Sony Online Entertainment announced their new micro-transaction model for both Everquest and Everquest 2 recently, deciding to take American MMORPGs in an entirely new direction. I can’t say that anyone in particular was surprised by the move. Sony has long been on the forefront at finding new ways to charge MMO players more money than they already were paying. Be it the Station Pass, Legends servers on EQ1, Magazines, or a Trading Card Game infused with in game items, Sony has tried to do it all. On top of that, they’ve already announced an MMO based on microtransactions called FreePlay, and I do believe that Sony uses EQ games to test out these ideas first.
I also think that the presence of Station Cash is in itself an admission of failure of Legends of Norrath, the oft-promoted TCG. Sony has tried everything to get that game off its feet and originally I think it did fairly well, but died quickly. And so Sony originally started making the Loot Cards more worthwhile as the expansions went on. What originally started as a bunch of mostly fluff pieces have turned into some quite nice pieces (In the latest expansion they recently added a 5 bedroom apartment with no upkeep cost which could save a lot of plat on housing costs!). Then they started just giving away packs with accounts, hoping that people would get back into the game. But in the end, I think the game just isn’t worth it and the amount of loot cards you get is so low, that few are buying packs JUST for the loot cards.
So now, we have Station Pass which has many items in it that looks a lot like what we had with th initial release of Legends of Norrath. We have those xp potions that Sony gives out any way they can (they already are given out freely for anniversaries every year), fluff armor, fluff pets, housepets, etc. The armor must look pretty darn good to be warranting the $10 pricetag, but I have heard that it isn’t really worth anything stat-wise. A lot to pay for looks IMHO. I think the things that will get bought the most is the Achievement Potions as that is the harder to get item in the game and achievement can get fairly difficult to attain once you’ve explored everywhere and killed all the nameds. You can also buy a low level one without putting any money into it since SOE gave everyon 150 free points and the cheapest one is only 100.
Overall, the concept annoys me. Don’t get me wrong, I think micro-transactions has its place. Ever play NeoPets or Maple Story? Micro transactions work in these games. But then these games are free to just jump in and play and the micro transactions are how those games pay the bills. In a game that already costs $15 a month, paying $10 for a fancy suit of clothes (where other games can buy you outfits for $1 – 2 and no monthly charge) seems more than a little ridiculous.
The answer to this always seems to be “well if you don’t like it don’t buy it.” But that isn’t the point here. Whether I chose not to buy in or not, the devs are wasting time on that and obviously ignoring the game as the last two expansions have been less than stellar. I am sure that Sony would be quick to say that they took no development time or money for this project, but I have a hard time believing that as they did take development time and money to make this crap and it was devoted to EQ & EQ2. If they didn’t waste the time and money here, where would they put it? I doubt they would answer THAT question… go figure.
I think that if Sony had decided to take that money and man-power and put it into the actual games of Everquest and Everquest 2, they’d have more complete games in the first place and may not be suffering for subscribers the way they are (at least with EQ2, I think EQ1 does better than 2 these days). Instead, I feel like they are just wasting their money, trying to find new ways to make old subscribers pay more instead of finding new subscribers. It is quite a shame that they have to milk their already decent players the way they do, and it makes me want to return to EQ2 even less than before…. lately I’ve been considering going and giving Lord of the Rings Online a shot with their new expansion… at least they don’t milk their players for all they are worth…
3 replies on “$OE Strikes Again”
Hate to say it but totally agree with you! I wish SOE would ‘waste’ they’re $$ attracting new subscribers instead of milking ever penny out of their existing clients.
Funny, I’ve heard LoTRO is pretty good too . . .
So far I’ve heard that the only purchasable items are vanity items with no in-game effects and potions that give a temporary bonus to XP gain, so it’s not like it’s the end of the world. We’ll see if they’ll actually add actual weapons and armour.
No it isn’t, though they are extremely expensive considering they are for a pay game… and XP gain isn’t a huge deal, I can barely spend my xp gain potions that we get for free… but the AA enhancer is actually fairly useful as that takes awhile to get… even for capped players….
At any rate, my point isn’t that they are offering extra stuff for extra pay. The point is that they are devoting resources to milking current players rather than devoting resources to getting new players to keep the game alive. The last two expansions have been close to utter crap… why not take the extra couple of devs that it took to make these vanity items and add them to the expansion team to give them some actual use!