Rum Cellar Highlights: What You Need to Know
From Roshen on the EQ2 Forums:
Earlier this month, the EverQuest II team unveiled plans for campaigns! The first new campaign, Rum Cellar, will be available on Tuesday, April 28, 2015. Rum Cellar comes with six new instances (solo, heroic, and raid content) with lots of loot, collections, and achievements.
Here’s a list of the features that are included in the Rum Cellar campaign:
- 2 Solo Zones (1 Solo and 1 Advanced Solo)
- 3 Heroic Zones (1 Heroic, 1 Event Heroic, 1 Event Heroic-Challenge)
- Raid Zone with 10 Bosses
- Lots of Loot, including drops of a Rare Elite Mercenary and a Zeppelin Mount
- New Achievements and Titles
- New Gems for Armor
- New Collections
- Merchant who accepts Far Sea Ferrin (who also sells a Zeppelin Mount!)
Rum Cellar is available as a stand-alone purchase for $14.99. And, since this new distillery-themed environment is full of Level 100+ content is connected to Altar of Malice (EQ2’s most recent expansion, which is required to play the Rum Cellar campaign), we’ve also bundled the campaign with the expansion so you can purchase both together: $49.99 for Rum Cellar + Altar of Malice, or $94.99 for Rum Cellar + Altar of Malice Collector’s Edition.
And remember, if you’re an All Access member, you save 10% on the purchase of Rum Cellar (or Rum Cellar + expansion bundles) at checkout!
Think ye landlubbers are prepared to defend against the Rumpocolypse? Get ready… Rum Cellar launches on April 28!
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Comments (54)
Wirewhisker
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What you also need to know is, you don’t need this and the content update later in the year will make this completely meaningless, as well as be more robust than this “campaign”.
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Neiloch
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Sounds like almost every content update in every MMO. ‘Why even play any of this years stuff when in two years it will all be meaningless?’
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Wirewhisker
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Except that they have already confessed that this will be a mere sniff of a content release, compared to the one later in the year.
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GriffonLady
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But! Zeplin mounts!!!! (assuming they are flying mounts, the campaign is still less than a flying mount on SC (if you don’t count SC bonus days or marketplace sales).
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Naramsin
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Well, if they have Zeppelin mounts, make mine a Led Zeppelin, lol. I know, dry humor, but I’m sure it was going to come out sooner or later.
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GriffonLady
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>.> Not that their pricing on mounts ever made sense to me, but that’s aside from the point.
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Leahyla
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There are 2 weeklys that give 15 ferrin pre member bonus each
A supplementary quest that basically means doing the heroic weekly 5 times or solo weekly 10 times that gives a red malice gem.
The merchant only sells the mount, ferrin containers or apperance gear.
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Ezka
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I think it’s funny that this campaign and the other content later this year will probably end up equaling the cost of a full-blown expansion. Why do I think it’s funny? Because everyone is complaining that it’s more out of their pocket, when it probably won’t be anymore than what they usually shell out for an expansion.
I mean c’mon. This stuff is reminiscent of the days of Adventure Packs. It’s not like this is a novel, world-changing idea. Get a grip, guys.
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Loch
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Sure, it might add up to the same amount we spent on an expansion. But will it have an expansion’s worth of content? We’re already $15 dollars into matching that expansion price and it’s just one reskinned zone.
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Pipsissiwa
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Those past adventure packs cost a heck of a lot less than $15 and you got a lot more zones and quests for your money.
The idea isn’t new – what is included is much less.
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Pipsissiwa
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So, as a 95% solo player, i get 2 zones, with 4 zones I am extremely unlikely to use (heroics) or will never use (raid). Doesn’t sound great value for my play style 🙁
An xpac usually gives me plenty to do (overland zones esp) and feels worth the money even though I won’t use it all – this new model…… less so.
Will we be seeing a solo/adv solo oriented ‘campaign’ in the future one wonders – sadly I doubt it. I’ll keep hoping tho.
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thait
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From what i understand, though i could very well be wrong, we’re supposed to see normal larger content release later this year. This is just a sort of small thing that i really am not sure i’ll buy yet since my group isn’t even near to being ready to use this anyway.
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Arcos
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$15 less 10% for All Access = $13.50.
At today’s exchange rate that should be just under £9.00.
Seriously, what is all the fuss about?
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Pipsissiwa
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I am simply worried that all these ‘campiagns’ will add up across the year to costing the same (or more) as an ‘normal’ xpac but with overall much less content for my playstyle.
I’ve never had issue with enough content or value for money in a full xpac – multiple solo/adv solo dungeons, overland zones, tradeskilling and most importantly for me, lots of different quests.
I do worry that these ‘campaigns’ with limited content at $15 a pop won’t add up to as much content overall for me.
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Zzzz'z
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I think over the years EQ players have been spoiled by so much free content added between xpacs that we have come to expect a whole of of stuff/fluff for FREE. Add to this the FTP aspect of the game where those players feel they should get all the same perks and benefits as monthly subscribers. I hate to say this but we have become a very ungrateful lot of gamers who scream for more and more yet want to pay less and less or nothing at all. With that said….how is this game expected to support itself and the developers if everything is free? I’m no advocate of pay to win with SC but do understand money needs to come from somewhere.
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Busby
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Well i thought the money came from my monthly subs on my accounts plus the yearly expansion.
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Kralus
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I’ve put in well over 2 grand into EQ games over the years. That’s a hell of a lot of money I’ve spent on free content.
I think it’s insulting that they’re releasing this for $15. They’re selling a door with several different difficulty settings of a re-skinned zone. I personally think it would have been better if DBG charged $4.99 for the solo instances, $4.99 for the heroic instances, and $4.99 for the raid instance. If I’m a solo player, I’m not going to spend $15 for two re-skinned instanced zones, etc.
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Poppintabs
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You know you are paying for the better graphics in the zone. That’s where the extra $3.70 bucks per variation comes from.
On another note though they have been recycling the content for a while now and people were still paying money for the expansions even though it was “re-skinned”. I do however like your marketing plan to split it up in to solo/heroic/raid content. I think the loss they would suffer from players out right not paying for all of it would be a lot more than the loss of just raid content or which ever one the player feels they won’t play. Think of how much easier it would be for people to get the DLC for their 50+ accounts. 😯
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Pipsissiwa
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Aye, if I could just pay for the bits I want (solo/adv solo) and not pay for the others, (especially raid – I will NEVER go in there) I’d be happier. I don’t mind paying for bundled content that I won’t use so long as there is plenty included that I will use – in this case there is more I won’t than I will, thus I question it’s value to me.
The precise price point isn’t the issue, it’s how much of what I’m paying for I will actually use.
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Dulcenia
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So over the course of 10 years of gameplay you think you might have paid enough to cover the salary of ONE developer for 2-3 WEEKS of his/her time?
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Kralus
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You’re joking right? lol I refuse to believe this comment is serious.
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Pipsissiwa
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I wouldn’t like paying for a load of features on (Eg) an appliance or on a TV/Broadband service, that I wouldn’t ever use. I’d prefer to have the option of a cheaper model without them. This really isn’t that different.
In games, services or physical goods, of course a single purchase alone would not pay for the R&D costs – it is a ridiculous statement and completely irrelevant.
I am simply pointing out that, as it stands, I am unlikely to buy this for my play-style, but if it was broken up into difficulties, I would buy the solo/adv-solo dungeons.
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Feldon
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Most people outside of the MMO world pay $40-60 and expect a full game. Hundreds of thousands of players payments add up to enough money to fund software development.
Eq2 costs $40 per year for an expansion plus $15 a month. $15x12x10 + $40×10 = $2,200 over 10 years.
Hypothetically let’s say eq2 had 200k customers. With the previous figures, that’d be $440,000,000. Again this is hypothetical and optimistic. If I don’t say that, I get an irritated email from someone at SOE/DBG.
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Pipsissiwa
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I joint run a three person Indie dev studio in the UK.
Our current game out in the late autumn will have taken about 3 years to make. If you assume the three of us getting around minimum wage, say £15k a year, then the game owes us £135k just in wages, let alone marketing, business rates & costs etc etc. We got £10k on Kickstarter, so that makes £125k left.
At £10 a pop we will would need to sell 12,500 copies just to cover our bare minimum wages, let alone other costs, before we can even consider profit. Luckily we’ve been Greenlit so we’ll be releasing on Steam – you never know, we may do it.
Making games ain’t easy, or a good way to make money 🙂
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Feldon
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Putting up a £10k kickstarter for a game that will cost £135k sounds like you underbid your kickstarter by about £125k. I do wish you luck, but I really think folks should set their kickstarter minimum levels so that they make a living wage. Otherwise there are hurt feelings and things go south as people totally burn out from working for free in the slight hope of profitability some day.
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Pipsissiwa
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The KS was to tide us over so we could not do contracting for a few months and concentrate solely on gamedev. If we’d have set it much higher I doubt we’d have made it (we actually raised 11.5k but the 1.5k covered the fees so we got out full 10k), and then wouldn’t have all our super alpha and beta testers. If people set their KS at what they would really need, almost no-one would get funded sadly.
We actually don’t expect to make any money from this game, it’s a learning experience and our name will be out there for future ones. We made the Guardian Top 16 games of EGXRezzed this year and we’ve already made a lot of good friends from Mike Bithell to the Carmageddon crew (gratuitous namedrops). Worth way more than money 🙂
On a practical note – we all three have to work as contractors as well as writing the game – i just isn’t feasible to be an Indie full time without working on other stuff unless you can muster enough interest to raise silly money on Kickstarter, which is very hard to do, or get a publisher, which we don’t want..
I posted this more as an example – I think people forget how much games cost in terms of the people, let alone everything else. I also wanted to show that I am well aware of dev costs.
I still want value for money from my products, tho.
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Saute
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Folks seem to miss one of the points which they have stated is to fill a gap in progression they felt existed.
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Poppintabs
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I think this “filling the gap” is pretty funny. There is 5 tiers of gear and 3 tiers of content. I have found that players can move through the content fairly easily if they choose to do so. The stages were laid out with a 1 stat requirement (resists) to survive the zone and progression isn’t an issue what so ever. If there was any issue it would be in the raid zones.
Don’t quote me on this but I am pretty sure that the top guilds cleared a lot of AoM raid content with last expansions raid gear. So that would rule out the possibility of needing content there. Layoffs created a drag to creating an entire expac so rather than spending a whole year for ‘maybe’ half as much content the idea to do pieces obviously came into play. There is no gap, plenty of guilds have moved right though heroic into raid content and plenty of players start off in heroic with yellow armor/mastercrafted jewelry to meet the resists.
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Kruzzen
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This is probably the most valid point here. They put out an xpac that had holes, lacked what was needed to progress properly, and not they want to charge for the mistake. I think that is more the issue. If this was additional content and the xpac had been complete I think this would be a much different issue.
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Poppintabs
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Would you care to give an example of one of these holes?
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Kruzzen
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Would you care to read the announcements?
From Kandor ” I will start off by saying we really felt that our original release of Altar of Malice was a little light on content for casual to mid-skill level players. So this release is really concentrating on that.”
So that is where I base my statement off of. Directly from DBG.
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Poppintabs
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What people still fail to address is that if in fact his statement was truthful I would then ask why the door to the zone was there when the expansion dropped?
You claim that you just now realize on [Kander, Apr 10, 2015] that the content was lacking but amazingly the zone was in the works before there was an official determination of the lack of content.
If you cannot read between the lines then you will unfortunately be suckered by just about every person you encounter who has any sense of wit about them. Fact > Statements
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madrat
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now if they would just sell if for all the sc I have banked up, as I sure in the heck am not paying 15 bucks for a pack that I might use 40% off. Way to go dirtbags this should have been part of the xpac. Now we just get nickeled and dimed to death.
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Ezka
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I still think it’s bad form to be so ungrateful about it all. You do realize the team was slashed, right? Try doing the same amount of stuff with less people. Would you like to pull the wagon by yourself, or with twenty people with you?
And madrat, we pay like $50-60+ for expacs we only use like 40% of. Not everyone raids. For those that do, I’m sure they aren’t dinking around in the easy stuff. And for crafters and decorators that don’t do those zones at all, it’s even less.
It is just infuriating me to no end that people don’t complain about expacs, but they toss snide comments and mean names around when they try to charge for a small amoung of new content. If you don’t want it, don’t buy it. You’re not being forced. And if you really truly need and want it, you’ll pay for it. That’s just the truth of it.
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Archangel
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“It is just infuriating me to no end that people don’t complain about expacs”
https://eq2wire.com/2014/10/20/altar-of-malice-pricing-announced-40-for-standard-90-for-collectors-edition/#comments
https://eq2wire.com/2014/10/24/opinion-why-90-for-a-collectors-edition-could-cost-soe-big/#comments
https://eq2wire.com/2014/11/15/eq2wire-post-altar-of-malice-launch-weekend-report/#comments
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Filly67
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You do realize that the team being slashed is not our problem. Many of us work more due to issues like that. What we don’t allow is a compromise of our work ethic or customer service. I think you need to remember is that they are offering less and charging the same monthly cost. Then to add something like this is just completely over the top.
Spend your time and money anyway you choose but they will not get one single additional cent out of me until this game is worth my time and money.
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Poppintabs
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Sales pitch of the year award lmao!
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Ezka
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Probably why I’m not in sales!
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Poppintabs
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Just found that funny because that is pretty much their pitch atm.
It is pretty obvious though that the team can only accomplish so much to keep up. Yes, they do need money to keep releasing more content, Yes, most of the content will probably be add-ons. But I do believe that there is a serious lack of concern for the approach taken to how content will be released or even the ability to reach out to the player base now that it has been fractured so badly via forums, no customer service, no polls other than did you like this specific generic thing, and no integration of the players in a Q & A anymore.
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Striinger
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If they’d split the dlc by play style at $10 a pop they’d be less winning (given the arguments above).
The most obsurd thing I often see is people who play an mmo… solo. Catering to that play style is why so many of the newer mmo are crap with no real stay power. Of you want to pay with yourself there are far better games with game play that’s suited to going it alone. For that reason I’d be tickled for them to start treating solo stuff as what it is; filler between group or raid groups. It’s like a LFG mini-game; LoN replacement. I’ll even go so far as to say people who bitch about this mmo not catering to solo play enough have no right and should feel blessed they have something other than LoN to do.
If this campaign is filling a progression hole that exists for more casual group or raid players, then it makes sense. A little more great you can get easily to help move on. It’s better than nerfing the shit out of tougher content (so it becomes trivial for many), and it charges people for the”help”.
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Pipsissiwa
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I shouldn’t have to defend my play style to anyone, but comments like this annoy the heck out of me.
Those of us who can’t commit to the time needed to run long zones as a group, who can’t log in as often as we’d like and who thus aren’t geared well enough (and prob never will be) for most top level groups shouldn’t play an MMO?
Just because you can group with others in a game doesn’t mean you should have to. I just love being in a world with other real players – it feels so much more real and alive.
I used to be an avid grouper, but these days I get to play at very random times and for much shorter periods than I used to. I’d rather run things solo than wait around for a pick-up group, and I sure ain’t giving up Norrath.
Solo stuff is great for those people who aren’t able to make a massive time commitment to the game to get geared or build great groups – I can’t commit to being on at a particular time or date and nor can many others, and pick-up groups can be very hit and miss, if you can get them at all.
Solo is my only choice most of the time.
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Pipsissiwa
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Oh, and I play plenty of single player games too.
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Ezka
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(Dunno how to do the reply thing)
@ Poppintabs
I do agree to that. All the crap about forums and things have left me perturbed at the least, and I don’t even play as regularly as most. I guess we can really only hope for the best, even when it sure as fire doesn’t seem to be going anywhere good.
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Traxor
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I’ve not seen one person mention the fact that many players PAY for multiple MULTIPLE accounts and that 2k is for 10 years on one account. That’s not including collectors editions. It sounds like to me, that rich people didn’t manage money properly and are now squeezing every dollar they can out of players until threatening to shut down servers isn’t a big deal and they scrap the game. Make good content. People will play
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Poppintabs
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Feldon above says:
I say above:
Seems as though you read only what you wanted to read
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madrat
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OK we we have 3 accounts all gold status 2 of those accounts 10 years old, actually older as we played swg. So when you add that up, that is close to 6k yep I spent a lot on eq2, swg, eq, and yes even vanguard. SWG had a few expansions before it went to the nge and that by the was was 4 accounts, I had 3 the wife had 1, We used to have 4 accounts for eq2, now were down to 3, the oldest child moved off and well I not seen her playing in a long time. SOE got a ton of money out of us. This is not about the money for us, it is the way that dbg has gone about this. 3.99 would be a great price, seams to me that is what the other adventure packs were, it just not worth the price of admission this time. One has to wonder if folks are going to buy it or not, of course we never know as dbg is never going to tell us.
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Poppintabs
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Just out of curiosity @ Madrat. How would you feel about this proposed earlier in the thread by Kralos?
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madrat
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5 bucks kind of sort of, i remember the original add packs being what 3.99 I think before they finally rolled them up into your membership package, and there was a heck of a lot more content with those. But yes 5 bucks I can see that. For me the 15 is a money grab, and were not sure what else is coming down the pike, 15 here 15 there and soon it adds up to be a 100 bucks or more when it is piece by piece.
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Charn
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Filly67 said:
Actually, and obviously, it is . . . however:
The only way to ACTUALLY show our dissatisfaction is to just not buy the Adventure Pa . . .errr, Campaign. No amount of bluster, griping, or “hot air” will do it. The bottom line is $$$.
Of course, if we don’t buy it, we risk more cuts, then less content, and, possibly, the end of EQ2 (though I think it would take more than the lack of sales on one campaign for that to happen).
Unfortunately, and historically, the vocal minority here does not equal the reality of the silent majority (and, I suspect, many of the vocal as well). Many people I know upgraded most (if not all) of their spells using SC even after the increase in spell research pricing.
We can complain all we want, but unless the majority don’t buy the campaign, they’ll continue to charge the same or more. And, historically, people WILL buy it.
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Poppintabs
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Historically speaking, since we are going there, content was released for the entire player base. What about the next DLC in November? Will that be for a whole different range of players? And so on? We “complain” because we want to keep the game around and viable for us, but when it is being designed around a specific group of people how can one understand this issue unless you are the one being excluded? Will they still sell DLC packs? oh yea they sure will but this will be a good eye opener that will hopefully get them to maybe include everyone next time.
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Striinger
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@ Pipsissiwa
I never asked for a defense of play styles. I’m just pointing out that paying $15/month is for an MMO. It’s not a good value choice for a pure solo player ONLY because there are countless better options for that style. I would never buy a Harley cruiser to race motoX.
If this campaign gives more casual players a leg up toward the gear they think they’ll never get, then the real benefit is in more people being geared enough to group.
I don’t want solo-only players to stop playing; it just makes no difference if they do. Their play style adds nothing to the MMO experience. From that perspective their needs and desires don’t really matter (if eq2 still wants to be an mmo).
P.s. OMFG autocorrect on my phone KILLS my posts!
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Pipsissiwa
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I would dispute that solo players add nothing to the MMO experience.
A lot of us are top level crafters and sell our services to raiders/groupers who hate crafting. Some of us are avid questers, and can help others in game with advice and tips. We buy your spare loot, crafted stuff and shinies from the broker. We are friends who are there to natter with, in or out of character.
An MMO is NOT only about grouping or raiding (and being an MMO that plays primarily solo can work as a model – Runescape, whatever you think of it, does it rather successfully) – it’s about everyone just being in the world together doing whatever it is in that world that they enjoy. We all interact, just not all in the same way. And soloers are just as valuable to the game world and economy as anyone else.
And of course, those of us who solo that sub are also paying to help keep the game going and being developed.
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Necromancer
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Are people really going to pay $14.99 for a Game Update? Seriously?
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Lateana
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I don’t really want or need this adventure pack, but my raid guild leader is hell bent on all raiders getting it. So between me and my husband we will have to purchase four copies to play our raid mains and alts:(
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