Awesome Bonus Items for Purchasing Altar of Malice!

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Afista_DG, Oct 20, 2014.

  1. Boldac Active Member

    ---Thoughts from an angry Rodian---

    I stuck by you when you "adjusted" the best MMO ever. I stuck by you when you gave people glow sticks in the best MMO ever. I even stuck by you when you "enhanced" the best MMO ever. I made the shift from blasters and lightspeed to finger wagglers, swords and boards and even *cough* vampire paladins. IMHO, some of the things that made SWG the best MMO ever have crept into EQ2 (i.e. housing comes to mind). This, and many others are why we, the players, stay (or come back).

    But this is the second worst decision SOE has ever made when it comes to MMO's. (The NGE'ing of SWG will forever be the worst)

    It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or a first year accounting student) to know you are making a mistake. If the players liked the idea there wouldn't be 25 pages of discussion on how much of a turd this CE offering is. Even with the beefed up mount, that will get replaced pretty quickly if understand it.

    You have the power to fix it, and profit from it. We're not asking for a free heroic toon, or something crazy like another game is giving away, with the CE...just for you to either make it worth our money or make the price match the small amount of bonuses you get with it.
  2. Griff Well-Known Member

    Here is the sad and ugly truth. Many of those who purchase the CE edition will do so because they feel that the Mercenary is needed given how useful they are. Much as I rather not buy the CE edition for the main accounts of my wife and I, we might just feel compelled to simply for the Mercenary. The sad part of that is it's no longer a case of "It's reasonably priced as a pre-order and too cool to pass up at that price". It's now a case of "If I'm going to wind up buying it at full price at some time for the Mercenary; might as well part with my cash now and get over the sting while using the Mercenary a bit longer". That comes down to selling a thirsty person a room temperature bottle of water for $5.00 instead of the ice cold lemonade you sold in the past for $2.00. Just be happy it quenched your thirst and fork over the cash!

    If past experience of gaining an elite mercenary is any indication of what's to come, odds are the only elite we will wind up besides the 10 year bonus one will be a CE one. Yeah, I know, you don't need one. You don't need any of the extras in the store, unless you want to enjoy all the game mechanics.

    In that respect, we are consolidating our secondary accounts and dropping our son's seldom used account to F2P. Have to budget somewhere these days, so it's a trade off. In the end, not really enjoying F2P, odds are the SC spent on those accounts will also be eliminated.
  3. Kawoosh Well-Known Member

    The purchase logic of previous expansions was simple. Buy the CE early for $30 or so dollars off, or buy later at full price.

    The purchase logic for the Altar of Malice expansion is equally simple.
    a. Don't purchase the expansion.
    b. Buy the CE day one.
    Or
    c. Buy the regular edition on day one. Remember, there is no discount for an early purchase. Then wait, and read about the finalized CE benefits.
    And
    c1. Don't purchase the CE upgrade.
    Or
    c2. Purchase the CE upgrade, When You Need It or when it's discounted. Which could be the next day or a year later.

    Impact to player, none. Either you won't buy, or you will purchase what you need, When YOU Need It. Impact to Sony's MBA expectation of upfront November cash? Significant if people put off purchasing the CE or a CE upgrade.

    It's Your money. Don't let marketing shills convince you otherwise.

    "That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You got that?"
    Ash, Army of Darkness
  4. Ashy Member

    Hmmm... now I am going to have to give more thought to decisions I thought I had finalized. Thanks a lot Griffon Lady, damn it lol But seriously, very well said =)

    Oh well... back to the drawing board lol
  5. Acid Rain New Member

    the expansion or the dragon dude race ... I'll go with the expansion. y'all priced yourselves out of my reach, killing all interest in the dragondudes. what the hell, sony, hard up much?
  6. mouser Well-Known Member

    It isn't that WoW is easier.

    1) Blizzard has a solid reputation for standing by their games. Last I checked they still have a "legacy" team of devs working on games like Diablo and Warcraft II Battle Net edition (they may have finally stopped supporting Warcraft II...). They came out with a new _content patch_ for Diablo 2 ten years after that game was launched (and it still sells loads of copies).

    2) They don't lie to their customers. Yes, they've made Soon(tm) their catch-all for deliverables, but they don't release a product until it's done (to be fair, they are only one of a handful of software companies who can afford to do this).

    3) They admit when they screwed up and fix the problems. See: Diablo III. They basically rebooted that game after the whole ultra-rare loot combined with a real money auction house didn't pan out. For contrast, see if you can find the SOE Producer's Letter for the first round of server mergers for EQ 2.

    Blizzard came late to the MMO market and changed it like nothing else before it. The next great sea change will be when Star Citizen launches. Back to Blizzard - they have a longstanding fan base of customers they treated well over many years through their other gaming franchises. They took everything they learned from those games, added everything they learned from studying the MMO's that were out (successful and not, Korean or not) and launched WoW.

    WoW has changed over the years, but mostly in response to real customer demand (not a bunch of angry folks with pitchforks on their forums. They know what the majority of their playerbase do and work hard to keep them happy.
  7. Awkk Well-Known Member



    Come on, I'm sure Blizzard doesn't have 100 times more people playing their games, just to celebrate them for their legacy devs and good customer service. Probably most players don't even know anything about the legacy devs, or customer service, until they need to use customer service, then they probably are glad to quickly get a fix and go back to the game, and not have to think about customer service again, until the next time they have a problem .

    Right? People play because the game absorbs their attention. Maybe the Blizzard legacy devs are coding the game to make the game enjoyable, or other corporate decisions are made to make the game enjoyable and attractive to as many players as possible. Maybe they have good writers, to make the storyline interesting and fun, and not too repetitive. Maybe there are other differences. I don't know, this is the only game I've played, but I have heard people say that WoW is easier, that there are less gear restrictions, and other differences. Meanwhile I have seen EQ2 players rage about things like the 7 to 1 gear turn in for heroic potent gear. There is a balance between hard enough and too hard, and of course it is not the same for everyone.

    Also, there is a thief player who has been ripping people off for months, in game, since May, tricking them into trading heroic chars or station cash or dungeon maker power levels, for plat, then he steals the plat and logs out, and when they complain and name the thief in channel, he comes back on many alts and taunts them. Sympathetic players say to tell Sony, but just as many players claim that Sony won't do anything, because they don't support those kinds of trades. Well, letting a thief get away with hundreds of ripoffs, is that good for the game? Does that promote grouping and community? How about Sony tracks this thief's IP and bans him? It might be the same guy every time, since the MO is similar and many identified thief names and taunting alts were in the same guild. If Sony does nothing, maybe it will invite copycat thieves. When the game is full of thieves, who will want to stay and play, and support Sony, when Sony didn't protect the player base from thieves?

    Also I have seen youtube movies where people somehow can get their WoW characters to dance to songs, or do things you can't do in the game, etc. How do they do that? I read that Team Fortress has software to let you make unique movies of the characters. All that we can do is make movies of our chars as we play the game.
  8. Elite Active Member

    I dunno, corny dance moves aside, SOEmote is a brilliant feature for making movies with in-game characters. It'd be pretty easy to sync some dialogue or even dub in some music with Premiere or Final Cut, I just think you'd have a hard time finding some appropriate music to sync with the moves they're laying down.
  9. Awkk Well-Known Member


    Here is one of those movies, how did they do this? You cant make a movie like this with SOEmote.
    ROFLMAO! - World of Warcraft (WoW) Machinima by Oxhorn
  10. AOE1 Well-Known Member

    Count me in for not getting this expansion. After nearly 14 years of expansions on both eq and eq2, I have had enough of Sony. Pricing this expansion at the prices they have finished off any desire I had to continue on with this madness. Keep going Sony and you will loose more of the players you have had loyal to you for many years. Good luck but I believe there are games just as fun to play, offer even better graphics and as many quest and things to do for far better prices. You have forgotten a huge player base and they are not raiders but are solo and/or casual players who do not have or desire to invest their entire waking hours into a game. WTG on killing your off your player base.
  11. Hijinx Well-Known Member

    Well, I just came back to EQ2 from WoW and the one thing I can assure you is their boards are full of complaints on their costs and choices, just as their are here!

    The biggest difference I see between these two games is that Blizzard offers a LOT LESS, but makes sure everything is polished, buffed and shiney. EQ2 offers much, much more in terms of race, class and choices in general, but it tends to be a bit, well, quirky.

    In no way do I think Blizzard is better or more honest or more sensitive toward their customers than SOE is. Were you around when they removed character builds? Holy smokes, people left in droves. If you read the forums - and I do! - what you will see are lots of complaints. Tradeskills have been dumbed down to nothing. Classes have been homogenized. What new races is Blizz offering with their expansion? Oh, none. Classes? none. Yes, they are finally offering new raids - after 2 years of running the same 4 raids, people are dying for new content.

    The truth is, both games have changed a lot - not everyone would agree with the changes in either game. Blizzard is still king, although their subscription numbers are way down from their peak, because you can log in and make an amazing amount of progress in 20 min. EQ2 is still more challenging, even though it's become much, much easier than it was at release.

    But holding Blizzard up as some sort of paragon of customer sensitivity is a mistake.
    knightowl, Cuelaen and Lodrelhai like this.
  12. Valzen Well-Known Member

    I've come to the conclusion that I won't be getting expac at all. Need a break anyway, and the prices are my motivation to get away for awhile after my membership expires Dec 1. I know the going rates for expansions are around $40.00 on average for any game regardless, but I simply can't see sinking any more money.

    The thing is, if I got the expac, I'll want the new race eventually, and then it will be something else and so on. Just like all MMO's, they know how to keep your attention and they know how to keep people buying. 5 dollars here, 20 dollars there.... it all adds up and I have to stop the madness somewhere. Seems like a good place to do that.
  13. Pipsissiwa Well-Known Member

    Just occurred to me that they are launching this for All Access on Armistice Day (11/11), not the best choice really.... Might have been better to wait a day. I know it has nothing to do with gaming, but it's a little insensitive to be making people scrabble to spend money on something ultimately trivial on a day when a huge part of the world is remembering millions of war dead.
  14. Kalderon Well-Known Member

    I´m a little upset on the pricing too, did also planed to buy ce for me and my wife. But with that little to get extra, paying that much extra. I might just spend some of the saved money in SC, or go out have a good time with the kids and wife ^^
    But i´m still into eq2 so, i will buy the xpac (se) anyways.....
    Hijinx likes this.
  15. Marilia Active Member

    That is pretty easily done with some clever video editing. ALL of the moves in that are in game dances, emote animations, or other animations like combat, swimming, etc. All they did was edit it all together to make it seem like more than it is. Something like that could easily be done in EQ2 by people that know how to do video editing (basically movie editing). I don't know how to do this, but I have seen some really neat Machinimas out there. I'd think this could easily be done with SOEmote.

    If you want to see a truly amazing WoW machinima look at: The Craft of War: Blind. This person used custom animations to enhance the in game animations. Would love to see someone with the know-how do something like this for EQ2.
    Awkk likes this.
  16. Faery Member

    This will be the first time i'll be buying a CE, so sorry in advance if my questions sound noob-ish.
    -The special mount, is it one heirloom or one per char ?
    -The mercenary, will it take more, same or less money than the standard one ? ( i actually use the paladin human )

    Thanks in advance for your enlightments.
    Awkk likes this.
  17. Morfydd Active Member

    Gems of Armor Advancement clarification

    Post by Caith in another thread: The gems you gain from the Collectors Edition will increase the statistics bonuses on a single piece of armor just as if you had applied a colored gem of that type, with the limitation that it cannot be used to upgrade an item that has already had a gem applied. i.e. You can use it to go from 0/4 Yellow Gems, to 1/4 Yellow Gems, but you cannot use it to go from 1/4 to 2/4.
  18. Awkk Well-Known Member

    Whoa, amazing combat moves! But the ears on that elf are ridiculous.
  19. CoLD MeTaL Well-Known Member

    Just remember that the CE stuff could be changed later and make sure your ok with that before you fork over cash.
  20. Panamon New Member

    What are the stats on the merc? Specifically Crit Chance. I'm trying to figure out why the big secrecy on things like this?
    Pipsissiwa likes this.