$70 for a port clickie?

Is it me, or does that seem slightly excessive for a personal port clickie? I want to buy the new expansion, I really do. And I want to spend money on a personal port clickie for both my toons. But $70? Double the price of the mid priced expansion?

Come on.

And for those who mention the other things.... all of those are irrelevant. Completing progression gets you the mount, the pet illusion does nothing for the pet outside of the look, and the aug removers I get with loyalty tokens. Now if the pet illusion increased pet offense or defense... maybe. But $70 for what amounts to a port clickie is a bit absurd in my book.

I can't be the only one who thinks this, am I?

Also, wasn't the higher end expansion $119 last year? Or am I mistaken?

Exactly. Just like my complaints about them in my thread.. the whole thing has been awful the past 5-6 expansions =/

If you mean the Premium Edition, you are mistaken. https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Terror_of_Luclin#Editions

Yeah, pretty sure all of the PE's have been $139.99 (TBM?) The one with the Pridewing mount.

The value of the port clickies, both personal and the one you can place, is in the destination. If the clickies go to the same zone as the guild teleporter (like in CoV...I threw my money away on that one because all indications were that it was going to go to WW, not CS), or to an adjoining zone that took all of 15 seconds to run to (like ToL), then they have ZERO value. Daybreak should be ashamed of themselves for charging so much for such useless items.

Now, if the clickies go to a "deeper" zone which may not be easily accessible by running there, then it has quite a bit of value. For instance, imagine if the clickies from ToL had gone to SV or Basilica...they would have been worth the cost.

You can piggyback on someone with the place-able version in a guild hall or house.

I see the price of the Collector/Premium Edition as a sort of crowdfunding support mechanism. It's an entirely optional upgrade (no pay-to-win) that funds the studio.

EverQuest's expansion bundles is a superior product to the $300-$2000 pledge packages you see on long unreleased vaporware.

I figured everyone had at least 3 accounts to pay for, so buy one at 139 bucks and drop that transport clickie in the GH! Get 2 more 39 dollar basic expansions and your good. Or better yet just use the one someone else already dropped in the GH.

Don't like the price, don't buy it. Expansion sales will tell the tale..

I agree with this. It's a way to kick some extra $$$ to DPG for EQ. I always buy the cheapest option because I have to pay for 6 accounts.

EQ is in a difficult position in terms of monetization. The game was designed before the monetization was feasible so the typical built in QoL buys like character slots, bank tabs, utility items etc aren't readily monetizable (We'll see how the tradeskill depot feature works out). All the areas I've seen DPG ostensibly grow in this area (Dragons Hoard, Overseer, Luck stat, perks) have been huge misses (intentional or no) from a monetization perspective. Its engine and current character visuals don't support a version of FashionQuest like games like Guild Wars 2 has. TLP servers are a huge boon because of how many nostalgia hunting kronolords buy into them. For live players, we get stuff like premium expansion packs.

If you want to give DPG a boost, throw in some extra money and consider the clickie a thank you rather than something you explicitly bought.

If they could prove that every dollar they get from these expansions goes to EQ development and NOT to supporting the other games that EQ keeps afloat, I'm sure people would be more inclined to fork over the money...myself included.

But the reality is we don't know where the money is actually going.

Sure we do. It is in their quarterly reports... and it isn't going into EQ (not any more than is needed) right now. It is going into other developments to strengthen the company profile. It has been several months since I last dug into that... I'm sure there are still posts on the forums from earlier this year with the links.. but LoTRO and another game are getting an influx of funding for development.. as well as some vaguely referenced new venture.

Not sure why you are ignoring everything else you get with the higher priced versions of the expansion and claiming only the single item what you are getting for the price. While that might be what you are looking for you are still getting more then just the port item for that price.

Its not like we have seen a drastic improvement in quality(or quantity), with expansions or general maintenance, since they introduced the market place.
Expansion-features have also been modest lately, we used to get impressive features like housing, guildhalls and mercs... Now we just get variations of "keyrings", or various minor inventory-management-improvements(I do like advanced loot though! )

I also have my doubt that the microtransactions are helping EQ1 at all...

Because their "micro transactions" are over priced for the value given, for the most part. Almost every potion has an equivalent in game.. but I mean, just get the buff from a person anyways.

Hero's forge has a per-character buy-in.. before hitting micro transactions... That's just slamming the door in their own face.

The mounts offer very little, when you just grab one in-game and get a progression item that takes the place of the mount buff (which are all minor buffs from the MP).

I've seen a lot of games try out micro transactions. The ones that fail are greedy. The ones that are successful make you want to keep buying those things.

MT's also need to be (mostly) expendable. If not, you won't keep coming back. In the case of Hero's Forge, they'd need a constant influx of pieces. For potions/minor services.. they'd have to be worth the money.

XP pots really need to be "culled" and set to 30 minute potions.
Bottle of Adventure I should be something like: x10, 30 minute 10% XP potions for $1.00
Bottle of adventure II should be something like: x10, 30 minute 25% XP potions for $2.50
Bottle of adventure III should be something like: x10, 30 minute 50% XP potions for $5.00

Right now it is 1 potion for 4 hours (none of that ever gets wasted right?) at $1.00/$3.00/$10.00 Those prices don't scale and the time frame for the potions is just way off.

I don't _want_ EQ to be a PTW scenario.. but if you're going to use MT's as supplemental income.. you still have to do it right. Same goes with the lashback they received about the perk packs.

With the current client, I actually think a lot of people are disabling hero's forge for performance reasons. At least that is my impression from screenshots shared by my guild.
Temporarily loosing control of the mouse every time a new piece of hero's forge needs to be loaded, really dampens my enthusiasm for hero's forge.

I bit the bullet and went with the $250 package for my main character. The tradable items will make up the cost in the krono they will fetch for (7+ krono for the expansion ticket is the going rate)

I keep having to remind people, the marketplace makes far more than most people on the forums think.

Player Studio profits stay steady, varying maybe 3% tops year over year.

It's pretty counter-intuitive to me. I'd think after years, everybody that wants to buy player made items, have already bought them. But they keep buying at a steady pace.

Bottom line, expansions cost them a lot of time and money to make.

You want to throw them some REAL money? Buy Hero's Forge Unlock for all your characters. That is pure profit for them, all automated, nobody lifts a finger all these years to collect Hero's Forge cash straight to profit.

I thought I made it clear in my original post why (for me) the other stuff is irrelevant. Maybe for some there is value in the other things, but I do feel for those that play through the expansion and maintain a subscription... the only thing of actual value is the port clickie. Everything else can be obtained in other ways and/or doesn't add value (such as a non stat illusion).

So for those of us like me, the thought of paying twice as much as a medium priced expansion for one personal port clickie is a bit extreme. Especially when you start adding in boxes as well.

It's really not about the clickie. You're paying extra to support the game and the any extras they're giving you is just a thank you. They're also fairly limited in what they can give you because a large number of players will complain about PTW if there's anything too significant.

I have two accounts. I am heavily considering just buying the basic $35 expansion for both toons- the mid price option offers a bag (which I have plenty of via hunters), and illusions/ornaments that do not add any power to the characters (they are cosmetic only). And the XP potions I don't care about, my character is max AA generally a third of the way into an expansion (probably less since this is a non level one). So DBG stands to make $70 off of me.

If their port clickie expansion was reasonably priced (say $99 or even $119 I would strongly consider) then this thread is never created and DBG would have made anywhere from $200-240 in a matter of minutes. But because they chose to price their personal port clickie expansion at a ridiculous (IMHO) price point of $139 without having anything else of value (to me), I will be choosing to not give them extra money.

Like someone said earlier, it is about value. As it stands now, DBG has lost $130-170 dollars from one person because of a ridiculous price point on an expansion that would have been bought had it been a slightly lower price. And the only thing that would even make me reconsider spending $280 on two port clickie expansions is if the port saved a significant amount of time and had such extreme value that it was worth it. The Umbral Plains port saved maybe 90 seconds of time. The COV port, if it went to CS then it was useless... if it went to WW that could save about 4-5 minutes from running across CS (I don't have it so am unsure). The TOV clickie took you to that city within EW which was a pain in the butt to run through just to get to EW, wasn't near any raid merchants, and I used maybe twice to get to that zone to do progression and never used it again. That was a complete waste of money.

Bottom line, if they priced it at $99 they would have made an extra $130 off me. If they priced it at $119 they most likely would have made another $170 off me. But pricing it at $139 is resulting in lost money they could have made, unless this port clickie is the be all/end all and such a time saver and convenient enough to reconsider.