Anyone else catch what DBG did with Draught of the Craftsmen from the store? DBG raised the price of the draught from 1750 to 2500, and then put it on sale for for 1750. Heard they raised it earlier this year too and it used to be under 1000. Ever since the initial devs for EQ, more and more seems like later devs see their customers are marks to be exploited. Although, DBG has taken it to a whole other level this past year and not just from store stuff.
I guess I'm not sure what the 'shady' part is meant to be. They increased the price of an item. When any item in any store is selling extremely well at one price point, it's pretty common for the purveyor of said item to try selling it at a higher price point. If they jack the price up too high, we as consumers just don't buy it and let economics sort it out.
As in to max profits? Slept through your college econ. course? If people are willing to pay more it would be foolish for any company to leave possible profits on the table, so to speak. I will bet if sales drop, the price will come down eventually.
Its shady because they provide the content that requires the tradeskills then raise the price of something that makes it so you dont really need tradeskills to do it. Then they make that content basically required to progress. Imagine playing Call of Duty and once you reach a certain prestige no one could kill you unless they paid to unlock a certain weapon or reached the same prestige level as you. Sure you could do it but everyone would just buy the weapon.
Damn 2500 now... I'm sure there will be people that still buy them, but I won't be buying them anymore. 1k I thought was a fair price, even 1500 I would probably still buy them but 2500 is too steep for what it does imo.
To me it sounds like they've created demand for a totally optional item, and are now trying to capitalize by selling it at an intelligent price. The horror! I'd understand the claims of 'shadiness' if they were selling a power increasing item for real $$ that wasn't available elsewhere in the game. But Draughts are certainly not required to progress. If you want the convenience of using a Draught, you pay the price they are asking. Don't like the price, don't pay, do the same content as everyone else anyway. As for the Call of Duty analogy, I had to stop after you asked me to imagine playing it. No experience to draw from. I guess we'll just have to disagree
Netflix just raised my monthly sub a little while back. Is that shady? You don't have to buy this item to play the game. So buy it at the asking price or don't. Simple concept. No need to make a post complaining about something that is 100% optional.
It's a near-two-decade-old game. Revenue streams need to be increased to keep it afloat. Subscriptions / sales decline every year. You can attribute the price increase to whatever you'd like. I'd like to think of it as an increase due to inflation. Personally, I have quite the stockpile of DB coins simply from the monthly 500 reward. A 1000 price tag is nothing for me now, but it was years ago. Relatively speaking, the price has the same cost. I'm certain others are in the same position. There is an opportunity for them to increase their revenue, along with deflate our wallets. They're obviously taking it. They're a business. If you don't like the increase, don't buy the item - it's not required.
It's easy to blame the devs for this because they are pretty much the low hanging fruit of the company, but i know quite a few devs from other games and not a single one of them enjoys having to design based upon generating micro-transactions. I feel it's pretty unfair to the devs to says they want to exploit the playerbase. It would be more fair to blame the people above them, the ones telling them to do more to generate micro-transactions...
The real shady behavior here is not fixing the Salvage bug , and loosing items while having a $25 Draught buff on you. 1)They didn't take the item out of marketplace while the bug is active, or at least make a note in the information about the Draught potion in marketplace, that currently it doesn't work right, due to the Salvage bug. 2)They didn't even put a serverwide MOTD to warn players about using a Draught, while the bug exists. THAT'S SHADY. Lets be honest this was known within a few hours of the bug being introduced. Did DBG make any effort to let players know in-game (not on these forums, which majority of the player base doesn't read) to not use the item? THAT'S SHADY.
If you actually do the tradeskill you don't need the potion. If anything, you're paying for an I win button and crying that it's not a perfect I win button.
It is shady to create an account to spread negative sentiments. Almost as if your ulterior motive was to harm EQ. *Sniff sniff*, you have been doing this for a while, haven’t you?
Its not shady if you create the the demand for it. Its shady when you create the demand then almost triple the price of it.
This I can mostly agree with. Taking the item out of the Marketplace while it isn't totally functioning as advertised would have been a good move. Personally I'd file it under something that fell through the cracks rather than a deliberate attempt to exploit customers. But this is the official EQ forums; we come with pitchforks raised! But why is that shady? You've said it a couple times, but not really explained it. I won't start citing dictionary.com or anything, but to me shady pretty clearly indicates some type of deception or trickery. But companies are doing the same thing DBG is doing in capitalist economies literally every day: adjusting their price points based on market demand to maximize their profits. Surely you don't simply define laissez fair economics as a whole as 'shady' do you? It's really simple. We're talking about a company selling a product. In this case it's a virtual product that is only useful within their game. If they decided to make the Draughts costs 10,000 DBG cash ($1000 USD) there's nothing shady about that either. It would just be stupid because nobody would buy them.
Someone fill me in: what do I "w" if I "p2" get one of these? I have Sacred Prayer Shawl augment, Artisan's Prize, Crestra's 7th ear, several Phlogiston items already, never having purchased one…
