I don't mind the price hike, really.

What has continued to bug me more and more are the routine nerfing of drops in older zones to "encourage" the purchasing of the latest expansion.

Honestly, I think the game is better served keeping ALL zones populated and viable. The expansions will STILL sell.

I won't notice the 2 bucks a month, but I hate finding empty zones.

Folks i think your missing the point of all of the price hikes seriously. Imo this is the cold hard skinny of it all.soE BLEW it's cash on developing EQ2. they don't need 2 extra dollars to keep up on regular eq servers all of Know there shrinking us to just 14 from 28. What's going on is they spent TO MUCH cash on eq2. And , it's flopping on them they exected all of us to go to eq2. They didn't bank on the fact that eq2 could flop .Then here comes WOW and other new MMog's and they took alot of eq1 base players.Which in turn meant the population they expected for eq2 went to crap for them .the profits they projected to recoup from the making and advertising of eq2 drained there bank.And is now on us who have always been SoE cash cow since it purchased it from Verrant interactive.
It's simple folks there not beeing greedy they seriously need the cash I don't , and never have played Eq2 i just play eq i have no desire for Eq2. They just over extended themselves trying to get the new product out and the management never thought WOW would be a real threat and that people would swap from eq1 to 2 just cause we love eq so much.They banked on figres they saw in a project projection and in reality it fell way way short so now there back to us to keep them afloat because just like other company World wide have done put simply They counted there chickens before they hatched

Ok. Here it is plain and brutally honest.

You all won't do S@#t about this price increase. You WILL keep paying what ever SoE wants you to pay because your ADDICTED and they know it. You put in years of work on this game and you won't stop no matter what they charge.

It would take SoE cancelling the game (FAT CHANCE) for you to stop playing. If, by some act from a divine being, you DO quit EQ, you will move on to EQ2 and become addicted all over again still paying the big SoE $15.

Repeat steps above but replace EQ with EQ2 and EQ2 with EQ3 and EQ3 with EQ4 and so on and so on....

I managed to move on because I realized Sony will just keep pumping out expansions instead of improving what they have. SONY needs to get their heads out of their wallets and realize that a game CAN get too massive and lose it's heading. Last I read they have 400,000 active subscribers @ $13 each a month = roughly $5,200,000 a month revenue.

5.2 MILLION A MONTH !!!

And what is Sony probably thinking...."I bet we can bring in $800,000 more a month if we up the subscription rate, MUHAHAHAHAHA!!" "That will pay for my 24K gold lawn gnome and private island chain in the Caribbean next month alone!!" "Those suckers won't do anything about it but whine on the forums."

Final point...you will be snorting Sony's white line until you die or join a support group...

Have a nice day =)

(Sometimes you have to be slapped in the face to come to your senses, thank me later)

Forgive me for being kinda random, but I am a little frustrated right now.

There HAVE been many improvements over the years, BUT many of those have been visual improvements. Because of the advacements, I can no longer walk through ANY zone, heaven forbid the bazaar or PoK, without looking at the ground. True, I could purcahse better computer parts, but that is a LOT more expensive than $2/month, and I simply cannot afford that living on my own and in college. Most of the zones added in the last 2 or 3 expansions, where all the experience is, I cannot travel to BECAUSE they are so taxing on my computer. Therefore I am stuck with older zones, and lesser experience. This also tends to make me need to solo on a consistent basis, because everyone wants to group in the sparkly new zones.
I have ALSO put lots of time into this game and it pains me to most likely be leaving. However, I have put LOTS of time into this game, and my main (only) is just now nearing lvl 64 after 1.5 years!
I have been considering leaving EQ for some time now, and this increase has just strengthened the argument. Not because I cant afford $24 a year, but why should I pay to suffer? I have instead chosen a game with no monthly fee, and maybe a lesser quality game. That is a risk I am willing to take.

Maybe a few of the ever whining people will finally leave this game once and for all with this price rise. I work and can afford the cost of 5 accounts, so an extra 10$ isn't going to hurt me none. Plus this game is better than any other ive taken the time to play.

you know I don't post here very often, but I just have the urge to put my 2cp's in on this subject.

1. Inflation ... it's a nasty word, and it goes up, every year, you can see it going up, the cost of cigarettes, the cost of soda, the cost of liquor, the cost of a dime bag .. AHHH .. GOT YA .. so you can't have that extra ______(insert your choice here). IS EQ worth it to you not to have the EXTRA you buy now? Consider this, if you've played 6 years (which I have) and have multiple accounts (6 in our household and none are bazaar mules) this is going to cost us more to play. So why is it a big deal to give up one thing you enjoy for another?

2. Cost of living barring extras .... the cost of food, the cost of rent, the cost of gas, these things translate into survival.... if the $2 more you're going to pay a month is going to take away from any of those things ... food, clothing, shelter, heat/cooling, .. then you didn't need to be on EQ in the first place. So what are you doing here?

3. Capitalism ... People are naturally inclined to want to make money above and beyond the cost of survival. If you went to work every day and only made enough to pay just your basic bills, how long would it be before you'd look for a better job? Well, if EQ is just barely keeping the servers afloat on what they are making, then how long before they look to put the servers to another use, if they don't start clearing a profit off of them? Servers take:

a) Manpower to maintain and operate, you can not just stick a computer or rack system in a room and let it run.

b) Electricity to operate, it doesn't run on hamster power, and even if it did we'd
have to pay for housing, feeding and care of those hamsters.

c) Parts and upgrades while the price of the components themselves may have gone down,
it still requires some one with a bit of post secondary education to install and service these things, have you priced even a 2 year college education these days? These people don't work for free. They have student loans to pay off.

d) Connectivity, you do realize that for us to enjoy the game we play, we have to be
able to connect to it in some manner, So, unless SOE is going to run truncated lines and private access servers on their own intranet, where as we would have to call in to even
access the servers via the phone line then it is going to cost them a significant amount per month/year/agreement term to provide us with publicly accessible servers.

e) Corporate Relations, EQ1 has to pay it's fair share to the corporation to exist. If it becomes a money pit, and is not paying it's dues, they will soon trash it and move on to something that is more profitable This includes Customer Service, and paying it's own bills.
So, why shouldn't that translate into our subscription dues?

The arguments that they're just trying to gouge us out of more money really doesn't float. If you want to play this game, quit being a tight ***, and pay for what you get. They've improved a lot of things over the last 18 months. But, with progress comes cost, you want a sub-standard game, I can point you in the direction of a Cartooned chat room called The Realm, that will only cost you a fraction of what EQ does, you want a game that's about actual game play, then dig out your wallet, checkbook, debit card, credit card, and get used it. If you think the new games are so much better content wise, in the words of my favorite Wizard ... Be Gone!

Jalaran DeSelkirk
66th Exarch of Tunare
Proud Member of Swords of Virtue
Loving wife of Kotov




Edited, Fri May 13 16:09:20 2005

Truth be told, this is nothing more than a profitable idea generated by a sweet talking attorney or wet-behind-the-ears marketing graduate. He got the ear of someone important and their eyes lit up when they imagined the resurgence of income from a declining program.

While it is true that a LOT of content has been added over the 6 years, a very minute amount of that content has been at no additional cost. The cost of creating that content was directly factored into the cost of expansions and included a reasonable profit margin. There's certainly no loss of income there.

Furthermore, the cost of maintaining EQ has NOT increased. In fact, leaving out the cost in manpower of MERGING servers it can only have decreased. The Customer Relations staff has been anything but stable and you don't replace a CSR who made $18 an hour by paying the next $20. You pay the new people less. The cost of maintaining the equipment cannot have gone up.... Servers have not been upgraded for years and the cost of every single component inside a sever has GONE DOWN. Returning to the merging of servers, I can only imagine it to take a lot of manpower and planning to do, but this is a one-time cost.

Overarching all this is the fact that populations have fairly drastically been cut. People got bored, hacked off or intrigued by a new game. This DECREASES the cost of operation. (but more dramatically decreases profits)

The staff at Sony are perfectly aware that EQ is in decline and are clearly working to keep it functional. They are also aware that while the COST of operation is NOT higher, the inherent PROFIT in what they are doing is lower. As such, some individual grabbed someone's ear and convinced them that the market could handle a price hike and would result in greater profits. Alas, but they are correct. A few will leave due to the hike or other reasons, but accounting for the decline there is still more profit to be made by increasing fees.

As was suggested earlier, it would be nice if analysis like this was not necessary. That said, I don't imagine any corporation will EVER say "Look, profits are down because others go elsewhere so those who remain need to pick up the slack. Who's first to offer some extra cash?"

Edited, Fri May 13 11:18:24 2005

If you are running just one EQ account per house then this is fairly minor, but when you have a family who plays you look at the overall costs and bang for the buck.

We are closing our bazaar trader accounts. They were worth it before to have our traders up while we play our mains, but just barely. With the price change those just aren't worth $360/year to us.

Our household EQ budget dropped from $78/month to $60 in exchange for not putting up bazaar traders, and we can live with that.

My thinking is that SOE upped the price by about 15%, and they might lose 10% of the monthly subscriptions from people who have bazaar or mule accounts, or keep EQ going just because they want to play very occassionally. I don't think its a move that will attract new players, since dollar for dollar a newer game is a better choice. SOE will overall come out with a small increase in monthly fees in exchange for a small drop in active accounts.

Edited, Fri May 13 10:13:04 2005

IMO they should let out this news before they stop the option to take a 1 year subsciption.
Then again i don't really care.. eq is an investement for me, not paying off in cash but paying off in all the friends I get and the things we do together. I have spent too much cash on EQ to quit now :)