You’ve been warned, reader. This is a rant, and it’s not that often I do these, so just hang on here.
SOE has recently come up with a marketing ploy to entice old players to come back to their games. It’s well done, too, with lots of shiny. Who doesn’t like shiny? In EQ1, renewing subscribers will get a bunch of items to /claim including 3 pieces of (tradeable) defiant gear, and 1 (tradeable) defiant weapon based on the level and class of the character claiming them. They’ll also get 10 exp potions, and 10 run speed potions, 5 charges of gate to PoK, a bag, and oh yes, two free months of game play. Their account has been reactivated, for free too. EQ2 is going through the same thing, with lots of shiny there, free game play, items to claim.
Wow. It sounds fantastic right? Oh, the new subscribers to EQ1 can also pick up SoF (the latest compilation of expansions) for free when they pay the $15 to activate.
But wait a second, what about those loyal customers, who never left. Or what about those people who subscribed last month, or the month before, still ‘recently’ returning.
Ah, That’s right. We get a pat on the back. We get to partake in the extra 25% exp zones, and maybe farm ourselves a piece of the defiant gear that is dropping world wide.
I suppose on one hand, we should all be thankful that SOE has taken such measures to bring people back to their games. I mean, who could do that other then SOE, what draws people into the game more then shiny. It doesn’t matter if nostalgia has been working to recruit people to the game, that we’ve brought a team of dedicated (fun) people back, and have been writing about it almost none stop.
I know ranting about it doesn’t solve anything, or make anything better, but it was something I had to get off my chest. Don’t get me wrong, either. I am very happy people will come back for at least a short time. I just don’t think they should have to be bribed with shiny in order to do it. Or if they are going to be bribed with shiny at least consider rewarding your loyal customers. I realize there are veteran rewards that long term customers get that short term do not – but in EQ1 they’re very restricted by how long you’ve had your account, and you need to have played for at least a year before you see anything at all. I wish it were like EQ2 where your account was flagged – there for you could claim veteran rewards on every character. But in EQ1 you can only flag 1 character per year. Which means if you were not a guide, or have not played for a huge number of years, you’d better make darn sure you’re going to stick with that character.
Poor alts.
I left. Hung up my EQ2 cape, and called it a day.
I was truly disappointed to see this…
I had paid 40 bucks for the RoK expansion, after paying 40 for EoF…and was not that pleased
I had a guild that was leaving in droves for AoC and other games..
I was waiting to see if AoC was my cup of tea…
Then SOE does this…
I enjoy AoC VERY much….
As I recently returning player who started a week or two before this special deal I got to say I feel robbed. Not only did I play to restart my account but I also dropped the 30-40 bucks for the expansion. Sony got some splainin to do.
Dalven
I felt something similar a while back. A friend who quit EQ2 years ago came back with Rise of Kunark. He got all the veteran awards I had veteran cases and all, even though he had his account active for under a year. Seems SOE counts the time from when you activated your account and not the number of active days.
I know it is extremely petty of me and that it is wrong, but I begrudged him that.
This whole thing is just business, after all. SOE already has me and they know I will not quit by giving someone else perks. Hey, maybe I should quit and resign? Nah, to lazy.
It’s not just active accounts getting the shaft. I turned off all access close to 2 months ago, And went with EQ2 only. So when I heard about this promotion, Thought I’d give EQ1 a try. Seems I don’t qualify because my account has not been in-active long enough. or at least thats what customer service told me on the phone :( Oh well
You know, I always thought of it the other way around… so many mobs are social in EQ and some zones are so packed that you really need a group to advance, or access to twink gear. It always felt like you could be much more casual in a game that had a well defined quest system and solo-designed encounters, with variable difficulty within /con ranges. Maybe it’s just me.
EQ felt very quiet when I came back a while ago, but that may have been because I didn’t have access to new content. I think anything they can do to bring back casual players can only benefit the game, but it is a shame the incentives don’t translate to active accounts.
An alternative could be that existing customers pay a lesser amount for an expansion, say $19.90 instead of $49.90, sort of like how the license for software upgrades work. But then again I suppose this would mean extra trouble for them in the physical retail channels since they would have to maintain two different SKUs.
1) Rake in as many new/old players as possible.
2) Suddenly release new expansion 2 free months later.
3) ???
4) PROFIT!
Well, that’s not fair. We paid for the fun we had until this point.
I do hope those current subscribers who do not have all the expansions, get them for free as well. Anything otherwise would be GROSSLY unfair.
I agree with you completely. It has always already bothered me that the new players has been able to buy a superset of the every expansion since the release of EoF for the same price that we had to pay for each individual expansion. And now they just pretty much get handed everything for free. Maybe I’m just a bitter and jealous person, or maybe it is partly due to the fact that in the last game I played, Lineage 2, expansions were released free, and it wasn’t low quality or anything, it was every bit on the same level as what you would expect if you paid for it.
I feel horribly sorry for those that just bought the game a day or a week before their announcement.
It almost seems like we have a loyalty tax to pay while the new subscribers get tax holidays. Whatever happened to the concept of frequent flier miles?
Yeah, I’m not exactly sure how they came up with that logo, but there ya have it.
Celebrate your Hardcore Heritage?
That’s silly. EQ was always a casual, social game until you started raiding. WoW and EQ2 are a lot more hardcore than EQ. And if it ever was hardcore, it sure isn’t now.
I wish they had given us something — free character transfers would have made me happy — but whatever. A bunch of people will come through for awhile, and maybe we can let some of them know what we’re up to, and how what we’re doing is the number one most perfect way to get back into EQ and have a hell of a lot of fun with it at the same time.
Farmed Dulak for armor last night and got just one piece of Fractured Defiant Chain armor (the boots), plus a piece of plate and some silk pants, as well as some uncommon, non-Defiant, melee shoulders, some caster shoulders, two Defiant weapons, and some minor magic stuff. Given this stuff is raid quality, one piece a night isn’t that bad.