Well, Station Cash is live now. So, while SOE scrambles to put together a press release on the subject, I’ll be happy to fill you in on what’s live in-game right now.
First off, I accessed Station Cash through the new “marketplace” option in the main “EQ2″ menu. Once in, I’m shown that my in-game wallet has 150SC points already. There are several items up for sale already, ranging from 100SC to 1000SC. The items are, as follows:
- Flask of Achievements I -100SC
- Flask of Adventuring I – 100SC
- Flask of Tradecrafting I – 100SC
- Slimy (housepet) - 100SC
- Flask of Achievements II -300SC
- Flask of Adventuring II – 300SC
- Flask of Tradecrafting II – 300SC
- Grunting Warrior (housepet) -300SC
- Knight of Shadow’s End (fluff pet) – 400SC
- Handy Servant (housepet) – 500SC
- Zhog, Ghoz’s Little Brother (fluff pet) – 700SC
- Flask of Achievements III -1000SC
- Flask of Adventuring III – 1000SC
- Flask of Tradecrafting III – 1000SC
- Seafury Buccaneer Armor Crate (full set of fluff armor) - 1000SC
- Tunarian Alliance Armor Crate (full set of fluff armor) – 1000SC
The potions are all experience bonus potions. The Tier I and II potions last for 4 hours, while the Tier III lasts for 2 hours. The Tier I give 10% bonus, the Tier II give 25% bonus, while the Tier III give 50%.
While in the Marketplace window, you have the option to add funds to your wallet. Choosing that option lets me know that I don’t currently have a payment source selected for my account (which leads me to believe that entering my credit card information might be a one time action). After entering my information, I close the in-game browser which opened and close the marketplace window. Upon re-opening the window, I’m now able to make purchases to add points to my wallet.
As suspected, each point is worth $.01. Adding $10.00 would give you 1000SC, for example. To test the system out, I buy 500SC for 5 bucks (the smallest amount possible). The transaction requires my credit card’s security code, which I key in, and the transaction completes instantly. In my wallet, I now see 650SC (the 500 I just purchased, plus the initial 150 free points I started with). I decided to go with an Achievements potion since I’m working on that today in-game, so I choose the Flask of Achievements II for 300SC. The transaction takes a couple of seconds to process, but when it’s done, I have 350SC left in my wallet, and a brand new achievements potion already in my inventory.
So, there you have it. Whether or not you agree with the system, it’s at least fairly easy to use and the functionality works exactly as expected.
After looking at the items, I decided … I don’t care. Really. I might even buy a house pet. The potions are similar to what we get with veteran rewards (and don’t stack) and the rest is fluff. LoN booster packs are more game-breaking (and I admit it, I’ve bought some to trade for items I really wanted! I love house items)
[...] a tough day to be an SOE community manager. This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am in Community, Game Design. You [...]
Given the item select it isn’t that big of a deal.
I wish more games would do this for those of us who want to level an alt as quickly as possible.
[...] More details on Kendricke’s blog. [...]
[...] more details you can read about it from Kendricke. He covered it very [...]
two words to SOE
SEE YA
5 words to Smed
LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE
wow, that stuff being offered is so incredibly lame. The armor looks like stuff I could get on the broker. The only thing mildly useful are the potions, but I have plenty of those already anyway. I find it amusing that people are so upset over such a lackluster offering.
Joshua: Of course the offering is incredibly lame, SOE isn’t that stupid, in fact I dare say they are kind of smart. If they rolled out this program and you were able to straight out purchase your mythical weapon for your class, they would lose a large portion of their player base suddenly and quickly. Instead they started this program a long time ago with LoN. They slowly got the player base used to the idea that they could purchase in game items with real money, even if it was difficult to do and somewhat expensive. Still I know at least a few players who dropped a large amount of money getting some of the LoN items. This was just the next logical step. I am actually surprised that so many players were surprised by the station cash. I saw it coming the day they put LoN into the game. Very slowly as they start to add more things to the Marketplace, the items will start to slowly blur the line between fluff items and actual useful items, because lets face it, if they can offer items which aren’t game breaking but are useful, they will find a much larger market. The player base that doesn’t care for RMT will slowly leave the game, or change their minds and decide it isn’t so bad. This way they can add RMT to the game without getting the harsh NGE like backlash if they did it all at once.
[...] is that they are selling stuff for way too much money. When almost half (7 out of 16 in EQ2) of the items you are selling are at or above that financially viable threshold, you are (in my opinion) doing it [...]
The system is fine while the items are lame, but what happens when they’re highly desirable and Station Cash (and not clever gameplay) is the only way you can obtain them?
It’s still a game. A person still doesn’t -have- to buy them. If a person feels compelled to do so, that’s still on them. They can chose to not participate. It’s very simple, don’t do it. Their character might what? do .5 less dps? Do 100 less? 1000? And if that’s a deal breaker for them, then that person needs to walk away. At the end of the day, it’s still a game.
If someone isn’t enjoying the game, they should leave, for whatever reason.
That’s just my opinion on it. I enjoy playing, love my character. I also know that there will always be someone who has better stuff than me. I have the best stuff I can afford with my plat.. I’m OK with that. Someone else getting something doesn’t change my gameplay.
I’ve been following (reading) the thread on the official forums. While I agree with Kendricke’s assertion there that nobody outside the SOE walls is privy to the cancellation data, it’s important to remember that the only folks who can post to the official forums are current subscribers.
One of your recent comments in that thread says “How many of players are actually cancelling? Do you know? I don’t. I can guess. I can put some numbers up. I can talk about how many people I’ve talked to in-game said they’re thinking of cancelling (there weren’t that many). …and then I can tell how many of them keep logging in anyway (all of them so as of last night).”
Well, the players that are canceling are obviously not logging in anymore to say they’ve canceled, and they cannot post to the forums to respond to your solicitation. They (we) are simply gone.
SC
Per Smed on that same forum discussion:
“We absolutely carefully monitor the amount of people that click cancel each day (as well as other metrics related to cancellations, including many different trends we monitor). That number has held steady. We have 4 years of data on this and we monitor it very closely.Our unique logins and concurrent usage is up, although I don’t want to imply that I believe Station Cash has anything to do with it. I don’t.”
So, you tell me how many more cancellations there are. Smed says “held steady”. Either he’s lying or we’re fooling ourselves into thinking there are more cancellations than usual.
I read the interview on Massively. Given his track record (as others have attempted to point out to on the official forums) his statements are not credible.
He has the benefit of hiding behind SOEs policy of keeping it’s numbers close the vest.
Other games are much more forthcoming with those numbers. I don’t begrudge SOE it’s business practices…it can do what it likes obviously. But relying solely on the statements of a man whose very job and financial viability rely on keeping the population as stable as possible has it’s own questionable logic. Surprising from someone normally much more logical.
You and I may never know the net result of introducing SC to EQ2. The point of my initial comment is that people are canceling. I can only speak to my own actions. I just wanted to let you know, since we are no longer able to respond to your postings/inquiries on the Official Forums.
SC
FYI, based on my census data (which, by your logic carries just as much weight as Smedleys–I said it, so it must be true) overall subscriptions have declined over the last three years. A significant drop occurred in Sept/Oct 2008, corresponding to the end of the LL campaign, which did not appear to be as successful as was probably hoped. Numbers of course were up with ToS, but were still below mid-summer. All of this data was, until my sub ran out, available on my website: eq2census.com. It has since been dismantled.
BTW, I canceled prior to SC being introduced. SC was not the reason I canceled my subscription. The reasons were enumerated in a posting (in the NGD) titled “Dear Antonia.”
I realized, based on the origins of the current debate that this might be misunderstood.
SC
[...] nice points Darren wants SOE to really go nuts Tipa has some info on EQ/EQ2’s shiny new RMT Clockwork Gamer also has some info on what Station Cash can buy for ya Zenke has some suggestions for SOE and Blizzard syncaine is all over Blizzard for it Mike (via [...]
eq2census.com was a great site, I used to keep myself busy plotting trends in Excel based on periodic snapshots. It would be awesome if it could come back to life in its original form or a replacement.
[...] offering RMT in EQ and EQ2 via their Station Cash program. I personally found some of the items they were offering for $10 to be over-priced fluff being just appearance items. Darren thought they lacked substance, but [...]
[...] you have Station Cash, which has been around for a while now and which was not met with enthusiasm. (And it still has the purists screaming. See race change [...]