Feldon 
Sales/Marketing set a price of $90 for the Altar of Malice Collector’s Edition which has led to some concerns. So the EQ2 team — now currently between a rock-and-a-hard-place — are trying to make lemonade by adding some stats to the Pterodon mount which will ship with the Collector’s Edition. Here are the stats as per Afista on the EQ2 Forums:
Striped Savage Pterodon Mount
Each level 85 character on your account will be eligible to use this flying mount which grants 100% ground speed and 150% flying speed. At level 95 this mount will give its rider the following benefits:
+20% Crit Bonus
+20% Potency
+115 Crit Chance
+3000 Power
+10,000 Max Health
+3000 vs. arcane, noxious, and elemental damage
Just for comparison’s sake, here is the 300,000,000 status mount added just prior to SOE Live– Alberich the Wise. You can see the stats are roughly comparable:
Alberich the Wise
• Increases Crit Bonus of caster by 17.2%
• Increases Potency of caster by 17.2%
• Increases Crit Chance of caster by 120.0
• Increases Max Power of caster by 5,500.0
• Increases Max Health of caster by 17,500.0
• Increases Ability Modifier of caster by 10,000.0
• Increases your ground speed by 75%
• Increases your air speed by 150%
ehhhhh…I mean it’s cool the mount is getting stats but it doesn’t really do much to justify the $90 dollar price tag especially when I look over at the new expansion for Rift as a comparison and for $49.99 you get a ton of stuff. A lot more than you get for $90 with Altar of Malice.
LOL so let me get this straight, the effectively unobtainable Alberich the wise has
+5 crit chance
-2.8 crit bonus
-2.8 potency
+2,500 power
+7,500 health
+10,000 ability modifier
-25% ground speed
-3000 resists
relative to the Collector’s Edition Mount.
If they had thrown in some ability modifier I would have been tempted, very tempted indeed. But I am still not convinced it is worth buying the collectors edition.
But if it had been a duck mount instead of some flying chicken …….
#duckmount
I wonder if the solo quest mount in AoM will be better though.
Has anyone started screaming Pay to Win yet?
This seems barely better than Ragefire.
So… mission accomplished!
Well it’s a start towards some sort of desire to get CE but still not enough :/
I wonder if the included merc is Kenny with a different skin?
At 90 bucks for the CE version, I’m surprised it’s not a duck mount that also fires missiles, can tank mobs and resurrect players. I have this strange feeling that the Mercenary will also be *slightly* overpowered as well.
Remember, according to the die hard fans that see no problem with any game mechanic linked to a purchase (AoD anyone); you don’t need it! That’s a really nice way of saying “Since I can afford it, I feel better knowing you can’t/won’t have it”.
Most the changes added to the game were a solution to bring back the players that enjoy solo/duo play that were restricted from so much content by their choice of a play style. That choice, however, tends to carry a steep premium.
I’m one of those solo / molo / duo players that plays generally every morning, but I can only afford between < 1 hour to 1.5 hours every day. More often than not, it's right around 1 hour, which means I really can't play heroic content in any meaningful fashion. You're right, it's my choice, but I prefer that to just not playing at all. Anything to help with the exceptionally few times I can play grouped heroic content (so that I won't be a complete drain on the group) is worth it to me; but $90 worth it? I dunno. But I will purchase the xpac as it's a tradition now after 10 years.
But $90 for the CE xpac is crazy talk.
You may enjoy the new event heroic zones coming in Altar of Malice. They take about 15-20 minutes to complete.
Indeed.
I shall have to try them out. That sounds like it’s right up my dungeon.
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, still no mention of UK pricing anywhere I can see.
Whatever it is…we are bound to get ripped off again as we always get a suspiciously poor exchange rate.
Mission accomplished if they still have the players pissed off. Otherwise they are just being overly greedy honestly.
Once again looking better on the CE deal but not enough to pull the trigger.
Nope, Still to high of price. idk when they will learn that its the price not anything else. I bet if they just knocked off just 20 dollar it would probably up their CE sales by 10x
If it had 150% ground speed and 250% air speed, it would be worth a look.
These mount stats are just a bandaid for the CE
Looks like marketing is driving the money train and the tweaks to stat mount and other stuff you’d normally pay for is the dev way too try to do right by players. It would normally take me months to spend $50 on EQ2 outside of subscriptions and expac, so I’m not sure the CE is on the cards. The marketing move has, however, caused me to review my need for alt accounts and decide to desub them.
if the CE doesn’t give you enough value then stick with the standard edition. Stop your subs on under utilized accounts, too and SOE marketing might start listening to their community and devs again.
Marketing in any company seems to know only one metric for success… $$$$
The expansion heroic/raid mounts will likely vastly surpass both. I feel sorry for anyone who dumped 300,000,000 status for a mount that would be obsolete just months after.
In some cases it’s not a matter of stats. If I had the status to burn I’d get the 300mil mount simply for appearance.
TBH it’s quite similar statwise to the ones being given out as rewards for Beta Testing. At any rate, Kander posted on the forums:
“To answer some questions we are seeing asked.
The Collector’s Edition mercenary is on par with past elite mercenaries. It’s a little bit better and should do well in heroic content, as the current Elites do. That being said, there are 5 new Elite mercenaries that will be dropping in heroic dungeons within Alter of Malice and have also been upgraded from past Elites.
The Collector’s Edition Mount’s stats are nice, but anything earned within the expansion will undoubtedly be better, so think of it as the baseline for level 100.
The Collector’s Edition Mercenary can be renamed to give a little more customization. Unfortunately, he is too cool to wear any of your armor.
Last year for beta rewards, we handed out appearance Sokokar mounts, and got lots of awesome help and feedback from the community for it. We wanted to make the ones earned this year a lot better, so we put some stats on them that is comparable to current content.”
Personally I am of the opinion that the value of the CE is in its price not its items, with all purchases there is a point where it is good value and a point where it exceeds its value at $60 the CE is good value and at $90 it isn’t.
For me adding more “pointless items” (houses, paintings etc.) wont change this obviously your definition of “pointless items” will vary depending on play style, I would probably pay the $60 to get it but I wont pay the $90 they want.
90.00 = too much
I’ve have always bought the CE and tbh I probably wont be buying this one. The items don’t equate worth to me. Plus $90 just around Christmas is pretty steep.
Plus I’m very worried about this release. I have a feeling it is going to be the worst release of an expansion SOE has had. No pre-loading of the download. I foresee huge outages as everyone tries to DL the content on the 11th.