I'm ok with the fluff illusions and stuff. What I'm not ok with is the XP potions. The only way to calm people down and make it "reasonably" fair would be to cap the potion usage somewhere between 30 and 50. Then it's not such a big deal because geez, you can get to 70 in a matter of a couple of /played days without help. I highly recommend SoE consider implementing that.
DngrMouse wrote: No. Buying expansions and paying your subscription is for access to a service, a service which requires you to play in order to advance. This is buying singular items directly. You're not paying for the ability to do a quest for the item. You're paying for the item. Not even comparable.
Detor wrote: HUH? Something like 95% of SWG's population quit within a month of the NGE going live. It was the absolute worst disaster that has EVER happened in a MMO.
Gage wrote: Sorry, I would have answered sooner, but I was congratulating a guildie on the awesome bear mount he got when he bought the TSO expansion. Now, I believe you were about to say something funny.
Unfortunately SOE knows that people will use the SC to buy things whether they be fluff items or not. If SOE put everyone's mythical for sale on there, you know darn well people would buy it. After cutting 8,000 jobs I'm sure they are looking in every nook and cranny to find some other source of income. Hell, they probably cut 8,000 jobs in America and hired 80,000 people overseas at the same pay rate. Sadly for the "subscriber's" of EQ and EQ2, we are feeling the effects of SOE's marketing schemes (as witnessed by the newest xpac in which we all know the ykeshan bear is only available if you bought the xpac in town). They are apparently having some difficulties at the shop out there on the west coast. Maybe they should've hired someone who actually cares about it's customers and employees.
DngrMouse wrote: And? He bought TSO and got a mount that any player buying the expansion via retail got at no extra cost. Or did you mean he want to Best Buy and bought a Dire bear mount directly?
Rhakos@Guk wrote: Actually, I think they might actually share that throne with AoC now. Half the playerbase left at release.
As far as this marketplace stuff. Yeah, I know people are upset about it. and the exact same arguments are being thrown around as for the LoN discussion. The one thats been sortof a hot potato is that this is just the start. Just wait and see and we'll be seeing raid gear as lootcards/at the marketplace. This far, SoE has kept true to their word about not giving away anything of real importance int he game. Levelingf aster? Hell, you can go to cap in about 2 weeks. Certainly faster now since that was the time it took for the first new race to be lvl 80 after the release of RoK and they pretty much doubled the leveling speed since then. And I see a market for selling stuff for pure looks. Apparenlty so does SoE. If people want to pay a bit for pure looks I dont see why not let them? really...
OK, so in one respect, I'm glad to see I hadn't completely missed this while perusing the boards - it really is new. Beyond disappointed is all I can really say.
Congratulations Sony, you're about to lose another customer, but what's 3 less account subscriptions to you, eh, you obviously don't care what your player base thinks so I don't know why I'm even bothering posting...maybe because I still do love this game for some reason, despite your constant attempts to ruin it. You promised you would keep this sort of thing to the station exchange servers, but once again you've lied in our faces. You can take your station cash and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Glad I cancelled my accounts 2 weeks ago so that I don't have to get angry at this awful change. $OE kkthxbai. Also, I <3 Thuata's signatures. Yes, still.
I don't see this as a big problem. The solution is simple . If you don't like it , don't use it. So someone buys an xp potion. Whoopie that isn't going to make a difference on other players. Maybe he or she would rather not grind to 80. Will them reaching 80 before you do affect your gamestyle. Not likely. People sell loot rights all the time for the good stuff. Does'nt matter if everyone around me has the best gear in the game. It still does'nt make a difference on how I choose to play. I have a bank full of xp potions from the vet awards. Never use them because I have had more fun leveling all my chars to 80. But I don't care if others use them. When this idea was first tossed about . I had hoped it would be stuff you could buy off a npc, with outrageous plat prices. That way we could remove some of the plat off the servers. But what the heck, its an ever changing game world. If people want to spend their hard earned cash on it, let em. If they do start selling armor and weapons , that is better than what tradeskillers make. Then thats the time for us to raise cain. But for now its just plain silly to get your britches all up in knot.
i can't believe SoE would go this far. people worked hard to get somewhere but now if you pay it's easier and faster. i was going to pick up the new expansion soon but instead i just canceled my subscription. i will also never touch another SoE product again.
Just received an email from Mr. Smedley instructing a CSR to issue me an immediate refund for the purchase of a retail copy of TSO - I even offered to send back the box and the pewter bear but that was declined by Mr. Smedley. Maybe if they have to issue enough of these it will make them see that they REALLY...messed up...with this one. And sure they knew we would revolt, because we ALL know the slippery slope on which this is treading. I want to thank Mr. Smedley for at least issuing the refund. It won't make me come back, unless this "feature" (blunder) is removed from the game, but at least it shows he has some sense of fairness. Y'all Take Care! Hawgwar - retired
DngrMouse wrote: Yea last time the people that ordered it via DD reaped the benefit. My point was that there is always something up their sleeve in order to draw in more people, whether it be good or bad for the current subscribers. Their mentality is once you're a paying customer, they could give 2 poops about you.
you mean your not going to stick around for the ++faction passcards so you can run round every zone without worrying about anything attacking you???
Nahdian, this is nothing like buying loot, people selling loot sell it for ingame money that they earned ingame (unless they bought plat, which isn't allowed on regular servers...yet...), not real cash. It doesn't really matter if the items in question being "useful" or not; having a store where you can buy ingame items for real life money was something Sony promised they would never do on our servers when they introduced station exchange servers and as a general principle players should be able to get items based on their actions ingame, not based on their real life economy. A great many players play this game for the fluff stuff as well and are now denied access to items unless they pay extra in addition to their subscription fee.
To all the people who say these are fluff items... If a guild uses 50% AA potions, they'll get to 185AAs in the time it takes guilds who do not use those potions to get only 170AAs. Those 15 AAs make a huge difference against raid content, which is very competitive and something some people care a lot about. I doubt I'll quit over this personally, since I'm enjoying TSO, but I hope everyone who's saying they'll quit actually does. This is a terrible addition to the game, and I hope SOE is forced to remove it from EQ2.
Seems to me the easiest thing to do here would be to restrict Station Cash to purchase of non-gameplay affecting items. In other words, you can buy a nifty new outfit for your character or a nice new pet, but they don't affect your stats in any way. I have to admit, the potions leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm always a little disappointed in a game where those people with RL cash get ahead faster than those of us on a budget. In my mind, that's why we had the Exchange Servers; for people who had RL cash to dispose of. Just like we have PvP for people who want to beat up on each other. So... Fluff items? YES. Gameplay affecting Items? NO. (just my 2 cp worth) PS - I know, people who want the fluff without paying RL cash will get up in arms... maybe create a quest to allow people to get the items in game? maybe offer it available for 'purchase' 30 days before offering it as a quest (or longer) think on this... there are plenty of people who will run out and purchase a hardcover edition of their favorite book, rather than wait for the paperbook edition...
