New Marketplace Items: Bovochs and Bristlebane!

Then once again, you are making baseless, counterproductive assumptions. Corporations in general are much more worthy of distrust than politicians. However once again, the behavior of SoE on this day has nothing to do with what you should be distrusting.

I’m not complaining so much about the price but more the color that was available when considering who would want a Pink Meatbeast… than why not make a stripe one for that price too. They are cool looking and I would bet a majority of males who love the mestbeast's would want that one too and some females too just like some males liked the Pink one too.

I'm sure the people who bought SC specifically for the pink meatbeast on Monday and had a reasonable assumption of the price range would like their money back. But as you and Lempo have already pointed out, those people are suckers for assuming anything and deserve what they got.

And exactly what would that be oh wise one? Anything and everything that is driven by $$?

Well, yeah. They gambled, and lost.

But if you want some schadenfreude...I have tens of thousands of SC that's been banked since before they stopped selling expansions for SC. I bought all that SC on discount days hoping I'd never have to pay cash for an expac again. So I'm a loser too.

*huggles*?

I'd pay 1000 USD for a night with Queen Thex, with Lucan as the busboy?

Dexella, I do not mean to be harsh with this comment, it might come across that way, but this is not ** seriously** what you should have to cover.

I do appreciate it that you are the first red name to venture a "head over the wall", but in my book, this is Hollys' / SJ's job.

All to often at Sony, it is the regular guys (and gals), without the fancy job title and the equally fancy salary that end up taking the flack.

Please copy and paste this message into a mail to Smed (as I am convinced j.smedley@soe.sony.com is not his real mail address, lets face it, Stringer had 3!!!) and let him know that in this gamers opinion, you should be paid more and have bigger influence than you do at the moment....

I'm sorry, but this is a total and utter cop out.
Prices change? Sure, prices may go up from 2k to 2.5k, or from 1k to 1.5k, but from 1950 to 5000? That's a ridiculous increase.
So what next, are the prices on Transfer tokens going to shoot up to 5k? Or are the next bunch of mounts that appear going to go up to 5k?
You wanted feedback, it was a disgrace frankly, and a mild PR disaster. Please learn from it, heck even fix it. Im sure you could quite easily refund everyone who bought it with 2.5k SC, then they still paid 2.5k for it and you win overall. Feedback is never taken well at SoE, anybody who has been around for more than 5 minutes knows this. At the end of the day, you'll do what generates you the most $$$ in that instant, without thinking of the long term repercussions. Look at the whole PSS1 Thread, and how long it took to sort, and how much you lost from that.
As Community Manager, shouldn't you be looking to what the COMMUNITY, not COMPANY thinks? and adapting to that.
Yes I bought a meatbeast, however I bought one, for 5k. If you had priced it at 2k SC, I'd have bought 5. So you are $50 less down the pan because of greed. But do me one favour, even if you don't even listen to my feedback, get one of the team to look at making ground mount illusions work with Cevern Vastpan - Ground Version.
Thanks.

Sony do PR disasters like.no.other Oh wait, that was their old strap line.... now they are Sony... make.believe!!

They "make" the price 5K and "believe" people will bend over and take it... TBH the most insulting part was the 50K --> 5K "Sale" pricetag, like they were doing player a favour.

God, I am going to bed now as I am agreeing with Errrorr....

OK Lempo on this one, I have to agree with you. Facepalm indeed.

Why did double SC end the day before you released the pricing on the mount? And for all the fancy marketing staff you have there, did none of them really foresee a backlash when said mount was released at such a ridiculous price?

You would have us believe these are coincidences. That they're little oopsies we should shrug off. We know they're not. It was a deliberate manipulation to get the most money spent in the weekend as possible. You can preach this 'personal decision' nonsense all you like. That's not why people are angry, and you know it.

Well, while you're "moving forward" Dexella, the main lesson I've learned from this debacle is to never, ever get excited by anything SOE announces in future ever again.

Because chances are SOE will then do something really clueless and ruin it.

I don't know what's worse, the fact that SOE managed to pull off another resounding win with their customers (heavy sarcasm), or the two <insert colorful descriptor> that are going to great lengths to attack people who are upset over this.

Its funny, I was going to come back to the game today. After reading about this fiasco on Feldon's fansite, then coming here and seeing the sheer, and utterly deplorable state of affairs this has become.. I just really have to shake my head. SOE manages, yet again, to knock one out of the park with their paying customers.

You see, its antics like this that drive people away. The track record of the last 3 years hasn't exactly been glowing, if you know what I mean, and adding another shovelful to the steaming heap that is your reputation isn't going to increase sales for EQN. Keep it up guys, really. Its working wonders.

I also read Dexella post, and I read all of these because I want to know what is incoming. She mentioned something that hadn't even been touched on until this thread and I can't believe it wasn't brought up, but as she said when these items are announced they don't release the prices officially, those are shown when it hits live. So why should they be expected to do this item any differently.

Oh please, does someone really need to explain this to you? They should have done this item differently because it was a major change in the manner in which they price items.

It isn't even so much about the change in pricing as it was timing this event at the exact same time as a double SC promotion. It's only natural to expect players to follow the standard process of stocking up on station cash in preparation for a special sale item. Had this pink bovine event happened by itself then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. It would purely be a discussion about whether $50 is excessive. It's when you combine the two at the same time that you create a scenario where players react according to NORMAL ASSUMPTIONS about the market only to find themselves screwed afterwards.

SOE changed the script on the marketplace at the exact same time as they marketed it heavily for maximum weekend profit due to the hype on the pink meatbeast. Did they do anything legally wrong? Nope. Did they do something that was ethically questionable to a lot of us? Yep.

Because it would be good customer service? When you go and change the pricing scheme that affects EVERY single one of your customers, then a little warning isn't unheard of.

I go to a restaurant near work 3 days out of the week. They have a sign out front that has the daily lunch special and the price written on it. I know their entire menu in my head along with the prices so I never even look at the sign after 5 years of going there. How ticked off do you think I would be if I sat down, ordered my lunch, and was given a bill for $20 instead of the normal $10 because they doubled their prices with no notice or warning. Would it ultimately be my fault for not checking the sign or asking to see the menu after 5 years, sure, you bet. You would think the restaurant, as a customer service business, would inform me of the price change the moment I sat down and not after I had already eaten. Not doing so could lead to upset and disgruntled customers and ultimately a loss in business.

The only difference in this scenario is that with Station Cash, its advantageous to pay for your meals in advance when SOE runs their promotions. It just sucks that those people that paid in advance expecting a $20 dollar meal were shocked by the new $50 price tag no one warned them about.

It is 1 item it is not as if they changed the entire pricing scheme. You are just grasping at straws to find fault where there is none.

Yet.... Its not like they haven't continuously shown themselves to only care about the money.

It's one item that they deliberately created hype over, actively encouraged spending money in advance to get, while hiding its bloated price tag. No one thing is at fault, it's the series of events that deliberately manipulated sales when they knew people would be left short.