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.

Comments

Whats the monthly fee for then?

[Dekks]

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?

Re:Whats the monthly fee for then?

[Dekks]

I realise there has to be profits, but part of the point of mmorpgs originally was that as well as playing with many people at the same time, the world would be constantly evolving with new content and refinements. That hasn't really happened in many but myself and I suspect many other people are happy to pay a monthly fee because of the promise of new content etc, otherwise whats the point of playing once you've seen everything or got to the highest levels, it just turns into irc chat with a pretty engine. This happened to me in SWG, I enjoyed it buy after a while I had done pretty much everything and used to just hop on to chat to my guild mates. JTL while not interesting me, I feel was a fair expansion to charge for because it was a big engine add-on, but whats most new content? A few new models and a new dungeon. I agree with you on pay the fee you think its worth though. I personally think this is gouging and if wow did it I wouldn't pay and would probably stop playing but others might be salivating at the idea.

Re:Whats the monthly fee for then?

[Austerity Empowers]

Dynamic content in most (not every) MMOG is still a dream. I would fully expect WoW to charge for expansions but to offer some bit for free. It turns out that the content of quality considered acceptable to us is expensive to create.

The question of whether there is some room in our monthly fee to squeeze in some new content development is not answerable, except to say that there are so many MMOGs out and/or coming out, that if someone COULD do it, they SHOULD.

Personally I think having a scriptwriter who changes some fraction of quests on a monthly basis could work out. I'm annoyed that the EQ world I lived in 6 years ago is the same one I live in now. But fundamentally it was an enjoyable enough game that overlooked it. WoW beat EQ for my money, it offered more and better for the same $.

Anyhow the only way to get change is to talk with your wallet, and hope some smart person figures out there's money he can grab.

Nothing like the City of Heroes model

[Quarters]

First of the "City of Heroes" model would be better named the "Asheron's Call" model, as Turbine was the first to do free content expansions. They did it on a more predictable schedule (monthly) than Cryptic has managaged.

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.