Not trying to defend Arena Net or anything, but isn't 50 more or less the usual price for MMO expansions?
This is the first time I am seeing such an outcry at the price of an expansion. I haven't followed it much, so is it a small expansion and short on content?
There's a few things wrong with the pricing.
$50 is what the price they set for the expansion, ok that's fine, wow expansion was $60 I believe and they had upgraded all existing accounts to have all previous expansion. FFXIV is $40 for standard expansion edition, $60 for expansion and core collectors, and preorder bonuses to either not separate packages.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: Heavensward
Here are the things that went wrong with it.
1. They decided to include the core game in that pricing, which sells for $5-40, depending on when and where you get it, more recently anet decided to do $10 sales themselves saying you will need the core game anyways to play the expansion. If you were going to include the free core game in the expansion why the fuck would go around telling people you need the core game, offer them the discount, and then turn around and include it in the package anyways? That just comes off as a money grab. I feel bad for the people who bought it in the last month in anticipation of the expansion, they're not even going to get refunded properly, anet is saying if you want the refund your current account will be closed and you will need to use the new codes to open another account. Because they included the core game, and the recent sales, people have it in their minds that the expansion really should have been worth $40.
2. No character slot on the basic package, the $75 $100 packages have them included, if you're going to introduce a new class add a character slot to all packages, you don't nickle and dime on that shit, they don't mind throwing in the $10 core game for free, but won't throw in a $10 character slot for the same price?
3. No release date, slim information on what content you're going to get because they like to pretend they're the CIA, is it even worth $50?
They should have left it simple, keep selling the core for $10, announce the packages for the expansion:
$50 for expansion only, extra character slot.
$60 on new accounts, expansion and core, don't need extra slot. Put it back to $50 at release if you want.
$75 $100 the junk collectors editions.
Include the core game later on when the expansion actually releases if you really want it at $50, the $10 difference you can say was for the beta access(which is also a joke).
Anet has no concept on rewarding play or rewarding loyal customers, and their marketing team is terrible, most other companies put up pricing plans much like FFXIV did, was it really that hard to copy that?
