EQ Never

mkopec_sl said:

I just think people are finally realizing that thy get fuck all for their $15 a month and are starting to question the entire sub thing. I understand that way back in the stone age of mmo games bandwidth was expensive and thus justified the price, but now? What the fuck are we paying for? If they want us to play for content upgrades to fund their team of devs, thats one thing, but you look at a game like wow, and the 4 or so patches in a 2 yr span. It really makes you wonder why are we paying $15 a month? Thats $360 for 4 shitty patches, plus they make you pay for the next exp pack.

Click to expand...

Exactly. With WoW, you are paying probably around $2 out of that $15 sub to actual WoW expenditures and development. The rest of your sub simply goes to Activision/Blizzard to fund operations to other projects and shit like stockholder dividends. Its a pretty awesome model for Blizzard; move most of your resources to Titan and other projects and have your current customer base pay for their development; AND charge them again when your new game is released.

Only thing is that model sucks ass for us paying customers. I'm certainly not against a company making mad profits, and using those profits on other projects, but there does come a point where the consumer gets taken for a ride. And at that point we just vote with our wallets, so to speak.

I will give you Ps2. That was actually a well done f2p game without charging for things that should just be included in the game or having a just bad quality game. Though I am sure a lot of that money came from the quasi "Sub" and the quasi "Box price" that players had a choice to do for some amazing benefits.

Pretty sure servers still cost $ to run monthly. I've never had a problem paying 15$ a month to enjoy something 10+ hours a day is pretty cheap. I hope eqn has the 50+ content they are promising.

mkopec_sl said:

I just think people are finally realizing that thy get fuck all for their $15 a month and are starting to question the entire sub thing. I understand that way back in the stone age of mmo games bandwidth was expensive and thus justified the price, but now? What the fuck are we paying for? If they want us to play for content upgrades to fund their team of devs, thats one thing, but you look at a game like wow, and the 4 or so patches in a 2 yr span. It really makes you wonder why are we paying $15 a month? Thats $360 for 4 shitty patches, plus they make you pay for the next exp pack.

Click to expand...

Not going to shill, but if you're going to make generalizations like 4 shitty patches in 2 years, you might want to do your research onto patch cycles. We've gone from 4.1 (April, 2011) to 5.2 (5.3 tomorrow), which included 3 raids, three evolving daily quest hubs, multiple 5-mans, and countless other pieces of content for players ranging from casual to hardcore. I'd hardly call that 'shitty'. You're totally welcome to your own opinion on it, and I'm not begrudging you that, but $360 for hundreds of hours of entertainment is pretty cheap, even if you add in a $40 expansion cost.

ThunderCougarFalconBird_sl said:

Exactly. With WoW, you are paying probably around $2 out of that $15 sub to actual WoW expenditures and development. The rest of your sub simply goes to Activision/Blizzard to fund operations to other projects and shit like stockholder dividends. Its a pretty awesome model for Blizzard; move most of your resources to Titan and other projects and have your current customer base pay for their development; AND charge them again when your new game is released.

Only thing is that model sucks ass for us paying customers. I'm certainly not against a company making mad profits, and using those profits on other projects, but there does come a point where the consumer gets taken for a ride. And at that point we just vote with our wallets, so to speak.

Click to expand...

Blizzard profits went from $155-170/quarter in Cata to $88m per quarter in MoP (excluding one off boxed sales like D3 and SC2), while ATVI profits went up due to multiple strong franchises (like Skylander). Vivendi Games (because that's the real name of the company if you look at its board of directors) used to be supported by Warcraft revenues but it's no longer the case. That's why they are looking to sell Blizzard.


Blizzard will go through a significant round of layoffs soon. Already some senior people bailed out and others are updating their linkedin profile as we speak.

Here's the link to ATVI/Blizz financialshttp://investor.activision.com/commo...e%20Model.xlsx

LachiusTZ_sl said:

I dont know many people that consider grinding gated reps, and running on the ever faster item treadmill as "entertainment". But if you do, kudos.

I think MKopec was talking about content, and major patches. Not the tiny fuck all patches that are part of that 4.1 to 5.3

Either way, I agree with all the jaded people here. I want to pay my 60$ + 15$/mo, and not have some other lvl 5 blow 500$ and have shit that will look cooler than my lvl 50 raid gear. Nor do I want to pay 10$ for every 4hrs of playtime just to keep up with the other people that decided to grind heavy early on with exp pots.

Also, if EQN is heavily instanced, I'm not messing with it. Hard to have immersion in a game with 230823582304234+ Instances of Lguk or whatever dungeon running at once. Esp considering I am a PvP fan . . . what is the point of a pvp server if it is instanced? So you can go farm loots, then go "duel"? No thx.

Click to expand...

There's an easy solution to the optical shit of people having cooler gear they paid for vs. gear you raided/earned in the looks department. And that's putting a toggle under the graphics options that turns off player purchased items on all players/other players. If the option isn't enabled, you see them wearing some graphical model that is generic for the level range they are. Enabled for just you? The only visual shit you see is stuff you purchased or items earned in the game. Enabled across the board? You see all the pixels that everyone spent money on. There's no option to turn off earned gear, but there is one for purchased.

That way people who don't give any fucks about what other people look like? Can view all the silly shit people spend money on. And the people who do have many fucks to give about the way others look? Can avoid seeing all the sparkly shit.

Hell, put in multiple toggles so that you can see friends and guildmates in their silly shit if you want since they might feel hurt if you don't want to see their silly shit.

The deal isn't really removing the silly shit, but not forcing it upon others. Pretty simple solution, imo.

Something akin to the above would allow developers to still sell models/whatever, but players who don't want to deal with rainbow ponies and space pimp mobiles won't have to.

cinge_sl said:

I will give you Ps2. That was actually a well done f2p game without charging for things that should just be included in the game or having a just bad quality game. Though I am sure a lot of that money came from the quasi "Sub" and the quasi "Box price" that players had a choice to do for some amazing benefits.

Click to expand...

And that's the thing that makes me hope that EQN will execute F2P in a ways that we haven't seen. As far as F2P games go, PS2 is without a doubt the least obtrusive model I've played.

Also, all this talk about XP pots is still propagating the assumption that EQN will have a leveling treadmill, which there's at least a fair chance it might not.

Torrid_sl said:

My alternative f2p model would be this: make the game free to play with no restrictions up to mid-level, and then require a subscription to advance characters further. Characters on unsubscribed accounts cannot gain exp or loot from mobs above X level, or otherwise obtain higher level items, but they can still log in, run around, fight, and chat.

Click to expand...

This seems to fall in line with the shit that Dave was saying in that interview, how they don't want to ask someone to pay for the game without letting them get invested first. Unfortunately, this was almost in the same breath as the comment about how much their "numbers" went up when they removed all the race / class / level gating from their F2P model with EQ.

There's still just too many variables to accurately predict the direction they're going to go with this. PS2 is a nice boon for those of us who want to hope that they can implement a cash shop without breaking a game, but that's also an MMOFPS, which is a completely different beast from what EQN will be (maybe?). I mean, I'm not going to kid myself. At this point I'll play anything thatdoesn'thave a traditional level based system, quest hubs, and exclamation points, but it would be nice to see a really, genuinely well-thought-out F2P system in what is typically a genre full of stupid crap, and golden dragon mounts.

LachiusTZ_sl said:

I dont know many people that consider grinding gated reps, and running on the ever faster item treadmill as "entertainment". But if you do, kudos.

I think MKopec was talking about content, and major patches. Not the tiny fuck all patches that are part of that 4.1 to 5.3

Either way, I agree with all the jaded people here. I want to pay my 60$ + 15$/mo, and not have some other lvl 5 blow 500$ and have shit that will look cooler than my lvl 50 raid gear. Nor do I want to pay 10$ for every 4hrs of playtime just to keep up with the other people that decided to grind heavy early on with exp pots.

Also, if EQN is heavily instanced, I'm not messing with it. Hard to have immersion in a game with 230823582304234+ Instances of Lguk or whatever dungeon running at once. Esp considering I am a PvP fan . . . what is the point of a pvp server if it is instanced? So you can go farm loots, then go "duel"? No thx.

Click to expand...

Forcing me to sound like a shill by saying stupid shit, but here goes:

4.1: Smallish patch, re-hash of ZG/ZA to bridge gear gap from H5's to T11. Worked well, increased raid presence in all 3 raid zones.
4.2: Molten Front (gated? No. Progressive? Yes.) + Firelands. Major content patch.
4.3: Hour of Twilight (3 5man's, LFR, Raid). Major content patch.
5.0: Mists. Major content/expansion patch.
5.1: Wilds PVP Dailies. Progressive, again.
5.2: ToT + IoT. Progressive dailies (gated in the context of participation). Gated LFR, wide-open massive raid. Major content patch.

Lots of fuck all patches, eh?

Instead of all the complicated, roundabout solutions they could just keep the cash shop modest and fitting to the theme of their world. Take mounts: fine with me if the cash shop has horses in some colors and factions and drops have other colors. Not fine would be gameplay regardless of your effort only getting you horses but the cash shop gets you dragons and hoverbikes.

As was said PS2 is remarkably well done in this regard. Also, PS2 xp pots are actually a sub, free players simply get less xp, but not in a crippling way (I am playing without it and feel the sub is a good value but not required either).

Anwyn_sl said:

Forcing me to sound like a shill by saying stupid shit, but here goes:

4.1: Smallish patch, re-hash of ZG/ZA to bridge gear gap from H5's to T11. Worked well, increased raid presence in all 3 raid zones.
4.2: Molten Front (gated? No. Progressive? Yes.) + Firelands. Major content patch.
4.3: Hour of Twilight (3 5man's, LFR, Raid). Major content patch.
5.0: Mists. Major content/expansion patch.
5.1: Wilds PVP Dailies. Progressive, again.
5.2: ToT + IoT. Progressive dailies (gated in the context of participation). Gated LFR, wide-open massive raid. Major content patch.

Lots of fuck all patches, eh?

Click to expand...

Just as a tidbit(not to get involved in your discussion) but there is a paid expansion in there.

mkopec_sl said:

I get what you are saying, but the F2P model is there because it makes them more money. More money than having subs. So they will not go away from that model. I also get what you are saying about exp pots, but IMO thats one of the places they are probably making the most money on.

Click to expand...

Yeah but one of the reasons f2p works is because of the zero barrier to entry. Remove the box price and allow free play up to a point and you can gain that advantage while still requiring a subscription to enjoy the full game. This is also important because players who have no clue what might be more entertaining to them are going to try the free games first, or only try the free games. If anything I think box prices are obsolete, not subs.

All cash shops are a form of pay to win. All of them. Developers want players to think it's all 'cosmetic' so they'll put up with it. It's impossible to implement a cash shop without diminishing the game. It's a balancing act to them: how greedy can they get with pay to win before it starts decreasing revenue instead of increasing?

Another solution might be to simply have cash shop servers and subscription servers without a shop.

mkopec_sl said:

I just think people are finally realizing that thy get fuck all for their $15 a month and are starting to question the entire sub thing. I understand that way back in the stone age of mmo games bandwidth was expensive and thus justified the price, but now? What the fuck are we paying for?

Click to expand...

I would posit that UNIQUE and innovative games can get away with charging more. WoW is losing subs to games that offer the same gameplay for less. Blizzard's monopoly is gone now; rivals had 8 years to clone WoW's design. When games are all clones, it comes down to price. When games are unique experiences, then price concerns go out the window. People will pay a premium for new, fresh gameplay. SoE is promising that with EQN, so a subscription model could work for them. I say premium, but for some users, a sub would be far cheaper. If all the game sites go on and on about how awesome and fresh a game is, and if your friends keep telling you how awesome the game is, you're not going to tell them "it has a sub? fuck that!"

As a player, you should want developers motivated to create new forms of gameplay instead of thinking up ways to milk whales and trap users by charging money for 'optional services' such as a talent respec.

cinge_sl said:

Just as a tidbit(not to get involved in your discussion) but there is a paid expansion in there.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say otherwise.

Nope, $40 but nice try at an insult!

And $72 for >10 hours of entertainment is perfectly acceptable to me per patch, when I more than likely got 2-3 days worth of time out of them. $1 per hour for entertainment? Sign me up. Could it be more entertaining? Sure; but your argument about '4 shitty patches' still remains unproven unless your only defense now is the price point.

How about f2p after week 2, but the 2 week head start is a $20.00 download?

Then allow 1 char per server on each account with a $20.00 option for each additional up to 8?

Pay the priest to perform a ritual for a diety worshipping swap ? Twennntay

Name change? Twentayyyyy

Guild can be started with a max of 10 players for free, then, Ching Ching 20
For uncapped. Every time

The point is let players invest in their characters, become tangled in the web for free, and offer them luxuries that don't really affect game play, but become kind of necessary once you commit tons of hours to the game.

No xp pots or bullshit shit though, like paying to give your Mage tracking

On the subject of selling armor appearances in the cash shop, I think the solution there would be to make it so that you can buy stuff that's different or odd (but still fitting to the setting), but to get stuff that's badass, you need to actually play the game. If you want a top hat, or some shit like that, then sure, buy that from the cash shop; if you want a set of dragonscale armor, then get in the game and kill a dragon. That way, the people who look badass are the ones who earned it in game.

Randin_sl said:

On the subject of selling armor appearances in the cash shop, I think the solution there would be to make it so that you can buy stuff that's different or odd (but still fitting to the setting), but to get stuff that's badass, you need to actually play the game. If you want a top hat, or some shit like that, then sure, buy that from the cash shop; if you want a set of dragonscale armor, then get in the game and kill a dragon. That way, the people who look badass are the ones who earned it in game.

Click to expand...

Pretty much, imo keep the cash shop to social clothing. Nothing that can be applied to "Earned" gear or items.