The big question is whether the next expansion really is 4 months away... we all know what extensive resources Daybreak is using to make this new expansion. /s
I would assume that it will be mid-summer next year if they open the next expansion to DBG Cash and it would not be an option available at launch, because it would impact the revenue too much.
That is assuming they actually DO launch the next expansion in 4 months as promised...... lemme think has DBG broken any other launch promises recently, wait ..... yes, yes, EQ Next comes to mind......... so much was supposedly being done to get that off the ground and yet.......... flop message.......... I am just saying I expect that when they realize that people are not going to spend money to get an expansion, and that they will be giving that expansion away for free...... I can see them reversing the decision to allow DBC to be used. Logically, with the next expansion all FTP and Gold players (who chose not to keep up with expansions since FTP's are given up to 2 expansions from current) would automatically get TDS. Those same Gold players may not deem it a sufficient enough reason to spend Real World money or freely earned DBC in order to jump 1 expansion ahead of FTP players..... after all free is free. The point I am making is: Would a normal person think it is even worth spending 3500 or more (depending upon version) of DBC (earned freely per month for being a Gold member or using RW money to add to DBC) in order to be 1 expansion ahead of FTP's...... The answer is most likely not......... This is why I think that ultimately the decision will be reversed, but hey I have been wrong before.
Assets and Liabilities. If people with All Access hoard their 500dbc per month, then those accumulations are liabilities on the Daybreak balance sheet. If Daybreak puts a sale like this up during the summer slow months, they get a few extra people buying their latest flop of an expansion (thus padding their expansion sales and making it look like they sold a bunch of copies of an expansion), and they reduce their liabilities on their balance sheets. Those liabilities are restricting the realization of profits/revenue from their All Access subscriptions. When they sell a $15 month of all access, they don't just get to instantly claim the $15 as revenue. They have to reserve a portion of that $15 that represents the 500dbc liabilitiy (a service that they still "owe" the purchaser). Until that 500dbc is spent, they cannot realize the full revenue from that $15. But when the dbc is spent, they can recognize that portion of the revenue. There may be other liability items that also get carved out of the $15 all access price, but I'd bet that the DBC is a larger portion. So yah, by allowing a sale like this once per year, they get to both pad their expansion sales and then also recognize a significant revenue from all the DBC moving from liabilities to ... retained earnings or "other income" maybe (?) on their balance sheets. It's still on the liability side, but at least it's under equity now. For the accountants out there... please don't point out that there are many holes in the above statement. You cannot reduce an entire field of study into a couple of paragraphs on a forum without leaving a few things out. As to the comments about having 3500 DBC, I am willing to bet it's far more common than some of you realize. There has been very little to spend DBC on in the marketplace. They steadfastly refuse to increase the yard limits, so the housing crap they try to sell doesn't move as fast as it could because they don't understand that the people that buy this stuff are mostly already at their yard limits. I still maintain one of those 2-year memberships because I don't want to lose the cheap monthly price. I'm retired, but I still claim the 500 per month because I can. I bet there's a ton of people like me with loads of DBC with nothing to spend it on. We must be an accounting nightmare for them. IF ONLY THEY WOULD JUST INCREASE THE YARD LIMIT! (shameless plug)
DGB already has the profit from whatever means the DBC was acquired, and yes it's a liability; however, Unspent DBC could still be spent on Planetside 2, H1Z1, etc. By spending it on EQ it shows that the reason the DBC, and the profit therefrom, was acquired was for that particular game, and so they should assign more internal resources to it.
We did gain a dev recently (who is actually on content development) so obviously they believe EQ is still worth some type of investment. Now... whether or not the expansion launches on the "typical" schedule - who knows. Usually we get some update in August about the status and then in October we get the deets. Personally, I'm all for a holiday release if it means a polished product and a beta that lasts long enough to actually test and have feedback taken into consideration. I do not want another TBM just for the sake of having 'content' available. Sorry... sortof off topic but the thread kindof took a new direction. IMO allowing purchase via SC either means the next expac is coming very soon or it's a ways off... I don't see a middle ground. By this point, I don't know who hasn't bought it that is going to actually buy it. If you could gift it to alt accounts, I could see it being useful.
OMG, WOW, did I call it or what ??? I knew the moment I saw the in-game message saying Double XP and 40% "Labor Day Weekend" sales in the Marketplace that the option to use DBC to purchase TBM would disappear.... Apparently Riou isnt the only one, hehe.
Noticed the TBM sale, first thing i did was go to buy it for my other accounts like i did for my main using DB cash. Only to find out that you can no longer use DB cash to buy TBM. So i check the original posting for TBM being available for DB cash to see if there was an expiration date, and i didn't see one. So, its another DB cash option removal to buy expansions with no notice. That is getting kind of old.
And here I was hoping to beat Draego to the punch on this........... guess I got the confirmation I recently asked for.
So the TBM expansion is on sale, but can't be purchased with DB cash anymore? Was there a DB post about this somewhere?
Even if its just for an alt, I prefer not to buy 10 month old content even at half off price, because I'll probably drop another $40 in 2 months, so essentially spending $40 + $17.50 doesn't make sense to me, only to enjoy that said old content for 2 months. Maybe if it was $5 for that old expansion it might be worth it for me, but no thanks I'll just wait. But I'm sure plenty of goobers out there will fall for this quick cash grab trick.
Though it stinks that TBM is no longer available for DBC, there's no reason to believe that the current 50% off sale would apply to purchases made with DBC. The last time an expansion was put on sale and purchaseable with DBC, the DBC option was still full price.
Not sure they want peoplee selling TBM codes to others in game for stuff... With what happened not long ago with the weekend of bans and unbans I am not sure that is something they want to encourage atm.
since the website has been back up the page that advertised TBM for DB cash has been altered. They added an expiration date that wasn't there before
i just found a copy of the original advertisement. i love the internet and how stuff never gets lost. http://bhagpuss.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-broken-mirror-now-available-for.html
Lack of a posted expiration date does not mean they must let it go on forever. Now, if it had explicitly stated it was to go on forever, there might be an argument.
Thank you for explaining that. I've been watching very closely since the All Access debacle (statements about the marketplace and how the SOE/DB cash works). Everything you said jives with all the statements they have released, across various sources. You also mention one of the many issues where it's plainly obvious they don't have the time, money or staff to do any kind of market analysis and make changes that would be more profitable for them. I know the yard item limit is a performance issue, and this old engine can't handle much more out in the open like that. But they could create a 'court yard' instance or something to that effect. I feel there are plenty of things they could do which wouldn't take a great deal of coding, but could accommodate people who would purchase more from the marketplace if they had anything to actually spend it on. And/or the room to actually place their purchases in the world! Watching the Player Studio closely (having a number of items there) has been very sad. The entire thing has fallen on bad times like all else after the buy out. Even before they became Daybreak the Player Studio lead couldn't get a web dev's time to change some HTML on various Player Studio pages. With most of the things around there you can see they just don't have the staff or time to do anything but bail water in an attempt to keep the boat afloat. They don't even have someone to assign to stuffing corks in the holes. 8(
