Awesome Bonus Items for Purchasing Altar of Malice!

Can someone please clarify this for me? Is there going to be an actual Isle of Refuge zone in the next expansion? Like is this going to be the original Isle of Refuge zone with some of the initial quests? I only knew of the Isle of Refuge house that was the upcoming 11 yr vet reward. So if there's only the house zone, why do you need a house object to teleport there?

There is both a Prestige Isle of Refuge house coming out next month as a veteran reward and an updated Isle of Refuge zone that is part of the Altar of Malice expansion. The house item will port you to the new Isle of Refuge zone.

I don't know about some... but I don't want them to add anything to the CE... I think quite a few have said as much. I think for some is they are simply stating, like myself, the inability to pre-order the expansion at 59.99 will result in them not purchasing it.
It's a legitimate discussion, regardless of if you agree or not. I'm sure, like yourself, many pay to play the game and are only posting to the forum for lack of better platform to voice their displeasure. Can they do anything about it? Probably not... will demanding more or saying they will quit, change anything? Probably not.. do they have the right to post on the forum about their decisions? Yes.

The cost hasn't changed just the lack of a discount. And all those same costs have gone up for the people who are employees of SoE, Many of them have family's for which they are the sole bread winner as well I am sure. And while there are no physical costs to create disks to send us for our purchase, the costs of maintaining and upgrading the physical infrastructure that supports the game we play has also gone up in the last few years, not to mention what the simple costs of things like electricity for the servers must be. During the course of 10 years they have not changed the price (which they still have not done), and everyone here is complaining that they are "disregarding the economic struggles of a typical family". Rather I think people for some reason think that corporations are greedy, when they want to make money, "I want to make more money than I spend so I can save and afford the things I want that are luxuries, but how dare you try and do the same! You greedy bastards!!!" Don't see the value in the CE, buy the SE. Just don't disregard the fact that both SoE and its employees are in the same boat we are, except they are faced with a dwindling player base. Fewer people overall playing than in the past means they cannot afford to offer a sale. If you ran say a restaurant that had done well for years and offered a 33% discount for placing your order in advance, and for one reason or another (say a new restaurant opened that was more popular) your profits dwindled to the point where you were just breaking even you would either provide food made with lower quality ingredients (read cheaper) for the same cost, start charging more while providing the same quality ingredients, or stop giving food away at a discount. I know what I would do, and do not blame them one bit. After all they could have raised the SE cost to $59.99 as well as not offering the usual sale price thus maintaining the cost to upgrade to the CE from the SE parity % people were used to from preordering in the past. In any case, the CE is fluff, always has been, getting up in arms over how much the BMW costs when the Ford is perfectly serviceable is just rank silliness.

The problem is we HAVE been getting the lower quality for some time and the reason they aren't making a profit is because of all the EQ2 resources being poured into Landmark and Next. Not just the cash alone but just about all the development personnel that we relied upon for years got shipped out leaving us with the current management which has proven over time to fall short on quality and quantity but never on arrogance.

I won't be buying either this time because i'm tired of the disappointment. The only part of SOE that truly excels now days is customer service and that's not enough to keep me in the game with so many other games out there offering better content. 3 accounts over 9 years and removing pre order discount has made up my mind to seek greener pastures.

Should be reason enough to look at what can be done to prevent alienating the majority that remains of a dwindling player base.

n/m

Alright. I will bite and purchase the collectors. That elite merc better spank the lower content with haste. I am imagining a cross between kenny and the 10 year merc (that way nobody can say...well i needed a tank..i needed a heal blah blah blah?) Anyway here is hoping that elite merc is over 9000!!!

Who knows? It depends on what SOE use for a USD-GBP conversion.

Your figure looks high for current FX market rates, have you counted VAT twice? CE at $81 (All Access discounted price) plus 20% VAT would be $97.20.

Using oanda.com to convert at market rate results ($1=£0.62018) is a GBP price of £60.28. Even after adding a 3% surcharge as typical on a credit card purchase would get the cost up to £62.08 which, while eye-wateringly expensive for an expansion, is still a fair amount under your £74.

As I said earlier, we won't actually know the GBP price until SOE opens up the e-commerce server. Based on past performance it probably will be more than £62 as their FX rates are only re-pegged at infrequent intervals. I hope it won't be as high as your £74.

hmm it would seam obvious that with 9 pages of people complaining about the price and items included in both the standard and collectors additions that sony will be loosing out. that bieng said i have played eq2 since the start and i will not continue to pay for my subscription or buy an x-pac; standard or collectors; with the current pricing. especial since with pre-order i payed 45$ for a CE last xpac.

$89.99 for the collector's edition with no special discount offer other than the $9 off for being all access, which I am, it is way out of my price range. The collector's edition items look nice but for $50 extra? If the collector's edition came with like a prestige house and the aerakyn race I could see paying that much but as is, no way. We don't even know how much the aerakyn race is going to cost us right now and I had really been looking forward to that. So as I see it if I want the race the only way to go is to get the standard edition which is highly disappointing with just a painting. And I have a bad feeling that the race is going to be like $20 at least and thats not including either a new toon slot or a race change potion. Sad that I'll be missing on the merc, the rest of the stuff I could live without and I'm guessing asking for an edition in the middle between standard and collector's isn't happening.

My boyfriend is always for me getting special edition's of games because he doesn't want me to miss out but even he's against me getting the collector's edition. I've bought full games for less than what this costs (GW2 for instance) and to pay this for an expansion is just ridiculous. I envy those who can afford this price, and hope they do enjoy it but still the price is ridiculous regardless.

Maybe that's the only bit that remotely interested him/her.

If they had scrapped the mount, pet and gems and had given us the new race and a house, I'd be figuring out where I could pull the extra money from to buy the CE. As offered, though, it just isn't enticing enough to remotely consider paying that much for it.

Point is: the only items that matter when considering the purchase are the ones a person wants. The rest might as well not be there, and don't add value to the package for that person. So in essence, you really might be left weighing out whether or not another mount and a painting are worth $50 to you.

I am going to add my voice & opinion to this conversation, and share what I have issue with, because i love you and you need to hear this... I am very disappointed.

I have read that the Aeryken race is not included in the expansion. This is a deal breaker for many people. $90 for the CE xpac, then $15 to play for the month, then buy the Aeryken race for around $20 as well? Ouch. If you want to make the Collectors Edition worth the high price, this expansions new race should be included.

Next I read that the mount will have a 75% ground speed and 150% air speed. I have 10+ mounts on my main that offer the same or much better stats than this. Sure it looks neat, but it has absolutely no benefits, and will not be useful except as an appearance or house item. It is not worth the extra $ for Collectors Edition. IF you want this to be considered a perk for the $90 CE, it should have heroic or raid stats.

Now, about the house. Yes, I know the starter isle as a house is this year's vet reward. That's nice for people who have played EQ2 since launch. I was an EQ1 player, and have 15 years on my SoE account. I have only spent about 5 years of my life playing EQ2. Having a house thrown into the mix would definitely make the Collectors Edition more appealing to decorators.

Lastly, for my biggest suggestion that relates to this and also everyday game play: Change Vet Rewards to be "All Access" and base it off of the Account age instead of time-in-game. I am a long-time customer that loves EverQuest I&II. YEARS and YEARS of my childhood and adult life have been playing this game. I have spent thousands of dollars supporting SoE. My rough estimate was over $4500 (i-dont-even-want-to-know how much money throughout my life on monthly subscriptions, gold membership, station cash, every expansion, race unlocks, appearance items, house items, trips to SoE live 4 years in a row, so on and so forth)... It would be nice to have Veteran benefits across all SoE games included in the All Access Membership.

This was not intended as a whiny, self entitled rant. Take it as loving advice and suggestions to improve a game that is very near and dear to my heart. Give us a better deal to make it worth our money, then I'd be happy paying your asking price.

Bad idea. That's pay to win. Paying more money for stat increasing gear. The CE mounts and any SC mounts have always been just about speed increase and no other stats.

Once you've played this game a few years you do have far too many of them and therefore they loose their appeal. It was amazing for me with CoE CE as it gave each alt a flyer for no SC. But since then I've got one per character from ToV and the giveaway wings, so another flyer isn't that great anymore.

But houses are also the same if you don't decorate. If you have one prestige home per character to dump your broker stuff in and never pay rent, why have another?

The research reducers are ok, it's a sneaky way to get people to use them. If the CE was 2 reducers per character, I'd buy it and it would be worthwhile dumping $50 extra for multiple characters to get two GM spells instantly. But because it's just two, even if that's theoretically $40 in value, to me it's not worth giving SOE my money for, as I think the price of research is too high anyway so I refuse to pay any way, even via a CE purchase.

The gem upgrades are getting close to pay to win. Do they upgrade further than what can be achieved in game? Or is it just an equivalent to, for example, a green potent gem if it was this xpac?

I will not be impressed if I see people with upgraded armor that can only reach that upgrade level through CE gems.

I've already mentioned that it is impossible to please everyone and the EQ2 is great proof of this. The fact remains that regardless of what parts of the CE bundle you like or dislike, making hyperbolic statements about it amounts to nothing. There is a Mercenary, an Isle of Refuge port, a mount, a painting, some armour gems, a house pet and some research time (2 GMs worth) which seems like quite the spectrum of stuff to add. I personally don't want another house nor do I want access to a new race. If they had offered it and left out, say the gems and research time, I wouldn't have made a stink because they are an option that I can purchase and they will serve me very limited purpose in the game.

Arguing against the price or the content of the CE based on what you would rather have is useless. Arguing against it with hyperbole is counter-productive.

Obviously, the 90 dollar package has a plethora of goodies but its way too overpriced for what's involved.

I would suggest throwing in a Premium Home and/or the new race to offer that extra incentive to buy the package.

Also, the fact that the new Mercenary is not a pure healer but a tank/healer hybrid is also a disservice to many of the casters or soloers who need a healer merc (and still use Kivoc).

The collectors edition is way over priced. There is no way I would pay $50.00 more than the regular edition. I know complaining will not help, and the only way Sony would ever care would be for people to just refuse to pay it.

SOE had me at gem armor adorns.
Sold.

There is no way I'll buy the collectors edition at that price. I may not even buy the expansion as i didn't buy the last expansion. I just don't feel like the value has been there lately. Not to mention that 90 is way too much. I dont need to be the envy of my friends with a new merc. As a player from eq to eq2 at release and also that i feel like i wasted money on for the most expensive pack for landmark, I think I'll be holding onto my cash this time around.

Why is adding a new hybrid healer a disservice to people that already use a healer merc? Do we know how well the new merc heals? Maybe the DPS it provides, or the mitigation it has offsets any shortage in heals it may or may not have.