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SOE to Sell Content Additions to EQII
Gamespot is reporting that Sony Online is going to be adding content to Everquest II in the form of adventure packs, essentially mini-expansions. From the article: "The first part of the adventure pack will come as a free download. All of the game's subscribers will be able to sink their swords into a new zone, fight new enemies, and so on. There will also be some new quests in this area for all players. [...] If players want to continue down this story path, they will have to pay what's been described as a "small fee" to download the rest of the adventure pack's content and continue on." Basically they're going to be following the City of Heroes model, but making players pay for part of it.
Has that came out already? Haven't really been paying attention since WoW came out :P
Maybe it's a concession they made since Guild Wars is breathing down their back. It's similar to what Guild Wars is plannign but on a small scale.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
I know server bandwith and maintenance isn't cheap, but if you are already paying $15 a month then just what is this money going towards? Anyone got any sort of idea of stats or breakdown of what it costs to run a game like this per person?
Historically their expansions have also added new features and gameplay enhancements bundled with "new content" (that 90% of the players couldn't benefit from). They'd usually give you a new zone or two for free (required to access new content anyhow), but to get the useful new features (and content) you'd have to pay the $$$. Often these "features" were seen by players as deficiencies or bug fixes from the original release...
They also have a history of making dependencies in their expansions: to finish the "epic" quests in the Omens of War expansion, you also had to have every other expansion. Lame.
It's greed, pure and simple. Expansions are fine if advertised clearly what they will and will not do. What SOE releases I consider "Extortion Packs".
While I find EQ2 to be a total loss, they could earn back some lost reputation by releasing gameplay/interface updates for free, and only charging for new expansions. Also indicating that xyz expansion will be (solo/group/raid) based with endgame content requiring xyz is helpful too.
Unfortunately by doing so, very few people would be buying expansions, a very telling story of the nature of their game.
That's cool and all, but when are they going to sell a release-quality game to their players? ;)
'cause God knows the susbscriptions aren't cutting it.
Wonderful. Now, we pay for the service, but in order to use the service properly, we have to pay more otherwise we're left in the dust. Fabulous.
I hope they wait until they actually get the current game working, and stop messing up characters with every other update. The patch a few weeks ago killed the servers for 2 days and yesterdays patch mucked up the quest logs of anyone that logged in after the patch, apparently the solution to the quest log problem is "don't log in because we can't fix it if you do" but the warning not to log in hasn't made it to the login screen.
It would also be nice if they could have the servers up for at least 24 hours in a row instead of taking them down at 10am every morn.
It really is too bad they are having these problems because the game is much better than WoW, but I still might make the switch because at least I don't fear logging into WoW
That being said, given players a small taste and then charging them for the rest isn't anything like a "free content on a regular basis as part of your monthly fees" model. Asheron's Call and City of Heroes offered everything to all players, effectively changing the base-level game for everyone at one time. EQII is going to be more like those vogue "manager's theater" things you see at multiplexes where you pay extra for nicer seats but are still seeing the same content as everyone else.
1) Shell out money for the game because you have to pay for the development work done to bring the game to the shelf.
2) Pay a monthly fee in order to pay for bandwidth and new content.
3) Pay an annual expansion pack fee to pay for new content.
4) Pay a quest pack fee to pay for new content.
I can understand 1) and 2). 3) and 4) don't make sense to me from a common sense perspective. From a business perspective they make sense but it's because of this multi-tiered leeching -- both in terms of money spent and in terms of time spent doing grindwork to stick around many more months than you would need to -- that I refuse to pay for MMORPGs.
Sooo, they release sub-par content (see Star Wars) and now they want you to pay to continue your sub-par content mini-expansion? What is their incentive for providing any initial content if they can charge for you to continue any quest? And WTF would I pay $15 month to play and then more if I want to quest. To this end I've always thought their boxed expansions were always too much $ for not enough quality product. This is why SOE is really sucking up the MMO market and why I no longer play Sony titles. Pray Sony and EA don't buyout the remaining few.
Every business tries to get on the reoccurring revenue gravy train: leasing instead of selling, selling access to media instead of actual media and so on. As a customer it is in your own best interest not to accept rental terms, but insist on transfer of ownership.
This is why I will never play an MMORPG -- it supports the reoccurring revenue philsophy.
In the face of their current competition, which I might add is a true gaming phenomenon, SOE fights back by- wait for it.......coming up with ways to charge their user base even more!
Sorry SOE, I'll stick to paying one monthly fee and enjoying WoW waaaay more than I ever did EQ.
(BTW you guys should try Battlegrounds. I hear it's going to be a blast!)
Who were the braniacs who masterminded this one?
I thought that was part of the justification of a monthly fee? There is no way the average EQ player comes anywhere near the monthly fee for bandwidth costs. I just don't understand why people keep paying to get treated so poorly.
Don't have access to the complete link(blocked), but the headline of this article is but a small part of what was said.
EQ2 is going to have multiple updates.
1) Additional content added every 1-2 months, new dungeons, quests, etc. This is addition to bug fixes, patches,etc.
2) Theses pay 3) expansion packs, store or download, with major areas, higher levels,additional trees to the classes,etc. The expansion will be major items.