SOE now selling PLAT for RL money!

[Tallenn]

Just got an email from SOE. You can now pay your mercenaries with "Bayle Marks" purchased with Smed cash.

For those that haven't been following the doings of live at all, mercenaries are NPCs you can hire to basically PL you, at least at lover levels (below 60 or so). They come in either tank or healer varieties, and they charge you platinum (the higher the level the higher the charge) every 15 minutes you have them active.

So, now that you can pay them with what is essentially real life money, you can indirectly buy platinum from SOE, conveniently charged to your credit card!

Un - freaking - believable.

[Tenpin]

sooo sad to hear this

[Slugs]

Welcome to the MMO Market of 2010

[Dantes]

I never understood the desire to pay real money for getting ahead in a game. It's like a sicker version of cheating. Makes me want to call up SOE and ask them "How do you sleep at night???" Despicable.

[Zoloph]

And I just noticed a banner ad at the bottom of the forums about EQ2 Plat and Lvling for real currency...

As long as there's a market for these services and in-game items they will be available.

[Bones]

Welcome to the MMO Market of 2010

Yup. Just like kids can now buy epic mounts in WoW for $25 a pop.
As sad as it is, gotta give props to these companies for knowing how to screw over kids using their parents credit card, and rake in tons of extra cash.

No pixels are worth paying for! Except classic EQ :cool:

[BuzWeaver]

On EQII you can now pay $5.00 a month for 3 days worth of play.

[mitic]

I never understood the desire to pay real money for getting ahead in a game.

whats not understandable by doing this? usualy if someone fails in life, he tries to be the tough guy on the nets

[BuzWeaver]

I never understood the desire to pay real money for getting ahead in a game. It's like a sicker version of cheating. Makes me want to call up SOE and ask them "How do you sleep at night???" Despicable.

This is what separates us on the EMU from the "New Gen" players. For them its all about the instant gratification. Sadly, SOE is now enhancing this enabling behavior. I suppose for them its another way to generate cash, you have to applaud their marketing team for studying their metrics/demographics.

[BuzWeaver]

From the Ten Ton Hammer News Letter today:


The next tidbit of news comes from Sony Online Entertainment and its flagship MMOG, EverQuest II. SOE has opted to acknowledge that people might long to play EQ2, but…not enough to pay a $15 monthly subscription. They’re offering veterans with currently closed accounts a sort of subscription microtransaction called the EverQuest II Passport--a payment of $5 buys you 3 consecutive days of gameplay in a 30 day period.

Good idea? Maybe. To me, $5 for 3 days doesn’t seem like much of a deal when I can buy a whole month for $15. And yet, the option might appeal to my husband who has recently expressed an interest in playing EQ2 with me again but can barely find time to squeeze in a few hours of the game, let alone a month’s worth. With SOE's new pricing plan, he could pay $5 for what amounts to a weekend pass and join me for some adventuring in Norrath. Since he works 10 hour days and attends college 3 nights per week, one weekend is probably all he can spare, anyhow.

There are other solid reasons why the EQ2 Passport might make sense to some people. It would be a great boon for multi-boxers who don’t want to maintain multiple 30-day subscriptions but do want the occasional advantage of rolling up an alt-bot to support their main. It’s also a good way to take advantage of seasonal events, if they appeal to you, or for /claiming login bonus items. But…

On an internal Ten Ton Hammer news discussion email, Jay “Medeor” Johnson commented that he felt SOE had made an interesting move, but that the new pricing option had too many constraints. He proposed that a number of non-consecutive hours for the $5 fee might be a better approach. I have to agree that I’d be more tempted to play if I had X hours to kill at my leisure than if I had to burn a weekend (or any other 3 days straight) to get my money’s worth. Who knows why SOE didn’t do it that way. Perhaps it’s much easier technically to flag an account by the consecutive day than by hours played. Or maybe a passport by the hour didn’t make monetary sense.

Still, it’s encouraging to see SOE thinking outside the $15 per month subscription box most AAA MMOGs find themselves in. I’ve played a few MMOGs in my day that left me thinking, “I enjoy this, but I don’t play often enough to justify a monthly subscription.” I’m not sure SOE’s found the right answer to dilemmas like mine, but it does my heart good to know that at least one AAA developer is searching for them.

[Skaff]

I can't really tell if your complaints are with the "Bayle Marks" or with the mercenaries themselves. I know you did slightly inform us about how they work, but I can pretty much tell that you have never used one before.

But I do agree with you, it is sad to see a RL currency enter a game. But I really don't see the effect being huge or used at all for most situations. Platinum is pretty much disposable to anyone who has been in the game for a period of time. I played on the 51/50 server and I was able to easily obtain enough platinum to eventually buy a merc and pay his upkeep. Keep in mind this was on the 51/50 server and that naturally attracted players to run around with and you were thrown a very nice set of gear to begin with.

If I had decided to start a new character on any of the non 51/50 servers, I would have started out close to where you start out in project1999. I would have been given a weapon* and a tunic. I know there is some tutorial where you can get a little more cash and a little gear but you still start pretty broke. The main point is that you are basically thrown into an empty world. The game has been around so long that the player base has become very top heavy.

Now enter the mercs and eventual "Bayle Marks". Will any player who has been around consider real life money to pay for the mercs? Hell no! They are cheap to maintain. Will a player who is new and has a limited source of income consider it? Possibly, but I would love to see the stats of new players entering the game. Regardless of the slight parallel that can be drawn between "Bayle Marks" and RL money... yes, a direction connection can be made but in reality there does not appear to be much of a significant application at all. If you want to complain about mercs, thats a whole other discussion!

It was also pointed out that WOW has the mount offer for $25 bucks. I heard about that the other day from a friend that was still playing the game. I personally thought it was funny and commend Blizzard on the use of well designed micro transactions.

[nicemace]

personally i dont know why they didnt do it sooner, the only way you can combat the market of selling shit for irl cash is if you can control that market.

they never did anything to people who were selling shit.

i ended up making around 10 - 12k IRL cash over my 9 years of live.

as for the service of the npcs, meh they couldnt do anywhere near what i did with my 5 box power lvling so dosent bother me.

[LazyFuj]

wow, let me just purchase a max lvl char!

[FatMagic]

On an internal Ten Ton Hammer news discussion email, Jay “Medeor” Johnson commented that he felt SOE had made an interesting move, but that the new pricing option had too many constraints. He proposed that a number of non-consecutive hours for the $5 fee might be a better approach. I have to agree that I’d be more tempted to play if I had X hours to kill at my leisure than if I had to burn a weekend (or any other 3 days straight) to get my money’s worth. Who knows why SOE didn’t do it that way. Perhaps it’s much easier technically to flag an account by the consecutive day than by hours played. Or maybe a passport by the hour didn’t make monetary sense.

Still, it’s encouraging to see SOE thinking outside the $15 per month subscription box most AAA MMOGs find themselves in. I’ve played a few MMOGs in my day that left me thinking, “I enjoy this, but I don’t play often enough to justify a monthly subscription.” I’m not sure SOE’s found the right answer to dilemmas like mine, but it does my heart good to know that at least one AAA developer is searching for them.

I agree 100% with this. If they did a $5 for say 72 hours of playtime, anytime you want - I would totally do it. I never play more than this of any single game in a month. And I would be extremely happy to pay $5 instead of $15 for my amount of playtime.

I'm also glad to see they are doing stuff like this, as I am more casual than hardcore. And like I said previously, I don't play more than 72 hours of gaming in a month (I probably do more like 40-50 hours MAX in a month). So this is a great option for me. WHich is why I've found I enjoy Free-To-Play games with micro-transactions.

[guineapig]

The Asian platinum market has been around forever in EQ and Sony has never seen dime 1 of that money. They can ban the plat farmers all day long but that does not keep new accounts from being created.

This is basically the only way they can see some of that untapped profit that being generated from their game.

Yeah it kind of sucks in a way but it really does make the most sense from a business standpoint. If you can't get rid of it, regulate it and profit from it.

[Omnimorph]

I agree 100% with this. If they did a $5 for say 72 hours of playtime, anytime you want - I would totally do it. I never play more than this of any single game in a month. And I would be extremely happy to pay $5 instead of $15 for my amount of playtime.

I'm also glad to see they are doing stuff like this, as I am more casual than hardcore. And like I said previously, I don't play more than 72 hours of gaming in a month (I probably do more like 40-50 hours MAX in a month). So this is a great option for me. WHich is why I've found I enjoy Free-To-Play games with micro-transactions.

You make a good point, but it's also a bad point. You play a max of 50 hours. That's more than most people play in a month i bet, so why would they want to lose $15 a month by giving you your playtime for $5.

They'd be wiser to check to see their current player base, and the majority of play times, and then maybe have the pass cover 60% of the lower amount of play times, that way ensuring the current player base keep paying the $15 rather than opting for the $5.

[Tallenn]

Actually, I HAVE used mercs before. I know exactly how they work. My issue isn't so much with mercs, but with the use of RL money to improve your character in the game.

I didn't like Smed cash AT ALL, but at least before, you were only able to use it for cosmetic stuff. Now that you can use it to pay your mercs, you can basically purchase platinum with your credit card, right from SOE. If you don't have to use that plat to pay your merc, you can use it for something else, so in a very real way, the marks you purchased to pay your merc IS plat you purchased from SOE with your credit card.

It doesn't matter if 100,000 people use it, or if nobody uses it. The bottom line is that SOE has become a plat seller.

Again, the issue is not mercs (though that's a separate issue), the issue is with allowing people to BUY progression in the game with RL money. For me, the issue is with smed cash period.

And yes, I'd heard about the WoW mounts, and am floored by that, as well. But this is an EQ forum, which is why I didn't mention it. I'll have to look more into that, too.

[Excision Rottun]

Smedley Treehorn treats objects like their women, man.

[karekiz]

ugh. 5 buck for 3 days?

If you are going RMT. Go free to play.

It is working for Runes of Magic...