The game is pretty much working as intended aside from a few minor issues. What this thread is asking for is an entirely new set of features. EQ2 classic isn't part of the regular game. Of course you going to have to pay extra for that. ALSO consider: The cost of a subscription game has not really kept up with inflation in the last 15 to 20 years. The cost of a subscription in 1999 or 2004 was $14.99 /mo. It cost a few bucks more on top of that if you paid for "EQ2 players" access. If it kept up with inflation it would cost $35 /mo and the game box would cost $100. The missing money has to come from somewhere. Acting like it everything should cost the same as it did 2004 isn't being realistic. It is delusional. Making use of modern funding platforms such as Kickstarter, Patreon, and GoFundMe is the future of gaming.
Then gaming is dead. Vapor ware scams happen too often for me to trust my money on a "future capability." Vanguard anyone?
I have looked at quite a few of these Kickstarters for games that are supposedly in development and I see their donation tiers and they advertise Founder and Patrons at $10,000 and $5,000 donations respectively and these folks are to get something like 1 year free sub, lots of free fluff, exclusive mounts, etc... and then you look and the game in question has folded usually within 6 months of the end of the Kickstarter and barely made it past storyboards. Then if you watch, you will see the same people starting a Kickstarter 6 months after that for a whole new game, and its the same storyboards, just the names of everything have been changed. If you look at the totals raised in some of those Kickstarter Campaigns they have raised a few million just in their first round and they fold. So they are just stealing that money from those people, wash, rinse, repeat. I would be much more at ease putting money towards a Kickstarter to help DBG fund a few more employees to help with bug smashing and itemization/tuning, then throwing it towards a "new" game that has not even had a line of code written. As far as a Founder, Patron, Pioneer subscription level, we used to have them, they were called Gold, Silver, and Copper (or was it Bronze). I see no reason why we cannot return to that. The people with the Lifetime Subs of course would not be affected at all. I am sorry, but here I would have to say the Free to Play would have to step up and be the Pioneer (Copper) level, running servers is not free, it takes electricity, rent on the building is not free, the employees that maintain them and the developers all like a paycheck. Hate me if you like but if $5 or $7.50 a month is to much to kick in for what you get in return, I think you should get the basic quality of life upgrades chat, broker, mail, then you should find someone that does not mind paying for your fun. You can mow a lawn and make more than this. The standard sub fee we have now, whether it is monthly or multi-month would be the Patron (Silver) and would remain as it is. The same amount of money for the sub, you get the same DBG every money and the rest of the perks, the double exp, double status weekends. And double currency. The Founder (Gold) would be $19.99-24.99 depending on whether you did monthly or multi-month. You would get 1000 DBG monthly. And double double on the experience and status weekends. And double double on currency. So a current member gets 2 loyalty tokens, a founder would get 4, during a double currency weekend a founder would get 8, or any currency, Erollisi, Tinkerfest, Frostfell, etc, of course it would include the raid currencies as well, I just do not raid, so I do not know what they are called to list them. Its a choice each player would have to make for themselves. If they want to pay more, they can, if they do not want to pay more they do not have to. If they want to play, they have to pay something to help pay for the servers, that is only fair. I think of it like the gas station, I want to drive my truck and you want to drive yours, gas costs money, you have money, so do I, but I don't want to use my money on gas, so I go in to the gas station and tell the attendant to give me $5 of gas on your bill so that I can drive my truck. Are you happy with that arrangement?
I miss feeling like MC gear was worth having, and heroic gear was mind blowing, as a solo/duper. My fantasy is still SL-EoF released at once, with blue stats removed from all gear, thus making AAs and procs really worthwhile.
If I thought realistically I could raise a couple million I would consider it. For a full team of full-time devs, over the course of at least a year and a half, with benefits and other overheads you're looking at at least $3-5 million, depending on location. But that isn't going to happen, nor do I have the patience, charisma, or business acumen to do it. And it would be a massive gamble. Still, a man can dream.
I like the idea of creating subscription tiers beyond Gold. There should be a Platinum sub and triple platinum sub. The money raised from these higher priced subscriptions would be used to hire more devs to squash bugs and polish content. Note in terms of inflation adjusted numbers these aren't really that expensive. Platinum sub ($24.99/month) - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses) - Double currency and status for duration of subscription Double Platinum sub ($34.99/month) - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses) - Double research speed on upgrading spells and research assistants - Triple currency and status for duration of subscription Tripple Platinum sub ($49.99/month) - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses) - Triple research speed on upgrading spells and research assistants - Can research to celestial tier - Triple currency and status for duration of subscription - Instant Beta access (when available) - Access to special "influencers" forum with greater dev interaction Lifetime "GOLD" members would get a $10 discount on these higher tier subscriptions.
With this we are just playing more of the pay to win "sort of", it doesn't fix anything core to the game..not saying it isn't a good idea as there was a time when I would have paid double my sub for the same EQ2 I started with..something without a marketplace that does nothing more than take from the core game and destroys the economy of every server it touches is what changed the game, we told Smed then not to do it, but like most everything else the people who actually fund this game were ignored. Guess where we are now..everyone is a wizard and we have rainbow colored rabbits...pretty sure I am not the only person that has a problem with this. "Influencers" forum would not do anything positive for teh game as you get banned if someones feelings get hurt without ever knowing what you did that was wrong..that is my personal experience.
How early was LU13 introduced? I started playing in February or March of 2006. I recall being able to actually solo non-dungeon quests that were non-heroic. There were ^^^ mobs in the overland zones, but I don't recall having to take them on to do a non-heroic quest. I also don't remember having to take on mobs of 3 with two ^s and a ^^ just to complete a non-heroic quest. I tended to try to pick up and complete every quest I could find. I leveled all my toons that way. Was I that late getting into the game? And yes, I do remember the sub-combines. They could drive you insane, but I also remember handcrafted gear actually being an advantage over non-heroic mob drops. UPDATE: I checked out the history, and it looks like LU13 was September 2005. That was the introduction of Desert of Flames, which, by the way, is already live on Kaladim.
Yeah, sounds like you started right around the time Kingdom of Sky launched, so you missed the classic experience of Shattered Lands.
The "fix" is that it brings in more money to fund the game. All those problems are the result of the game being starved for money and not having enough resources to fix things. The reason for this is simple. Factoring in inflation the cost of a subscription is about half of what it was in 2004. It is not that you are paying double for your subscription, it is that you are paying half price and still expecting the same quality of content. It is delusional to expect everything will cost the same as it once did in 2004. Do you know who funds the game now? WHALES who splurge in the cash shop fund the game, not you and your half priced subscription. As a result those are the people who get listened too. This has nothing to do with Smed or what the players think. It is simple economics. They know who butters their bread and it is not subscriptions. You cannot deny this reality. My suggestion here is to increase the price of subscriptions so that funds the game and the marketplace matters less. Then the devs will have more money and resources to increase the quality of the game overall.
We're not paying a half price subscription. We're paying the price Daybreak has decided to charge. I don't care if they decide to charge twenty dollars or twenty cents, people have the right to expect a quality product if they're paying the advertised price. That being said, I was a Station Pass subscriber back in the day. I had no problem paying $30 a month back then, and I don't now. That also being said, it's unlikely for them to try and charge more due to the fact that Blizzard only charges $15 a month and Blizzard sets the standard.
Back when UO was first launched in 1996-1997 you bought the box, for $30-$40, got 30 days sub with the box and then it was $9.99 a month after that. Things that were $9.99 in 1996 are approximately $30-45 now depending on where you shop. And even UO which is 23 years old now and has a population of less than 2000 players has raised their price to $14.99 a month and there is no discount for multi-month subscriptions and there never has been. I was with that game from alpha until late 2009 while playing a myriad of other games, when I left, I stopped subbing 17 accounts, let all my houses fall and never looked back. My point though is that even UO has increased their price half again from $10 to $15 and they did that when their player base had already fallen to less than 2000 players and it did not cause a revolt. Offering pricing tiers is not forcing anybody to spend more, its offering those that want to spend more for more perks the ability to do so and avoid cash shop purchases while providing DBG a constant increased revenue stream with which to improve conditions. I will never spend a penny for spells from the marketplace, but I would pay a higher tier subscription price to improve conditions at DBG and if one of the perks of that is lowering research time, YAY for me. The people that still wish to pay the same that they do now, still have that option. The ones that pay absolutely nothing, in my opinion would still need to kick in something since nothing in life is free, except maybe the air outside and sunshine, give them the option, $7.50 a month or $60 a year.
There already is an "influencers" forum. That's the Community Council. Folks are asked to join, NDAs may be in place, etc. No point to a forum based on people willing to spend a lot of money to self-select to join that particular forum, that's going to be unrepresentative of the game population even more than the forums already are (because most players never come here).
I suggested in EQ years ago that the Silver accounts be $5 per month, not a one time $5 payment. I still think this would be a good idea. Two characters with f2p. Four characters with Silver. Seven characters with all access. Active characters I mean. Character slot expanders add to that.
Yeah and you just contradicted yourself there. Blizzard set the standard not daybreak. If you are only paying for subscription you are paying below what it costs to maintain the game. Blizzard isn't there to help us. They exist to put their competition out of business. WoW is like the McDonald's of MMOs. The quality isn't great but nobody can beat their price points. If you owned a restaurant in a small town and suddenly McDonald's opened a store and stole all your customers what can you do? You will never beat them on price but you can offer higher quality and fine dining. EQ2 going F2P didn't work because they went down scale instead of upscale. There never should have been a Silver account at all. It should have started at gold and then went up from there by offering higher quality services.
How many mom and pop stores were put out of business because a Walmart opened in the general vicinity. The mom and pop stores could never compete with the price points that Walmart could offer. And people generally, not everybody of course, do not show loyalty. People that were perfectly happy shopping for decades at the mom and pop store flocked to Walmart for the cheaper prices and mom and pop went out of business and had no income. Just because people or corporate entities can do something, doesn't mean they should do that something. Is DBG happy living in Blizzard's shadow and hoping from fiscal year to fiscal year that they show enough profit for the Investment Capitalists to keep them running? If I were an employee there, I would say no. Let us listen to the customers that remain loyal to us, the ones that are saying lets step out of Blizzard's shadow and be different. Even if the path to change starts with a Survey asking the entire player base what subscription level they would be willing to pay if offered different tiers. It would be a step in the right direction.
I don't know how many in this thread were actually here on launch day, but I was. What was released at launch was a disaster and, other than unbelievably poor marketing, it is the prime reason WoW has been on top since it was released shortly thereafter. So, no thank you to what we had at launch. 15 years later with a tiny fraction of the resources they had at launch, they still cannot get a balanced TLE up and running. But, I will say if there was a type of Project 99 in which a couple of devs could bring back the game to 2009, made some tweaks to gear stats, that was pretty much the end of the golden era of this game. Introduce flags for hardmode and PVP that would wear off after a certain duration, then that would be amazing. Alas, this is what we have. Enjoy the TLEs or move on.
First of all i have to admit that i am a KoS Child (started beginning 2006) and didn't start at launch. While i like the idea of different subscriptions types it would need to be introduced with content richer expansion (as in multiple overland zones, Dungeons and Quests). I believe if the Devs would show us what they have in store for us and say " We are planning this all this expansion but due to our smaller team size we will release some Dungeons and Quests throughout the year" that it would be understandable. Just to point out that even in KoS they released some Raidzones during the expansion as they weren't finish on release date and they had a much bigger Team back then.
KoS was just rushed to meet their 6 month expansion cycle they had at the time, since that's how they ran EQ1 as well. They moved to annual expansions after, which is why EoF was so much bigger with more diverse content. EoF and RoK back to back really spoiled us, since they haven't been able to match that volume of content since.
