Due to the increased costs of running the EverQuest game service, we will be increasing our subscription rates in June. Effective June 12, 2005, the new monthly subscription rate will be $14.99/month. While this announcement may be unpleasant, the cost of operating a top tier MMO has increased significantly over the past three years and this change will help us achieve our goal of seeing that every player has a consistently enjoyable experience in the world of EverQuest. We will continue to offer discounts from the new rate plan on multi-month subscriptions. The new price for a 3-month subscription will be $41.97, a 6-month subscription will now be $77.94 and a 12-month subscription will now be $143.88. The 24-month subscription will continue to be $199.95. You don't have to do a thing; you will automatically be migrated to the new billing structure under your current subscription plan when your current subscription plan expires. Subscription rates are subject to tax and value-added taxes, as applicable. These price increases will not affect the SOE Station Access™ subscription rate.
Additionally we'd like to thank our current EverQuest players by offering a 6 and 12-month limited time promotional offer. For a limited time only, you can take advantage of 6 or 12-month promotional subscriptions and reap great savings. Between May 12th and June 11th, 2005, we're offering a special discount on the new monthly subscription price:
* A 6-month subscription costs only US$69.99 -- that's a 10% discount off of the new monthly plan.
* • Even better, a 12-month subscription costs only US$99.99 -- a 31% savings off of the new monthly plan.
For more detailed information on the new subscription rates please go to www.everquest.com/rates.
-Sony Online Entertainment
So right after a new expansion is released that they gained money on they hike the rates of the service. My prediction a year ago was they were going to push people to move from EQ to EQ2, its coming true. :) Condensed servers, rate increases, expansion after expansion to add anything new and still lots of fixes that need to be done all the way back four years ago.
Hmm, pushing people to EQ2 is one way to look at it, the other way is that EQ still has more subscribers than EQ2, who have shown by now that they aren't willing to go to another game (or have come back from one), and so they stand to make a lot of money by raising EQ's subscription rate. :P
Game on,
Salaries only ever go up. So do labour costs.
Maintenance of legacy code costs more the older and more complex the code is.
Condensing servers costs money (the merge takes hours of support) and saves none at all other than energy which is barely noticeable in comparison to labour.
Pushing people to EQ2 is extremely unlikely to be the motive behind this, it's a silly strategy as people are far more likely to go to WoW or wait for Vanguard.
EQ is still awesome value for money in my book. The longer it remains profitable the longer it will be around.
Khayden
im annoyed..ghey sony..i definately didnt and will never goto EQ2 btw, but i also dont think im going to pay new increases..hell no..i luvs playing eq but omg sony get real..psh ><
They continue to find ways to dig into their subscribers pockets. They are releasing multiple expansions every year now at $40 a pop and hiking rates to try and dig deeper. They need to abandoned EQ or EQ2 if they can't afford to keep it running.
for trues, i find it hard to believe with all the money they make from people buying expansions, paying current rates, having multiple accounts, playing both EQ and EQ2 in some cases. and omg we cant keep our server running with all the current income lets kick up subscription a few notches and milk some more money outta players before they quit. say it withs me..sony is GHEY. psh =p
Protest with your wallet then :-)
i am..im qutting i tihnk /cry
not only are they making money off of the expansions and the increases, etc as you all have stated, they are saving money by combining the servers and only having to run half of them...so if anything they should be LOWERING our monthly subscription (yeah, right_lol) not raising it...
by the way...hi everyone im a new member...
Graice Ninelives
Ayonae Ro-i cant remember who we merged with i'll write in next time...lol
43 Apprentice Beastlord
its one dollar if you can't afford one extra dollar why are you playing this game already your cutting your budget way to close...
Expecting a company to pay staff, maintain equipment, and provide updates without charging a single cent more (and still remaining competitive enough to retain that staff) is... well... silly -- even the "free" Guild Wars charges for updates. *I* certainly don't work for free, why should a programmer at Sony? Companies like Sony, Blizzard, Mythic, Microsoft, Ubisoft and a host of others don't spend the time and money to develop, maintain, and expand a MMPORPG for the betterment of Mankind... they do it to make money, plain and simple.
It's sort of a given that prices will eventually go up -- I used to buy new paperback books for $2.00 each... now they're around $7.00+... gas used to be $0.25/gallon (a bit before my time admittedly)... now it's $2.25/gallon... when I was a kid, a Coke cost $0.15... now the average is $0.75. In another fifteen years, I'm willing to bet that even those prices will seem low.
And, frankly, if a $12/year increase for a leisure item is enough to make you scream bloody murder, perhaps you should step back and take a look at the price of non-leisure items, such as groceries, gas, electricity, rent, insurance, healthcare, and countless other things that have gone up in the last 12 months. My rent, my gas, and my electric have all gone up much much more than #12/year in the last year alone -- heck, most have gone up more than #12/month... all this huff over a $1/month game increase is kinda silly in comparison imho :lol:
True enough.
This is all just basic economics. Reducing servers will not necessarily reduce operating costs, as an above poster alluded.
Suppose that you supply the world with a product; apples, for instance. Everyday you load a truck up full of apples, and drive them to the market. Someone else has invented oranges, and your demand for apples lowers. Thus, you reduce your apple production by half. Will this lower your price by half? Not necessarily... You still need the truck... and you still drive the same distance, so your fuel consumption for said truck is the same. How will you keep up with your constant operating costs, and maintain a profit for you? You may need to actually raise prices.
Ahhh, my head is hurting. Supply and Demand. Marginal costs. Production probability frontier. Elasticity of demand. Arrrrgh, economics! :evil:
Yea, ya merge the servers, shutting down half of them, cut your CS down by half... Yup thats a increase in costs alright :roll:
Quote from: Jikaabx on May 21, 2005, 02:36:31 AM
Yea, ya merge the servers, shutting down half of them, cut your CS down by half... Yup thats a increase in costs alright :roll:
Less servers = less GMs? Don't think so somehow, they havent allocated CS staff per server for YEARS. How is that even close to making sense when the total population post merge is no different than it was before?
They did NOT do the server merger to reduce costs. It simply doesnt work that way. The servers are probably still running incorporated into new clusters or farms in fact I think SOE even stated this. The time spent by the technical team means doing the merger actually cost them money and the reason they did it was so that they kep servers at a level of population to make playing more rewarding and keep people playing longer.
Honestly you'd think it was doubled in price or something the way some people react. It's a comparatively small increase, the first in a long long time, if you don't like it noone is forcing you to pay it. If you don't like the prices for expansions noone is forcing you to buy them and f you pay for a year in one go it's still less than $10 a month. As a consumer the only recourse you have is to not buy the goods.
Yeah price rises are never fun but honestly if you expect them to do anything else when their costs go up and the number of subscribers come down then you're being naive I'm afraid.
Khayden
Outragous! When does SOE realize that they are LOSING PEOPLE!!!! Raising prices on an already too high per month cost is ridiculous and to attempt to hide said fees saying that expenses has gone up is laughable! Expenses are always increasing, but SOE is making money hand over fist and has been for quite some time on EQ. Taking such actions as this will NOT make them more money in the long run. What it will do is choke out those riding the fence about staying in the game. The only saving grace that has kept myself in EQ is the yearly specials they have offered over the past two years at their anniversary: the 12 months for $99 . The price of playing EQ online should have NEVER risen above $10 a month. Anymore and it's plain gluttony on SOE's part and has ruined our population time and again. It's pretty obvious that SOE is heading their MMO generation down a slow and painful death slope.
Welcome Solase!
I gotta say though... your accusations are faulty. They are not getting any new subscribers, so how are you to cover increasing costs, with fewer subscribers? Your only recourse is to raise prices... period. There is no other way to raise the funds to continue the service at... oh gosh, dare I say it... a profit? There, I said it... SOE is a business! :-)
This is all basic economics here people.
Also, price raises did nothing to "ruin our population." Perhaps you haven't heard of a few little games called World of Warcraft and Everquest 2? Those are the reasons why people moved on.
Actually how are their costs going up? They have elminated underpopulated servers which put old server clusters out of use which could then be re-added to the newly merged servers for more horsepower. Bandwidth gets cheaper by the day. They have elminated almost ALL of their support staff and from the last few expansions I have seen not much thought is put into anything anymore so developers are thin. SOE has cut costs at every corner at the expense of their user base so I don't understand how you can say their expenses are going up. The only expenses they have increasing is padding pockets. In the tech industry lecacy apps do not increase in price they level out and maintenance becomes quite cheap.
OK, thus far, this entire conversation is speculation. If you think the costs of running EQ are getting cheaper, prove it. Show me some numbers. It seems we have alot of economists here, so maybe they should start backing their claims with numbers.
I'll be handing out the tin foil for hats later. :-D
Well, I had a 2 paragraph run down of real world numbers (if I shut off one server and merged where I work). But I thought I'd spare you all that.
There is a much simpler way to look at this:
Cost of going to see Star Wars Ep III:
$7.50 ticket
$1.50 for gas ( more like $5 for me since I live in the sticks).
$10.00 Popcorn, soda, gummy bears, etc. (don't say you wont buy it, theres no reason to go to the movies cept popcorn after the home theatre boom).
_______
$19.00 (this is if you like to watch movies by yerself.....add $10 if your taking the wife or girlfriend, more if you have kids.)
$19.00 for 2h 20m of entertainment.
$14.99 for EverQuest.....potentially 720 hours of entertainment. I spend that much in one trip to the store. EverQuest is still the cheapest entertainment around.
And don't go spoutin off about all the expansion you HAD to buy....no one held a gun to your head. Classic/Trilogy play just fine.
Also....if anyone here has a right to complain, I do......I've already starting paying 14.99:
Transaction Date Order No. Description Amount
5/12/05 996002648 EQ Subscriptions $14.99
4/7/05 995172716 EQ Subscriptions $12.95
:-o
SOE provides entertainment as a service, just like the example above. They're raising their prices to a competitive rate. It's not unheard of in any entertainment industry. Honestly, if a couple more bucks a month ensures that the Devs and QA are making a competitive wage and SOE is bringing in enough money to remain profitable in the eyes of their upper management, I'm fine with it.
Wages increase, businesses that provide services to SOE, such as leases, charge more as time goes. It's just the nature of things.
I have to agree with the above posters. SOE is in the business of making money. As long as the game is showing a profit the suits will continue to support it. However, making unsubstantiated claims of corporate greed is really just a knee jerk reaction to the price increases. All in all $14.99 is relatively inexpensive given the amount of enjoyment I get out of the game. It's certainly considerably less than I pay for cable and I play EQ more than I watch TV.
Quote from: JillieMT on May 24, 2005, 09:04:35 PM
Welcome Solase!
I gotta say though... your accusations are faulty. They are not getting any new subscribers, so how are you to cover increasing costs, with fewer subscribers? Your only recourse is to raise prices... period. There is no other way to raise the funds to continue the service at... oh gosh, dare I say it... a profit? There, I said it... SOE is a business! :-)
This is all basic economics here people.
Also, price raises did nothing to "ruin our population." Perhaps you haven't heard of a few little games called World of Warcraft and Everquest 2? Those are the reasons why people moved on.
All I have to say, Guild Wars is managing to do it :-P . With SOE releasing on average 2 expansions a year now and knowing that all of us levels 60+ are going to buy the new content who are staying, I'd say they have a pretty guaranteed return on investment there alone. At least NCSoft realizes this and has taken a much better and different approach to their customers: "Keep the customer happy!" What a concept!!! As someone mentioned earlier as well, how many things have gone unfixed for how long now? To give you an idea of some SIMPLE FIXES that should have been fixed a long, long time ago, what about our claws that when worn are turned backwards?!? How freakin hard is it to invert the graphic and attach it to the existing equipment!?! Even I could manage to do that one :-P
Has nothing to do with being an economist, I run a web hosting company and have for the past 5 years. In 2000 a site that gave you 1gb of space and 50gb of bandwidth would have run you over $199/month, today that same site will run you about $9.95 with most hosts. The reason???? Bandwidth and disk space are extremely cheap now. The support staff you speak of was mostly outsourced so they do not stay competitive with US rates and the development is mostly off shoots of EQ2 development now. There is very little originality being made for EQ, for the last two years we were a beta test for the release of EQ2. Every new feature they added they said would be an existing feature of EQ2.
I agree with the GuildWars comment, they are making enough off of the software to justify the online play. Blizzard has done that for years with Diablo also. I know EQ is different, but there is little justification for making the existing population even unhappier with rate increases.
Quote from: Kaspi on May 26, 2005, 02:19:21 PM
I agree with the GuildWars comment, they are making enough off of the software to justify the online play. Blizzard has done that for years with Diablo also. I know EQ is different, but there is little justification for making the existing population even unhappier with rate increases.
Then at least you see my point. Software development along with the movie industry has made money hand over fist during the last 20+ years. From my Financial Accounting class, I specifically remember them having a blurb regarding the movie "Forest Gump". At the box office, it grossed more than $600 million, yet they were able to claim it as a loss as they creatively worked the number to show that it cost them $630 million. This is a practice that extends over into the oil industry, entertainment industry, etc... So to think that EQ is not profitable or would not be profitable for SOE to charge only $9.95, you should consider the fact that they are able to offer the $99 a year offer (or $8.25 a month). They would not offer such a deal if it was not profitable. I'm glad that you have done well with your small ISP company and I completely understand that you may feel that SOE's belt is tightening due to inflation. However, they have a larger purse and also more clients than a small ISP provider has and therefore cut huge amounts in less amount of manpower needed as well as the cumulative interest accrued from the multi billions of dollars invested throughout the corporation as a whole.
Think of climbing a hill to get to the otherside where the grass is greener. Most large corporations that are managed correctly are over the hardest part and on the downward slope. They can aquire smaller companies, merge departments, and cut manpower so what once took twice the amount of manpower is consolidated under one large umbrella. SOE is like any other company: in the business of making money. When they see a product of theirs start to decline, they do what most large corporations do; shift the funds to a more promising product without analyzing if the product is still making them a large profit. I've seen it happen time and again. Chrysler bought Dollar, Thrifty, and Snappy rent a car and merged them under the "Pentastar" umbrella. When numbers declined for the rental car business in the mid 90's (and only a small decline to say the least), they spent millions of dollars splitting the 3 companies apart again and sold them all off one by one. Today, Dollar and Thrifty Rent a Car are worth about twice as much as they were on the Nasdaq 10 years ago!
In closing, SOE is just making more poor decisions based on a short term experience. As many others have stated, people (including myself) left EQ for a short while to check out WoW, EQ2, etc.. yet, many of us have returned to EQ for the simple fact that those products don't hold our attention as well as EQ. Instead of investigating and correcting areas that would make the newbie levels more captivating, they have decided to put all their efforts into EQ2 (ie. what you said about us being the beta testers for EQ2). So again, many areas that need fixes applied or whole new reworks (ie. Smedley's claim to redo all the character models over a year ago that has not and from last account will not happen) go left unattended which speaks volumes to us the consumer that SOE does no longer care about it's EQ product to the extent of it being a viable continued commodity. Raising pricing on EQ is most likely not to cover the cost of inflation on keeping EQ up and running, but more to the point of covering the failed EQ2 product which from what I remember had many budget overruns. They have lost a large contingent of EQ players to WoW and now NCSoft has come along and smashed them again with the release of Guild Wars which promises (and from what I've seen so far delivers) a very captivating MMO that has less downtime for patching than any other MMO and provides a full featured RPG with no, yes NO! monthly fee!
Please don't try to justify (at least not to me) the necessity for SOE raising monthly subscription rates. Many of my friends, many articles I have read, etc.. people have stated time and again that they feel it's silly to have to pay for a monthly subscription. I, however, don't feel that way, but I do feel that charging $15 a month is going beyond standard profitability to gluttony on SOE's part. By us paying a monthly subscription rate, we should feel that within the same amount of cost spent it was worth more than going out and buying a new game on the market (ie. at $10 a month in 5 months it should feel like we spent are money more wisely than say going out and buying Guild Wars) .
Unfortunately this is the corporate world we live in today. It's not enough for a company to be profitable. The corporation must not only show profit, but show growth as well.
EverQuest's pricing fits in right with everyone elses. These prices are all current as of 10 minutes ago according to the official websites of each respective game:
Monthly Term................. 1 ........ 3 ....... 6 ..... 12 ...... 24
EverQuest....................14.99...13.99...12.99...11.99....8.33
EverQuest II.................14.99...13.99...12.99...11.99....n/a
World of Warcraft..........14.99...13.99...12.99....n/a......n/a
Dark Age of Camelot.......14.95...13.45...11.95...11.45....n/a
Star Wars Galaxies.........14.99...13.99...12.99...11.99....n/a
City of Heroes...............14.95...13.95...12.95...n/a.......n/a
Lineage 2.....................14.95...13.95...12.95...11.95....n/a
Horizons.......................12.95...11.95...10.95.....9.37...n/a
Shadowbane.................12.99...11.66...10.84.....9.99...n/a
Planetside.....................12.99...12.00...10.83...10.00....n/a
SOE also offers the All Access Pass for $21.99/month -- if you play more than one Sony game (EQ, EQ2, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies, plus a few other miscellaneous ones) this will save you money over the monthly flat rate. Since I play EQ, EQ2, and Planetside, I pay $21.99 instead of $42.97, so I rather like this -- plus I get free expansions in EQ2 and some other perks.
Guild Wars will make its profit by selling expansions. Want to play something other than John Doe Human? You gotta pay for it. NCSoft did this in Shadowbane also -- want to play a cool race with extra abilities? Pay for a year subscription in advance... it didn't fly as well as they'd hoped. I'm curious if they will continue this if the expansions don't sell well. I'm also curious what type of customer service they offer, if any. Bear in mind, too, that GW is not in the same category of game as EQ/WoW.
The monthly fee provides Sony/Blizzard/Mythic/NCSoft/etc with the resources to do a great many things, but primarily it fulfills one very important need all of these companies share -- no one works for free. Personnel costs are the single largest expense for ANY company, and unlike things like web hosting, they don't go down with time. My salary has steadily increased over the last six years -- I wouldn't even consider a job that paid me now what I made six years ago. My benefits have also improved dramatically. The MMORPG market is highly competitive, with new venture's starting up all the time, and existing ones always seeking to expand. If WoW wants to get some experienced people for their team, where they gonna look? Sony would be my first guess -- Brad looked there first when he started Vangard. So Sony's options are to let their most experienced and skilled people trickle away to better job offers, or to provide suitable compensation so that they are not as easily tempted. Where does that compensation come from? Scroll up to that chart above :)
Sony have a duty to their shareholders to make as much money as they can, as does every company.
It's basic economics, if people are willing to pay it they'll charge it. I've worked in software development with outsourcing etc and project budgets long enough to know that outsourcing is no cheaper in the long run and development staff get paid more every year if you want to keep them, and development times go up the older the product is.
Bottom line: Price is dictated by what people will pay and $15 is a pittance for the amount of hours of play I get out of EQ.
Khayden
Just to chime in on the Guild Wars angle here . . . 1) GW expansions will be higher priced than EQ's expansions . . . 2) GW is basically a giant LDoN . . . everything is instanced, which means there will NOT be a lot of hours and hours of QA to ensure the persistant world is balanced and golden for their players. Although some of EQ's work is less than golden for sure . . . and to see EQ charging more money when more and more of their content is becoming instanced . . . well . . . um . . . at least you can still raid stuff . . . you can't do that in GW :-D
Quote from: Stingite on May 27, 2005, 03:35:13 PM
Just to chime in on the Guild Wars angle here . . . 1) GW expansions will be higher priced than EQ's expansions . . . 2) GW is basically a giant LDoN . . . everything is instanced, which means there will NOT be a lot of hours and hours of QA to ensure the persistant world is balanced and golden for their players. Although some of EQ's work is less than golden for sure . . . and to see EQ charging more money when more and more of their content is becoming instanced . . . well . . . um . . . at least you can still raid stuff . . . you can't do that in GW :-D
At this time, we don't know yet what Guild Wars expansions will cost as there have not been any released. EQ expansions have been around $30 on release. Even if GW expansions were to cost the same amount as the original game ($50), in a little over a month that fee would be met with the cost of EQ expansion (ie. $30 + $15 per month) .
As far as the mechanics of EQ versus GW, EQ is still a game based on a '98 engine. Yes, some overhall was done with the release of Shadows of Luclin (and other various patches), but not much. When GW patches a zone, they simply place the files on the server and tag the system to let the client know there is new content that needs to be downloaded and installed when the person attempts to enter said zone. This is a revolution in patching and reduces downtime considerably. The content gets more readily updated this way and there's is less downtime required since they don't have to bring the whole freakin world down to do it.
As far as raiding, yes, it does have it's moments and merits. However, I still find that the most enjoyable experiences I have in EQ is doing dungeon crawls with a group. LDoN's happen to be king in this area thus far and I'm disappointed that the same feel did not carry over in DoN as much.
One thing I have to say, as far as MMO's go, EQ still leads the way with me. This is most likely due to the fact that I have been playing EQ since September 98 and it has become a sorta nostalgia for me. I feel this is the feeling most of the old player base feels as well. However, this is also one of themain reasons why I have adamantly argued against SOE raising the monthly fees in EQ. To me (and I'm sure many others) it feels as if SOE is preying on this nostalgia in hopes of milking those of us who have built this nostalgia for the game and giving very little back. Smedly promises to implement all new character models; then they turn around and act as if he didn't say it and state that they don't foresee doing this anytime in the future. Broken issues go on unfixed. At least Bill Gates brought Microsoft to a halt for 6 months in order to address fixing holes in their software (ie. he addressed the issue which is more than I can say for SOE who has totally ignored these issues). And time and again it has been said that the whole newbie experience has to be re-worked in order to bring new players onboard with EQ. If these areas go left without attention, then I see EQ following the same slow death that Ultima Online has endured which is sad.
Sony has no legitimate reason to jack up their prices. And like others have said, it should have gone down, not up.
And it doesn't matter what features Guildwars has or doesn't have, the fact is that there is NO monthly fee period. Which is proof in itself that it can be done.
In fact bandwidth costs have even gone DOWN the past year from what I have read on several news sites. And another point, is that Sony is offering a yearly fee of $99 (which means the price is less if you choose that, so therefore that means they CAN afford $8.25 a month(and you can bet they are still making money off that), but for whatever reason they decide to jack up the single monthly fee.
EQ2 Sucks, I am A computer engineer and I can tell you prices do go up.
Even if EQ was $20.00 a month that would be $.67 A day, Where else can you go have that much fun
for $.67 A day. can understand kids or people who are having hard times, but for most of us that
are working $15.00 is not a big deal. And is Sony tries to keep pushing us out there is always WOW!
and now guild wars if free. Kabbus not to single you out, but come-on. No reason.
Try playing one of the other games and see what kind of support you get.
Even though Guild Wars is free see how long that lasts. Sit back and think of all the little things sony needs to
think about. Electric, Insurance, Office, Computer Room,401K,Server Maintenance,Phone support and much the
list go on and on. I have owned a Computer Company and try hosting A web site it gets expence real quick.
What we should do is ask Sony to give of something with every renewal even more potions.
Web Site hosting is so cheap now anyone can do it. You can have 99.99% uptime for the price of a Big Mac meal. The cost does not go up since they are still using the same hardware and just replace what breaks. They implemented all of their costs up front in the clusters and now just maintain. Bandwidth and hardware are both cheaper now than they were 5 years ago also.
I find it funny folks are being sucked into defending/opposing this price increase.
It's still cheap entertainment, even if it were $19.99 a month. And you know, I am sure I would pay $19.99 a month if it were that much.
Does this make me an ignorant consumer? No. Why? Because "I" feel I am getting my money's worth from it. And as long as I feel that way, I will continue to pay.
I won't pay $14.99 for WoW, or EQ2, because I don't think I should have to pay to be tortured by boring crap. I don't get my moneys worth from them.
I don't care where the money is spent so long as I am getting my entertainment value from it.
If you are subscribed to the fee.....sure, you have a right to complain I suppose. It's a bit hypocritical though, since you control where your money goes. The best way to complain and have your complaint noticed however, is to stop paying. There's a novel idea.
If you are no longer a subscriber....There's nothing for you to say.