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MONTHLY FEE GOING UP!!!!!!
fawd
Member Posts: 367
The origonal Everquest is bumping up their monthly fee! Are you kidding? The game is like 10 years old. Ya, its the funnest game of all time, and it is a classic, but, the price should be going down, not up! Anyone else here really want to see the monthly fees slowly go down?
Comments
http://eqlive.station.sony.com/news_section/newsview.jsp?story=50010
Hah, that sure is lame, they should be decreasing it to attract more players. Don't see why anyone would still play now :, they pull another SOE stunt.
Well, I wouldn't call it a "stunt." They are in business after all and if they can demand a higher price for their product and still sell it, then they have a right to do so.
However, I do agree that it's odd that they are increasing the fees to play an old game. I certainly wouldn't sign up for a subscription. I guess they figure that all the casual EQ players have left for greener pastures. What's left are the hard-corps who might be willing to pay a few bucks extra. I guess only time will tell.
-Let's all be ignorant!
Yes, that s because it s their only source of good income.
Since EQ2 is a flop, they are trying to milk the only fat cow they got left in the stables.................EQ
They know that EQ players love too much that game to leave it (Yes some will, but majority will stay).
They also know, that If they will attempt something similar with EQ2, they will probably cause a mass exodus and they will be left with only 2 people playing that game...........John Smedley and the Producer.
Actually who am I kidding, they are not even playing their game, cause they are too busy taking unpopular and ill advised descisions.
Greedy morons................
Surely its just to cover their costs.
The people they pay for things (electricity, wages, building rent) etc. will all be increasing their charges in line with inflation/economy etc. so they will have to aswell.
If people are still willing to pay it for an old game then fair play to them!
prices in every sector raised in the last 10 years, do you really think server cost decreased ?
furthermore income expectations alos raised and salries...
there is only point what we can dow, cause we consumer have the power - we just dont play it
----ITS A TRAP!!!----
They dont have JUST the servers to think of.
Look at the economy!!! Fuel, rent, phones, services (cleaning, maintainence), Bills (electricity, water), the average wage, tax . . . . etc
They are all going up all the time. You can't expect a company to keep the same service for the same cost over time. If where you worked didnt offer you a rise each year AT LEAST in line with inflation, would you still work there? I know i wouldn't.
I dont blame them for raising it to be honest, if people are still enjoying the game, I'm sure they would prefer to pay a little more than suffer a degradation in service.
when i first read what u said i said "hey that cant be right only about 3000 subscriptions shoudl cover that"
but then i realized how much they spent on EQ2 and how big of a flop its become ever since their decisions.
So i think you could be right this could be to cover their basic expenses......
Anyway i think that SOE will be dead soon. Bliz finally killed em by making classical decisions that are proven to be unadventurous and right. Their is nothin new with WoW, just bunch of old concepts put together into one game. Its less risky and more likely to work.
If SOE had taken risks like a new type of combat system, or per say something to change the game adn see what would happen. THen i would be supporting them.
but i cannot approve thier decisions.
they must rot in hell....
98% of the teenage population does or has tried smoking pot. If you''re one of the 2% who hasn''t, copy & paste this in your signature.
if MMO developers/publishers keep doing this, Say good bye to MMOs. I don't think how anyone in their right mind would pay $20 each month to play a damn game.That's like a new game every month.and don't come and say there aren't $20 games, because there are plenty of em'.
Actually with SOE if you pay $21 a month you get 7 games .. EQ,EQ2,SW:G and Planetside among them..
Make a difference!
It depends what you mean by flop.
Of course EQ2 has lots of customers (around 250.000 at launch) but the number are lower than EQ subscribers (500.000) and much lower than WoW subscribers (1.500.000 and growing).
Plus from launch, EQ2 subscribers are decreasing quite fast, they are not increasing at all.
Therefore, considering all the hype for this game, and the poor results achieved, we can say that EQ2 is a flop.
1. EQ2 is not a flop. As long as EQ2 has 100k or more accounts, after it reaches the 1 year mark, it is a bona fid success.
2. EQ right now does NOT have 500k accounts! LOL! It has a solid 200k accounts. Possibly 300k accounts. SoE is in the process of consolodating roughly half of all EQ servers. The main reason is lack of players (due mostly to EQ2 siphering them away from EQ. And somewhat from other MMORPGs also siphering EQ players.)
3. EQ right now costs nothing for SoE to run it! EQ originally cost 5 million to make. SoE spent 30 million to buy it back from Varant Games/Smeadly. EQ to date has generated (conservative estimate:) 200 million. (Liberal estimate:) 1 Billion dollars. The profits from EQ alone were enough to allow SoE to make THREE MORE MMORPGs! PS, SWG, EQ2. That's roughly 65-70 million taken from EQ's profits to make 3 more MMORPGs! Then there is the TON of EQ expansions each which cost roughly 1-5 million to make. Some were even almost free to make (like the Bazaar!).
35 million (total SOE spent making EQ and buying it back) + 65 million = 100 million alone in profits spent. Add cost of expansions and it is even more. EQ is an insane money maker, insane profit maker, and still is.
4. The real reason why the individual cost of EQ is going up, has nothing to do with EQ. It has to do with SOE's
All Access Pass
SOE is trying to push players into signing up for the All Access Pass. It is an experiment. Just like SOE did an experiement charging more than twice the monthly subscription for premium EQ servers. The All Access Pass was thought of, and mentioned, when SWG first came out. It was first tested when EQ2 came out. It is now being further tested.
EQ, EQ2, PS, Infantry, Cosmic Rift, *SWG* = possible total of 6 online games for the one price of the All Access Pass. SOE also has more other lesser games. (I never had any intrest in them. Though I did play Tanarius a few times.)
-Personal Website (A Work still in progress):
http://www.geocities.com/xplororor/index.html
-AC, AC2, AO, EQ, Freelancer, SWG:
http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor
-More SWG:
http://community.webshots.com/user/captain_sica_xol
-More EQ, Dungeon Siege, *UXO*, Diablo II:Lords of Destruction:
http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor_archives01
-EverQuest II, Horizons:
http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor_eq2archives01
-EVE Online !!!
http://community.webshots.com/user/sica_xol_archives01
-DAoC
http://community.webshots.com/user/sica_xol_archives02
-Coming sooner or later... CoH, WoW, MXO, UO, GW, As3, RS
Let's me retake Xploror maths.
First, you dont add up the 30 millions Sony pay with whatever cost before, because the 30 millions cover all this in itself.
Second, you need to think like a bank. 30 millions investment. If in the first year EQ have an average of 350k subscribers, it mean something like 42 millions revenus. Off which you need to take the 2.5 millions ''interest'' they have to pay(or could have earn elsewhere) on the 30 millions investment in a year. You then could repay the 30 millions completely to remove any further interest cost, it still leave you with a raw profit of 9.5 millions. Now you pay all the devs, the electricity, tax income and everything, and you realize EQ is possibly in the red after the first year of been purchased, depending on many factors that we have troubles to estimate, like the subscriptions and the actual salary of Johny himself!
The second year profit is prolly completely spended in the various expenses (and 2 years of expensions), and the secret deals they have here and there. Did Brad get his job with Microsoft on his own alone? Maybe, maybe not.
Now with all the remaining years they make profits that they need to respent completely in expensions, others MMORPGs, income for Sony(eh, dont think Sony dont eventually get some income for it treasuries...)
Buying EQ was good for Sony, but EQ ''coffers'' are prolly empty, and I would not wage that the subscriptions for EQ cover it expense those days.
Will SoE died soon? No. At worst Johny will ''find'' a better job. It hapen to Brad, if Johny fail to deliver what he must have promised to Sony(and only your imagination can try to embrace the wild oaths he prolly undertake to Sony), he may get a new job soon, within or outside Sony.
To take a Xploror approach may seem more ''logical'', but Sony think like a bank, and for Sony, EQ coffers are empty. And SoE coffers are empty.
The new Star Wars movie and the CU(WoWification) may help their Star Wars title to get bored WoW players...and if you think WoW is growing, you are biaised. I have more RL friends playing EQ then WoW...WoW is declining, dropping like a rock. And they start talking about more raiding stuff...that is somewhat familiar, aint it?
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Originally posted by pinkdaisy
[b]
Originally posted by xplororor
1. EQ2 is not a flop. As long as EQ2 has 100k or more accounts, after it reaches the 1 year mark, it is a bona fid success.
That is an overly simple statement. A game with 100k subscribers could be making alot of money, or losing alot of money. The analysis isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
2. EQ right now does NOT have 500k accounts! LOL! It has a solid 200k accounts. Possibly 300k accounts. SoE is in the process of consolodating roughly half of all EQ servers. The main reason is lack of players (due mostly to EQ2 siphering them away from EQ. And somewhat from other MMORPGs also siphering EQ players.)
Actually according to [url=http://www.mmogchart.com/] EQ has more than 450k subscribers. Care to cite your source for your figures? Again EQ population is near its peak, not on it's death bed.
3. EQ right now costs nothing for SoE to run it! EQ originally cost 5 million to make.
Not true. Yes much of the cost of making an MMO is "upfront, explicit cost" but those aren't the only costs involved. There are recurring or "unit" costs which continue as long as the game is running. Server maintenance, bandwidth, customer service staff, programmers for bug fixes, team that adds new content. None of this is free, and none of it is trivial either.
SoE spent 30 million to buy it back from Varant Games/Smeadly. EQ to date has generated (conservative estimate:) 200 million. (Liberal estimate:) 1 Billion dollars.
Roughly 6 years of operation. Currently over 450k subscribers, but let's take a historical average of say 300k (note this isn't totally accurate, but will get us relatively close). Also, i think that EQ originally charged closer to $10/month -- i could be wrong on this as well, someone would have to enlighten me to calculate the figures more precisely. Thus if we take 300,000x12x6x10=216 million USD in revenues from subscriptions. We could do similar analysis of the retail box prices x number sold for the original box and all the expansions. I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but i do know that a bulk of the revenue from MMOs comes from the subscriptions, not the retail box sales. Thus we can assume that the revenue from retail boxes is most likely less than the 216million in revenue generated from subscriptions.
So, a few hundred million in total revenues since launch? Sure, 1 billion in revenues, nope keep punching those calculator keys.
The profits from EQ alone were enough to allow SoE to make THREE MORE MMORPGs! PS, SWG, EQ2. That's roughly 65-70 million taken from EQ's profits to make 3 more MMORPGs! Then there is the TON of EQ expansions each which cost roughly 1-5 million to make. Some were even almost free to make (like the Bazaar!).
35 million (total SOE spent making EQ and buying it back) + 65 million = 100 million alone in profits spent. Add cost of expansions and it is even more. EQ is an insane money maker, insane profit maker, and still is.
Pure conjecture. Any links to back these claims?
4. The real reason why the individual cost of EQ is going up, has nothing to do with EQ. It has to do with SOE's
All Access Pass
SOE is trying to push players into signing up for the All Access Pass. It is an experiment. Just like SOE did an experiement charging more than twice the monthly subscription for premium EQ servers. The All Access Pass was thought of, and mentioned, when SWG first came out. It was first tested when EQ2 came out. It is now being further tested.
EQ, EQ2, PS, Infantry, Cosmic Rift, *SWG* = possible total of 6 online games for the one price of the All Access Pass. SOE also has more other lesser games. (I never had any intrest in them. Though I did play Tanarius a few times.)
Ok, this one might actually stick. Whether it is more profitable for SOE to encourage people to pay for an individual game or the station pass has alot to do with their playerbase. If -- and i don't know the answer to this, but SOE has all the info from their users and thus the answer -- the vast majority of players subscribe to only a single SOE game at a time, then it might well be more profitable for SOE to get them to sign up for the station pass. At some percentage and above, it becomes more profitable not to have the station pass.
The most profitable plan can be figured exactly with subscriber numbers for each game, the monthly cost of each game, the retail box costs and frequency of expansion packs, what percentage of players for each game buy the expansion packs, what percentage of players opt-in for the station pass, and most importantly we need to know what % of SOE players subscribe to one game only. If we have all that data then we could calculate which one would make them more money. We don't have all the figures (especially the percentage ones) but SOE does and i'm sure they've run the numbers.[/b]
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Thanks Pinkdaisy, for your reply, you saved me lots of time
This answer is for Xplororor.
"flop" is something that didn't met the hype.
It doesn't necessarly means that is a total failure, it just means that the product performed less than expected.
And EQ2 performed less than expected, both against its old brother EQ, and even lesser than WoW which has 6 times EQ2 subscribers.
I don't think that Mr Smedley wanted to make such an expensive game with the aim of achieving 200K subscribers. That's not the way business works.
Their goal was at least to overtake EQ subscribers by 250K, making it a total of 750K.
When you launch a new product, your aim is always to make better than the previous product, these are the basic rules of business.
In this case EQ2 didn't achieve its target by a long way.
Of course that doesn't mean that 200K subscribers is a failure, I am not expecting SoE staff begging for money on the street any time soon.
Never than less compared to the big hype and the relatively low success it achieved, I consider EQ2 a flop (And EQ subscribers are paying the bill for it, that s why SoE increased the prices of EQ).
Double post
Games Played » AO | EvE | RyL | EQ | SwG | WoW | MxO | CoH | GW
If they added Henchman I might come back to EQ but as is? I have little desire to fight for a position so my bard can 'raid'.
I also find it hard to believe that people are comming back when they consolidated their servers.
Realmreaver formally of EQ, SWG, FFXI and WoW.
Malis/Pirotess of PSO.
Some named of Diablo 1 and 2
Grendel Kinguard of GW.