Had to chuckle at that last bit. You're probably right :-)

And you have to wonder, are the people whining about 3 bucks a month the same ones whining about how crowded it is in Velks or how it sucks because you can never camp [highly desired loot item #001] cause there are too many people competeing for it?

From reading some of these posts you'd think VI has the obligation to give their product away free.

HELLO! People. There is an equilibrium price in a free market. There is a certain supply of a product (server space), you price your product so that you supply the consumer in a manner that exhausts your supply without creating a demand you cant supply and while making a profit.

Sure GM should sell cars for 1000 dollars. I mean they sell millions of cars! At grand a pop that is more money than they need!

Please get a clue people.

Synoc

So turn down your settings if it is running too slow. turn off mip mapping, lower your graphics settings, turn off character models, shorten your clip plane. Just adjust till you get the frame rate you want.

Or do you suggest that there shouldnt be anything in the game that doesnt work flawlessly on your (old) system? So I shouldnt be able to get more options just because your machine cant handle it?

I, for one, am happy that that they have set the system to let people choose. More choice and configurability is GOOD. Not something to coplain about. Sheesh.

Synoc

And if you do own (your own house) take a look at the taxes you pay on the property! Ouch … and yes, while you can complain about taxes it, like another thing (death) are always constants in our world. I would add another constant: fees. Though usually it’s hard to give up because you were enjoying it so much, the good thing about fee based services, unlike death, taxes, rent, etc., is you can avoid it if you don’t like it.

To have the notion that fees for ANY service will never go up is just setting yourself up for a disappointment. Anything from ISPs, phone services, gym memberships, EVEN public transit and the US postal system, every service oriented fee goes up eventually. It’s just a rule of business and life in a country based on free enterprise.

If you want things to stay the same constantly then may I suggest a socialist or communist community for you. Sure, you won’t get much progress and change but you can almost always expect constant (high) fees/pricing (unless the government decides it wants more).

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China (i.e. price increase by Verant)? Most people expected it, AND it WILL go up again in the future. For you to think that it won’t is the same as pulling the wool over your own eyes. Now the question should be WHEN will the next price increase happen.

Great thing about this system is that if the price exceeds the value of the services being offered then you can chose not to pay for it (with exception of taxes). So $3 increase a month after 3 years sounds pretty fair to me. Another increase in only a few months with minimal changes done, and now we have a problem. But until they do that I only see a few good arguments as to why the hike is not justified.

What in the world does that have to do with a price increase?

Actually I think what most people are saying (if they agree with the hike) is, "hey, $3 increase after 3 years isn’t that bad." They aren't saying that no matter how high the price goes they'll pay. I think that if Verant were to increase the fee by ANY amount in 6 months then you'd have a lot more angry people, because THAT would indicate that Verant is indeed going to make this rate hike a normal, constant thing. Other than that I think people are saying exactly what you said, "okay, after 3 years they've raised the monthly price by $3, fair enough (service issues aside), but they better not raise the fees again in 6 months."

certain things to keep in mind

1. Sony hasn't put as much money into the game as they would have you think < fact

- Unless you work for the accounting department for sony I doubt you know this for fact. Fact is that servers need replaced rvery year, each "zone" is its own server and there are a lot of servers. (i dont know the number so i wont make one up). They also have a T3 array for the internet connections. Last price on a single T3 line I saw was 6k a month.

2. Verent employee's are very underpaid.. if at all (programers, customer service ect) < fact

- once again unleaa you work for them, how do you know this is fact. If you have ever run or been involved in running a company you would know that the overhead costs of an employee (insurance, accounting, retirement, office space, office supplies) is 40% - 65% of an employees salary. So if an employee makes 50k a year, the actual cost to the company is more like 75k a year. This I know for fact.

3. Sony is a major world corporation with money invested and coming in from everywhere < fact

- Sony is a major corporation, with DIVISIONS. Money from one Division does not leak into another division. This is done for security reasons so if one part of the company fails it dosent bring down the rest of the divisions.

4. There is little morality when dealing with large corporations < fact

- Once again this is an assumption. I will agree its usually true, but the bottom line of ANY company is to make money.

5. Recent medical studies show that mmorpg s are addictive and many people become obsessed and stop at nothing to continue .. leaving friends and family behind ... even their children <fact

-- Hehe, we all kno this is true, but not the fault of Sony/verant.

6. Everquest is still a faulty product (yet they have just anounced ANOTHER expansion) <fact

- Agreed, there are still some problems in the game, but they have kept up on their word of having a ever developing and expanding world.


6 1/2. there will be another expansion before the new one is finished <more than likely fact

-- Guesswork, no place for this in an argument.

7. 10$ x 250,000 people = 2,500,000$ a month x 12 months = simple math that i can't do
...its a rediculous amount of money with a patheticly small amount of it going to cost (servers, employees, advertising ect) < fact

-- Again, unless you work for them in accounting, finance this is a guess. Marketing is VERY expensive and EQ does a lot of it. Whens the last time you picked up any game mag and didnt see an EQ add, not to mention the Movie Theatre trailer, TV adds etc. Marketing and accounting people are paid straight from Overhead (i.e. they dont actually make tangable money for the company but are necessary) not to mention recruiters, secretaries, phone systems, the list goes on. Running a company is expensive, very very expensive.


8. Sony tests out their games for free .. in otherwords they just sell it to us and we play test it <fact

-- WRONG, that is the final phase of testing, I remember reading a post on the developers forum conserning this in which a Sony employee clearly stated there is a Massive software testing tepartment inhouse that tests before anything ever makes it to the test server.

9. Legends server ... cost 5 times more to play on but only has about .5% added content and its not much diffrent than the test server aside from being able to petition .. adding to this ... didn't verent try selling you onto the legends server by starting gm events on standered servers and having them end abruptly before it got going, then telling you it wouldn't be like that on legends?

- If you are not on legengs, you have no need to complain or first hand experience to base your opinion on, if you are and dont think it is worth the money, change servers.

10. how many times in the last year had sony pissed you off with new policys, changes to the game, new severs ect?

-- hmmm, well i get pissed whenever i zone crash, or get stuck in a wall. But overall I enjoy the game, if I didnt I wouldnt play. And why would adding new servers **** you off??

10 1/2. how many times in the past year has verent made you happy? ... bug fixxes don't count , that was already their responability and most should have been done before we handed over our 30+$

-- most of the fixes are game exploits, and there have new quests, free zones, new items and a constant effort to keep this from becomming a "diablo" mess with rambant cheating and exploiting, I say overall good job on keeping the game balanced.


i'm going to end here, but i could continue on for very long time ... i think i've made my point
Sony is a company and they're trying to make as much money as they can .. theres nothing wrong with it, *its the way they go about it and how they care their customers* .... many times i feel like i'm dealing with some drug dealer or some pimp somewhere .. they make all these excuses why they do things but it never adds up unless you apply that sony/verent is taking advantage of us ... and they are .. theres no dought about it.
i love my main character ... and i mean LOVE... almost all of us do ... our characters are an extension of ourselves letting us live a life that we could never live in RL and we become attached to them and most of us wouldn't let them go ... Sony knows this... as soon as all this info on the obsesion/addiction to these games started getting released, sony started finding new ways to take your money .. some people bought into that, others got second accounts, some people have taken the bait and fallen further into their need for eq (some people really do need it.... "addiction") ... now they raised the stakes ... "well, we didn't rip off enough people on legends, so lets get all the basterds now"

I guess the reason i'm so mad is because i can't just take my charater and go elsewhere, i have to stay here or abandon my charater and all the hard work i've put into the game .. in the mean time Sony is just going to keep pulling my money away from me until i can't afford to play eq anymore (isp costs have risen also, atleast in my area) .. i already pay out 100+dollars a month to play eq ... single account at that

In my eyes, Sony is being abusive from several diffrent angels ... if any law expert out there knows of who to contact about this, or any info regarding, then please post a link, i'm really interested in looking into it

Nineva Delamortei
Luclin

-- I understand you are upset at the price hike, but after 3 years of running things I think it is justifiable, in fact off the top of my head I cant think of anything that costs what it did 3 years ago. WOuld i rather the price stay the same? Sure. Am i gonna make up a bunch numbers and fill in the gap with opinions and speculation to make sony seem Evil? not a chance. Im not quite sue how you manage to pay $100 a month to play EQ, if there was no EQ you wouldnt have an ISP? The most i can see anyone paying per accoung is $40 (legends) anything else aer costs not attributed to EQ (even PC upgrades are necessary, regardless of what "game" im playing i upgrae mine every 6 months. (memory, HD, Processor, Video, Sound) not all at once but things need upgraded EQ or no. If you are truly that addicted to EQ and are draining your cashflow every month, and you feel Sony is personally out to get you then my advice is Quit. Walk away, smell the roses and seek profesional help if you cant.

EQ is hardly the same game it was three years ago. By stating it is a "3 year old game" you are implying that it hasn't changed. This couldn't be further from the truth.

As to the pricing issue let's face it, this pricing is the same as what DAoC charged from the start, and I didn't hear any big complaints about that. Why shouldn't Sony be able to charge the same amount as DAoC? They're even offering you a way to save a ton by registering for 1 or 2 years...at $190 for 24 months that's $7.91 a month, which is less than the current 6-month discount rate. If they were truly trying to gouge people they would have hiked the rate up higher than this and wouldn't have offered these other options. They're just trying to stay competitive, if they don't we will all be saying good bye to EQ...

ROFL Finally an intelligent post that flames the flamers. Everyone stop your whinning. VI can charge what ever they want. If you don't like it...don't play. No system or business is perfect...but EQ is really cool...and why keep complaining when you are going to keep playing anyways?? ROFL