder now many people confused by those who pay to play betas give money to Kickstarters?  I am sure you can all see the parallel.

[Sky]

SHUT UP


 

[Venkman]

Well in all seriousness they're right.

"RMT" is a sliding scale. Funding some virtual coin to buy some virtual foozle that has no value beyond the moment and no actual value beyond the context of the game, and heck, because it's a game probably has zero measurable value outside of whatever qualifier your own impatience/emotion puts on it, that's fine. Was established, eventually it got imported to the West, and as much as SOE hoped they'd be the ones to bank best on it, others got there quicker and more completely by defining a new genre and audience of people not predisposed to realizing MTX = RMT = buying UO gold on eBay to fund that house but not admitting it so you loose gamer cred.

But RMT to fund a game that doesn't exist? Or worse, fund a fucking virtual item in a game that doesn't exist?

Now that's shame-worthy.

And yes yes, in a year, either Chris Roberts' thing launches and we'll need to reset expectations on what the train to loser-ville looks like. Or it won't and we can use that as the example of "man, you got Roberted", or whatever pithy catchphrase catches on in the next twelve months.