Feldon From EverQuest2.com:
Brell Serilis is in search of more treasure to expand his vault!
He has selected some treasures from the EverQuest II Marketplace to add to the hoard of valuables locked in his vault deep underground.
Get select items now before Brell locks them away on October 2, 2011. Items placed in the Vault of Serilis won’t be available for purchase until at least sometime next year.
Visit the Marketplace and select Vault of Serilis to get these items now!
The list of items being mothballed put aside until 2012 can be read at EverQuest2.com or in-game in the Vault of Serilis.
UPDATE: EQ2 ZAM has a complete list of the items which are being removed from the Marketplace.
Dumbest and most money grubbing idea. Ever.
i feel like half the things people comment on eq2wire are offensive to SOE but never get blocked. CAUSE THEY DESERVE IT!!!!!
It’s stupid, but it’s a new way of doing things. Looks fun tho.
I don’t think Disney would want anything from SOE in their vault. If Disney tested their rides the way SOE tests its Everquest 2 products they would have been sued into bankruptcy long ago
Blatant attempt to drum up some extra sales by making things limited.
It’s like the city festivals. There’s a reason people hoard hundreds upon hundreds of items from each of those when they only come around once every 6 months. We think, “I might need that sometime.”
/unimpressed
LAWLZ!! … the Money Grab stench is thick on this one. Guess SC sales are way down, or they want to push people to use the saved Double/Triple SC they saved before the expansion ships so they can make them pay full price for AoD since they used up the saved SC
On a more positive note, they also need to cleanup for new items. Having too many items would hurt sales as well.
I agree, making something a “limited edition” tends to make folks just run out and buy it. Doesn’t make them worth getting now. I just went and checked out the list — a lot of the things listed have been on sale, too. The citizen’s clothing, for instance, looks boring, so I am not surprised it’s going away.
Since the Zam article didn’t include them, the EQ2X-specific items being locked away are:
– Cure potion (15s cooldown, cures 500 levels–one of the most potentially unbalancing items available, in the right situation, if you ask me)
– Luck potion (2 hours of 25% increased coin loot)
– Quickness potion (1 hour duration, 25% increased run and ground mount speed)
I could see them getting rid of the cure potion if they decided it’s too unbalancing; the other ones don’t strike me as a huge deal so I’m not sure if there’s any particular reason for their choices.
While on the surface, it does look like a ploy to separate us from our SC, checking the SC store gives a different impression. What they don’t mention in this announcement is that the prices of these items has been slashed, nearly 90% in some cases. So maybe they are just making more room in the SC store database and giving us one last chance to grab some of this stuff for almost nothing. Naive, I know. 😉
No, this is nothing but an attempt to get more money from the items. Plain and simple. They think that by making them limited and hiding them they can bring them back at a higher price. It is all about the money,
It is called marketing people. Build a bridge! (get over it)
@MilliebII See the thing you just did? You know sharing your opinion with everyone else? That is what everyone else here is doing as well. That is the purpose of a forum.
If what SOE was doing with the MP items made a bit of sense, I might tend to agree with you on your opinion. But since the MP items don’t have to be created for purchase, and they are not a finite resource, it makes most everyone come to the same conclusion. That what SOE is doing is only a blatant attempt to drum up sales. Which is fine. But you know, take us out to dinner first, and try to hide it a little better. If you go on a date you don’t pick up your date and say “Hey lets skip the whole going out, and just head to the back alley over there, and have a shag.” It’s crude. Put some effort into it. In short, I don’t mind giving SOE my money, as long as they make something worth it. Just don’t insult me with such a shallow, and obvious ploy.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe they felt these items were not so great, and they wanted to remove clutter from the growing market place. Most of the things they are removing are pretty low on quality, so this may be the issue. If this is so it still makes little since, as some people were purchasing the items, and by removing them they lose the money they can make from those people.
Either way that is the purpose of people posting. To discuss the news article, and what it means to them. Not to ignore them and not post an opinion of the article.
Expansion is coming, people have SC stockpiled for it, they want to remove as much of that SC that they can, so it does not hurt the sales of the expansion, its very simple if you just look.
This cannot be marketing. SOE has shown time and time again they actually have no real marketing department/knowledge.
@Steve LMAO.. so true since ROK I think.
@Aethn
just like DOV
you wont be able to use SC to buy the new expansion at launch
they will allow that a few months later
seems like they are getting rid of some of the crap items they had lying about.
@Karl: TSO was on the marketplace on day 1. SF was a week late, only because of their special thing for retail box purchases. DoV was on the marketplace on day 1. I know because that’s how I bought it.
Could be (if you look at what is going in there) that it’s most stuff that doesn’t or hasn’t sold well in a while to get it out of the way to make room for more items.
1: There is always plenty of room on the marketplace. Any argument otherwise is fail.
2: Removing items to create artificial demand is a cash grab.
Have a nice day.
It is just another best practice from Zynga which SOE (and even Blizzard) are paying attention to and crafting their game around. At least they aren’t charging players different amounts for the same items like they do in Zynga games. (i.e. I know you never buy so I will sell the pink barn to you for $5.99 while the person who spends a lot they will sell it to them for $19.99. Price elasticity and user behavior analytics.
They want to make money. If using scarcity tactics will achieve that and allow them to un-clutter their marketplace, it seems like a win for them. Right now SOE is in purgatory – they want to go to an all micro-transaction virtual goods model but have a large traditional subscription base and they are going to have to do a clever job of beating you down to accept it. Why ceiling a “whale” in your game for $10 a month when they can spend $2,000 a month on your game. Again, more lessons learned from free-to-play giants.
All the stuff they are mothballing is ugly – I wouldn’t take it for free, I don’t care how rare it is.
Yes there is an unlimited amount of space on marketplace, but do most people want to scroll through potentially 40 items per category?
I have little doubt there is an idea amount of shelf space to get the most results. ergo if you have 10 items in a category verses 40 people are more likely to buy those 10 items rather then getting overwhelmed with choices and buying nothing.
…
1: Make more Categories.
2: What you essentially just said was that the concept of a shopping mall, in real life, doesn’t work. Way to fail.
Paradox of choice – why more is less. Way to fail Vortex.
Paradox of Choice is probably an appropriate term. That said there’s nothing they’re phasing out that I really want anymore anyway, other than the Wooly Companion petamorph wand for my future beastlord.
Good term, and interesting concept, but I am skeptical of such a thing. I know that for myself at least more options does not make me decide not to buy something. What I want to buy will always be what I want to buy.