'How CCP expect to win money on this if they charge like a eyeball for something that dosent you even need???'

I love reading about EVE and was interested to read how Incarna turned out, but CCP has let the sheepskin slip as wolfish greed is revealed in their avatar shop pricing. Items are very expensive, but more importantly, instead of mere vanity items available for purchase the (leaked) plan was apparently to sell gameplay items - a huge no-no.

Comments from Massively and EVE forums:

'I honestly think the reason we're going to see more of this in the future is because WoW got away with it. They charged half the price of an expansion for access to a virtual item on top of a $15 sub fee and people were falling all over themselves to buy it, so there's no reason for a company like CCP to expect to do anything with this but print money.'

'Well? Are you all happy yet? You let the companies put Micro-Transactions in Pay To Play games, and now they cost more than a boxed version of the game, much less a frelling Expansion pack. Now they just sit on their duffs pumping out more of this cash shop crap instead of boxing up expansions. Never, NEVER, EVER! Is it a good idea for a P2P to have Micro-transactions, save for things like their expansion packs and character slots.'

I don't know much about it, but it seems vets are sitting on huge stores of PLEX, which might have something to do with the pricing.

Does the sentiment below sound familiar?

'(a) vets are extremely demanding customers. They remember every single word you said in public for the past 8 years and will try to hold you to it, they will tell every newbie about how your company messed up 4 years ago (which is ridiculous considering the average time your customers stick with EVE), they will tell everyone that the game is horribly broken (in areas that your average customer is not likely to experience ever), moan about abandoned features, ...

It's pretty much the same list of reasons that make newbies much better recruits for in-game corps than vets - the newbies might not own their own supercapital and have 20 alts but they are adorable, enthusiastic, extremely loyal if you hand them some breadcrumbs and they come in never-ending supply.
The newbie will happily spend several hours running his T1 industrial through half of empire just to help out with corp logistics, the bittervet is more likely to empty your corp hangar and go awoxing because your CEO was lacking the proper respect when addressing him.

(b) The disparity between new and old players is an ever-growing design problem for EVE - reducing the number of vets (in favor of more newbies) might reduce the pressure to rework game design a bit.'

'The problem is, without veterans, specially with how EvE work, how would you make the noob stick to the game?

There no other games I know where the vets made so much third party contents needed for the game..
We have even our own radios....'

Labels: EVE