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[Graelyn]

Well, I've bought a year of subscription time.

This whole pile of shit in the last few months made me drop all my other accounts and had me itching at the unsub button for Grae as well, and most of you know I have a rather more personal reason to be annoyed at CCP...

However, the immediate changes to the game, and the unmitigated awesome that WINTER looks to bring gives me a solid line of hope.

I want this game to succeed. Really bad. I've sunk near 8 years into the fucking thing. That is what made it's fuckups in the last year so frustrating. It's also why, now that the direction shows signs of changing, I will support it as best I can.

[Julianus Soter]

And what are these personal reasons, precisely, Grae?

I think what CCP doing is just, necessary, and well-timed. They should be judged by the execution of the winter expansion, not by taking the measures required for a business to remain solvent.

[Jade Constantine]

Well, I've bought a year of subscription time.

This whole pile of shit in the last few months made me drop all my other accounts and had me itching at the unsub button for Grae as well, and most of you know I have a rather more personal reason to be annoyed at CCP...

However, the immediate changes to the game, and the unmitigated awesome that WINTER looks to bring gives me a solid line of hope.

I want this game to succeed. Really bad. I've sunk near 8 years into the fucking thing. That is what made it's fuckups in the last year so frustrating. It's also why, now that the direction shows signs of changing, I will support it as best I can.

At this point the only thing preventing me doing the same is the NeX store. If CCP remove it and put all the content there into the character designer (or some other way of reusing the content without MT) then i'll get out my credit card too.

[Desiderya]

Hm... everything I have or want from NeX was or will be bought with ISK (and yes, I still have all my gifted Aurum) I don't really get the hard feelings about that thing when you can eseentially buy faction ships with your credit card.
Also while the launch of NeX was terrible, it's not that this thing is overpresent or overwhelmed with CCP's attention at this point.

[Jade Constantine]

Hm... everything I have or want from NeX was or will be bought with ISK (and yes, I still have all my gifted Aurum) I don't really get the hard feelings about that thing when you can eseentially buy faction ships with your credit card.
Also while the launch of NeX was terrible, it's not that this thing is overpresent or overwhelmed with CCP's attention at this point.

Call it a form of doing penance. CCP fucked up in a huge way with this microtransaction flirtation and the insulting messaging coming from their senior management this year. They looked like becoming an identikit sheep developer following the herd to MT greed that has ruined other games. Time has come for them to put this rubbish firmly behind them and move on.

If I wanted I too could buy everything in the NeX store for isk but the concept offends me immensely because of the way this content has corrupted the integrity of the player-led economic sandbox in the game.

I want to play Eve Online.
Not Perfect World International.

[Nakal Ashera]

While the NeX is really, really dumb, I don't see it going anywhere. CCP have said that they're worried that subscription MMOs are going the way of the dinosaur, and PLEX's will be just as vulnerable if the market does end up shifting in that direction, as some industry guys are predicting.

[Jade Constantine]

While the NeX is really, really dumb, I don't see it going anywhere. CCP have said that they're worried that subscription MMOs are going the way of the dinosaur, and PLEX's will be just as vulnerable if the market does end up shifting in that direction, as some industry guys are predicting.

I think its more likely that a couple of the "industry experts" (ie MT whores) that CCP hired last year told the management that the subscription model was dead and the icelanders believed them. I suspect these genius experts told CCP that it wouldn't matter if they dropped a few subs this summer because NeX would make up the difference in spades.

Lets hope they got fired.

[lallara zhuul]

Just got an email about 4.95 for 30 days from them.

Guess they need to boost up their subscriber numbers so that the investors will stay happy.

[GoGo Yubari]

I think its more likely that a couple of the "industry experts" (ie MT whores) that CCP hired last year told the management that the subscription model was dead and the icelanders believed them. I suspect these genius experts told CCP that it wouldn't matter if they dropped a few subs this summer because NeX would make up the difference in spades.

Lets hope they got fired.

Quoted for the effin' truth! Micro-transactions and free-to-play MMos have certainly added something new to the market, but I've never believed subscriptions are going to go away any time soon. They can co-exist peacefully.

It's just that the subscription based companies get really greedy when they see f2p rake in revenue with MTs and they start to think how much money they could make by just adding MTs to their subscriptions... whether subscription is going away, it's highly dubious most of these games will even be around to see that happen so why not milk the cow for all its worth? In Eve's case, the reason not to milk it, is that in my opinion Eve doesn't have to die out. It has potential for unique longevity.

I guess they needed moneyz to develop WoD at speed. They probably knew the bubble of new employees would burst without new incomes, so they trusted in MTs. It failed catastrophically and the bubble burst. If that's the story and the "industry experts" provided the meat to the arguments for going that way, I would be very surprised if they wouldn't be fired for causing a fifth of the company to lose their jobs. That might be a huge over-simplification of things, or it might not.

[Faraelle Brightman]

*raises hand* I am not an expert on the games industry, but I'm paid to play one at work.

No one's disputing that whoever designed the MT structure for CCP needs to be beaten with a very large clue-by-four. But I've got my doubts about the longevity of the subscription market, albeit doubts colored by my resistance to paying for them.

Fact is, subscriptions are a very tough market if your name isn't Blizzard. The paths of successful MMOs are lined with the graves of those that never made it to launch or folded sometime after. The fact that Eve has survived for this long and even profited as a subscription game in a niche genre, at a price higher than the current industry average even, is frankly amazing.

Fact is, f2p and MTs aren't killing MMOs, they're saving MMOs...or at least certain MMOs.  Dungeons and Dragons Online probably would have had to shut down if their transition to f2p with microtransactions hadn't been successful, and I probably wouldn't have played it if it hadn't.  Pirates of the Burning Sea, I think was another. It's also giving a lease on life to smaller games that probably could never have afforded to launch if they went subscription, because they would never attract enough of them to survive.  Note that all these games retain a subscription tier; you pay $10 a month and you get bonus stuff from the store and unlimited access to all the content.

NeX or microtransactions aren't inherently evil, it's just that CCP blew it in every possible way imaginable. They blew it on pricing, they blew it on selection, they blew it on launch, they blew it in communicating with the players, they blew it on integrating it with the rest of the game and the existing playerbase, they blew it by having bad pricing *on top* of a subscription model without reducing subscription rates or offering a free-to-play angle.

And don't diss the profit motive entirely. Profit in the hands of good people = cool stuff. What we really want is for CCP to work their way back into the "good people" camp.

[Saikoyu]

I'll agree with everything said above.  If NeX had oppened with ship skins and they only cost a buck or two, I would have bet that it would have taken off like a shot, with no problems. 

[Gottii]

*raises hand* I am not an expert on the games industry, but I'm paid to play one at work.

No one's disputing that whoever designed the MT structure for CCP needs to be beaten with a very large clue-by-four. But I've got my doubts about the longevity of the subscription market, albeit doubts colored by my resistance to paying for them.

Fact is, subscriptions are a very tough market if your name isn't Blizzard. The paths of successful MMOs are lined with the graves of those that never made it to launch or folded sometime after. The fact that Eve has survived for this long and even profited as a subscription game in a niche genre, at a price higher than the current industry average even, is frankly amazing.

Fact is, f2p and MTs aren't killing MMOs, they're saving MMOs...or at least certain MMOs.  Dungeons and Dragons Online probably would have had to shut down if their transition to f2p with microtransactions hadn't been successful, and I probably wouldn't have played it if it hadn't.  Pirates of the Burning Sea, I think was another. It's also giving a lease on life to smaller games that probably could never have afforded to launch if they went subscription, because they would never attract enough of them to survive.  Note that all these games retain a subscription tier; you pay $10 a month and you get bonus stuff from the store and unlimited access to all the content.

NeX or microtransactions aren't inherently evil, it's just that CCP blew it in every possible way imaginable. They blew it on pricing, they blew it on selection, they blew it on launch, they blew it in communicating with the players, they blew it on integrating it with the rest of the game and the existing playerbase, they blew it by having bad pricing *on top* of a subscription model without reducing subscription rates or offering a free-to-play angle.

And don't diss the profit motive entirely. Profit in the hands of good people = cool stuff. What we really want is for CCP to work their way back into the "good people" camp.

Pretty much this.

[Desiderya]

Call it a form of doing penance. CCP fucked up in a huge way with this microtransaction flirtation and the insulting messaging coming from their senior management this year. They looked like becoming an identikit sheep developer following the herd to MT greed that has ruined other games. Time has come for them to put this rubbish firmly behind them and move on.

I can agree to that train of thought.

[Shae Tiann]

Well...

I guess it seems that we - the vocal dissenters, protestors and unsubscribers - won after all (despite all the nay-sayers calling us trolls). It is a tragedy that the process couldn't happen without a lot of people losing their jobs, however. That is not cool, but then none of it really was.

Let's see what it all means in real terms in the end. I really hope they can salvage the game and alter course, for Eve Online and the company, even if right now I doubt I'll personally return again.

I'd just like to point out that CCP's layoffs are not a result of player protests or unsubbing waves. Several of the people who were let go were working on things that CCP promised for the winter expansion shortly before the down-sizing. It was an issue of money that's been hanging over the company for a long time already.

[Robert Kauliford]

I think the free expansion model is something that CCP can use to justify using subscriptions for bulk of the revenue.