Spatch

This made me lulz.

Ain't it the truth.

There are new Tier 4 inspirations coming. Check the markets, they're already listed (although there are none available at the moment).

I was extremely disappointed in the Wedding Pack, and felt it was overpriced.

There, now you can buy it to spite me.

It's happened to me once or twice now. Opening and closing the e-mail window two or three times fixed it for me. Definitely a bug.

The Wedding Pack (WP) is a pretty limited "dealy-o" (LOL), and overpriced at $9.99 (IMO), but the costume parts are nice. You don't need to use the entire costume (tux, or bridal gown), the individual pieces to the costumes can be insert into any type of costume-build. The emotes are neat, but I'm not a big emote guy -- I got WP for the costume bits, and they do see some regular usage (in full on a couple of toons, in part on several).

* steps onto soap box *

The Wedding Pack, IMO, was the worst pack to be released up until the party pack, given its extremely focused theme. I waited a little over two months to purchase it. At the time, it was only the second 'booster' to have been offered for sale - and was seriously lacking in comparison with its predecessor. The first one, the GvE pack, had much, much more stuff for the same price:

1. Jump Pack temporary power
2. Pocket D teleport temporary power
3. Pocket D VIP badge
4. Sinister and Justice costumes

As such, I felt (and still feel) the WP was overpriced for what it offered, and did not want to be part of that initial "rush" of sales. That initial rush would really be what determined the success or failure of the pack. I hoped initial sales would fall short of their expectations, forcing them to rethink future boosters. Up until the Party Pack, all packs have been much better than the WP, and I have purchased them all immediately upon release. Whether sales, or lack thereof, of the WP had anything to do with this, I can't say.

With PP, it will very likely be the first booster I don't buy. If I do, it will be for obsessive-compulsive reasons only. However, I will wait several months to do so for the same reasons as the WP above. And, who knows, maybe they'll drop the price eventually. There's no precedent for this of course, but no prior booster has received such widespread negative feedback before, either.

Tsk tsk, now Nether. Many of us are intimately familiar with how businesses work. Because one may disagree with you, doesn't make one an uninformed rube.

I am a counterexample to your statement. I have considered leaving because of this PR cluster-bork. Will I? No -- my sub is paid through June/2011, so I'm rather a captive customer at the moment. But, a seed has been planted that probably shouldn't have been.

I'd like to think I haven't engaged in any grandstanding to date, but that my posts, whether you agree with them or not, have been reasoned and articulate.

Expressing displeasure with this pack (for whatever reason), doesn't necessarily make one a grandstander.

As always, IMHO.

There has to be, IMO, in order for us to move from operating assumption to factual premise. Sure, a 'single-thing' pack will appeal to a smaller player base all things being equal. So long as either of use is working from a different operating assumption, both reasonable, we're going to end up at different conclusions.

True to a point. But, pricing it closely to 'full' boosters (GR pack excluded), will ensure its appeal remains limited.

I think you missed my point. Of course we're the only audience they have. Somebody playing WoW isn't going to be remotely interested in this thing.

What I was trying to convey was that at no point was the term 'niche' or 'limited' used. There was a general question about boosters, and there was a general reply about an upcoming booster announcement. Sure, it's an ad hoc Q&A, with no time to craft marketing-approved answers. But, I was simply trying to support my point questioning the intentionality of the PP's limited appeal.

I agree, certain presumtions guided the setting of the price point. But those presumptions were prior to the player feedback following the pack's announcement. No changes were made to the pack or price point after conditions on the ground changed.

Several folks have made reasonable points that they would pass on buying the pack due to prohibitive price point. Others have indicated they are unhappy with the direction this pack signals to them. I'll ignore those folks who wanted costumes or powers, since no pack will please everybody. But, I think this is the first time we've seen such overwhelming protest against a booster price point.

Sorry, you lost me. Your not sure I think it needs any ... what?

Narrowing the appeal decreases sales.

Of course they'd like to maximize revenue - that's an axiom we can both agree on. But, as I noted above, they maintained the product as-is, despite the player feedback.

You could well be right. We'll see how this unfolds. I too hope they'll pull some useful lessons out of all this din.

I'm pleased you haven't responded negatively to this pack -- believe me, I wish I didn't feel they way I feel (heh, and aren't emotions what largely drives us as consumers ). With previous boosters, Wedding Pack excepted, I was excited about them, really wanted them, and bought them immediately. After War Witch's comment of upcoming boosters in August's Q&A, I was waiting with anticipation for the pending details.

Coming on the heels of GR, the PP really disappoints. They should be exciting the playerbase. If this was a deliberate niche pack as you suspect, the timing probably couldn't have been worse. I really think PS stepped in it here, marketing- and PR-wise.

You make some valid, and interesting points. You and I will likely end up agreeing-to-disagree, but I appreciate the respectful tone of the exchange.

As always, IMHO.

No, probably not. But, in fairness to us posters here, we probably wouldn't have this second thread if there had been some sort of acknowledgment to the large negative feedback in the first from the mods.

An unconstructive post, and a poor analogy to boot. If the store is a place you enjoy shopping at, and you really would like to buy that mug, then it probably isn't unreasonable to have a discussion with the owner/manager.

As I stated earlier, good companies appreciate constructive criticism from good customers. A company is in trouble if, as you suggest, people simply start walking away without voicing concerns.

Your second point rather negates the first. I'm seeing, largely, constructive criticism here from exactly the people who will not be buying it, myself included. Why then the passive aggressive tone with your first paragraph?

This is the rub, I think. As I alluded to in my first post on this thread, this minimalist booster pack, set at an irrationally high price point (IMO), is irritating coming so close on the heels of a paid expansion, and two other boosters. In my case, my annual sub was also paid in June.

I don't begrudge PS/NC trying to make a profitable buck, but if decisions begin to irritate customers, short term financial gain may be just that. Short term.

I'm not crying Doom here. 75-month vet myself, happily coughed up for all previous perks. And, heh, they've got me through June/2011.

But this pack really, really, rubs me the wrong way.

That's the second time you've said this, so I'm honestly wondering, was there an official announcement on this that's slipped past me? Or, is this simply a working assumption based on the minimalist content of this pack?

Interesting points, Nether. But, if I may, I'll make a couple of points.

1. I'm not sure there has been any specific indication that this booster is deliberately targeted at a smaller, or niche, audience. I'd question whether its limited appeal is intentional. I've seen as much, if not more, boosting (pun intended) of this pack compared with previous ones.

Recall, as well, that earlier in August during the pre-GR launch Q&A, War Witch (in response to a question about future boosters) indicated that by the end of August, there would be an announcement new boosters. I'm pretty comfortable in saying they were targeting the PP to the general Co* population -- certainly to those who had purchased previous boosters.

Without specific confirmation either way, we'll never know for sure. So, I think it's a reasonable default position to place this booster on the same level as previous ones. You hold a contrary view, which is okay too.

2. Comparing to previous boosters, IMO, is valid. We're not talking widgets here, that require shipping, warehousing, tracking, wholesaling, retailing....etc. We're talking about a virtual product with none of the built-in overhead of real-world widgets. Charging a premium on a virtual product because of limited appeal seems ... strange.

From a pure supply and demand perspective, it's not an invalid point of view. But, this virtual product is made -- it requires no further input costs. Whether they sell ten, or 10,000, their production costs are done. The more logical approach would be to widen the appeal by adding to the booster, or reducing the price, and, in either case, maximizing revenue by increasing sales volumes.

3. Of course, it's valid to state that people need not buy it if it is not a good value to them. But, it's equally valid for a company's customers to voice concerns if they feel the company is putting out products that offer poor value for money. Good companies value constructive criticisms from good customers.

As always, IMHO.

To your first point, too true. Given that the devs have indicated that they want to make all NPC costumes available to players, some of the Carnival costume pieces would have been a great addition to the PP.

To your second point, as every passing day goes by with no mod response, I have come to strongly suspect marketing and/or the high-up-mucky-mucks are forcing hands.

Indeed, never understood why rename and server transfer tokens weren't offered up through the vet rewards program. We get respecs and character slots every few vet rewards, items we can otherwise pay real money for, but not renames or server transfers.

<shrugs>

Not sure SG renames are a viable idea due to the Standard Code Rant. Indeed, it doesn't appear base code has seen any material changes since it was built five years ago. Even then, my impression was that the base code was more than a bit unwieldy (to wit, base raids removed from the game entirely, and a 5-year hiatus for the CoP trial -- two prominent base-related features heavily advertised with CoV's release). The fact we don't have the ability to buy an SG rename token with real money suggests to me the tech isn't there, and won't be easy to put it there. Ignoring the foregoing, however, it's a fine idea for a vet reward.

Regarding the 75 month reward (which I will be receiving later this month), I like it. It's something we haven't seen before, so for that reason alone I like it. I hate it when we get a vet reward with, for example, a respec and costume token -- yawn, my main has 10+ respecs and 100+ costume tokens. Both my villain and hero bases are fully decked out, so I can only spend prestige nowadays on cosmetic items. But, my hope is that bases will some day see some (any!) love, and prestige will become a sought after currency again. With this hope in mind, I always play in SG mode, and will enjoy the 10% boost in prestige from mob kills.