Will you be buying the new Aerakyn race?

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Loch, Aug 26, 2014.

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  1. Ahupu Well-Known Member

    Holly very clearly said that it was not part of the expansion, but merely something that "was going live around the same time". I too inferred that it was part of the expansion, but rewatching the video I realized that was my mistake. Oh and with that bit of info, though they did not say it was going to cost SC, I would have been able to deduce that fact, with the other race and class that were not included in an expansion having an SC cost.
  2. aspekx Well-Known Member


    i did know what he meant. i really wasn't trying to be pedantic. i think that it is an important point. these things are not free. to assume that as such is to give SOE credit for something that isn't earned. i find that over time players are more and more viewing themselves as burdens to the company rather than as customers who are making an exchange. and that troubles me.

    it also troubles me that more and more customers are beginning to see the company as doing them a favor when offering product packages or the benefits of a subscription.

    my apologies for sounding pedantic though, i truly didn't mean for it to come across that way.
    Cuelaen likes this.
  3. Mayble New Member

    Yes I will
  4. Dulcenia Well-Known Member

    For me, the link started at 0:00, and I only watched the first couple of minutes. It definitely isn't all related to the AoM...unless you don't get the Isle of Refuge Prestige Home as a veteran reward without purchasing the xpack. That's announced at around the 1:20 minute mark, and I very much doubt that it is tied to the expansion.

    Anyway, what minute mark is the Aerakyn race announced at? I really don't want to watch the whole video.
  5. ShaggyBodom Well-Known Member


    7 minutes into it is the race announcement.
  6. ShaggyBodom Well-Known Member


    Every new class ever introduced (atleast in the last 4 years I have played) were part of an expansion. Beastlord was Age of Discovery. Channeler was Tears of Veeshan. As for races, I know Sarnak was included with Kunark. Freeblood apparently being separate from anything and released as just a new race with no ties to an expansion (maybe I am wrong?). That was also added before going free to play I believe. So this is the only race being added, that was included in an expansion announcement, that requires a totally seperate purchase. So with all that, I was unable to realize that maybe it would be a separate purchase.
    aspekx likes this.
  7. Alphonsus Well-Known Member

    Freeblood's were included with the Collector's Edition of Destiny of Velious. If there is a collector's edition of AoM that includes the Aerakyn and some other cool stuff, I'll consider it. Otherwise, I won't be spending any SC for the new race.
    aspekx likes this.
  8. Atan Well-Known Member

    I can fully empathize that they need to cost recover the effort of creating the new race with making it an additional cost, so I'll belabor any complaining about the wallet grab.

    But I still go back to, what if anything, makes this particularly interesting to want to make one?
  9. Ahupu Well-Known Member

    You're correct forgot about the BL coming with AoD. As someone else pointed out the freeblood came out months before DoV and if you met certain qualifications they were given for free in February after they had been out for months(roughly coinciding with the DoV release). Again however the Aerakyn were not included in the expansion announcement, at least not anymore than the rare item merchant, cross server dungeons, and guilds being able to level to 100 after the expansion comes out. The video was an EQ2 keynote that included info about the expansion, but all of those things and the Aerakyn were very clearly (even if I did make the mistake too of inferring the race was attached to the expansion) not part of the expansion based on what Holly said. We hear what we want to hear sometimes, it happened to me as I said, but that does not change the fact that her speech outright told us it was not part of the expansion. And the only previous race not included as part of an expansion you had to pay for, ergo you must pay for this one. I won't deny the speech's construction led to the confusion, but watch it again, really watch it, and you will have to admit they did not surprise us by not including the info that it was not part of the expansion.
    Finora likes this.
  10. Cuelaen Well-Known Member

    For me, it will depend heavily on how much you can customize it. In my opinion, they need newer, updated hairstyles, and more hair color selections. I would also like to see varying horn and wing shapes and colors
    aspekx likes this.
  11. ShaggyBodom Well-Known Member


    Ok I see where they said it wasn't really part of the expansion. And I guess it could be blamed on 3rd party sites as well listing them as a feature of the expansion and not something separate. There have been times where companies will not have an expansion fully ready but still want to release it and yet still give out more content to the expansion holders over the following month or 2. So they still kinda failed in mentioning that we will have to pay for it. My stance on the situation is still mostly the same. I won't be supporting an idea that wasn't fully made clear in the announcements. It made me way to excited to make something new, and then let down by a 3rd party site telling us it was a paid thing.

    Has SOE even said anything on official sources about it before the 3rd party site? Its very possible I missed it.
  12. Malleria Well-Known Member

    If anyone with influence is reading, please make some kind of mouth action that corresponds to the emotes the aerakyn in this video are doing. Especially the ones with big sweeping wing movements - it just looks bizarre that they're exerting themselves so much with absolutely no movement on their face. If they still have that wooden expression when they go live it'd be a huge turn off for me o_O
    aspekx likes this.
  13. Estred Well-Known Member

    I sadly think only Animations. Races are quite bland in EQ2 by comparison to other, newer games. Which may be due to age/engine restrictions.

    In Tera every race has unique Armorsets. One item has different appearances of every race, relatively dramatic differences too.
    In Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn, all Classes have different armors based on Armor Type and Weapon Type.

    Yeah... nothing like huge exertion (cool anims btw) without any effort in the face. Think of lifting a 40lbs Air Conditioner, without moving your face at all.
  14. ttobey Makes the Monsters Move

    The engine on Player Characters controls the faces, and these weren't set up for that in those videos.
    aspekx and Malleria like this.
  15. Feldon Well-Known Member

    When SOE invites Press sites out to cover its events, and those sites are completely unfamiliar with the games, then misunderstandings do happen. Massively and ZAM have people who cover SOE games year round, and further, they will not accept comped hotel rooms and free airfare like the other Press sites do.
    When the Press embargo dropped 5 hours early, I was at a coffee shop at SOE Live scrambling to copy-and-paste all the stuff that had been posted from different sites and assemble it into one article. Massively and ZAM got the Aerakyn race details correct. I copied some of my info from a site that didn't. I'd like to think it's actually pretty amazing that the Aerakyn race is the only real mistake in my article, but even one mistake is frustrating. :(

    P.S. I wish SOE Corporate would stop giving the store away to Press sites and promising them the moon, while barely acknowledging that fan sites exist. Don't get me wrong -- the EQ2 team has been awesome to me -- I'm talking about SOE and fan sites in general.
    Shmogre, Tylia, Neiloch and 1 other person like this.
  16. aspekx Well-Known Member

    i think this is a further misunderstanding of the complaint here.

    while i certainly associated the race with the expac, there is no way i would even think of holding SOE responsible for my misunderstanding. that's my fault, my assumption, my problem.

    my issue is of a broader concern: races and classes have always been a part of expansion packs. this is not just an EQ2 thing, not just an SOE thing, this is across the board with most mmorpg's. you pay the sub, you buy the expac and that's it. and some of these games don't even have a cash store to make up for the imagined loss in profit margins that seems to be the concern of some. even the more whale sized mmo's can't afford to operate at a loss in selling an expansion pack. so i really have a difficult time believing that the race is being sold separately because of some desperation on the part of SOE to meet their budget.

    overall my fear is that they are conditioning customers to accept that every single piece of gameplay can be broken down into separate little items and then sold. plenty of Asian companies do this, it's part of the culture and how the mmo industry grew over there. but not here and there are reasons for that. typically in the West, for or for ill, we purchase things that are packaged together. primarily because we recognize that in buying a package deal we may pay a little more up front then we wanted, but that in the long run the expense is balanced out by the value.

    right now i am playing Dragon's Prophet. (which i can highly recommend for several reasons.) but DP is built on that Asian model, being a game developed and released by a Taiwanese company and only being 'distributed' by SOE here in the US. (a game which charges you for inventory slots and stable slots for your dragons, even if you are subscribed.) so when i see the DP marketplace for SC items and i see the trends in the EQ2 marketplace, i don't think im being terribly out of bounds to wonder if this is where SOE plans on going overall.

    and the fundamental issue is that for each and every one of us, we will pay more in the end than the subscription price. one may hold off on the Aerakyn, they may wait for the price to go down on the expac. but either in EQ2, or Landmark, and probably EQN, we will pay more.

    to be clear, i do not think SOE has some evil masterplan to rob us all into the poorhouse. that's silly. but i do think this is a growing trend in SOE products (ie., inventory expansion costs money in Landmark) and as customers i do think we can openly question that direction.
  17. Griffon Lady Well-Known Member

    I'll be buying them, but more to use as house actor models than any thing, since you have to have access for them to be available as a model for the house actors. (Or so I've been told)
    One Manhattan Island house, complete with a certain Gargoyles clan, coming up! ^_^
    Lodrelhai likes this.
  18. Enric_of_Neriak Member

    You raise some interesting points Aspekx and I agree that the direction SOE seems to be going is in charging for game features players are used to getting for 'free'.

    I don't agree that they are going with the eastern MMO model of micro transaction for the most part though. Most Eastern MMOs I've played that had cash shops with cosmetic items only let you rent those items. You could get a vanity pet for 30 days for a buck and after that you had to rent it again. If fluff items didn't come with a rental fee then they were charged items with limited use. I have not played enough of those games to say if that is common or if I've just managed to play the minority of games with that cash shop model.

    Also, the Eastern MMOs I've played have no issue selling power in their market places on top of convenience items like XP potions. Again, I've only played a small handful of those games but the cash shops there feel much more intrusive and the game plays like it only exists for the cash shop. This is all based on personal experience so yours may be different.

    In the past we did get new races with expansions. The Fey, Arasai, and Sarnak all came with expansions/game updates. The Freeblood race was free as part of a summer promotion for gold members for a limited time when they were first introduced. The Freeblood also had a racial goodies pack on the marketplace. After the promotion was over they were for sale for anyone that wanted them and didn't get them for free.

    EverQuest II has 19 playable races included to all players regardless of subscription at this point in time. Right now Freeblood is the only race that has a seperate cost. I can't think of another MMO out there that has that many playable races available to choose from (but I'm tired after a long day and maths are hard).

    I truly believe that the reason this race isn't included with the expansion is two fold. One, the fact that there are 19 playable races to chose from excluding the premium Freeblood race. The second reason I believe there is a cost associated with this race is I think the devs wanted to add a new race but to justify adding it to the schedule it had to be on the marketplace.

    I don't know about other games but here to add a race is more than just modeling it and animating it. Once the thing is in then all the armor has to be tweaked to work on it. There have been a lot of words posted on the forums over the years of how time intensive adding a single armor set is to the game. It takes something along the lines of 1-2 months for one unique set. So adding a character means that it has to work with all the armor or all the armor has to be tweaked to work with the new race.

    I was disappointed when I found out this thing would be a separate purchase but from my earlier post you'll see I'm still getting one. However, I don't think conditioning (see pink meatbeast mount for testing what the market will bear) has anything to do with this. I really do think, in this instance, the only choice for the devs was marketplace item or no new race period.
  19. d1anaw Well-Known Member

    Personally, I don't know. I loathe to make yet another character. I don't really have time to play all 11 that I currently have and don't want to delete any of them. So I'm going to have to wait and see. It sounds intriguing though.
  20. Naneel Member

    I got Freeblood free on my account as part of a promotion for vets with active accounts.

    Any chance of a similar promotion here?
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