$15 USD a month is insane for Gold atm. the all access pass is closer to a deal, but $6 a month for the gold perks is about all i would pay. for $15 you can buy a lot of spell unlocks and broker tokens! and it's too risky to do a long term gold package, who knows in 3 months they may go real F2P and stock up the store with useful items again.
And they are passing laws to prevent those "free" games from tricking unsuspecting people into spending money without know it on those "free" games
If you fork out for a yearly sub, it works out to $10/month saving you $60 a year. plus if you go recurring you are getting $5 worth of free SC a month. it's well worth it if you can afford to front a year sub all at once.
If you where able to take advantage of the special yearly subscription offer last year the cost if actually 7.95 a month
Yes, but based on replies in this thread, some people actually are /ragequitting over this, as irrational as that may be. People on this system "ragequit" over the stupidest things. My feeling is that if you don't like what's being offered, walk away. No biggie. I don't do business with companies that do things that are offensive to me, particularly when they are discretionary providers. But what I never get is the need for people to tell the world that they are quitting and try to get others to quit with them, especially since, haha, most of them cannot help themselves and either show up on the forums to whine some more, and/or show back up in the game to whine some more. Just go away if you are so outraged.
From a business stand point, I would never not listen to my customers points of view. I try my very best to meet them in the middle where we can both be profitable and comfortable. When you don't have to advertise and your customer base keeps growing, well... that's just good word of mouth right there. I am a paying customer. SoE will have to deal with it, deal with mine and other players concerns. I will not rage quit and I encourage other players not to also. But those Gold members totally have a right to express their feelings and points of view. It's not a system/ragequit my friend, its exactly how they feel.
The third scenario seems to be in play at the moment, and not just new players, I've heard a bunch of "been away from EQ for 5 years" type chat in AB 1-9. The marketing of a free Heroic Character looks like a stroke of genius at this point. Not only have a bunch of people come into play as potential customers but Tears of Veeshan is a relevant buy for all of them. /tips cap to SoE for the move
I don't see how they can justify charging $15/month now. Talk about schizophrenic. I thought it was too high before the recent F2P changes, but now it's way out of whack. I have one gold membership and I will continue to pay for it. Supporting the game and the industry is justification enough for me. However, if they lowered the price to $5 a month [without me having to commit to 12 months, no thanks] I'd subscribe on six accounts. For me, I'd consider it worth it at that point.
I basically put into perspective, the game is a form of entertainment, when it exceeds the price point that it is the most expensive form of entertainment available then it is not worth keeping. 15.00 a month would barely cover 1 drink on Friday night after duty and that last about 15 minutes and it definitely does not even come close to a night out with the SO
Everything for nothing? They pay $15 actually , soon would be for nothing (no good incentives to do it, only out of goodness to support the game it seems). Ah, you were talking about freeloaders! Then it makes very good sense.
There's a lot more to it than just that, though. A single drink each Friday for four Fridays, in my area, would cost between $12-16, depending on what I was drinking. That drink, however, does not exist in a vacuum, since I also get the pleasure of enjoying any music that is playing, the company of friends, and at one local pub the pool table and dart board are free. All of those factor into how much "entertainment" I get for the money I spend. I could buy a single BluRay/DVD movie for $15 and own it forever, I can watch it as many times as I want, getting anywhere from 1 to infinity hours of enjoyment out of it, (give or take), plus I can lend it out to friends and they can be entertained as well. The exact same can be said for an audio CD, or a book. Skyrim and it's expansions cost me about $100, (which is about how much I've spent on EQ2) I've got somewhere around 400-500 hours invested, (which is about how much I've spent in EQ2). I can easily invest another 400-500 into it without spending another dime, but since it's a single player game that time isn't quite equal to an MMO. Maybe those examples are not a better value for my money spent, but it's a different value. Not all entertainment is equal, thus the cost to value ratio isn't a simple metric that can be measured from one form to another. I for one am not going to stop drinking and load up another EQ2 account because it's "cheaper". As for a night out with the SO? Well, all I can say is the rewards for that are far greater than anything I could ever get from any video game.
God knows where you live. I thought Australia was expensive but I can usually get 2 beers for my $15!
years ago $15 was about the cost of a premium cable channel, thus i justified it because i played eq vs watching sopranos. now i can get these channels for $20-30 when not on special, should i pay that much for an mmo monthly? maybe, but not going to happen. their price wars are killing them, i understand that it costs to produce an mmo and am willing to pay, but if i have to pay $300 a year for one mmo i will not be playing but the very best of them and only one of them. at this point SOE is coming across as not "play your way" but more like "Gold is the only way." something has to give with this sub price or things will not change.
Not that I need to defend myself from the internet forum police, but: schiz·o·phre·ni·a noun 1. Psychiatry.. Also called dementia praecox. a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations. 2. a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements. schizophrenic [ˌskɪtsəʊˈfrɛnɪk] adj 1. (Medicine / Pathology) exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia 2. Informal experiencing or maintaining contradictory attitudes, emotions, etc.
