Request for character slots to be sold on the marketplace

Earlhastan · 08-20-2010, 05:02 AM

With the new coding youve been doing in this latest GU you have introduced buyable character slots on EQ2x. The only way people on Live can get this is by upgrading to Station Access wich costs 30 dollars per month. People with SA accounts have suggested purchasable character slots on the marketplace ever since that feature was introduced.

With the now added perks for having a multi month standard subscription while SA accounts get nothing the incentive to upgrade is even smaller. Paying 15 dollars extra every month is just not worth it if you only want the extra character slot feature of the SA plan.

Can we get purchasable character slots on the marketplace now that you have proven it does work? Pretty please....

Xolita1 · 08-20-2010, 05:22 AM

First off, i would change the subject line from "petition" to "question" or "request"... to keep it unlocked.

Then... Yes, I would love extra character slots. I am missing characters too that have been accessible before this update.

The Station Access is the only possible way now, and I know it. Part of me cheers at the idea of buying extra slots, but the other side tells me that nomatter how I look at it, the promise that the live servers will NOT be affected by F2Pis beeing broken in somany ways... unbelievable.

Buying character slots will only be the beginning. What? Not even, we can get our horses with SC now, so it's NOT the beginning either.

Maybe EQ2 is just becoming too expensive for me to play.

*edit for grammar

Earlhastan · 08-20-2010, 05:30 AM

Name of thread changed. Thanks for the input.

Yes. Its not a good way to go down. The real incentive for playing on LIVE would be if we where granted 1 character slot per year played as a veteran reward. Now that would be something more valuable than the fluff items they are offering now for multi month subscribtions.

Xolita1 · 08-20-2010, 05:33 AM

Earlhastan wrote:

The real incentive for playing on LIVE would be if we where granted 1 character slot per year played as a veteran reward. Now that would be something more valuable than the fluff items they are offering now for multi month subscribtions.

Now... THAt would I call a reward.

I definitely hope this one doesn t get overlooked by the dev's.

+5

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 05:36 AM

I definately agree. I was seriously considering upgrading to station access because of this /camp change, but in the end I couldn't justify the costs. I even looked at some of the other available games to see if I could find some further justificiation for upgrading and I just can't. Vanguard's playerbase is too low... Free Realms is kiddy, plus only costs 3.60 a month for a sub anyway... the other games just don't appeal to me.

Considering purchasing a 1 year live subscription plan is 143 dollars and includes 3 in game items and 7 characters. SA for a year is $360 dollars (12 X 30) for 0 in game items and 12 characters; that's quite a dramatic increase.

Also, Station Access when first introduced included more perks than it does now for EQ2 players. It used to include access to the leaderboards etc (which is now free to everyone) and it also originally included free access to adventure packs (which were done away with). I think that to make station access valid again it should include all of the expansions in all of the games available... even then I'd rather buy Destiny of Velious than pay over double the subscription cost the rest of the year.

Please add new characters as 1 time purchases. Also I think somewhere between 6 and 10 dollars per slot is appropriate. Any more than that and I personally am not likely to purchase any slots. Even at 10... it's iffy for me, but I'm basing my numbers off of DDO, where it's about 6 dollars each, and I do understand that characters here in EQ2 have more data tied to them than in DDO. Plus in DDO you don't need to continue paying an active subscription when you unlock a character, so that alone gives reason to have a higher price than here in EQ2Live.

Remember that the more characters we have, the more likely we are to spend SC on other things for those new characters. For example I purchased an appearance piece for my pally, which I won't be able to play anymore now that the /camp change was implemented. Had I not had character slots to make the pally in the first place I never would have made that purchase. A lot of others will likely pay for potions and other things in addition to appearance items on new characters.

Masuri_Sukawa · 08-20-2010, 06:12 AM

I actually came here to say this! I would definitely pay money to have more character slots. There are so many great classes in EQ2.

However, I won't pay that cash in the form of paying so much for Station Access.

I think it's, hmm, City of Heroes that lets you buy more slots? For like 5 bucks a piece or something? That, I'd pay for.

GrignakOw · 08-20-2010, 06:19 AM

LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 06:20 AM

Amani@Permafrost wrote:

I actually came here to say this! I would definitely pay money to have more character slots. There are so many great classes in EQ2.
However, I won't pay that cash in the form of paying so much for Station Access.
I think it's, hmm, City of Heroes that lets you buy more slots? For like 5 bucks a piece or something? That, I'd pay for.

A LOT of games offer it... on the /camp character thread someone lists a bunch.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 07:16 AM

Razzler@Nagafen wrote:

LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go.

Sorry to follow my own post with another, but the reason people are against marketplace is definately not for things like character slots. You don't see anyone complaining that character transfers have been moved there, in fact it's a great because now the service is both automated, and something you can do in game. Services like we're talking about are the one thing players have actually been asking for long before station cash, and the marketplace actually provides a good method of delivering these services to us.

I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example

To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each)

To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each)

To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each)

And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total.

Based on the prices I see in the marketplace, this seems like a more realistic option for everyone involved. Most players won't pay a huge amount for characters, but this way they can still enjoy having a few more slots at a reasonable rate.

Earlhastan · 08-20-2010, 07:21 AM

Razzler@Nagafen wrote:

LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go.

If you sit down and read that thread youll see that people are upset with ingame items that are removed and put on the marketplace, stuff like the tracking scroll is getting sold on marketplace, the UI changes with the SC button clearly visible, shoddy new spell effects, etc.

Noone is complaining about the services sold on the marketplace, like the transfer tokens and the name change potions. These are services bought that dont affect the gameplay in any way and is in my opinion the only thing SOE should sell on the marketplace on the LIVE servers. The rest is just getting more and more a way to con us to pay more money for something we already paid for.

Lets face it. We are never getting rid of SC unless everyone cancels their subscriptions NOW. The time for the real uproar should have been when they introduced it along with TSO. Now its here to stay because we didnt complain enough back then. If we protest loudly enough now we might get them to back of on some items. The mounts that was removed is already on their way back because people complained. We might get some other opinions through as well if we are persistant enough. But we also need to try and tell SOE what we would like to be available on the marketplace as an alternative. To be able to purchase more character slots would to me be an acceptable service, since almost every other game out there with some kind of RMT options offer this. SOE however dont. The only way to get more slots is to pay double the monthly fee for 5 slots and a lot of services for games almost noone in here wish to play.

Wingrider01 · 08-20-2010, 07:56 AM

TheSpin wrote:

Razzler@Nagafen wrote:
LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go.
Sorry to follow my own post with another, but the reason people are against marketplace is definately not for things like character slots. You don't see anyone complaining that character transfers have been moved there, in fact it's a great because now the service is both automated, and something you can do in game. Services like we're talking about are the one thing players have actually been asking for long before station cash, and the marketplace actually provides a good method of delivering these services to us.
I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example
To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each)
To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each)
To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each)
And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total.
Based on the prices I see in the marketplace, this seems like a more realistic option for everyone involved. Most players won't pay a huge amount for characters, but this way they can still enjoy having a few more slots at a reasonable rate.

how is that going to pay for the additional resources needed to constantly store all the data that is generated per character slot? Enterprise level storage is not cheap

3.00 per slot per month maximum 5 additional slots fits better. Do not want anything available for station cash, would rather see it removed from the real servers

Bre · 08-20-2010, 08:08 AM

I like the idea of extra character slots as veteran rewards.

In the absence of such, additional character slots is something I'd pay a reasonable sum for on the Marketplace. It's account services like this, name changes, server transfers, etc. that the Marketplace seems appropriate for on Live servers. It's the sale of stat gear that I disagree with being on the Live server Marketplace.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 08:09 AM

@Wingrider01

Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.

Wingrider01 · 08-20-2010, 08:28 AM

TheSpin wrote:

@Wingrider01
Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.

electricity to run the drives

maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap

floor space in the coloc

those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge.

As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises

callahan · 08-20-2010, 09:53 AM

Don't worry.. EQ2X has 3 extra char slots for the 12 month premium payment.

FFS.. Extra character probably only takes up a couple Mb of space (stats, inventory, quests/AAs, recipes, house/bank items, etc). Whole of War & Peace is <2Mb. So basically nothing compared to the Gb of log files they store every second from every live player.

Should be able to fit every current EQ2 character and character ever to be created on a $500 HD, but this is $OE.

Deson · 08-20-2010, 10:19 AM

Earlhastan wrote:

Lets face it. We are never getting rid of SC unless everyone cancels their subscriptions NOW. The time for the real uproar should have been when they introduced Station exchange and LoN. Now its here to stay because we didnt complain enough back then.

Fixed. It can be argued this goes back all the way to Legends servers but the seeds for this in EQ2 were planted at the latest with LoN loot cards. If such a blatant attempt to extract more money from players wasn't stopped back then, it's hard to think they wouldn't move to an actually friendlier, more direct model.

Wingrider01 wrote:

how is that going to pay for the additional resources needed to constantly store all the data that is generated per character slot? Enterprise level storage is not cheap
3.00 per slot per month maximum 5 additional slots fits better. Do not want anything available for station cash, would rather see it removed from the real servers

How do you know how much it will cost them? Do you see their balance sheets and accounting plans to know this?

Iamken · 08-20-2010, 10:23 AM

I'm not so sure they would do this. The only reason I have a station account is for the extra EQ2 character slots. I don't play any other SOE game at this time. If they made extra slots purchasable, I would just buy the 5 slots and downgrade my account, saving me money in the long run.

urgthock · 08-20-2010, 10:42 AM

TheSpin wrote:

I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example
To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each)
To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each)
To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each)
And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total.

Why on earth would SoE ever price them that way. Right now you pay a recurring $15 fee each month to get those extra 5 characters. Why would or even should they merely charge a one time $30 fee for those same 5 characters. I know you would love it if they did and so would I and so would every player. Just like I would love it if I could go out and buy a ferrari for $100. But it doesn't make good business sense for SoE to price them that way. A more equitable and reasonable (for both sides) cost would be a recurring charge of like $1.50 extra for each slot. That way if you want to have those same 5 extra characters, you end up paying like $7.50 extra month instead of $15. Sony wins in that if you keep those character slots for more than 4 months (which most people would), they make more money than just charging a one time $30 fee. And you win in that you get the extra 5 slots for only $7.50 per month instead of the $15 per month you would have to pay otherwise and aren't paying that extra $7.50 for the "ability" to play other SoE games that you have no interest in.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 10:47 AM

Fyfe@Najena wrote:

I'm not so sure they would do this. The only reason I have a station account is for the extra EQ2 character slots. I don't play any other SOE game at this time. If they made extra slots purchasable, I would just buy the 5 slots and downgrade my account, saving me money in the long run.

This is why this particular request is being brought up now.

Rothgar wrote:

I apologize that this change didn't make it into the update notes. It was not our intention to try to hide it. Obviously this would have been discovered within about 5 minutes of the update hitting live servers. We've already had the internal discussion of making sure that our changes are hitting the update notes to try to keep this type of thing from happening again in the future. Every update there are things that we miss in the update notes and we know we need to improve that.
We've known about this issue for as long as its been in the game and it was always something we saw as needing to be fixed. We never considered it a bannable exploit, but it was definitely something that was not intended. With the addition of the Extended service, we wanted to limit character slots for free accounts to provide another reason to encourage people to subscribe. This bug would have had a bigger impact in that environment, so it became a priority to fix it.
Unfortunately we have no plans to undo this fix as it was definitely something that should have been fixed a long time ago. The fact that you've been able to make use of those additional slots for so long shouldn't take away from the fact that it was a bug.
It may be little consolation, but we've resurrected the discussion of selling additional character slots to give you more options. There have always been some hurdles with this which is why you haven't already seen it. As soon as we have more information on this topic, we'll let you know.
Again, I hope you'll accept our apology for not giving more warning on this change.

I bolded the paragraph concerning extra slots.

A lot of people would likely buy slots, plus this is a feature they can also sell on the extended servers. Overall I definately think it would be more profitable to have thousands of people buying character slots than to have a handful of players pay $15 montly for 5 slots.

And in response to urgthock. There is nothing sold in the marketplace that adds a recurring subscription cost. It's all one time purchases. Of course Rothgar said 'selling' which doesn't necessarily mean selling in the marketplace. If SoE can add it to the store, it's probably a win for them because the store can be used without a credit card, so even if it's a one time purchase, it's a much more accessible purchase. Also in my opnion 15 dollars a month just for 5 character slots is highway robbery. 360 annually for 12 slots versus 140 annually for 7 slots. The only thing that makes SA worthwhile for people on a budget is the fact it allows you to play multiple games... and most people are on a budget.

The successful F2P games do not make their money from recurring subscriptions... they draw people in,lure them with fancy things, keep feeding them until they can't take any more, and then they usually get hungry for something else. I'm don't think the EQ2X servers are set up to be very successful because it almost requires a subscription if you want to be a serious player.

Gungo · 08-20-2010, 11:19 AM

I don't see them charging less then either a $15 fee for each slot on a one time basis up to a max 3 slots.ORat least $2/3 a month per slot up to 5 slots.

Eitherway it likely would be cheaper then a full SA but no where near this nominal fee people are looking for. Honestly have you people ever looked at the prices of marketplace items/features.

Furthermore SOE NEVER had the intention of giving players unlimited slots like the old bug allowed so i wouldnt expect more then any other previosu feature worth of slots. In example 10-12.

Cyliena · 08-20-2010, 11:26 AM

I'd be happy to purchase extra character slots for SC or a low monthly fee.

EQPrime · 08-20-2010, 12:07 PM

I'd pay a one time $10-$15 fee per slot to add a couple of character slots. I have no problem with stuff like this being on the marketplace along with account transfer tokens and stuff. It's mounts, armor, etc., that I have a problem with.

Kenazeer · 08-20-2010, 12:23 PM

Wingrider01 wrote:

TheSpin wrote:
@Wingrider01
Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.
electricity to run the drives
maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap
floor space in the coloc
those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge.
As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises

I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 12:36 PM

I thinks it's important to comment that with all the changes right now in EQ2 making a decision soonish on this feature would be very good. I'm at a crossroads right now myself... Upgrade to station access, pay monthly with 7 slots, or cancel completely. The sooner there is an option to buy some extra slots I'd be more likely to just sign up for a year's gametime and be done with it.

Wingrider01 · 08-20-2010, 12:40 PM

Kenazeer wrote:

Wingrider01 wrote:
TheSpin wrote:
@Wingrider01
Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.
electricity to run the drives
maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap
floor space in the coloc
those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge.
As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises
I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out.

By law I am required to keep ALL emails that are sent to or from any of my employees past, or present for a term of up to 25 years, they have to be available within 24 hours of the request. I do not keep old email on expensive fiber attached storage, the emails are archived off to lower cost mass storage that is ISCSI attached to the server for access by the employees, 100 to 500 times lower for retrival ten the fiber attached chassis's but also a less cost then the fiber chassises and drives not being able to verify it but the logical that they archive off the canceled accounts on lower cost ISCSI storage and when an account is reactivated a small script copies it back to the faster production array. there are cheaper ways of retaining old characters then allocated space on more expensive fiber attached drives to give people additional character slots for a single cost

Cost wise it is a better ROI is a old player comes back after 3 or 5 years and finds their favorite character(s) still there, which in turns gives a better chance of them actually staying then if they come back and find the character(s) do not exist.

Eveningsong · 08-20-2010, 12:42 PM

Kenazeer wrote:

Wingrider01 wrote:
TheSpin wrote:
@Wingrider01
Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.
electricity to run the drives
maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap
floor space in the coloc
those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge.
As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises
I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out.

The cost to the game of having returning players come back only to find their old characters wiped would be far higher than any storage costs.

TheSpin · 08-20-2010, 12:50 PM

After 4 years of inactivity I don't think people would be THAT upset if they happened to come back without their characters. Only the character names itself would have any value considering these characters might be older than the AA system is, and the level cap was 50-60, which is obtainable really easy now. If my characters were purged on wow if I decided to reactivate my account now I wouldn't mind too much. If I come back to a game after such a long absense I want to enjoy the whole experience all over again... really none of that matters and isn't really the issue we're discussing here. I don't think the characters are moved to some remote storage area. If a player did come back to the game I'm sure SoE wouldn't want them to experience horrible gameplay by having their character stored in some dusty corner. The only reason they fixed the whole /camp 'exploit' was because they didn't want EQ2X players to get something without paying for it. Before EQ2X they never cared that some people had up 90 characters on a single account.

Gaige · 08-20-2010, 01:03 PM

Wingrider01 wrote:

those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage.

See, this I have trouble believing.

You keep seeming to imply in multiple threads that EQ2's RMT isn't profitable. If that is true then why has Rothgar posted the opposite (citing it as one of EQ2's most important revenue streams), why was the entire UI redone to showcase it, why is the marketplace the most updated part of EQ2 and why did SOE just launch a new service that focuses on more robust RMT?

The way EQ2 has been headed goes against your argument I'm afraid.

CorpseGoddess · 08-20-2010, 02:19 PM

So let me get this straight...

Having purchasable mounts in SC somehow affects gameplay, but allowing people to buy character slots does not?

Selectivity is a slippery slope, you know...

Deson · 08-20-2010, 02:27 PM

Streppoch@Guk wrote:

So let me get this straight...
Having purchasable mounts in SC somehow affects gameplay, but allowing people to buy character slots does not?
Selectivity is a slippery slope, you know...

And perspective is lost on the myopic. How exactly does having more character slots( the precedence pre-existing as well) affect in-game play?Unless you're thinking the slots will come with loot and such that is.

08-20-2010, 05:33 AM	#4
Xolita1 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 28	Earlhastan wrote: The real incentive for playing on LIVE would be if we where granted 1 character slot per year played as a veteran reward. Now that would be something more valuable than the fluff items they are offering now for multi month subscribtions. Now... THAt would I call a reward. I definitely hope this one doesn t get overlooked by the dev's. +5

08-20-2010, 06:20 AM	#8
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	Amani@Permafrost wrote: I actually came here to say this! I would definitely pay money to have more character slots. There are so many great classes in EQ2. However, I won't pay that cash in the form of paying so much for Station Access. I think it's, hmm, City of Heroes that lets you buy more slots? For like 5 bucks a piece or something? That, I'd pay for. A LOT of games offer it... on the /camp character thread someone lists a bunch.

08-20-2010, 07:16 AM	#9
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	Razzler@Nagafen wrote: LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go. Sorry to follow my own post with another, but the reason people are against marketplace is definately not for things like character slots. You don't see anyone complaining that character transfers have been moved there, in fact it's a great because now the service is both automated, and something you can do in game. Services like we're talking about are the one thing players have actually been asking for long before station cash, and the marketplace actually provides a good method of delivering these services to us. I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each) To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each) To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each) And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total. Based on the prices I see in the marketplace, this seems like a more realistic option for everyone involved. Most players won't pay a huge amount for characters, but this way they can still enjoy having a few more slots at a reasonable rate.

08-20-2010, 07:21 AM	#10
Earlhastan Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 27	Razzler@Nagafen wrote: LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go. If you sit down and read that thread youll see that people are upset with ingame items that are removed and put on the marketplace, stuff like the tracking scroll is getting sold on marketplace, the UI changes with the SC button clearly visible, shoddy new spell effects, etc. Noone is complaining about the services sold on the marketplace, like the transfer tokens and the name change potions. These are services bought that dont affect the gameplay in any way and is in my opinion the only thing SOE should sell on the marketplace on the LIVE servers. The rest is just getting more and more a way to con us to pay more money for something we already paid for. Lets face it. We are never getting rid of SC unless everyone cancels their subscriptions NOW. The time for the real uproar should have been when they introduced it along with TSO. Now its here to stay because we didnt complain enough back then. If we protest loudly enough now we might get them to back of on some items. The mounts that was removed is already on their way back because people complained. We might get some other opinions through as well if we are persistant enough. But we also need to try and tell SOE what we would like to be available on the marketplace as an alternative. To be able to purchase more character slots would to me be an acceptable service, since almost every other game out there with some kind of RMT options offer this. SOE however dont. The only way to get more slots is to pay double the monthly fee for 5 slots and a lot of services for games almost noone in here wish to play.

08-20-2010, 07:56 AM	#11
Wingrider01 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 5,999	TheSpin wrote: Razzler@Nagafen wrote: LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go. Sorry to follow my own post with another, but the reason people are against marketplace is definately not for things like character slots. You don't see anyone complaining that character transfers have been moved there, in fact it's a great because now the service is both automated, and something you can do in game. Services like we're talking about are the one thing players have actually been asking for long before station cash, and the marketplace actually provides a good method of delivering these services to us. I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each) To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each) To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each) And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total. Based on the prices I see in the marketplace, this seems like a more realistic option for everyone involved. Most players won't pay a huge amount for characters, but this way they can still enjoy having a few more slots at a reasonable rate. how is that going to pay for the additional resources needed to constantly store all the data that is generated per character slot? Enterprise level storage is not cheap 3.00 per slot per month maximum 5 additional slots fits better. Do not want anything available for station cash, would rather see it removed from the real servers __________________ Fixing computer issues, one SOC7 at a time. Yes Jim, the user has experienced the dreaded PICNIC error

08-20-2010, 05:02 AM	#1
Earlhastan Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 27	With the new coding youve been doing in this latest GU you have introduced buyable character slots on EQ2x. The only way people on Live can get this is by upgrading to Station Access wich costs 30 dollars per month. People with SA accounts have suggested purchasable character slots on the marketplace ever since that feature was introduced. With the now added perks for having a multi month standard subscription while SA accounts get nothing the incentive to upgrade is even smaller. Paying 15 dollars extra every month is just not worth it if you only want the extra character slot feature of the SA plan. Can we get purchasable character slots on the marketplace now that you have proven it does work? Pretty please....

08-20-2010, 05:22 AM	#2
Xolita1 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 28	First off, i would change the subject line from "petition" to "question" or "request"... to keep it unlocked. Then... Yes, I would love extra character slots. I am missing characters too that have been accessible before this update. The Station Access is the only possible way now, and I know it. Part of me cheers at the idea of buying extra slots, but the other side tells me that nomatter how I look at it, the promise that the live servers will NOT be affected by F2Pis beeing broken in somany ways... unbelievable. Buying character slots will only be the beginning. What? Not even, we can get our horses with SC now, so it's NOT the beginning either. Maybe EQ2 is just becoming too expensive for me to play. *edit for grammar

08-20-2010, 05:30 AM	#3
Earlhastan Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 27	Name of thread changed. Thanks for the input. Yes. Its not a good way to go down. The real incentive for playing on LIVE would be if we where granted 1 character slot per year played as a veteran reward. Now that would be something more valuable than the fluff items they are offering now for multi month subscribtions.

08-20-2010, 05:36 AM	#5
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	I definately agree. I was seriously considering upgrading to station access because of this /camp change, but in the end I couldn't justify the costs. I even looked at some of the other available games to see if I could find some further justificiation for upgrading and I just can't. Vanguard's playerbase is too low... Free Realms is kiddy, plus only costs 3.60 a month for a sub anyway... the other games just don't appeal to me. Considering purchasing a 1 year live subscription plan is 143 dollars and includes 3 in game items and 7 characters. SA for a year is $360 dollars (12 X 30) for 0 in game items and 12 characters; that's quite a dramatic increase. Also, Station Access when first introduced included more perks than it does now for EQ2 players. It used to include access to the leaderboards etc (which is now free to everyone) and it also originally included free access to adventure packs (which were done away with). I think that to make station access valid again it should include all of the expansions in all of the games available... even then I'd rather buy Destiny of Velious than pay over double the subscription cost the rest of the year. Please add new characters as 1 time purchases. Also I think somewhere between 6 and 10 dollars per slot is appropriate. Any more than that and I personally am not likely to purchase any slots. Even at 10... it's iffy for me, but I'm basing my numbers off of DDO, where it's about 6 dollars each, and I do understand that characters here in EQ2 have more data tied to them than in DDO. Plus in DDO you don't need to continue paying an active subscription when you unlock a character, so that alone gives reason to have a higher price than here in EQ2Live. Remember that the more characters we have, the more likely we are to spend SC on other things for those new characters. For example I purchased an appearance piece for my pally, which I won't be able to play anymore now that the /camp change was implemented. Had I not had character slots to make the pally in the first place I never would have made that purchase. A lot of others will likely pay for potions and other things in addition to appearance items on new characters.

08-20-2010, 06:12 AM	#6
Masuri_Sukawa Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 20	I actually came here to say this! I would definitely pay money to have more character slots. There are so many great classes in EQ2. However, I won't pay that cash in the form of paying so much for Station Access. I think it's, hmm, City of Heroes that lets you buy more slots? For like 5 bucks a piece or something? That, I'd pay for.

08-20-2010, 06:19 AM	#7
GrignakOw General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 23	LOL in this post you have like 2 or 3 people atm asking for extra character slots to be sold on marketplace and then you have the GU57 Feedback thread with about 24 pages of almost everyone against marketplace IDK SOE you do the math on which way your playerbase wants this game to go.

08-20-2010, 08:08 AM	#12
Bre General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 53	I like the idea of extra character slots as veteran rewards. In the absence of such, additional character slots is something I'd pay a reasonable sum for on the Marketplace. It's account services like this, name changes, server transfers, etc. that the Marketplace seems appropriate for on Live servers. It's the sale of stat gear that I disagree with being on the Live server Marketplace. __________________

08-20-2010, 08:09 AM	#13
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	@Wingrider01 Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription.

08-20-2010, 08:28 AM	#14
Wingrider01 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 5,999	TheSpin wrote: @Wingrider01 Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription. electricity to run the drives maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap floor space in the coloc those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge. As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises __________________ Fixing computer issues, one SOC7 at a time. Yes Jim, the user has experienced the dreaded PICNIC error

08-20-2010, 09:53 AM	#15
callahan General Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 113	Don't worry.. EQ2X has 3 extra char slots for the 12 month premium payment. FFS.. Extra character probably only takes up a couple Mb of space (stats, inventory, quests/AAs, recipes, house/bank items, etc). Whole of War & Peace is <2Mb. So basically nothing compared to the Gb of log files they store every second from every live player. Should be able to fit every current EQ2 character and character ever to be created on a $500 HD, but this is $OE. __________________

08-20-2010, 10:19 AM	#16
Deson Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2,754	Earlhastan wrote: Lets face it. We are never getting rid of SC unless everyone cancels their subscriptions NOW. The time for the real uproar should have been when they introduced Station exchange and LoN. Now its here to stay because we didnt complain enough back then. Fixed. It can be argued this goes back all the way to Legends servers but the seeds for this in EQ2 were planted at the latest with LoN loot cards. If such a blatant attempt to extract more money from players wasn't stopped back then, it's hard to think they wouldn't move to an actually friendlier, more direct model. Wingrider01 wrote: how is that going to pay for the additional resources needed to constantly store all the data that is generated per character slot? Enterprise level storage is not cheap 3.00 per slot per month maximum 5 additional slots fits better. Do not want anything available for station cash, would rather see it removed from the real servers How do you know how much it will cost them? Do you see their balance sheets and accounting plans to know this? __________________ I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom. I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break...

08-20-2010, 10:23 AM	#17
Iamken Tester Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 254	I'm not so sure they would do this. The only reason I have a station account is for the extra EQ2 character slots. I don't play any other SOE game at this time. If they made extra slots purchasable, I would just buy the 5 slots and downgrade my account, saving me money in the long run. __________________ Fyfe - 92 Troubador - Unrest Quinleigh - 90 Fury - Unrest Rylaar - 90 Ranger - Unrest Fife - 60 Troubador - Test

08-20-2010, 10:42 AM	#18
urgthock Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Houston, TX. Posts: 1,308	TheSpin wrote: I was thinking more about how to make this a good option and I actually think it would be beneficial to SoE to sell this in character 'packages' rather than selling individual characters. for example To increase your alloted characters from 7 to 10 costs 1500 SC (3 character slots @ 500 each) To increase the allotted from 10 to 12 costs another 1500 SC (2 character slots @ 750 each) To increase from 12 to 15 would be 3000 SC (3 characters @ 1000 each) And from 15+ each slot costs 1500 each and is sold individually.... up to 20 slots total. Why on earth would SoE ever price them that way. Right now you pay a recurring $15 fee each month to get those extra 5 characters. Why would or even should they merely charge a one time $30 fee for those same 5 characters. I know you would love it if they did and so would I and so would every player. Just like I would love it if I could go out and buy a ferrari for $100. But it doesn't make good business sense for SoE to price them that way. A more equitable and reasonable (for both sides) cost would be a recurring charge of like $1.50 extra for each slot. That way if you want to have those same 5 extra characters, you end up paying like $7.50 extra month instead of $15. Sony wins in that if you keep those character slots for more than 4 months (which most people would), they make more money than just charging a one time $30 fee. And you win in that you get the extra 5 slots for only $7.50 per month instead of the $15 per month you would have to pay otherwise and aren't paying that extra $7.50 for the "ability" to play other SoE games that you have no interest in.

08-20-2010, 10:47 AM	#19
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	Fyfe@Najena wrote: I'm not so sure they would do this. The only reason I have a station account is for the extra EQ2 character slots. I don't play any other SOE game at this time. If they made extra slots purchasable, I would just buy the 5 slots and downgrade my account, saving me money in the long run. This is why this particular request is being brought up now. Rothgar wrote: I apologize that this change didn't make it into the update notes. It was not our intention to try to hide it. Obviously this would have been discovered within about 5 minutes of the update hitting live servers. We've already had the internal discussion of making sure that our changes are hitting the update notes to try to keep this type of thing from happening again in the future. Every update there are things that we miss in the update notes and we know we need to improve that. We've known about this issue for as long as its been in the game and it was always something we saw as needing to be fixed. We never considered it a bannable exploit, but it was definitely something that was not intended. With the addition of the Extended service, we wanted to limit character slots for free accounts to provide another reason to encourage people to subscribe. This bug would have had a bigger impact in that environment, so it became a priority to fix it. Unfortunately we have no plans to undo this fix as it was definitely something that should have been fixed a long time ago. The fact that you've been able to make use of those additional slots for so long shouldn't take away from the fact that it was a bug. It may be little consolation, but we've resurrected the discussion of selling additional character slots to give you more options. There have always been some hurdles with this which is why you haven't already seen it. As soon as we have more information on this topic, we'll let you know. Again, I hope you'll accept our apology for not giving more warning on this change. I bolded the paragraph concerning extra slots. A lot of people would likely buy slots, plus this is a feature they can also sell on the extended servers. Overall I definately think it would be more profitable to have thousands of people buying character slots than to have a handful of players pay $15 montly for 5 slots. And in response to urgthock. There is nothing sold in the marketplace that adds a recurring subscription cost. It's all one time purchases. Of course Rothgar said 'selling' which doesn't necessarily mean selling in the marketplace. If SoE can add it to the store, it's probably a win for them because the store can be used without a credit card, so even if it's a one time purchase, it's a much more accessible purchase. Also in my opnion 15 dollars a month just for 5 character slots is highway robbery. 360 annually for 12 slots versus 140 annually for 7 slots. The only thing that makes SA worthwhile for people on a budget is the fact it allows you to play multiple games... and most people are on a budget. The successful F2P games do not make their money from recurring subscriptions... they draw people in,lure them with fancy things, keep feeding them until they can't take any more, and then they usually get hungry for something else. I'm don't think the EQ2X servers are set up to be very successful because it almost requires a subscription if you want to be a serious player.

08-20-2010, 11:19 AM	#20
Gungo Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Crushbone Posts: 5,378	I don't see them charging less then either a $15 fee for each slot on a one time basis up to a max 3 slots.ORat least $2/3 a month per slot up to 5 slots. Eitherway it likely would be cheaper then a full SA but no where near this nominal fee people are looking for. Honestly have you people ever looked at the prices of marketplace items/features. Furthermore SOE NEVER had the intention of giving players unlimited slots like the old bug allowed so i wouldnt expect more then any other previosu feature worth of slots. In example 10-12.

08-20-2010, 11:26 AM	#21
Cyliena Server: Everfrost Guild: Crusaders of Neriak Rank: Colonel Fansite Staff Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 3,798	I'd be happy to purchase extra character slots for SC or a low monthly fee.

08-20-2010, 12:07 PM	#22
EQPrime Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Massachusetts Posts: 702	I'd pay a one time $10-$15 fee per slot to add a couple of character slots. I have no problem with stuff like this being on the marketplace along with account transfer tokens and stuff. It's mounts, armor, etc., that I have a problem with. __________________ Uguv - Templar/Armorer/Transmuter Pequeno - Dirge/Alchemist/Tinkerer Reeep - Brigand Arbre - Warden/Sage Flippyfloppies - OP SK Amplify - Troubadour Slege Mistmoore

08-20-2010, 12:23 PM	#23
Kenazeer Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,178	Wingrider01 wrote: TheSpin wrote: @Wingrider01 Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription. electricity to run the drives maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap floor space in the coloc those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge. As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out. __________________ Come play EQ2...we have SOEmote, Dungeon Finder, and Dungeon Maker.

08-20-2010, 12:36 PM	#24
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	I thinks it's important to comment that with all the changes right now in EQ2 making a decision soonish on this feature would be very good. I'm at a crossroads right now myself... Upgrade to station access, pay monthly with 7 slots, or cancel completely. The sooner there is an option to buy some extra slots I'd be more likely to just sign up for a year's gametime and be done with it.

08-20-2010, 12:40 PM	#25
Wingrider01 Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 5,999	Kenazeer wrote: Wingrider01 wrote: TheSpin wrote: @Wingrider01 Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription. electricity to run the drives maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap floor space in the coloc those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge. As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out. By law I am required to keep ALL emails that are sent to or from any of my employees past, or present for a term of up to 25 years, they have to be available within 24 hours of the request. I do not keep old email on expensive fiber attached storage, the emails are archived off to lower cost mass storage that is ISCSI attached to the server for access by the employees, 100 to 500 times lower for retrival ten the fiber attached chassis's but also a less cost then the fiber chassises and drives not being able to verify it but the logical that they archive off the canceled accounts on lower cost ISCSI storage and when an account is reactivated a small script copies it back to the faster production array. there are cheaper ways of retaining old characters then allocated space on more expensive fiber attached drives to give people additional character slots for a single cost Cost wise it is a better ROI is a old player comes back after 3 or 5 years and finds their favorite character(s) still there, which in turns gives a better chance of them actually staying then if they come back and find the character(s) do not exist. __________________ Fixing computer issues, one SOC7 at a time. Yes Jim, the user has experienced the dreaded PICNIC error

08-20-2010, 12:42 PM	#26
Eveningsong Tester Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,844	Kenazeer wrote: Wingrider01 wrote: TheSpin wrote: @Wingrider01 Is there really a continual cost on this storage? So SoE has been paying every month for characters on accounts that were created 5 years ago and never played again? I think they would have purged characters by now if they were paying monthly for well over a million unplayed characters on inactive accounts.Check out all the other games with this feature available. I don't know of any other game charges a recurring cost for extra characters. DDO charges about 6 bucks each like I said, but no subscription required, so I could pay 6 bucks per character, up to like 30-40 characters per account, per server, and permanently have that character slot for as long as DDO keeps going without paying Turbine another dime. In fact you can pay about 200 dollars and permanently unlock the entire game for play, no recurring subscription. electricity to run the drives maintence contracts to have 7x24x365 4 hour response is not cheap floor space in the coloc those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. In addition the games mentioned limit the amout of items a character can have on them and in their vault LOTRO is I belive 20 slots in the valut with NO ability to place bags so you can store 20 things, their housing is limited also as to the number of items that can be place - and that limit is no where near what SOE allows to store in even the beginning house. One eq2 character with all their possessions and house items probably exceedes the item count of every character allowed in LOTRO - pay OR free. even with a properly designed relational database the amount of storage required to be kept spinning would seem to be huge. As far as retaining canceled account characters - itis a distinct possiblity that canceled accounts are rolled off to lower cost and perfomance storage, maybe even enterprise level optical since they are not being updated and there is no need to have high performance access to the information, freeing up the higher cost high performance storage, if the account is reactivated it is then moved back to the regular datbase storage. Don;t know if that is what happens but have seen that done with other data at various location and enterprises I think his point was, and I will reitierate, if storage was any kind of issue at all cost wise they would have been purging old toons more frequently than a single time in the 6 years this game has been out. The cost to the game of having returning players come back only to find their old characters wiped would be far higher than any storage costs.

08-20-2010, 12:50 PM	#27
TheSpin Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,587	After 4 years of inactivity I don't think people would be THAT upset if they happened to come back without their characters. Only the character names itself would have any value considering these characters might be older than the AA system is, and the level cap was 50-60, which is obtainable really easy now. If my characters were purged on wow if I decided to reactivate my account now I wouldn't mind too much. If I come back to a game after such a long absense I want to enjoy the whole experience all over again... really none of that matters and isn't really the issue we're discussing here. I don't think the characters are moved to some remote storage area. If a player did come back to the game I'm sure SoE wouldn't want them to experience horrible gameplay by having their character stored in some dusty corner. The only reason they fixed the whole /camp 'exploit' was because they didn't want EQ2X players to get something without paying for it. Before EQ2X they never cared that some people had up 90 characters on a single account.

08-20-2010, 01:03 PM	#28
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Wingrider01 wrote: those particular games make up for it by RMT transactions, the amount of eq2live rmt transactions for 1 month would probably not even cover the capital expense outlay required to purchase / lease a tray of storage. See, this I have trouble believing. You keep seeming to imply in multiple threads that EQ2's RMT isn't profitable. If that is true then why has Rothgar posted the opposite (citing it as one of EQ2's most important revenue streams), why was the entire UI redone to showcase it, why is the marketplace the most updated part of EQ2 and why did SOE just launch a new service that focuses on more robust RMT? The way EQ2 has been headed goes against your argument I'm afraid. __________________

08-20-2010, 02:19 PM	#29
CorpseGoddess Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Vancouver, BC Posts: 1,774	So let me get this straight... Having purchasable mounts in SC somehow affects gameplay, but allowing people to buy character slots does not? Selectivity is a slippery slope, you know... __________________

08-20-2010, 02:27 PM	#30
Deson Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2,754	Streppoch@Guk wrote: So let me get this straight... Having purchasable mounts in SC somehow affects gameplay, but allowing people to buy character slots does not? Selectivity is a slippery slope, you know... And perspective is lost on the myopic. How exactly does having more character slots( the precedence pre-existing as well) affect in-game play?Unless you're thinking the slots will come with loot and such that is. __________________ I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom. I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break my doom and gloom.I will not let Domino break...