Feldon A few months back, the frequency of StationCash item introductions was increased from a monthly schedule to a bi-weekly schedule. If EQ2Wire reported on all of these items, then 50% of our articles would be about items that, quite frankly, a lot of our readers aren’t that wild about. There was a time when $14.99 paid the bills, kept the lights on, and paid the staff. I’m not sure when we strayed from that.
But sometimes, an SC item is cool enough to warrant mentioning here, especially when it comes with cool art. There is a dearth of cool-looking mounts in EQ2. So this might help…
We leave it up to the reader to decide whether 2500SC (normally $25; $12.50 if you stocked up on SC during a double SC weekend) is reasonable for a large animated skeleton. 😉
You can also get such animated skeleton mounts, but with armor, from the last named in Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum.
\aITEM -1443966968 -916395633:Boneclaw, Fetidspine Prowler\/a for normal mode, and \aITEM -1077471780 -1208309743:Deathclaw, Fetidspine Prowler\/a for the chalange mode.
From Lemilla’s comment it looks like Smokejumpers has come through on his aim expressed on the forums (*) to give an alternative way to acquire SC items ingame. Now at least if people are paying for the artwork to be developed via station cash purchases they do at least pay for something that also adds to the game (via the dungeon drop).
In this case I’m quite happy with it, people paying SC for their mounts are funding the design of items that can be acquired through adventuring.
(*) Smokejumper said he was interested in getting alternative versions of SC items into the game in response to a slightly snarky thread started up. In this thread someone took Smokejumpers original question (why is it a problem to have the marketplace store as a alternative route to get an item a problem) and turned it around to ask why SC items couldn’t be acquired by other means in game…
In response to a slightly snarky comment about why an alternative route to getting items ingame is a problem, in this case he was questioning the problem of the RMT item store).
You should also mention that you can now buy level 70/80 arrows with station cash now.
According to smokescreen on the boards they are merely the same ones available on the in game vendors and were added as a convenience item for players in the field.
The line between EQ2X and Live grows smaller every day.
@Murfalad: If I’m thinking of the same one, that was an interesting thread on the official forums. In it, it looked like the lightbulb actually came on for SmokeJumper and he adjusted things based on realizing something he didn’t understand before.
It came down to this. Item X was in the game as a reward for having accomplished something. Item X was then added to the marketplace. People were unhappy because now there was no way to tell the difference between people who earned it and people who bought it. He didn’t realize that those that earned it wanted to show it off as a badge of accomplishment. But if you do something as simple as changing some of the colors, it’s still the same item, but now you can tell them appart. Problem solved.
If the mounts in ZUA have a different appearance than the SC mounts then, like you said, it looks like he’s done the reverse here. Took an item designed for SC and turned it into in game loot.
So that’s what happens to your prowler mount if you don’t log in for 3 months…huh. Not worth $25.00 bucks for me. I agree with Chunk, the line is growing smaller.
And POOF! They’re gone.
SmokeJumper posted this on Everquest2.com about the arrows:
Really…convenience. The MOST convenient thing would be to do away with arrows all together period… This smells strangely of “lets see how far we can push that line before they squawk. I can always pull it back out!
In a nutshell that is exactly what it was starseeker, exactly!
and 25.00 for the mounts way overpriced if it costs MORE than the monthly fee to play then in my book it’s not MICRO-Transitioning anything. if they were say 10.00 I’d probably buy a bunch cause they are cool and with the new mount appearance tab I could still keep my good mounts AND look cool doing it. But untill Smokescreen sees that 25.00 is too much then he not gonna get my business.
They must be moving quite a few at $25 to keep them there. I’m about out of SC that I bought on double SC weekends, and I’m in Europe now so no way to buy more cards. And in case you’re wondering, what I’ve bought with SC is mostly tradeskill vitality potions and a character name change. I’m not progressing really any faster with my tradeskill characters, but on a weekend, I can craft for 3-4 hours and still have vitality, when normally I’d have to try to login during the week. So I’m just rescheduling my gameplay, not trying to get one over on other people. And it’s been 8 months to the day since the expansion — anyone who wanted to be level 90 and corner the market has done it.