Anytime you have separation point between a publisher and a developer, the question is inevitably raised as to just how much control the publisher has in the relationship. We have seen publishers take over development of a game from its developers all the way down to publishers only capable of forwarding bug reports to the developers for them to fix. The ultimate answer we seek in judging where the scale tips is so we know who to blame when the things hit the fan and players want to know who is responsible for mucking things up.
In the case of ArcheAge, at least we know that Trion is in full control of the cash shop. As Community Manager Scapes posted, Trion controls the content and the pricing.
“We decide what’s in it and at what price, simple as that.”
You can check out the entire Q&A at the link below.
Trion’s latest DLC pack has released, ushering in new arenas, new missions, new weapons, and more. What it also brought is a new cash shop item that has members of the community in arms. The Legendary Weapon Kit comes packed with one random legendary weapon and a set of random epic mods for said weapon. All for the low low price of roughly $100.
Defiance’s community manager Evan “Scapes” Berman responded on the forums to explain that the price.
This wasn’t a number we pulled out of thin air. It was based on analysis of store use data and existing lock box prices and functionality. An Epic Mod Hoard is 700 bits and grants four random mods at epic rarity. A Tier 4 Lock Box is 400 bits and grants four random weapons at random rarity between rare and legendary. The Legendary Weapon Kit is 10,000 bits (currently discounted 20% to 8,000 bits) and grants a one of each type of mod at epic rarity matched to a random weapon at legendary rarity. This price is based on the average cost of purchasing Epic Mod Hoards and Tier 4 Lock Boxes to get the same value: a legendary weapon fully loaded with epic mods.
One hundred dollars for a weapon that there is no guarantee will be useful? Are people really buying this kit? Of course they are.
Simply put, we were seeing purchases of it the moment the servers came back online. If it wasn’t moving at its current price, we’d change it. And agreed, the Legendary Weapon Kit isn’t intended to be “content” per se, but instead offering a (premium) convenience for players who elect it.
Trion’s latest DLC pack has released, ushering in new arenas, new missions, new weapons, and more. What it also brought is a new cash shop item that has members of the community in arms. The Legendary Weapon Kit comes packed with one random legendary weapon and a set of random epic mods for said weapon. All for the low low price of roughly $100.
Defiance’s community manager Evan “Scapes” Berman responded on the forums to explain that the price.
This wasn’t a number we pulled out of thin air. It was based on analysis of store use data and existing lock box prices and functionality. An Epic Mod Hoard is 700 bits and grants four random mods at epic rarity. A Tier 4 Lock Box is 400 bits and grants four random weapons at random rarity between rare and legendary. The Legendary Weapon Kit is 10,000 bits (currently discounted 20% to 8,000 bits) and grants a one of each type of mod at epic rarity matched to a random weapon at legendary rarity. This price is based on the average cost of purchasing Epic Mod Hoards and Tier 4 Lock Boxes to get the same value: a legendary weapon fully loaded with epic mods.
One hundred dollars for a weapon that there is no guarantee will be useful? Are people really buying this kit? Of course they are.
Simply put, we were seeing purchases of it the moment the servers came back online. If it wasn’t moving at its current price, we’d change it. And agreed, the Legendary Weapon Kit isn’t intended to be “content” per se, but instead offering a (premium) convenience for players who elect it.
World of Warcraft’s in-game store has arrived in the form of the Battle.net shop. Right now the cash shop is rather limited, offering access to the standard fluff players have come to know and either love or hate from Blizzard’s web client. Vanity pets run about $10, with mounts at $25, although most items from both sets are 50% off for the time being to celebrate the launch. Grab them before they go back to regular price on January 1st.
Zenimax’s Matt Firor stated in an interview that Elder Scrolls Online required a box price and subscription because free to play, while valid, just wasn’t compatible for the game that they were building. So with Zenimax claiming that the experience is all about being able to enjoy the game for a flat subscription with no monetization being shoved in the player’s face, instinctively I asked how long it would take before Zenimax confirmed a cash shop. I expected something more like a few months after launch, not twenty four hours after the article was published.
An article on ESO Hub confirms through Matt Firor that Elder Scrolls Online will have a cash shop.
According to Matt Firor will be available in The Elder Scrolls Online an item shop, where her character fun items and services you can buy as a renaming of the character.
BUT! I am still holding my breath on this one. Account services like renaming being an added fee is pretty standard even going back to subscription games without cash shops. Now the question is regarding what Zenimax considers to be “fun items.”
Ferrets are adorable, they are like a cute rodent with the intelligence of a pig, playfulness of a puppy, and the ability to poop in a litterbox like a cat. They are mischievous and will steal your car keys and go joy riding and if you’re really not paying attention may end up joining a chain gang and I’m sorry I’m getting distracted by that picture up top. At the same time, I fall into the category of people who will never own a ferret thanks to a fantastic allergy to pet hair, all of it. So to compensate I’ve delegated myself to crazy virtual pet guy, which is like the guy down the street who owns thirty cats but on the internet.
Age of Wushu has introduced a new pet ferret that can only be obtained between June 11th and June 23rd, and the process to retrieve it is simple: Top your account off with 2000 gold. How much is two thousand gold, you might be asking? Well let’s head on over to the Snail Games page where we can top off our accounts and-
Oh…
Six hundred dollars. To obtain this pet ferret, Snail Games expects you to top off your account with six hundred dollars. To put that into perspective, with that same money I could buy a real ferret and keep it alive longer than the gold would last me in Age of Wushu. I could invest that $600 and have my money make money. Or make three months payments on my car (loan plus insurance). Or upgrade my computer with a new video card and some ram. Or try and bribe a politician, something useful.
At the end of the day, this is simply a gift for players topping up their accounts with a lot of money. If Snail Games decides not to sell the ferret by itself on the cash shop (assuming they aren’t already), that is their own marketing failure and they are ultimately the only ones who will be hurt by it.
Ferrets are adorable, they are like a cute rodent with the intelligence of a pig, playfulness of a puppy, and the ability to poop in a litterbox like a cat. They are mischievous and will steal your car keys and go joy riding and if you’re really not paying attention may end up joining a chain gang and I’m sorry I’m getting distracted by that picture up top. At the same time, I fall into the category of people who will never own a ferret thanks to a fantastic allergy to pet hair, all of it. So to compensate I’ve delegated myself to crazy virtual pet guy, which is like the guy down the street who owns thirty cats but on the internet.
Age of Wushu has introduced a new pet ferret that can only be obtained between June 11th and June 23rd, and the process to retrieve it is simple: Top your account off with 2000 gold. How much is two thousand gold, you might be asking? Well let’s head on over to the Snail Games page where we can top off our accounts and-
Oh…
Six hundred dollars. To obtain this pet ferret, Snail Games expects you to top off your account with six hundred dollars. To put that into perspective, with that same money I could buy a real ferret and keep it alive longer than the gold would last me in Age of Wushu. I could invest that $600 and have my money make money. Or make three months payments on my car (loan plus insurance). Or upgrade my computer with a new video card and some ram. Or try and bribe a politician, something useful.
At the end of the day, this is simply a gift for players topping up their accounts with a lot of money. If Snail Games decides not to sell the ferret by itself on the cash shop (assuming they aren’t already), that is their own marketing failure and they are ultimately the only ones who will be hurt by it.
Cash shops can be a major pain in the rear, especially if you’re the type of player who would take Bioware up on their 350 character slot limit. Buying multiple copies of the same piece of cosmetic clothing or vanity pet can get pretty expensive when you’re looking at three, four, or more alternate characters. As a measure of good customer service, many MMOs allow for cosmetic unlocks to be available account-wide, enticing users who might otherwise be dissuaded by the threat of high-costs to open up their wallet.
Starting today in The Secret World, it will be possible to unlock pets account-wide for the cost of 25% over the base cost of the pet. So for instance if a single pet cost 200 Funcom points (not a real estimate), the cost to unlock account-wide would be 250 Funcom points. If you already own the pet as of the transition, you will simply have to pay the 25% extra cost in order to unlock them account-wide. Additionally, Funcom will be rolling out the veteran reward system soon. Players who purchase a subscription will receive relevant points at the start of the period, including multi-month subscribers as well as Grand Masters (lifetime accounts). Funcom is planning on adding in a large variety of items, although the total list has not been fleshed out.
I had a chance to see Age of Wushu at New York Comic Con, which intrepid sleuths should take to mean “there was a line about two hours long to play it.” The people I did manage to watch play while staring over their shoulders, however, seemed to be having a fun time. Regardless, news broke this week from Age of Wushu in China that the developers have installed two cash shop exclusive skills. While it is unlikely that this system will be anything but popular in China, Snail Game is walking on eggshells if they expect the same system to work in the western hemisphere once Age of Wushu hits North America and Europe.
For their defense, the two skills are mostly for cosmetic reasons, versions of other skills that simply have better animations. RuneScape does this in a similar fashion by selling premium animations for actions like chopping wood and cooking food. According to players in the Chinese game, the skills aren’t very useful barring perhaps one or two, and players are buying them for little reason other than to feel special. While Snail Games has not dived into the realm of selling advantages, gamers should certainly keep an eye on the game’s Chinese servers.
File this one under undermining your own values. A good long time ago I reported that Jagex was considering adding an authenticator-style security dongle to RuneScape, an idea that was scrapped after community backlash over a very simple perk. In order to encourage people to buy the dongle, Jagex wanted to offer a small expansion in bank space. Ultimately, of course, the reason Jagex gave for the withdrawal was that the company considered selling bank space as an unfair advantage, and that doing so would violate the company’s policy of not selling in-game advantages for cash.
Welcome to 2012, Jagex. In today’s update, players are now able to buy bank space. Not just a small amount of bank space, up to 250 extra spaces. Nonmembers will be able to expand their bank up to 4.2 (over the current 78) times its current limit, and allow members to increase their bank space by around 50% (over the current 468). Each expansion costs approximately $8 and offers 50 extra bank spaces, the whole group will cost around $40.
So did Jagex lie about the Bank of RuneScape image being fake, or was the appearance of the image last week just a really well timed coincidence?
MMO Fallout 