I think of it as a sale and that is it, just most people disagree that the sale price is to low. Then again that is life, we can't all get 50 - 90 percent off of items all the time. 10 percent is 10 percent less then the retail price, by Webster's dictionary it is a sale. If you don't like the discount amount, don't buy it
I think what some posters have touched on is the real reason for the negative reaction.....the announcement of the sale as if it were something spectacular. If there had been no announcement and people had simply discovered that when they went to buy a service that 10% was taken off, they would have been pleasantly surprised. Sony raised expectations when they announced the sale in the way they did. It wasn't just on this forum but in the launcher as well. When you do something that raises peoples' expectations you run the risk of disappointing them.
Where on earth did I accuse Sony of "trying to rip" us off? Where did anyone accuse Sony of trying to rip us off? We are "accusing" Sony of making a bad marketing ploy. That's pretty much it. Please don't put words in peoples' mouth. That's arrogant. And I think it's important to let Sony know that they raised peoples' expectations too high so that they don't stop giving us discounts, Don't make a big deal out of a sale that shouldn't be made a big deal out of. That's the real message here.
Compared to what the marketing at SOE has done in the past this is a joke. With that being said, what they did in the past went way beyond overboard. Thus the reason for the sentiment in the thread. When you put out double and tripe station cash initiatives for half the year, then turn around and slash things and do 50% deals, you are gonna have people laugh at you when you do a whopping 10% with no double or triple SC deals around. This is simply a case of how SOE marketing had pushed the expectations one way and now they have had to reign in the deals and are testing where the best price point deal is. SO they start small, 10%. People say what a joke and very little sells, so they try something else. SOE marketing is very much a trial and error group and has been for some time. So I voted with my wallet and did not buy into there puny sale. Waiting to see how they respond.
Seriously, the complaints, whines, and justifications for same are over the top on this issue. That is saying something for this forum. However, one must keep reminding oneself that a large number of posted complainers, across threads, are a few people with multiple accounts who tend to post 'conversations' with themselves. Whatever floats their boats.
Obviously I'm glad that most of the services I've bought have been on 50% off sales, except for about three of the character slots and one or two race/class packs. Sometimes I can afford to get stuff at retail, sometimes I can't. Since so many new game features (races/classes/bank space etc) have been incorporated into the Free To Play model, perhaps that means that other services will never get deep discounts again? Who knows - maybe, maybe not. Tomorrow's another day, and sales and discounts vary. People who can afford to brag about always buying full or close to full price can do it their way, and players (like me) who need to live within a budget tend to wait for a bigger discount - lolz about "real life entertainment budget realities" for the virtual make-believe world! This is a great game, so I won't be all upset by discounts having a variety of levels, after all, it is all about revenue for Sony, and I want the game to stick around. And if some of the EQ2 revenue wanders off to EQNext, frankly I don't mind that either. Basically, it's true that any sale is better than no sale. Speaking just for myself, I have a gaming budget, and I'm not inclined to let that become a reason for a spot of class warfare on how my fellow EQ2 fans should do their shopping. SM
that has nothing to do with SOE, it is the populous that assumed it would be what they want, kind of like the difference between real world and fantasy. The announce there would be a sale, that was it - the populous read into it what they wanted and demanded that they where entitled to in their vision. Not sure what you are trying to make with this - " If there had been no announcement and people had simply discovered that when they went to buy a service that 10% was taken off, they would have been pleasantly " given the current feeling of the forums there would have been a 900 page thread of people screaming at SOE about it being to cheap of a discount and the populous where not informed of it
Just for the record, I was excited about this sale until I saw it was only 10%. I was actually going to use this time to go ahead and purchase some character slots for future use, and I might have if it would have saved me more than $1 apiece. If it was at least a 30% sale I probably would have bought at least 5 slots. Just for the record.
