76 thoughts on “Altar of Malice Pricing Announced – $40 for Standard, $90 for Collector’s Edition”

  1. Due to real life, I missed COE entirely, and didn’ buy the CE for ToV. I am leaning towards the CE for my account and my husband’s account this time. It’s easier in some ways *because* I’ve not bought a CE in 3 years. The price is astoundingly high, even as all access – but in theory that difference in price is balanced out by the research and the merc. Even though I wouldn’t pay SC to upgrade, having a key spell or two researched to GMaster earlier than otherwise would certainly be a bonus.

    I play Civ still, but EQ2 is the only MMO I consistently play, making it an easier choice for me. Averaged over the life of the expansion it’s still well within my entertainment budget. Rough hit all at once though!

  2. Way too large of a jump from the standard to the collectors.

    As an SOE Live attendee I was looking forward to getting the CE at a decent discount – but to upgrade, I’ll be paying more than the SE.

    The gap between the two just seems rather large and is a real put off. I’ll probably end up buying it – doesn’t mean I’ll be happy about it. And since no pre-order – maybe I’ll wait a while before I upgrade.

  3. No house = no CE that I’d want.
    I was fully expecting the BrokenSkull Bay pirate colony as a house or inspiration for a house for the collector edition. Or a smaller and less accurate version of Refugee island. Something. :\
    I know there were buttheads that complained about too many houses, but no one holds a gun to someone’s head and says “Decorate or else!”. Not to mention there is a whole playstyle that exists JUST for the houses. :\
    Thank them SO very much for talking SOE into not adding a house to this CE. Remind me to find something those people like and talking someone into getting rid of it because I personally don’t like it. Alcohol, perhaps?
    I’m happy about the things they add for raiders and every other playtype, I SUGGEST things to add for other playstyles… why do some a******* have to whine about things that have absolutely NO affect on them until my playstyle group’s favorite things just get dumped?
    And on a side note, same outrageous price, less stuff. Congrats AGAIN to the people who complained to SOE about “too many” houses.

    Including the new race in CE would have worked pretty well. No additional work required, if they just plain hadn’t made a house. Adding $50 to the base price for an item that teleports you to the same island as the world bell, a nice mount, a merc who might be better than Kenny, an interesting house pet, and couple research scrolls per account and 3 gems per account? :\

    if they want $, they need to balance the interest of all playstyles. Dropping the main incentive from the usual CE for one style does nothing but lose them money. :\

    /sigh Ah well… at least I’ll save a bit o $ by getting normal edition. :\

  4. Since the mount is probably statless, I don’t use mercs (my wife is a better healer) and the guild will surely have a port item, I really struggle to find $50 to upgrade to CE.
    Maybe they should give CE tokens then throw some good stuff on marketplace so you can pick what you value so they don’t dilute the “ewww ahhh ohhh factor” so much. Just think: exclusive house, Mount, merc, GM spells, show armor, decorations, consumables…etc. Buy multiple CE if you just can’t get enough. Heck, the CE could even just BE the tokens (like krono even). Make the token purchaseditems no trade and let people “BYO collector edition”. My $0.02.
    I am not dillusional; I know that ship has sailed. But it doesn’t hurt to brainstorm… with myself. LoL

  5. I’ll probably get the CE just for the merc. I’m guessing the current sad batch of mercs will be even sadder at 100, with the exception of any new mercs. The teleport item is also nice. I’ll probably hold onto the potions against the event of getting an ancient spell scroll and needing a quick GM upgrade.

  6. The way I look at it is the CE is $45. (All Access) But to research for 40 days is $18 each times 2 is $36. So is the rest of the stuff worth $9. There isn’t even a price of the Gems of Armor Advancement. Me who likes raiding can turn the usually hardest pieces to get (Legs and BP) into T2 will be well above the $9 that would make the package alone break even. I still at that point get even more. (Merc, House Items, Mount Apperance.)

  7. I’m with GriffonLady on this one. Taking away the prestige house for this was just wrong. I’m in raid beta with two teams and I have seen the artwork that comes with this expac. It’s beautiful work to say the least and a house from it would be nice regardless of the zone. It’s just my opinion but I still feel disappointed by the Vesspyr expac prestige house, so I was looking forward to a nice one this year. Honestly I would rather have a house than the mount. Oh well, can’t please all of the people all of the time. I’ll stick with being happy about what looks to be the prettiest expac I’ve seen launched in my short three years!

    1. It would have been good of them to send out a survey to see what items people would want in the CE. :\ What better way to see what people will pay $50 for than asking them what they’d pay $50 for. (Although, I guess it would have just come back as everything and more, but if they had a rating scale or something, it might have given them the information they needed to gain the interest of the largest bunch of players.)

    1. It is only 2 spells. there is a bell that ports you to the same island, so nothing new there. Another mount to add to the growing list.

      If they had it a preorder I would buy it, but the no pre-order kills it for me. heck, that’s a week of groceries there. Oh well, happy that some can afford it, but I know a lot of people who will not be getting it this year.

  13. As always, there are players who the CE would have great value to and some it won’t. To anyone who was planning to spend SC upgrading to the new 96-100 grandmasters, the CE is a great value. Anyone who doesn’t like the idea of spending money to upgrade their ingame abilities, the CE would have a lot less value.
    All in all, this CE certainly has a lot more value than ToV’s CE.
    Also, and I may be way off base, but I doubt VERY much that the reason they aren’t offering pre-orders is to avoid customer issues. I am almost certain it is so they don’t have to offer pre-order discounts. It fits right in with all the other obvious money-making decisions they have made recently, such as raising the research costs 250% and the completely unnecessary introduction of grandmasters for all spells.

  14. Get two 40-day spell research potions. For example, one potion can be applied to a Level 100 Master spell to increase it towards Grandmaster.

    If you don’t already have the master this is worthless!!

    1. You can use it to upgrade 2 91-95 masters, which most of us likely already have, or you can wait and use them for when you get a 96-100 master drop, or when you finish researching a 96-100 master. It might not provide instant gratification on launch day, but its far from worthless.

      1. Basically, you can EITHER use it to upgrade two 91 to 95 spells/CAs or ONE 96-100 CAs/spells.

        IF I’m not a freemium member, I will NEVER actually SCRIBE any master spells. I’ll save it until I harvest or buy a grandmaster rare, then immediately upgrade it. OR, (as most people will do) use the regular rare to upgrade all your spells/CAs to expert level. THEN I can use the TWO upgrades to go from master, then grandmaster.

        I just cannot foresee myself (and most likely any other subs) to scribe a master spell. We’re going to save it to upgrade it to the Grandmaster. The ONLY people who WILL scribe it are the free players, since that is their new spell max . . .

        This will make masters even MORE rare, since EVERY player can use them, not just subscribers, so it will be a LOOOONG time to get TWO of the same spells, thus the reason why I’m not going to scribe any masters I receive. Making this (as was stated) useful basically only for the 91-95 masters we already have.

  17. In previous years, SE was $39.99. For $20 more, you could upgrade to the CE during pre-order. So the CE upgrade cost was about half the cost of the expansion.

    This year, with no pre-order, SE is $39.99. For $50 more, you can upgrade to the CE. So the CE upgrade cost is more than the entire rest of the expansion combined.

    I haven’t decided yet, but this may be the first year ever that I don’t buy the CE. And I’ve bought every one of them since Desert of Flames, most on multiple accounts.

    If they can’t do a pre-order, they should do a discount down to the previous pre-order prices for All Access members for the period of time where only All Access can buy the expansion.

    3. Yeah I only used to get the CE because the pre-order gave it a nice discount. I won’t buy it for $90. They would have to pack it with a bunch more cool stuff for that price.

      I wish they would do it like Trion is doing with Rift. The expansion is free. However, they offer a few different levels of extras for different prices.

  18. What I don’t understand is it cost Sony less for this than in the past, lets take 5 years ago we got a gold coin, map, box, CD/DVD, keychain, along with digital items in game.
    So they save on printing cost, media, transit to retailers & more.. yet they charge more these days then they did in the past.
    When I have something substantial in my hands I will buy the CE.

    1. Exactly. In the past, collector editions cost $60 and included physical product. SOE probably made $25 per box. Now they are selling for $90 and they make $90. It’s really a 260% increase.

      1. Guess since the player base is shrinking a little every year, they figure divide costs up amongst what’s left? Like buying a pizza with 10 people pitching in vs buying a pizza with only a couple friends pitching in.
        Ok, so it’s not completely that.. but it feels similar. XD

    1. @Hoot

      The game is full on pay to win. Buy Krono. Sell on broker for plat. Use plat for raid loot.

      Anyone who doesn’t realize that EQ2 has a pay to win mechanic isn’t paying attention.

      1. Go play Perfect world for a while and you will see true pay to win. You can NOT get the good stuff unless you gamble on gems (and may get crap most of the time) then you gamble combining the stuff you just gambled on, since it can blow up and give you nothing. :\
        Everything SOE sells that is close to pay-to-win is also obtainable in-game. I just hope that doesn’t change. :\
        Hell, with the increasing “Pay more for less” behavior… I hope the game lasts a few more years. :\

  22. My husband and I have 7 accounts between us. We’re not even going to be able to do the standard on more than our main accounts at this time. I don’t know if they will offer upgrade pricing for the difference later on, but if they do, I *might* buy one for my main account. $90 a pop in the current economy….they’re on crack 🙁

  23. I’d love to know the numbers on previous SE v CE. from what I’ve read it will be standard for me, what always gets me is the sales pitch, when they should be making CE a no brainer to buy for most.

    “Standard $40 bucks, but hey guys we appreciate you so CE is $65 with all these gifts and double the spell research” (I’m not tight, multiple but with toons and/or accounts this isn’t a deal breaker but a nice value item)

    how many more would upgrade than just grab standard, I cant believe they would make more money the way there are now, for 1 this thread would have a totally different feel to it!

  24. First CE I won’t be buying. The mount would just be ‘another’ mount I can’t use at this point. And the merc seems to a be a Mystic and the current mystic merc is useless compared to stamper or the other ones you can get.

    Further proof that they do not ‘get’ their player base. Many will buy for the research reducers, but meh.

  25. They’ve gone from “You’d be an idiot to miss this deal at $60, even if you aren’t yet level capped” to “There’s no reason to get the CE and no rush to buy the expansion until you are 95 and run out of stuff to do.”

    They’ve turned it from a “must have” that people compulsively buy to a hard choice that will have people saying “ohhhh all right just this once”. I think sales of the CE at $90 will be 5% of their normal sales figures at $60, resulting in a huge revenue drop over last year.

    Remember kids, there’s no physical product, no maps, no coins, it’s just pixels.

  26. I agree Feldon, this is just pixels on a screen, they are not paying for producing extra product, storage, etc… No discount (sorry 10% barely registers as a discount to me) for pre-ordering. I barely feel that the SE price is worth it. I seem to be buying these last couple expansions out of habit more then being excited about the game play. There will be no CE for any of our four accounts when in the past we bought at least two. It’s not about having the money, it’s about if it’s worth the money. And IMO it doesn’t even come close.

    1. They do have employees making this stuff, electricity, etc… but yah… charging $40 for all that went into creating the whole expansion, then wanting $50 more for 3 gems per account, 2 research scrolls per account, one mount per character, and a house item that ports you to the same point the world bell ports you too, and a house pet… how did they even think that would work out as something more than a handful of people would consider worth buying? o.0 And why don’t they offer some of what they were smoking in the CE? IT must be some good stuff.

      1. A lot of people who ordered the pre-order had weird things happen when the payment was supposed to go through.
        Personally, I went to play on opening day and was getting a “you need to purchase ToV to enter this zone” messages. I looked on my account and it had’t been flagged. I called customer service since people were already complaining in chat about how no one was answering /petitions, and they told me I hadn’t ordered the xpac. They said it looked like the bank had rejected it, but I had more than enoguh to cover that. I called the bank and they said the payment was never requested from the bank in the first place that they knew of, but when I called customer support again they SOE, they were certain that the bank rejected payment.
        SOE told me to order the CE at the normal price ($89.99) and that they would refund the difference that I would have saved by pre-ordering. They didn’t…. so I kept calling customer support. Good thing I had it in writing in my support ticket, because I got a “We don’t do refunds” a few times when I called. One message said I could get that amount in SC, but I was pretty POed by then and I demanded a full refund for the whole xpac and the year sub I had just recently paid. They said no, of course, but after another week or so of calling an /petitioning, they did eventually honor the pre-order price and give me the rebate. SO I guess it was all ok in the end… aside from not trusting this company as far as I could throw it. :\
        :\ It was almost as bad as dealing with Dell customer support, I tell ya.

  31. I still think they could have won with “tokens” so you can choose items. They could have offered a couple of tiers of exclusive items too or even changed items over time too (eg. duck mount only available for first week after launch with platinum level token) haha

  32. I just can’t justify spending $90 for a collectors edition with such trivial, useless stuff. $60 maybe I can see because that elite merc and flying mount look cool and the research reduction potions are good with the whole new grandmaster tier but $90? Really? Who’s going to spend that much honestly?

  33. Can I presume they will do what they’ve done in the past for us SOE Live (nee Fan Faire) attendees (who are getting the expansion for free) and just charge us the difference in the cost from the expansion to the CE?

    I.E. $45 bucks if we’re a sub or $50 if we’re not (though most attendees, I’d think, WOULD be subscribers).

    It was not stated in this announcement. ARE they going to only charge us the difference and has their been an announcement regarding Fan Faire attendees? I’d like to hope they’d follow suit from previous years . . . but with no pre-order, past performance is not an indicator of future (or present) business decisions . . .

      2. So, since I can’t pre-order it, will I just have to go and buy the CE on day one . . . (though, will I even have to go and buy the SE on day one and they won’t charge me, or will I just “HAVE” it on day one without having to do anything extra?) and they’ll just ONLY charge me for the difference?

        Basically, have they got it all figured out or am I going to have to be on the phone with them . . . again? And since I’m getting it for free, will I be able to get the CE upgrade whenever I want, and not have to deal with it on day one? Or do I have to do this within a certain time limit.

        OR, am I going to have to call them and ask them all this . . . . again?

  34. Really I am upset that the mount isn’t a decent stat mount, and no new home. The potions are good for 2 spells… Make it 4 for the account and it takes the sting off.

    Make the collectors edition mean something as it is I am having a hard time making a final decision on getting it or buying a second standard edition for my alt account.

    1. I’m not familiar with how good mounts are these days, but my first reaction looking at the stats on these mounts was jaw dropping. These mounts are better stats than what I had when I was raiding Sentinel’s Fate.

  35. I’m gonna buy the CE. It’s a ridiculous price, but I’ve played this game for 10 years and I only have 1 account, so I’m just gonna jump on this crazy expensive bandwagon because I like playing; it’s what I do. I’ve been playing the beta and so far it’s a bit underwhelming compared to previous expansions, so I’m not sure it’s “worth” the $90 expense, but alas I’ll shell it out anyways.

    I will say, though, (not to be a cheerleader for SOE), that we don’t know what costs are really involved in for these games as they don’t tell us and they could have legitimate reasons for the price.

    However, I think that $90 USD is way over the top and well above a legitimate value. If SOE wanted to maximize their profits, perhaps lowering the cost to a reasonable figure would entice everyone into purchasing the CE over the SE, which, might actually net them more in the long run than the current price tag.

    But what do I know…

    1. While I understand your feelings and certainly what you do with your money is your business, but since you posted I feel the need to discuss.

      You see this type of “it’s unreasonable but I guess I’ll do it anyway” approach is the reason they are pricing these items so high. SOE has definitely been working the angle of, let’s charge more even if we sell less, at least it will be at a higher price. A reputable company that is interested in the needs not just the wants of their customers understands that a good product at a fair price would lead to more items being sold to the point that a larger profit would be made.

      Would I like the CE? Sure, it seems ok and I have always purchased at least two in the past. Is it worth what they are charging? IMO, no way so therefore I will not be getting it. As I have mentioned previously it’s not about how much it costs it’s about how much it’s worth. I would pay $150 if it was a great product but that’s not what this is.

    2. Status items are nice, and letting people know you have money is fun for some.. but I was getting nothing but hatred and tells about how stupid I was for buying that pink meatbeast mount. :\ I tried explaining to them that I’d been hoarding triple SC and it was technically 1/3 of the price that they kept telling me I’d spent… but yah… if you want to see what pointless a-holes people can be, bring along that ce merc or ride that CE mount around. /sigh
      If we are divided they conquer, together we stand. If they don’t make enough sales because we all refuse the CE, maybe they will put it on sale or add things to make it worth more than the whole xpac. (Still boggling over how a few goodies are $50 more, and the whole xpac is $40 to begin with… o.0)
      Either way, the standard edition xpac does look pretty good. /shrug

  36. Oh my! I forgot about the fx rate. I’ll have to check but I’m guessing CE is well over $100 here. Uhm…no CE this time around. Hopefully this experiment with pricing will fail so the only people you see with CE are the same ones with the pink meatbeast. If the $$ work out better for SOE expect to see $60+ expansions with $150 CE.
    In admittedly a little disappointed… and this comes from a couple that flew in from Australia for SOE live!

  37. You just haven’t pitched the $300 duck mount high enough up the food chain yet, Tom. 😉 If you do, be sure to make the sound of jingling coins when he lands, add a currency looking particle effect and have it periodically spout Scrooge McDuck inspired quotes. :mrgreen: I joke, sorta.

    2. The price hike came when the price should have gone down. No more manufacturing, packaging, shipping, physical advertisements/posters at game stores, shelf time losing value, pewter cat or bear, gold coin, cloth map. Just a digital download from a place already set up with servers that do exactly that. XD
      If you think that makes sense…. well I hope you are rich or have caregivers.

      1. Well SOMEone has to pay for the development EQNext Landmark, EQNext, and H1Z1 . . .

        This is OUR chance to Play . . . err, PAY it Forward. We’re all producers now!

        Will we get our name on the credits of those games if we get the Collector’s Edition? That would be cool.

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