Thursday, July 29, 2010

Word of the day.

The word of the day is: Conjecture.

Pronunciation: \kən-ˈjek-chər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin conjectura, from conjectus,past participle of conicere, literally, to throw together, from com- + jacere to throw — more at jet
Date: 14th century
1 obsolete a : interpretation of omens
2 a : inference from defective or presumptive evidence b : a conclusion deduced by surmise or guesswork c : a proposition (as in mathematics) before it has been proved or disproved

If you would like a current example of the use of conjecture, please see any and all blog posts on the subject of the new EQ2 Extended service and how it along with SOE will die because of going F2P. In fact, you could read any post that foretells the future of the game and company, because at this point no one knows what exactly is going to happen.

I'm not here to fight the good fight for SOE or EQ2, I haven't been an active player in quite a long time. But what I am here to do is to be a counter weight to the doom and gloom rhetoric that is being tossed around. What I would prefer to see are more posts that are picking apart EQ2X and asking questions to try and get clarification. Green Armadillo points out something that is quite important to those who are intending on dungeon crawling or raiding. This is a legitimate concern that I think everyone should be questioning, it's just to bad the rest of the post is based on assumptions about the future of the game.

I believe what has me most peeved about the whole situation is the comparisons to what Turbine did with LOTRO and how those same people believe SOE should be doing the same thing with EQ2. I believe that the success of DDO instilled a certain confidence that Turbine would be able to handle the transition of LOTRO to a F2P business model. It would seem that SOE hasn't instilled that same confidence.

4 comments:

Marty Runyon said...

It is rather amusing that SOE, already having a long history of free-to-pay and cash shop games is getting treated like they have no idea what they are doing.

Yeebo said...

I think Green Armadillo raises a legitimate concern. However, like always with these things, my attitude is wait and see. There are too many unknowns, including what system will come out of the alpha and go live next month. I assume things are still being adjusted.

Ferrel said...

It isn't all conjecture. Green is making an assessment of the situation based on facts. Here is what he is looking at.

The Live servers offer you the entire experience for $14.99 /mo.

The Extended servers offer you a crippled game experience at silver level (one time purchase of $10). This isn't conjecture, this is based on the EQ2 matrix sheet as it stands.

If you upgraded to the gold extended level you pay $14.99 a month but receive less than on the live servers.

I think that point is that the models don't reconcile well with each other given the current documentation.

Jayedub said...

I do agree that the Gold and Platinum plans are not very great, but the Silver level isn't any more crippled than LOTRO's Free or Premium plans.

If we're going to throw out assessments, then maybe the Gold and Platinum plans are priced as such to keep the live service better and more attractive. If they were no different than live, then there would be no reason to play on the live side, and everyone's fears of live dieing would actually have much more merit.