Renames: Why so expensive?

Okay, I...

What...

Errr...

*Hangs head in defeat.*

Yeah I have to also disagree with VoodooGirl for once. We are probably talking somewhere around 64 bytes of data - that's bytes, not even kb. It's probably a combination of a money grab and anti-griefing. It's as simple as that.

I too think $5 would be more reasonable, or even less.

VIPs get a free rename every two months. nbd

To my mind, the rename and server transfer costs are a relic of the *** backwards pricing model the game used before pricing was considered to be a "thing." Want something? $10. Want something else? $10. Want anything at all other than your subscription? $10. Doesn't matter what it is, that's what it costs. In a time before microtransactions where people actually sat down and considered pricing, marketability and advertisement, everything had the same cost.

Paragon Studios had to learn the hard way that "consumables" which cost too much do not get purchased. They started off trying to maintain their old model of "everything is expensive" and found out that consumables, especially fairly minor ones, did not sell well.

Character renames are a consumable. To my eyes, the only reason they haven't been reduced in price is there's almost no demand for them, so no-one has bothered to sit down and work on an alternate pricing model. The system is no longer manual, as evidenced by the fact that it's instantaneous despite the messages warning it might take time. Price it lower and people will buy it. Price it at $10, though, and people will figure they can live with a misspelled name or, you know, do the "ghetto rename" transfer trick since server transfers were seen as SO worthless subscribers get them in our junk mail.

I think Steam has proved that high prices don't always generate the most revenue. On the contrary, they've shown that LOW costs generate considerably more. It may be time to re-examine the prices of renames and transfers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Also, the cost of the renames is probably on the high side to discourage people from continually renaming characters that have been genericed.

Iron Man has been genericed. If renames were $1 a lot of people might take their genericed character and name him I'ron Man, then Ir'on Man, then Iro'n Man, etc.

Making renames expensive probably goes a long way toward cutting down how many times a GM has to keep genericing the same character. Spending $10 to get around a GM's decision is a lot more daunting than spending $1.

One thing I thought of that's not considered by the "it's only data" people is to remember we're dealing with a software system created a decade or so ago. I imagine it originally had to do with the character's name being the database key for the character record. When you change keys, the database recalculation and replication is affected. Especially when you factor in cached data and server farms. Changing data is simple, but not always without implications or impact.

--NT

That's the point JayboH, there isn't a guaranteed way to prove it will work 100% of the time. It's like saying write bug free code. Hence the holding of the breath. You just need a drive to time out or a function fail without an error code or one you didn't expect. If the DB was offline I would have a bit more confidence but nobody is going to want to pay for a rename today if it's going to take affect during Thursday downtime.

The code is already there and it is working, so I don't get your point at all.

That isn't exclusive to the topic we are discussing - the DBA needs to be on-call even if renaming wasn't even an option in this game.

Except with the test server if something goes terribly wrong, wiping the player database is now a viable option as well as the reduced consequences of a database rollback (restoring an old working copy). It's the test server, they've told us time and time again don't expect any sort of permanence.