Seriously SE???

[Obysuca]

great content updates

>_> Just going to be "that guy" but 3 dungeons, 2 of which being rehashed versions of older ones, maybe 4-5 story quests and a fight you do once and never again and expected to last you another 3-4 months is not "great content updates"



40.00 is a bit much imo, I remember when expansions were 20.00 (pre-WoW), so no, they haven't been "that way for ages", they've just been like it since WoW. Which is kind of being ripped off in a way, considering on release, you'll only get maybe 5% of an expansion, which is usually 4-6 new zones, ~10 story quests and maybe like 3 fights and considering its a 10 lvl increase, maybe like 3-4 dungeons, if that. Half of those, you won't ever do again after you do it once. If there was maybe 10 new zones, 20-30ish quests, closer to 10 fights and more than 3-4 dungeons, then sure, 40.00 might be a valid price, but for what amount of content expansions give on release, 40.00 is a bit of a rip off.
I'm sure the people who are blindly following SE as they say "it'll have as much content as 2.0 did", have probably never played a SE mmo before (XI, 1.0 etc), so you wouldn't know that when SE says something, 90% chance is that they don't follow through with it, so I doubt we'll get "as much as 2.0 had".

[Nominous]

I'm all for questioning conventions and not burying your head in the sand but if you want SE to listen, don't buy it. Because I mean we'd all like to pay less for things in general but in the end of you are willing to buy it for the price then SE did their job well and estimated a good selling price.

Not buying their game is a vague suggestion to the company, at best. There's many conclusions they can come to from lower profits, but without asking customers, they wouldn't know.

Even still. It's not something worth questioning, or trying to change. It's a fine line for businesses to 'haggle' prices with customers. The customer will always want either equivalent, or lesser than the amount that would actually allow the company to make any decent profit. That's nice and all for the consumer, but then the business is at higher risk of failure, the lesser their profit. Just let the business professionals do what they do in making these prices, and understand that it's a tough pill to swallow.

They make the prices with a mixture of greed, market trends, what's reasonable and not, and I'm sure tons of other variables. The consumer has it easy in saying that the price is 'too high', but the best perspective we have on the 'right' price is the perceived value we get from the entertainment inside. It's all fine and dandy, we're right to have opinions as consumers, but it isn't going to help us, or the company if they're losing money instead of making it lol.

[Zumi]

40 bucks for the standard edition expansion is below what blizzard charged for their latest expansion which was 50 bucks.

[TouchandFeel]

Wait, we have to PAY for content in a game where we already PAY monthly??

That's the real rip off. This should be completely free. Why else are we customers otherwise??

You pay for the expansion because it costs money to make.

The money from subscriptions goes mainly to hardware/server upkeep and maintenance, the salaries of the development team that is focused on the content updates, marketing and distribution, utility costs such as electricity, etc.
Essentially, it pays the majority of the basic costs of running a MMO.

Expansions in MMO's are pretty much always handled by another group (the expansion team) that is separate from the group that maintains and updates the live game (the live team). The expansion team is often as large as or even larger than the live team, so essentially you have almost an entire second Dev team building the expansion. Couple that with the fact that an MMO expansion, particularly a content heavy one, can take a very long time to make sometimes almost a year and you have a pretty large development cost that the company has to recoup.

That is why MMO expansions cost money on top of the subscription people already pay, because making it costs the company money on top of the costs necessary to just keep the game live.
Subscriptions keep the game live, expansion costs allow them to make expansions.

[kyuven]

not sure, but somehow it bothers me if I pay $40 for an expansion after 1+ year playing loyalty and then there will be a version ARR+Heavensward $50 or less. I will continue playing for sure but it builds up when you pay 3 accounts (mine and my two son's accounts)

For your loyalty, you get veteran rewards.
All are equal in the face of expansion content.
Hell, expansions area great way for those newish to the game to actually have a shot at being competitive with the veterans as whole new swaths of content are introduced, new means for gearing up, etc.

[CGMidlander]

It's amazing how many blind followers not only acquiesce in being ripped off.
The don't even question it anymore.

good job, gaming industry. good job.

I say: 3$ discount for every month subscribed.

Personalized pricing would cause support headaches and cannot be done for the physical copies.

[Gramul]

Welcome to gaming?

This shouldn't be an excuse.
Expansions should have no reason to cost more than the games they're expanding on.

The cost of the game itself.
The subscription fee.
The cash shop items.
The additional retainers.
The wedding ceremonies.
The special edition upgrades.
Square is using this game to milk as much return as they can and I'm not really sure why people are so okay with it. With every addition, I hear "Oh it's just a small thing. / It's just a visual trinket. / Oh it's not that much."

Why the unfaltering support of a practice that takes from you with little clear overall return?

[kyuven]

Personalized pricing would cause support headaches and cannot be done for the physical copies.

I can already imagine how bad it will be when the expansion goes live.
No matter how good your content is, when something new comes, people bitch to support.

[Kazumac]

Not buying their game is a vague suggestion to the company, at best.

Hardly, it is probably the most telling thing you can do. Seeing less than expected sales will force a change in price as long as the company feels it will increase their profits to do so. Posters say it's too high of a price. If they truly believe that then they shouldn't buy it.

It doesn't preclude other things as input for better understanding but saying it's too high of a price then going out and buying it doesn't really tell SE anything other than that SE set the right price.

I feel the price point is fine /shrug I'll be buying it along with probably the majority of everyone else.

[DoctorPepper]

Not buying their game is a vague suggestion to the company, at best. There's many conclusions they can come to from lower profits, but without asking customers, they wouldn't know.

I disagree with this statement, people already voted with their wallets during 1.0 and succeeded in getting the entire game revamped because of it. That said, I think it's the only way for people to really get their way. The hard part is getting other people to agree enough to not play the game that they're dying to play.

I don't think see any problem with the expansion price either though. I've never played a game that didn't charge for their expansions, nothing new to see here folks. Odds are the expansion is coming with over 100 hours worth of entertainment (call it what you will but I consider it entertainment) and that makes me feel like I'm getting my monies worth, subscription or not.