If so how big of a deal is it? is it like Champions Onlines MT? Or like a free MMO with a cash shop with exp pots for sale?

It has a cash shop but not for buying uber gear etc.. It has AA pots and xp pots.. Also has some house items/pet things and you can buy "Appearance only gear" .

You also use the shop to buy name changes, character transfer tokens and race respec items.. Anything for sale is not game breaking in anyway..

They also have a trading card game were you can buy virtual cards to play like magic the gathering. You have a chance to get loot cards in the packs. The reason why I quit eq2 and said enough is because they also started offering special dungeons to people who buy the booster packs theres a chance to get a card that offers these dungeons. Anyone else who doesent buy the boosters cant access them. Pretty neat huh?

It does and it doesn't. Nothing on the cash shop is useful other than some potions to increase xp gain. They are also selling station transfer buttons on there. Everything else that they sell is all stupid stuff like items for your house that don't give status but look nice, pretty "armor" for your "armor looks" slots, and worthless pets that don't do anything but look pretty.

And what djnexus has decided to ignore is that there is ONE item that does that in the two years since it was released so he's way overreacting over nothing. Its an extremely rare item and I have never known anyone who got one in the over 4 years that I've been playing.

The game is also supported by Live Gamer, which allows gold, items and characters to be sold for real money. And much of that is hardly a "microtransaction". :P On the plus side, it is players selling them, not the company.

Originally posted by Rallycart

The game is also supported by Live Gamer, which allows gold, items and characters to be sold for real money. And much of that is hardly a "microtransaction". :P On the plus side, it is players selling them, not the company.

Which most people don't even know exists so it isn't game breaking.

People need to stop making it into more than it is.

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by Rallycart

The game is also supported by Live Gamer, which allows gold, items and characters to be sold for real money. And much of that is hardly a "microtransaction". :P On the plus side, it is players selling them, not the company.

 

Which most people don't even know exists so it isn't game breaking.

 

People need to stop making it into more than it is.

The fact that many don't know about it does not change the fact that you can legally buy and sell gold, items and characters. And, for the people that use it, it is as "game breaking" as any other RMT for items, gold and characters. People with real cash can buy already leveled chars, plus items and gold for those chars. The fact that only a small part of the population uses it is not the point.

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by Moirae

Originally posted by Rallycart

The game is also supported by Live Gamer, which allows gold, items and characters to be sold for real money. And much of that is hardly a "microtransaction". :P On the plus side, it is players selling them, not the company.

 

Which most people don't even know exists so it isn't game breaking.

 

People need to stop making it into more than it is.

 

The fact that many don't know about it does not change the fact that you can legally buy and sell gold, items and characters. And, for the people that use it, it is as "game breaking" as any other RMT for items, gold and characters. People with real cash can buy already leveled chars, plus items and gold for those chars. The fact that only a small part of the population uses it is not the point.

This is only available on a couple servers.

Originally posted by ethion

This is only available on a couple servers.

Nice, I actually never noticed that it was only Vox and the Bazaar. However, being that you can transfer chars from server to server, it is still a problem for any server, as I can buy one on Vox, then transfer him, with items and gold, to any of the others.

Originally posted by Legato89

If so how big of a deal is it? is it like Champions Onlines MT? Or like a free MMO with a cash shop with exp pots for sale?

If you like rmt in games then you will most likely enjoy the rmt as it gets ramped up and up in the game. 

If you do not like rmt in games, then the odds are really high the rmt will cross your tolerance level at some point. 

You will get various answers to how big a deal the rmt currently is, but there is no denying that the rmt efforts of soe have been steadily increasing over the last serveral years.  Both increasing in number of delivery methods and impact of offerings.  The president of soe has stated that he wished the company to transition the majority of their revenue from subscriptions to non-cusbsrciption revenue. 

Personally I don't think it matters how big a deal the rmt is currently, because the direction it is traveling is clear enough.  It just matters how you feel about rmt in a subscription game. 

Originally posted by Moirae

It does and it doesn't. Nothing on the cash shop is useful other than some potions to increase xp gain. They are also selling station transfer buttons on there. Everything else that they sell is all stupid stuff like items for your house that don't give status but look nice, pretty "armor" for your "armor looks" slots, and worthless pets that don't do anything but look pretty.

 

And what djnexus has decided to ignore is that there is ONE item that does that in the two years since it was released so he's way overreacting over nothing. Its an extremely rare item and I have never known anyone who got one in the over 4 years that I've been playing.

It doesent matter the fact that its still there and theres a chance that someone could get it is enough. Just because very few people have gotten it doesent make it right. So its more than just fluff items.

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by ethion

This is only available on a couple servers.

 

Nice, I actually never noticed that it was only Vox and the Bazaar. However, being that you can transfer chars from server to server, it is still a problem for any server, as I can buy one on Vox, then transfer him, with items and gold, to any of the others.

Yeah except you can't.

Anyone can transfer to the Exchange servers for free, Noone can transfer off, ever.

You also can't transfer off PvP servers.

Learn wtf you are talking about, before you open your mouth.

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by ethion

This is only available on a couple servers.

 

Nice, I actually never noticed that it was only Vox and the Bazaar. However, being that you can transfer chars from server to server, it is still a problem for any server, as I can buy one on Vox, then transfer him, with items and gold, to any of the others.

You can only transfer a Toon to a Exchange server not off of an exchange server. So if you start on a PVE server you must pay the 20 bucks for a char transfer to move it to the bazzar. Once there you can not transfer off of that server. Also Same goes for the PVP server. You cant move a toon from a pvp server to a pve server.

So this has no effect on any of the server except for The Bazzar and Vox.

  Ok, I'm confused.   Can you buy XP Potions on any server, or just those 2?  or are the char and item sales only one those 2, but the XP potions and pets and spiffy armor are available on all servers?

Originally posted by Xmudder

  Ok, I'm confused.   Can you buy XP Potions on any server, or just those 2?  or are the char and item sales only one those 2, but the XP potions and pets and spiffy armor are available on all servers?

The latter.  The cash shop items are available on all servers, but it's mostly just for looks, and some XP potions.  I like to take my time leveling up; I have tons of XP potions in unclaimed veteran rewards because I have no current use for faster progression.

The XP potions are basically the heaviest impacting cash shop items in the game. They have various kinds that give a short term bonus to experience gain. Ever since then though they have just been offering more appearance armor and furniture for houses, and using the delivery method for typical MMO services that any decent MMO has (character transfer, name change etc).

The 'dungeon' they offer via LoN is piss poor and ultimately has no impact on the rest of the game. I think some small amount of coin drops but you can easily get better items for your character in dungeons provided in the 'actual' game, its more for LoN lore than anything else.

Originally posted by Dionysus187

The XP potions are basically the heaviest impacting cash shop items in the game. They have various kinds that give a short term bonus to experience gain. Ever since then though they have just been offering more appearance armor and furniture for houses, and using the delivery method for typical MMO services that any decent MMO has (character transfer, name change etc).

The 'dungeon' they offer via LoN is piss poor and ultimately has no impact on the rest of the game. I think some small amount of coin drops but you can easily get better items for your character in dungeons provided in the 'actual' game, its more for LoN lore than anything else.

You have to acknowledge that the threshold for items has been crossed with the latest addition.  It can no longer be said that potions are the only thing that affects the game.  It doesn't matter if it is possible to get better items in the game than those sold in the cash shop, because items are now being directly sold.  Not only that, but they have diverted developer time to creating cash shop only game world area.  Strange that the expansion is delayed, but they have time to create a special dungeon for the cash shop.

Downplaying the impact or quality doesn't really matter, because it sets a clear example of things to come.  There will be more items, more dungeons and who knows what else that will be accessable only by spending cash in the virtual store.   There is more impact of a cash shop than just the items for sale.  It takes developer time to create all this stuff and that is time that is no longer being spent fixing bugs, creating new content and the like for regular updates.

I personally suspect the items will be of good value to entice more people to buy virtual cards in the hopes of getting a winner. 

Not sure where you get the idea that items are being directly sold, they haven't done anything like that, I'm looking at the SC store window right now and the only thing that could remotely effect combat is the potions like I said before. And items gotten through LoN cards isn't items being 'directly sold', that's basically gambling for a 'jackpot' of desired item or paying a certain amount to other players in booster packs you buy that still in the end have very little impact on gameplay and have in game counter parts with better benefits.

Unfortunately they aren't going to be able to tell the true reaction unless they introduce these type of things in small increments. Think about it, they can guess that people won't like getting dungeons through these methods but the chance to make a profit is too great to simply guess here. So they introduce a banign version to test the water. Either people will not even care, thus not buying cards trying to get it OR people will care and try to get the dungeon by spending more money. I most certainly don't agree with what their doing though if they end up making a significant net profit I can't blame them if they eventually keep doing it either.

You can speculate all you want about other things, how they design the game or want to, or however they spend resources, one thing they will always bend to though is what makes them more money. So if people hate it so it doesn't make them money they will stop, if it does make them money they will continue. Unfortunately simply 'unsubscribing' won't be seen as losing money because of something done in LoN but rather EQ2 exclusively, although if card sales don't go up enough to cover the costs of development of this zone or people specifically trying to get the zone in general is very low that will speak volumes about it.

It DOES trouble me about developer time spent on this stuff, but looking at whats being put out via the SC people didn't lose out on a whole lot. Mostly house furniture and appearance items already in the game just dyed or put together in sets, with at most minor changes.

The positive side is FreeRealms has hit them HARD with the reality that microtransactions aren't nearly as big as they would have liked to think at least in the western market. Making all jobs available for free up until level 5, and making all jobs require a subscription to get past level 5. Previously some of the jobs you could level past 5 without a sub. This means they weren't able to lean as hard on their cash shop and it wasn't even a 100% F2P, cash shop game.

Worst case scenario you can look at the biggest microtransaction based MMO's and they still don't sell the best stuff through their service, so speculating they will do something even remotely close to that is just downright ignorant.

Well said Dionysus.  Nice summary of how things are going and I generally agree with you.

Soe (and others) are going to do what they think is going to make them the most money.  The problem is that that hasn't always been what is best for the customers and the health of the game.  Without speculating I think it can be seen that this management style has harmed soes games on numerous occasions and the trend of their micro transaction desires has been getting bigger and bigger with ventures into items and now locations that do affect the game. 

The one word that I think sums it up nicely is 'guess', because nothing that is happening suggests that soe has any clue to what they are doing.  They simply want to achieve something, but once again have no idea what the impact of trying to reach those goals will be.  I do not see much love for this type of thing from their players and as you pointed out, the implosion of free realms might have been the eye opener they need.