Feldon SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums perhaps being too truthful:
It was basically the other way around and our announcement wasn’t very smooth. The [vampire] race was originally intended as a marketplace-only offering and then we decided to also create a way for players to get it as a promotion also.
The marketplace offering comes out sometime this month (it’s not done yet, so dates aren’t exact), but the winter promotion doesn’t end until Velious comes out, so that’s when we’ll give it away to those that want to wait for it.
Lemin summarized it thusly:
Frankly I don’t know which of the two announcements i find more deplorable, you actually come to the live servers and post you intended to add a race through the marketplace? You expect not to lose accounts over that? Quite a lot of people will find that this was your original intent an unforgivable betrayal giving it to us as a afterthought probably wont soothe these people.
to which SmokeJumper said:
I’m sorry that this bothers you, Lemin. But frankly, that offering breaks none of the rules we set for this marketplace on Live. And we are giving it away if you’re patient…and we decided to give it away before we told you about the race in the first place. I don’t see the issue here.
Since putting races on the Marketplace is something that has never been announced to the players until today’s ham-handed announcement, I’m not quite sure how we can compare it to any preconceived set of “rules”.
When players start using language like “unforgivable betrayal”, I just can’t help but roll my eyes. I mean, please. It’s a business, and they’re making a business decision. If people really feel this strongly about it, then they should just vote with their wallets.
For those who claim that there are legions of players who loathe the cash shop, that seems to be contradicted by SJ’s statements of how popular it is, and what I’ve seen with my own eyes of people running around with appearance gear and whatnot from the marketplace. Someone is buying this stuff; quite a few someones, actually, and that gives lie to the notion that SC is some roundly hated intrusion into the game experience.
I also do find it humorous that the first reaction from a lot of these people was “Oh god, not vampires! That is so lame, why not orcs? You guys suck!” almost immediately followed by “What? To get my vampire early I have to buy it on the marketplace? You guys suck!”
The problem here is not that the new race is going to the cash store (or that SOE is magnanimously granting it to loyal customers several months after it releases). The problem is that they’re still charging all players (both F2P and live) full price for an expansion box. In every other MMO I’m aware of, including EQ2 until this announcement (EOF and ROK), the $40 expansion fee gets you the stuff the devs have been working on since the last expansion.
DOV looks very underwhelming compared to past offerings in this context.
How is paying for a new race on marketplace different that new race being a feature of a new expansion? I’m on Sonys side on this one races are something that are a good thing to add to marketplace – I’m sure it takes a bit of manpower hours to setup the new race as long as the expansion isn’t missing features then I think this is fine. Personally I won’t be buying a vampire doesn’t appeal to me.