Information regarding Expansion and DLC Pack Purchases

viper491 wrote:

I, too, don't have the option to purchase expansions within the game, and am only given the option to purchase with a credit card, rather than the SC I have on my account. I was hoping to upgrade my standard copy of DoV to the collector's edition, and would really like to be able to do so. However, I will not be doing so if it's not done with SC.
I don't like the route this is going, as I was happy to purchase my expansion with SC, but due to the business needs you have, it's perfectly understandable. However, should you want to charge as much as you did for AoD, please consider making the next expansion greater in content and features. Make it worth the cost. AoD, which I got with SC, was not worth the full cost, even though it did have some great features.

Lets see if I can get people to see what there doing, and go get people to see that alot of this is your own fault.
When SoE originaly implemented the purchasing of Xpacs on the Market Place, 98% of most people I play with bought the amount of SC they needed either VIA Game Card or CC to purchase the expansion. If you went out and spent 100$ on SC to save up for future purchases of Game Expansions then you are an idi*t. Did you honestly think that a year / 2 years down the road that the value of your SC wouldn't become zero or something would change and you wouldn't be able to use it.
Then we have the people who like to abuse the system. Yes I realize that this was SoE's stupidity in the first place by not paying attention to the repurcussions of there actions but that really doesnt matter. They have double and SC Weekends and you are getting 2x or 3x the amount of SC you actualy paid for and people took advantage of it. How long did you honestly think this would last. People got mad when they fixed it and I don't blame them for fixing it. And yes, they attempted to make a wrong a right and allowed people a limited time to use it after taking the option away. But how is it good business to continue to let people buy there service/product for 1/2 to 2/3 off. You wouldnt make any money and you would essentialy go bankrupt.
Now they are taking away the option to buy Expansions or DLC away from the market place. Again, you probably fall into the above categories if you are mad about this. " I wanna use my years worth of saved SC to buy the expac and now I have to actualy pay for it. " or " I bought my SC a year ago and have been saving it to buy the new expac and now I cant use my year old SC " and my favorite " Since I couldnt use my 3x SC stock pile to pay for my subscription anymore I figured I would rip SOE off some more by using it to buy an expansion". SoE gives us 500SC a month for our subscription, so in a 12 month time frame thats 6000 SC, do you honestly think SOE would want EVERYONE to get the new expacs for free. I meen come on people.
The sad part is, I cant tell you how many people don't realize that you can still use the SC Cards from walmart to purchase expacs / subscriptions. You just use the code on the website rather then useing it in game. It still works and you still get 500SC added to your wallet. People can still sell SC Cards for plat and I for one will still buy them. SoE isn't loosing out on any money this way. Even though I am not paying the money for the service. Someone else is.

Zyllah@Permafrost wrote:

i agree.
AoD was and is overpriced. i bought it (x2) bc i could buy it with SC. it was december 2011 and during one of the SC sales. the only reason why i bought it then was bc i could use SC. when i bought other expansions, i purchased them thru amazon. age of discovery is not available at amazon, which seems suspicious/odd.
i have extra SC sitting on my accounts that i can do nothing with. i dont care for fluff items. i had planned on buying the next expansion with it. now what?

Dilbert@The Bazaar wrote:

maybe your accounts are getting 500 SC/month but mine most certainly are not and, yes, i am on recurring.
the tone in your whole post is super offensive. not everyone put SC on their account to "rip off SOE", as you imply. i added SC on my account buy expansions at a time when i had the funds to do so. there is a promise from SOE that you can use your SC when you want, how you want.
the way SC works is it goes to the SOE bank and the game does not get credit for it until it is spent. so let's say you have 10,000 SC sitting on your account. it's in the SOE SC bank but none of the games are getting credit for revenue.
for example: when my son buys a 500 SC item from FreeRealms, that gets added to FR's revenue. when i buy a 4000 SC expansion, that gets added to EQ2's revenue. i currently have enough to buy an expansion on two accounts. that SC will never get spent in EQ2. it is extremely unlikely that i will buy two expansions bc my son does not play enough to justify spending $40x2 when the next expansion is released. it would have, however, been easy enough to spend the SC. since a refund is highly unlikely, i will most likely allow my son to buy stuff from FR; therefore, EQ2 will never see the revenue on his account that they would have for a future expansion. i'm willing to bet that i'm not alone & lots of ppl with alt accounts won't be buying as many expansions as they would have, if they could have used SC.

Dexella wrote:

Real world currency is used to buy the SC. In fact, I use cash, not credit. This is irrelevant to my point but I felt compelled to clear the air on that.
What alternatives are going to be offered for customers (like myself) who wish to purchase Expansions and DLC packs (still not sure what exactly that is...) but are desiring to pay with real world currency instead of inflationary borrowed credit. Are you going to offer purchasable unlockable cards at game stores or Wal-Mart or something like this which can then unlock the download for a specific user? (That might be a good idea for those wishing to buy Expansions as a gift for friends and family.) Maybe return to selling the boxes as well (which doesn't make sense if you are striving to cut cost and increase revenue.)
What exactly is going to be offered as a replacement option for paying into a game that I (and others) are obviously wanting to continue enjoying?
I would love to see this game continue, I want to play THESE characters that I have invested REAL WORLD currency in, I want to see these characters move through an evolving world; so please, rather than allowing the customer base to continue jockeying back and forth, bickering over what might or might not be intended by the company they are supporting, answer our obvious questions about the future of this game.

nixhoPe3 wrote:

Going to stop there because I'd love to know your thoughts on debit cards or such and how they are "inflationary borrowed credit."

salty21db wrote:

This is the problem with Forums in general - people tend to post without reading what has already been said. I swear this will be repeated 20x's before it gets across to people. YOU CAN STILL PAY FOR EXPANSIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS WITH STATION CASH CARDS !!!.. Just redeem them on the website and not in the market place. If you don't like to use plastic debit cards or credit cards - go to Walmart and buy a couple of station cash cards and use them on the " WEBSITE " and not in the Market Place.

Dilbert@The Bazaar wrote:

Even if you couldn't they make "cash cards" nowadays lol.

tomsky wrote:

I completely agree with this.

Cyliena wrote:

Yep! Get rid of the double/triple SC and do half-price and rebates. I love playing eq2 but with this option removed, I will not be getting anymore expansions.

I only have one thing to add to this one--THANK YOU for giving a few weeks notice this time, as well as giving folks a chance to buy expansions if they hadn't already. Yes, this sucks for folks who were saving up for the NEXT expansion, but perhaps there will be some other product or service that you will want to buy with your hoarded SC sometime.

Speaking of next expansion ... spill. Any word on content/features/date? Or point me to another thread if I missed it.

Edited to fix spelling. And I'll edit it again later if I notice another error. Ha.

Cyliena wrote:

As do I. When Station Cash was still a bubble of an idea the one thing we said was "Make it so we can buy our subs and expansions with it."

Delirya@Guk wrote:

you need to think globally - this change will affect ALL games that utilize station cash and I know that my kids would be very upset if the double and triple station cash events are removed from free realms. Best just to handle it exaclty the way they are planning

Dilbert@The Bazaar wrote:

Maybe you did not read it yourself?
"Starting Monday, August 27th, 2012, we will no longer accept Station Cash as a payment method for Expansions and DLC Packs. Real-world currency will be the only way to purchase these products."
So, I have looked for any way to use a SC card to buy an expac and the only way I have found is cash. There is no mention of using a card to get an xpac. So why don't you walk us through this method since you know a secret that we don't. As far as sub time, yea, that is easy to add, but not to buy an xpac.

this does not bother me what SOE is doing. I would as a company have all of the Expansions be paid in cash , and the items used for Example : potions, and such you can get it with station cash, or what ever I would have ingame purchases of the items you can use in game. I feel that they are doing what any company would be doing and since it does take time and money to make expansions and make sure the programming is correct.

strentgh wrote:

The only reason it bothers me is because the option was available in the first place, so I stock piled a bunch of SC, that is now useless to me. Will I get a refund? Of course I won't. Those of us that purchased SC with the intent of using it to purchase expansions and subs now have a bunch of SC to stare at. I don't want anything else they have to offer in the marketplace, and I'm clearly not the only one or there would be no need to remove these options in the first place.

I know exactly what you mean

Dilbert@The Bazaar wrote:

Can you now? How is that?

salty21db wrote:

Where do you find these cash cards for which one would not pay an additonal fee?

Here's the thing about paying RL cash for expansions:
They don't put them out in boxes anymore. The production of these expansions cost the salary of the employees to make them....just....like.....everything.....else.....in....the....game....every.....day.
Without the boxes and with it just being a link to clicky-click for your digital download, there's no production cost in the creation of the expansion. That means: you're paying for the bare bones. No magic, no extras, no discs, no fancy posters, no pewter figurines, no nothing.
That extra $50 bucks for the collector's edition? A couple more lines of data. Nothing anymore special than anything else. Nothing tangible or permanent.
Its data. And not even pretty packaged data. Its a blue link. Nothing extra goes into an expansion that doesn't already go into things like the Drunder GU, DoVx2, and the Qeynos revamp. You might even argue that MORE went into the Drunder GU and DoVx2 than went into our last expansion which, again, was just a link to click and download.
You cannot tell me that SoE didn't know what they were doing when they released AoD, had a triple station cash bonus weekend 2 weeks later, then announced the week after that how AoD was a huge success and everyone and their brother's dog bought it. If you didn't understand how, why, and when they did that, I have a beachfront bungalow in Nevada that you might be interested in.
Well, duh. I'll pay $15 x the number of my accounts to click on a blue link. I won't pay $40 x the number of my accounts to click on a blue link. I will, however, pay $40 for a box from the store with a fancy map, a few discs, a booklet, and a pewter figurine. So if you're going to push real life cash, put out a real life game.

I foresee that they will change the tune they're whistling once the same thing happens with the next xpac that happened with AoD-- pushing them into a triple station cash weekend so quickly after the release due to low interest. We'll see expansions for station cash again. We'll see non-recurring subscriptions for station cash again also once those of us who have a year or more of sub time stocked up run dry and don't buy anymore of it.