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Role Playing (Games) Businesses PC Games (Games)

SOE to Sell Content Additions to EQII 54

Posted by Zonk from the if-you-can-make-a-buck-doing-it dept.
Gamespot is reporting that Sony Online is going to be adding content to Everquest II in the form of adventure packs, essentially mini-expansions. From the article: "The first part of the adventure pack will come as a free download. All of the game's subscribers will be able to sink their swords into a new zone, fight new enemies, and so on. There will also be some new quests in this area for all players. [...] If players want to continue down this story path, they will have to pay what's been described as a "small fee" to download the rest of the adventure pack's content and continue on." Basically they're going to be following the City of Heroes model, but making players pay for part of it.
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SOE to Sell Content Additions to EQII More

SOE to Sell Content Additions to EQII

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  • EQ2 (Score:2)

    by Fr05t ( 69968 )
    Has that came out already? Haven't really been paying attention since WoW came out :P
    • It use to rather small community but has started to fill up with people bailing for WoW.
      Now the less filled servers are filling up and they are adding more server next week.
  • Maybe it's a concession they made since Guild Wars is breathing down their back. It's similar to what Guild Wars is plannign but on a small scale.
    • Except that Guild Wars won't be charging $15/month.
      • Yeah, makes SOE look like a bunch of greedy guys don't it :D I mean seriously. Monthly fee goes towards servers and updates. I don't want to pay more on top of that for the updates!
        • Exactly. If we were really paying for additional content and server bandwidth, then why the hell do they charging for the additional content we paid them to develop!?

    • Re:Guild Wars (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe it's a concession they made since Guild Wars is breathing down their back. It's similar to what Guild Wars is plannign but on a small scale.
      - Not really a concession. More like attempt to grab more money. City of Heroes has already a concept that is pretty much similar to this, except that it's free. They call it "Issues". The last issue (Issue 3) gives players new classes, new powersets, new encounters and whatnot.

      Similary, MMOG maker do release free content regulary. Hell, even WoW just recently
      • I don't think that they are "free" per se. More like thats what the hell we pay the $12.95/month for. It funnels back into the developers who try to maintain and expand the content of the game.

        This whole concept is why (other) people still play Asheron's Call 1. Every month there is still new dungeons, new items and new quests to go out and explore and find so people and thier macros keep paying that monthly fee.
      • >Similary, MMOG maker do release free content
        >regulary. Hell, even WoW just recently added a
        >brand new dungeon (Maraudon) with new quests.
        >Free.

        How is that free? You pay a monthly fee to cover that sort of things. Sure, the fee cover other things too, but "adding new content" is one of the main things poping up all the time as a justification for the fee. So how can it then suddenly be free?????
        • It is all relative, buddy. Like how Guild Wars says you can play for FREE online!! No, I have to pay $60 to play "FREE" online.
          • So how do you define free then? By that argumentation everything is just free! Since I am not a native english speaking person I am not fully aware of every exact possible meanings and such of words, but to me, "free" is something you get without having to do anything in compensation. In this cases you do. I know that here in Sweden, the word "gratis" which is basically free, is regulated to not be allowed to be used in situations were anyone has to do anything to get it. So one can't say, buy this vacum cl
      • You need to read the full article.
        The According to the article they recently added 200 new spells, lots of more quests and a 2 new dungeons.
        Overall it could be a good idea. If they can get around 10%(which would be 30,000 to 40,000 people) of the people to spend $5 extra for thoses they can keep some additional people hired and turning out this contents, in addition to the people doing the free content and the multiple teams working on expansion packs.
  • I know server bandwith and maintenance isn't cheap, but if you are already paying $15 a month then just what is this money going towards? Anyone got any sort of idea of stats or breakdown of what it costs to run a game like this per person?
    • I'd assume it would be for the level designers and scriptwriters and artists and stuff.

      The way I understand it (someone can correct me if I am wrong) is that the $15/mo or so actually goes towards the upkeep of the server hardware, paying the sysadmins and the in-game support team, and for bugfixes of the sort. The actual game-running team is a seperate team than the programmers/artists that designed the game and it's content.
      • I am not an EQ2 subscriber, prefer wow myself, but it seems the game price covered the development, adn the subscription price covers the bandwith and bug fixes, csr's etc, but to then say hey if you want new content you have to pay sort of negates the purpose of paying a monthly fee to me. 200 bucks a year for one game is a lot but people can justify it saying well i get as much entertainment as I would buying a full price game every month. If they want you to pay subscription fee, plus game price, PLUS th
        • It's a lot greyer then that, I doubt anyone even evaluates the cost of operation that explicitly. In most companies the COST of something is very near secret. I may be the only person in my company who knows how much the product I built actually costs, and I'm not allowed to discuss it (and my manager has a different idea that he doesn't share with me, that includes factory costs). It's all compartmentalized.

          Price of course is usually public, depending on the type of business (B2B sometimes keep prices sec
          • Well if you can get a morgage (sp?) that brings the monthly cost of that house close to the cost of your apartment then its worth it to buy the house because you are using your money to gain property, you might think of it as storing wealth in the house/land. And normally you will make a profit when you sell it or you will pass it on to your kids for free and that gives them a big advantage in life.

      • Re:Whats the monthly fee for then? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by I8TheWorm ( 645702 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @12:57PM (#11289244) Journal
        I know SWG as ~200,000 players subscribed. If their cost of upkeep is ~$3MM/month, then I think they should reevaluate their maintenance plan.

        Of course, they're in it for profit too, but ~#36MM/year, I would assume, is likely paying for new game development as well. Just a hunch though.

        • Re:Whats the monthly fee for then? (Score:4, Informative)

          by macrom ( 537566 ) <macrom75@hotmail.com> on Friday January 07, 2005 @01:07PM (#11289369) Homepage
          There was an article in Game Developer a while back talking about the business of Everquest. They run over 1,900 servers (this is EQ I, only), employ hundreds of people and (not sure if this was mentioned) probably consume huge bandwidth pipes. Think of some of the costs :

          • probably at least 50 employees to run and maintain the game. Average $50,000/year for each, you're looking at $2.5 million.
          • cost of bandwidth. I would imagine that the bill is $5000+ per month. I suppose a DS3 or 2 would work. Anyone care to theorize?
          • Cost of keeping the servers running at 99% or more. Think of the bill for the datacenter, rack space, electricity, etc.
          • Cost of running the billing system. Maybe that could be counted in the 50 employees, maybe not
          • Cost of marketing -- that's still factored in because you want new purchases
          You still want to make a good profit after all of that. Now, all of what I mentioned could still be way lower than their monthly intake; maybe someone with more reliable cost figures could elaborate.
          • All of your numbers make sense, except for one. If your average salary for those 50 employees is $50,000/year, then your cost (salary * ~150%) of keeping them is closer to $3,750,000/year. Just being a geeky former HR coder over here.
      • That's all fine and dandy, but the article deserves a +Infinity Bullshit ranking.

        SOE just isn't getting the subscribers they had hoped for. Probably because their game is shit. But the suckers that play will pay.

        And no I'm not one of those WoW zealots, I haven't played it yet. I did play a lil EQ2 on a friends acct. when it launched, but neither of us have played since.

    • Re:Whats the monthly fee for then? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @12:12PM (#11288692)
      We don't know how much it costs to build a Civic, but I'm sure it's not even close to $13k.

      We don't know how much it costs to build blue jeans, but I know it's not $50.

      You can go on like this for every single object around you. Probably only the subway/bus you ride to work on costs more to operate than it receives in ticket sales.

      Pay the fee if you think it's worth it, don't pay the fee if you think it's not. It's that simple.
      • I realise there has to be profits, but part of the point of mmorpgs originally was that as well as playing with many people at the same time, the world would be constantly evolving with new content and refinements. That hasn't really happened in many but myself and I suspect many other people are happy to pay a monthly fee because of the promise of new content etc, otherwise whats the point of playing once you've seen everything or got to the highest levels, it just turns into irc chat with a pretty engine.
        • Dynamic content in most (not every) MMOG is still a dream. I would fully expect WoW to charge for expansions but to offer some bit for free. It turns out that the content of quality considered acceptable to us is expensive to create.

          The question of whether there is some room in our monthly fee to squeeze in some new content development is not answerable, except to say that there are so many MMOGs out and/or coming out, that if someone COULD do it, they SHOULD.

          Personally I think having a scriptwriter who c
      • You pay $50 for blue jeans? Wow, some people just blow money :P
        • Some people (*cough* ahem) pay upwards of $150 for jeans, just for a little design on thier back pockets.

          I kind of aliken it to Research and Development, but when modern fashion designers are trying to push the envelope, >85% of the new ideas are crap, but that 15% of "cool" stuff defines a generation.
    • Profit perhaps? Don't forget, it's a business.
  • Historically their expansions have also added new features and gameplay enhancements bundled with "new content" (that 90% of the players couldn't benefit from). They'd usually give you a new zone or two for free (required to access new content anyhow), but to get the useful new features (and content) you'd have to pay the $$$. Often these "features" were seen by players as deficiencies or bug fixes from the original release...

    They also have a history of making dependencies in their expansions: to finish th
    • I agree with your bad faith argument (charging for what should be free) but another aspect is how it hurts the game experience itself.

      Having played Anarchy Online for a bit (now it's free) it struck me just how detrimental these expansions are to the suspension of disbelief in the game (though you only have to look at the chat channels to do that mind you). Your character talks to loads of people in the lobby telling him how great Jobe is, then you try to go to it and up pops a message "you need the Shadow

      • They're only role playing in terms of you have to know your class and play your class well. Clerics should be healing, warriors should be tanking etc. To that end some of these games are excellent role players. EQ1 forced you to play your class role, and play it well if you wanted to get anywhere.

        Anyhow your point is taken in another dimension. There'd always be one zone in each expansion that was "where it's at", so essentially all your money went to that one zone. If you couldn't get there, you were scre
    • Unfortunately by doing so, very few people would be buying expansions, a very telling story of the nature of their game.

      This prediction is wrong, you will see that this model is a success.

  • Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dragoon412 ( 648209 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @11:43AM (#11288313)
    That's cool and all, but when are they going to sell a release-quality game to their players? ;)
  • 'cause God knows the susbscriptions aren't cutting it.

  • Ugh. (Score:1)

    by keyne9 ( 567528 )
    Wonderful. Now, we pay for the service, but in order to use the service properly, we have to pay more otherwise we're left in the dust. Fabulous.
    • That's the way ALL mmorpgs (with the exception of SWG) are. Unless you plan on not sticking with the game for much longer, you generally don't have a choice whether or not you want to buy an expansion pack, the choice was made for you by the company making the game. Only reason SWG is different is because JTL is like an completely different game. What you do in space has almost no connection to the ground game, therefore if you didn't like the space game, you could just ignore the space expansion and sti
  • I hope they wait until they actually get the current game working, and stop messing up characters with every other update. The patch a few weeks ago killed the servers for 2 days and yesterdays patch mucked up the quest logs of anyone that logged in after the patch, apparently the solution to the quest log problem is "don't log in because we can't fix it if you do" but the warning not to log in hasn't made it to the login screen.

    It would also be nice if they could have the servers up for at least 24 hours
    • The fix for the problem with quest logs was to ignore the ones that reshowed up and they fixed it a few 2 days later.
      Read up on WoW if server instability is your fear. It has been down more then EQ2 has, and they have not given as much response or additional "free" time back to the players.

  • Nothing like the City of Heroes model (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @01:43PM (#11289748)
    First of the "City of Heroes" model would be better named the "Asheron's Call" model, as Turbine was the first to do free content expansions. They did it on a more predictable schedule (monthly) than Cryptic has managaged.

    That being said, given players a small taste and then charging them for the rest isn't anything like a "free content on a regular basis as part of your monthly fees" model. Asheron's Call and City of Heroes offered everything to all players, effectively changing the base-level game for everyone at one time. EQII is going to be more like those vogue "manager's theater" things you see at multiplexes where you pay extra for nicer seats but are still seeing the same content as everyone else.

  • 1) Shell out money for the game because you have to pay for the development work done to bring the game to the shelf.

    2) Pay a monthly fee in order to pay for bandwidth and new content.

    3) Pay an annual expansion pack fee to pay for new content.

    4) Pay a quest pack fee to pay for new content.

    I can understand 1) and 2). 3) and 4) don't make sense to me from a common sense perspective. From a business perspective they make sense but it's because of this multi-tiered leeching -- both in terms of money spent a
    • Most people will get these packs for the novelty and the phat lewt. But there is already enough content in EQ2 to last a while for the not quite hardcore players. I welcome this business model even though I will not be investing in it anytime soon. I'm happy enough playing as is and exploring what's already there. Just as long as they don't tie in these quest packs into a server wide, sooperdooper, you gotta finish this before level pi * 20 required quest. Besides...they'll probably charge a higher f
  • I thought that was part of the justification of a monthly fee? There is no way the average EQ player comes anywhere near the monthly fee for bandwidth costs. I just don't understand why people keep paying to get treated so poorly.
  • Don't have access to the complete link(blocked), but the headline of this article is but a small part of what was said.
    EQ2 is going to have multiple updates.
    1) Additional content added every 1-2 months, new dungeons, quests, etc. This is addition to bug fixes, patches,etc.
    2) Theses pay 3) expansion packs, store or download, with major areas, higher levels,additional trees to the classes,etc. The expansion will be major items.

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