Producer Letter: What's to come Sept to Nov!

If I had to guess I would say probably not. I don't think that there has been an actual box on the shelf for a few years now.

Thank you for the information, Holly.

I am looking forward this expansion and hope for a good collector's edition.

No pre order period is something i do not understand.
From a marketing point of view, especially with the aerakyn race as a separate "live feature", i am nicely asking you to discuss und rethink this.
Your "live feature" will sell much easier, if the expansion comes with a pre order option containing a small discount.

If you only allow your customers to buy this expansion on release day and later (no doubt without any discount), they won't be very willing /or even won't be able to give another portion of their real money for a virtual item away.

You will also loose customers who like discounts in general - those will wait until next year to have the expansion for less money.
If they still want to play in that time ....

After 10 years of playing this game my one big regret is not buying the original collectors edition. For years I have coveted the baby dragon house pet that came with it! I would love to see a second chance at one of those to commemorate the post 10 year expansion!

You can still get original box with items on Amazon I think , although I am not sure the code would work and give you a dragon and other in-game items.

I am sure that the people that are in eq2 from the beginning would buy premium 10 year metal box without 2nd thought! I know I would!

I know a couple of years ago there were quite a few available on ebay as my wife bought several of them just to get the baby dragon. The egg was salable so if all you wanted was the dragon you might check the broker.

I agree though, a kind of 10th anniversary commemorative edition or even a set of 10th anniversary collectors edition goodies available on the SC or Loyalty store would be a cool idea.

Pre-order's ability to generate sales is debatable. I've occasionally found myself cancelling pre-orders for one reason or another. Folks would surely do the same if they didn't like something in beta. If anything, it generates false expectation in this type of game. Having a pre-order process would only confuse people, as some would wonder why they paid their money, but they still can't access the game until later in November.

Where the aerakyn race is concerned, whoever wants it will eventually get it. The main goal for most people will be getting to 100, not playing through a new race or spending even more to convert their toons to the new race.

It was noted earlier that all access gets a discount on expansions. They also get discounts on SC goods. What's really being sold these days is all-access. Subscribing has more value than ever. At the risk of sounding pitchy, you can get a lot for as little as 9.99 / month*

*with a 12 month commitment

So in November, how many years will that make? 11. Last year we got 10 year rewards, the year before that 9yr...so... let me check my math... 8.. then 9... then 10... what do YOU think should come next?

Sorry for "calling SOE out". If you feel that calling both last year's reward and this year's: "the 10 year reward", you're welcome to that opinion. I know exactly when eq2 came that doesnt change the fact that after 10 comes 11, not 10 again.

I think AoM should be pre-orderable and should unlock ToV immediately for those that do (if you don't already have it). I came back to EQ2 after an eight year absence and just recently hit the DoV cap of 92. If I didn't know AoM was coming out in two months, I'd be buying ToV. But because AoM will include ToV, my options are: spend $80 over the next two months to get both expansions and play ToV content immediately, or wait two months (play some alts) and spend $40 (guessing on xpac price) in November to get both. Obvious decision in my opinion and seems a foolish predicament to put a paying customer in.

I wonder if the no-pre-orders is because of the snafu that popped up last expansion? I was one of the "lucky" people that pre-ordered the moment it was available to pre order. Not sure why SOE won't take my money till the day of release, but it's been that way ever since they went to digital only. :\
Any way, the day arrived, I logged in, all excited... aannnnd couldn't get to the new expansion. I checked my bank account... the money had never been taken out. I petitioned.. and I wasn't flagged because I hadn't bought the expansion. o.0 I had the pre-order cloak, so I knew it had completed the ordering process, so I replied to the petition asking to double check that. After a few phone calls to SOE customer service, billing, and my bank (And SOE and my bank playing the blame game, pointing at each other the whole time... my bank says they have no record of so much as bouncing the request for the funds from SOE...Who knows.. maybe they got DDOSed that day and funds transactions got interupted and it wasn't SOE or my banks fault /shrug.) SOE told me to buy the collector's edition at full price and they would rebate the pre-order sale price difference back to me. After a few more messages, they remembered to actually do that rebate part. >.>
I know this didn't happen to the entire player base, but I do know that quite a few people were affected, so that could be why they just don't want to bother with pre-order any more.
I'm always a sucker for the pre-order/collector edition goodies. I LOVE the house and mount one-per-character stuff. 0.0
.... but holey moley.... $90.00 for the non-pre-ordered collector edition last time? no sale on the new one??? ......... /headache

Can we pleeeeease have some kind of sale price/pre-order on the expansion?

pleeeeeeeeeease?
(Unless you are going back to more decent prices like the retail editions that used to be what.. 40 bucks? Ah the old days. /sigh) How was a physical item that needed to be manufactured and shipped, goodies like a collector coin or pewter figure inside, take up shelf space in a store front, etc... so much cheaper than a file that get's downloaded? o.0 I'll never understand that...
I remember being soooooooooo excited about the pet monkey that came with the first expansion, and the craziness with Game Stop giving the codes to the wrong people. XD Silly Game Stop. /claim item now, so it's all good. ^_^


Oh! And having a way to sell the expansion for plat would be pretty cool too, btw. Something like the Krono, where someone pays full price, gets a token, and can use it on their account or put it up on the broker. But i guess if the credit card is stolen it gets all kinds of messed up. I dunno. :\

Honestly Feldon, we think it will happen based upon our experience. I know they have been working to change there image, but some of us have been around long enough, yourself included, to know the track record. Recently you have been championing them more and showing the changes they have been making, which is good, I applaud the changes, but I am still worried that some over eager money person there will say oh it is ok, since there is no pre order, they have no choice but to pay full price. I have seen to much of that in the past to make me comfortable with them just saying, no-preorder.

Instead of rushing to get the expansion right away I might wait a month til all the bugs and fixes are done. My guys are only level 40 so I don't need it quickly in any case....

CoE was only included in ToV because it raised the level cap to 95. Given that situation, there's another possibility with ToV... Maybe it gets rolled into free content. Of course, it's bad business to properly reveal something like that. There are still potential sales to be made on ToV up until the next release. They have their business plan, just like everyone else that releases new products every so often. The predicament is your own and no one else's responsibility to figure out or correct.

Maybe I misunderstood the post you are replying to here, or maybe misunderstanding your post. All expansions have always been all-inclusive save AoD so I don't understand why you seem to say CoE was included because of the level cap raise.

For whatever reason Sony seems to have decided against using the same release model as last time. It should be very interesting when the accountants analyze the sales data to see which approach generated the better result. My uninformed opinion is it would be the ToV presale model that granted access to the current content with your order for that 6-8 week ramp up to ToV going live.

It was probably something I said. I'll try saying things a bit differently. Since AoD and F2P launch, it hasn't been as cut and dry as "this expansion includes all previous content." We now have everything that is included in Free Play and then what you gain access to with the new expansion.

So, CoE was released and all velious content was free you could get to 92, but you still had to buy CoE to go beyond that level and access prestige abilities.
ToV came along. All velious content was still free, but CoE and things like the cap raise to 95 and prestige abilities were not. CoE was rolled into ToV.
Here we are with AoM. There's a new cap raise, new prestige abilities and all new content. Two things can happen with what's given out for free. They can keep the Free Play cap at 92 / velious only or they can roll the 92-95 content and first set of prestige trees into Free Play. I see the latter being what happens come 11/11 and giving free players two weeks to get caught up a little.

So if I understand right, you are not actually talking about what buying the expansion get the person buying it, but what the expansion's release unlocks for FTP for people that don't actually pay a monthly sub in some fashion

Sorry for the confusion. I am talking about what the expansion gets you access to. Whether you sub or not really makes no difference. There's expansion content that will be available for free (this is what I meant when talking about Free Play) and expansion content that will be locked behind the purchase of the next expansion. Whether that extends to anything preceding AoM remains to be seen.

With the recent(ly fixed?) server and market stability, I am concerned with the game even being playable, let alone the marketplace being useable. I'm all for stress tests but I don't think this is the time to have one. Let us give you our money first so we can patch come release day. Release day will have enough issues (like almost any expansion release day) that we don't need to compound the issues into such a narrow time frame.

I also hope the Collector's Edition is an amazing bundle of goodies with both fluff and services to make both sides of the camp happy.

Just points of clarification.
Starting with Echoes of Faydwer, EQ2 expansions were "all in one" packs. Meaning if you bought that expansion, the previous expansions and base game were included. This continued through Destiny of Velious. After Age of Discovery & all servers going Free to Play it changed slightly. Everything was free to download through Sentinal's Fate at that time but you had to buy DOV separately as well as AOD if you wanted everything.

When COE released DOV was included. When TOV was released it included COE and DOV was rolled into Free to Play.

In one of the SOE live videos, one of the SOE representatives stated that TOV would be included in Altar of Malice and that COE would become part of the Free to Play bundle.

I hear ya. That's exactly the one I was missing. Luckily found someone selling it on the broker and bought it right way! Now I have them all!!

Anyhow, like some have shared in previous posts here. Excited about new x-pack.. but waiting for more details.. then will decide accordingly..

I hope so too....ToV's collector edition was just blah in my opinion so for the 1st time I did not purchase the collector edition.....I hope they go back to making it worth paying the extra bucks to own or I'll pass on it again.

With that said...I'm really hoping the 11yr vet award is awesome!