Awesome Bonus Items for Purchasing Altar of Malice!

True, and it was definitely more than 10% too.

This all sounds great but I will be damned if I will be spending $40.00 minus the 10% for membership for an xpac I can't play. If I can't get in to the beta to try it they why should I sink money in to a non refundable game that I wont ever be able to play plus all this time my characters are stuck zoning so I will never be able to earn a mount for any quests whether its for killing or skilling. We have been in the Beta forums forever trying everything possible with other players and still no results. I guess there will be a big loss on this xpac Sony, sorry about your luck.

The CE is not at all worth what they have priced it for. I wont be buying this xpac. I agree with those that think time to move away from SOE games

I've been playing nonstop since about a month before DoF came out... so just about a year short of the full run of the game. I'm among the crowd that's learned the $60 CE expac preorder deals have been fantastic. Regardless, I'll be playing after AoM comes out. However, if there is no incentive to buy it right away, I won't be buying the expac *at all* (not even the standard) for another couple months at least. Figure out a way to make $60 offer happen for the CE (like offer it to subscribers during the early access period) and I will figure out how to squeeze that out somewhere. Otherwise, no monies from me at launch this time.

Yes, pre-ordering saved you $30 for collector's edition the last couple years at least. All access is new, and the 10% off cash purchases is something they added to All access. If there was some discount other than the pre-order sale price, I'd love to find out what it was.
They are replacing the pre-order sale price with this All access 10% discount.
Considering how much objection there was to the price of the last 2 xpacs, and how much less we get for the same price this year.... well something's gotta give. Either more balance now, or quite a tumble later, possibly catastrophic failure if this habit keeps going.

Anyone else remember the retail collector editions with IRL goodies? XD I can't remember the prices on those, but I'm thinking it was $30 to $50 less than the digital editions that require no physical materials aside from existing servers to download from, no manufacturing of disks or packaging or instruction booklets, no shipping costs, no retail shelving costs, no pewter or cloth items to make, and the price goes wayyyy up when they switched to digital downloads? o.0 What am I missing here? And here we are, years later, with SOE still pushing the envelope.

What assurance do we have that we will be able to access this content ... if we can even access it in beta?

As an All Access member, last year I pre-ordered the Tears of Veeshan - Collector's for $44.99.

So, Previously....
($89.99 - $30.00) = $59.99
($59.99 - $44.99) = $15.00
($15.00 / $59.99) = 25% discount

Now...
($89.99 * 10%) = $9.00
($89.99 - $9.00) = $80.99
($80.99 - $44.99) = $36 more this year

Yes! That is what I was remembering. We paid under $50 for our CEs. I even did all-access on two additional accounts last year, making it four subs for two months each and getting the CE for each.

See, if we think it is worth it, we will spend a LOT on this game.
So please SoE, make it worth it...

By any chance, did you go to SOE Live last year? Because I did, and I also had an all-access account at the time, and I paid $45 for the xpac. But that wasn't a discount for being an all-access subscriber. That was because Live attendees got the standard edition free, and only paid to upgrade.

Wow - I was thinking of quitting the game after 10 years BUT thought that a new xpac would be interesting and decided to stick around and keep my all access. Now it seems like the new xpac is much too expensive for what you get, and I need to reconsider my all access.

It seems like a lot or people are leaving the game - a ten year old game. There used to be double and triple SC sales, but that has stopped (the first hint that SOE was looking for ways to get more cash). Also the SC market seems to be geared more and more at pay to win.

It seems to me that SOE should be finding ways to keep its loyal members happy rather than raising its prices and acting more greedy. I'm not sure yet if SOE will get any more of my money. I'm beginning to feel that every time I hear "SOE," I automatically check to see if I still have my wallet.

I did not go to SoE Live last year. Never have actually, too far away. And paid that amount for the CE.

Absolutely none of this stuff is a requirement to play and be successful in AOM. There's, what, 650 races already and each of them can strap on some wings so what does it matter if we play Aerakyns or not? As for character slots, I wish I could lend out some of mine because between my wife and I we use 6 on two accounts.

As for losing CE sales, I'm pretty sure they've got the books figured out well enough to determine how many sales they may or may not lose based on the pricing.

The game itself is failing in that it is aging and the population is dwindling. It won;t die with AOM and, I'm fairly sure, it won't die for a couple of years to come.

I understand that it pisses people of to pay $90 for an expansion, but the fact remains that that price tag is only for those that have the money to throw at some semi-exclusive in-game stuff. We already have a bunch of houses... who needs more? Those who say they do, would only complain about the prices and effort required to decorate the new house or how it didn't have the right kind of walls to hang certain things or whatever. People love to complain. I'm a case in point... I'm complaining about people complaining!

I appreciate what you have to say to a degree, but it doesn't hide the fact that no matter what came down the pipe, people would find something to whine about. Even if it was based on pure supposition.

Are they really serious? I keep looking for the April 1 date on the OP. NINETY BUCKS? No pre-order discount? No. Just no.

It's going to kill me to not be able to take my crafters and adventurers all to max level, but I won't pay that much for an expansion. Even 40 for the standard edition is pushing it. I could almost buy another entirely new game with that.. which I may just do, instead of pouring even more money into what is turning into a bottomless pit. And for 90 I could almost buy 2. What are they thinking?!

If you're going to make it 90, make it worth it. Add a house and the new race. At the very least, put the pre-order discount back in - you can see from the responses in here that getting rid of that is making A LOT of people VERY unhappy - and you are going to sell A LOT FEWER and end up not only making many fans upset but making less money than you could have.

Respectfully, it's exactly that sort of logic that often gets people into financial binds. If you can afford it and justify the cost of something, by all means, buy it with no regrets. Odds are I will upgrade to the CE on my main account, maybe. The problem with the logic you used is that many cut out that "latte" several times justifying each micro-purchase as a pack of smokes, a fast food meal, you name it. That is until all those mic-transactions add up to substantial spending and in some cases debt.

As many pointed out, it's $81-$89; which is a substantial increase in price. Your explanation is like saying you don't mind if the cost of gas goes up another $1.00 because you can skip a few trips a week and still have the same money left at the end of the week.

Yeah, $90.00 is pretty expensive for what the bonus in game items are. To me, they certainly aren't worth the extra $50.00 in cost. I typically buy the collector's edition, but I'm not sure I will if the price remains that high. How can you justify the bonus items being worth $50.00? It doesn't make sense to me. I suggest letting everyone purchase the game for $40.00, then offer the additional items via the SC Marketplace with a discount to All Access Members. That way, each person can pick and choose what they want.

Tears of Veeshan was (is) $39.99 for the standard edition, and $89.99 for the collectors edition. You can still see its price on the main EQ2 website: https://www.everquest2.com/expansion-content
Chains of Eternity was $39.99 for the standard edition, and the collectors edition was $59.99 if you pre-ordered it. Once it launched, its price was $89.99.
Destiny of Velious was $39.99 for the standard edition, and the collectors edition was $89.99.
Sentinel's Fate? Digital editions were $39.99 for standard - though the boxed version was $29.99 for standard, for whatever reason. I can't remember how much the collector's was, since it didn't really have anything that interested me.

The prices for expansions haven't really changed, just, apparently, peoples memories of the prices.

As for the lack of a house that people are complaining about - there hasn't always been a house. In fact, usually it was a mount, appearance crap, or house items. I believe that only three expansion/feature packs came with a house - AoD, DoV and ToV. Three, out of eleven. Getting a house is the exception, not the rule. This expansions included items are pretty much the norm - not much for standard edition, cool, if mostly useless, stuff for collector's edition. And really, look at it this way - a heroic character is priced at 35$USD. So someone is paying an extra 15$ for the bonus fluff, if they have a use for the heroic toon. A mount is usually 1750SC, so. Yeah. This collectors edition has the same amount of "added value" that they usually have.

More, in fact, than a lot of previous CE's had - Sentinel's Fate, for example, just had a mount, a recolor of the same appearance gear standard edition had, and eh, 500 SC?

The boxed versions came with nifty little pewter items - but those weren't always limited to collectors editions, either - I have a bunch of pewter things (keychains, figurines) from various standard editions (I've only, ever, bought CE's for 1 account - I have multiple accounts, the other accounts always got a standard edition) for both EQ1 and EQ2.

Yeah, I can't see $90 (or even $81) for the CE. I've bought other CEs, in fact all of them that have been offered I think, but I think it will be the SE this time.

If things were excluded because one person said "Who needs more" there wouldn't be any thing... at all... The POINT is to interest as wide a population as possible so the game gets enough money to survive. This collector's edition is failing that goal.

I'm a lurker most times here, but had to post now. The pricing is ridiculous. Unfortunately, it looks like the pricing and the taking away of the preorder discount is only going to shoot themselves in the foot. I, for one, will not be purchasing either version until (1) it is made to be worth the huge price and/or (2) the pre-order discount comes back into play. Because there is no way in Hades that I'm buying this expansion as it stands right now.

It's a huge difference when you no longer have the option of the preorder discount to defray much of the cost of the purchase. The items in the CE are not worth that much (to me) and I'd never have bought the CE at full price for the last one either. I'm just getting tired of the lack of 'worth' when they want to put these huge price tags on expansions - it's not even a full game, it's an expansion for crying out loud.