Here's the thing though, if it's a $10 expac, not a $40 expac then it would be fair to assume we're getting 1/4 the content at 1/4 the cost right? Well the $40 expac comes with 1700 new quests 7 new flashpoints 3 new warzones 3 new raids 1 new class 1 new race New Level Cap Extended Crafting to new level cap New Abilities/Spells Two new game systems 1. Pet Battles 2. Farming And then a huge laundry list of minor things like new seasons of pvp, new tiers of gear, new mounts, new pets etc. In order for RotHC to be 1/4 of that it would need to come with 400 quests (We have been told it is the size of a larger planet which means it will come with between 150-210) 2 New Flash points (none are included) 1 New raid (none are inlcuded) 1 New Warzone (none are included) New levels, new abilities (these will be included) But there are currently nothing else. So yes, we should expect about 1/4 the content for 1/4 the price, but what they are trying to sell is about 1/10 the content for 1/4 the price...

What server are you on? Because on the Bastion Prime time queues are up to 5min for PvP or PvE and ranked is virtually non-existent already. Cutting away 20-30% of the player base is going make a major impact on the game and our experience playing it. Putting content behind a paywall is going to hurt as both as consumers and as players.

As has been pointed out before, it's not 3 times the size it's more like ten times the size. Take a planet like Tat, Hoth, etc. These planets have 150-180 quests TOTAL. Then you look at WotLK which added 1700 quests, 850 unique quests per faction. Then you add on the fact that WotLK added 3 raids, 7 dungeons, 3 battle grounds, an open world pvp zone, a new class, new profession, new crafting recipes for all the professions, new tiers of gear, etc. And then Cata was even bigger than that, about 30% bigger. And now MoP just as big. Now I understand it's not fair to compare those Expansions to RofHC because MoP took nearly two full years to develop and cost $40 at release. But BW is the one making the comparison by calling their product an expansion. If they don't want them to be compared then they shouldn't call them the same thing lol. WotLK, Cata, MoP all came with about 10x more content than RotHC and cost about $30 more.

No matter how they slice it up its going to be terrible. It means that instead of having 100% of the players in 2 separate queues, we now have them in 3 separate queues. And what about ranked? Is ranked going to be L50 AND L55 or just one or the other or both? It means that we're going to have far fewer people in queue than before. I don't see how as a player anyone can say that putting this content behind a paywall will be good for the health of the game. Just off the top of my head I'd have to say that 10% of people will just quit over this whole ordeal, seems to be the magic number from the other big PR hiccups. Another 20% will just not buy it as that seems the magic number of f2p'ers in my warzones. This means the likely number of L55's available to do content with will be lower than the original number of people on server before the second round of server merges. Yech.

I don't know if you've read the new State of the Game by Jeff Hickman, but he talks about retooling "elder game" content so that it is still relevant at 55, essentially powering up the mobs in FP's and OP's so that they are now relevant for L55. Now he doesn't say if that means adding something like another tier of difficulty on to them so you can do them at either 50 OR 55, but my first instinct would be to say... now. Also, how they work the brackets for PVP has the potential to completely ruin PVP for ever. Imagine if 55 is its own bracket and 1-54 is now the Bolstered bracket. Can you imagine some L54 in fully auged EWH fighting a L10? GG.

Oh geeze, well nevermind then, forget I said anything. Certainly don't go there. It honestly is the internet's dive bar.

No, no, no, no, no. Don't you know that if you utter one criticism about the game you must hate it completely and entirely, and that if you hate it so much why you should just leave and never come back! I've honestly had people tell me that, I have no right to complain, that I should just leave and never return.

Never been to 4chan eh?

Where do you think customers get their ideas about what the game will be like? You think you just invent little stories in our head and hype them up? No, the hype comes directly from the MARKETING department of major corporations. They are the ones telling us it's going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Go back and rewatch the developer walkthroughs with the devs where they literally say things like "Ilum will be revolutionary, awe inspiring" and then it comes out so broken they have to remove it in the first major patch to the game. It's a joke dude. There is a reason that most production studios spend more on marketing than on game development, just check out EA and Activision's quarterlies, even in a heavy development cycle they are matching if not exceeding their development budget, because companies have learned it's a lot easier to trick people into buying a crappy product than it is to make something worth the money.

"Create forum accounts" Uh, you automatically get a forum account when you sign up for service, you don't have to do anything extra. And secondly if you're looking at the whole set of people that have played this game, the only thing you can really say about them is that the vast majority of them quit the game because they felt it wasn't worth the money. We don't have any records about their posting habits, who said what to whom, what percentage of posts are positive, negative, how many people enjoy this game vs hate it. All we really know, statistically speaking, is that a. 80% of people that bought this game quit the game. b. Server populations were so low they had to be merged multiple times. c. profits were so low from all the people quitting that it had to go f2p to try and rake in more cash from the people that stayed behind d. since the initial boost from the launch of f2p on november 15th, service status has declined

This is an absolutely horrible analogy. The real analogy should be "We were promised an Aston Martin and they delivered a Gremlin." I think people are perfectly justified in holding off on giving EA another penny of our money, too many broken promises and half finished content. There is a reason EA was voted the worst company in America, and it's not because "people who play MMO's act like entitled children."

I honestly don't know how people still believe this. It's made really explicit in the store when you try and preorder, it's been on the front page, it's been in all their adds, it's been clarified here on the forums like a thousand times, even in this thread as well. Whether you buy it now or after January 7th the price will be exactly the same, $10 FOR SUBSCRIBERS and $20 if you're F2P. The ONLY thing you get for preordering is five days of early access to the content. That is it. There is NO price reduction for ordering it early, you will pay the exact same amount of money.

What the devs have been doing has led to 80% of people that bought this game, walking away from it, going f2p in under a year, charging for content updates, refocusing on paid items and cash shop gear as opposed to content, and generally turning this game into the laughing stock of the MMO community. I'd say what they've done has not worked at all.

OMG, I was completely and absolutely dumbfounded as to how to handle this perplexing scenario. Without your timely, sage advice I likely would have been wallowing in indecisive ignorance for days, if not weeks. Thank you for pointing out this brilliant course of action, your wisdom is miraculous.

This. Some guy literally drops half the known curse words on Earth on me in a single post, Re, Fa, F.U, Cu, etc, all of them. I respond saying something along the lines of. "Can't tell if you're angry or trolling, if you're just angry chill and try and try to rephrase that without being so obscene and I'll respond, if trolling, have a great day." Get an email saying "calling out another poster for trolling is against our forum's rules of conduct as it distracts from the conversation taking place. Remember, if you believe someone is trolling, please add them to ignore and do not respond." Came with 3 infraction points...

http://www.rockstargames.com/V/ http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire Let's look at your example! For GTA V we have two full blown trailers highlighting numerous key features, over a hundred screen shots showing us the art, detail, and cool new stuff, and about a dozen articles and interviews with people saying what they've changed and added between iterations. Everything we know about Makeb can be summed up in two sentences. So it's not even remotely the same, but I like how people keep saying it.

The price will not go up, in fact, I would expect that the price actually drops within the first month of release. Perhaps it will take two months, but I see this expac being five dollars pretty quick.

If they aren't certain enough about what's going to be in the game to tell us, how do they know it's worth ten dollars? Did they just pick a number from thin air? Why would they put a product up for sale and allow us to order it if they don't know when it's coming out or even what it comes with? Sounds like kind of a scam to me...

Yeah, I guess that they make a specific point of mentioning the wz's fp's and op's seperately from RotHC it makes it pretty apparent that RotHC doesn't actually include new wz, fp, or ops and that those are completely separate things.

Well, they haven't said that the planet will include those things, so source on where you heard they were? Here is my source, their own website. http://www.swtor.com/buy Look at the "key features" section...

Maybe, people aren't willing to preorder something from a company that has a track record of going back on its word? I guess "prudent customer" now means "cheap entitled child" now or something.... you people make me smile.

It doesn't come with new flashpoints, it doesn't come with new operations, it doesn't come with new companion quests, it doesn't come with new warzones. The last expansion I bought was 10 times bigger than this and cost me the same amount of money they are asking. Oh and the planet's size has been released, it's only the size of Hoth, so there is no chance that it's going to be "five times the size" or whatever silly thing people are still claiming.

I'd be willing to bet you 1M credits that the price drops at least 50% within 3 months of release...

What does that have to do with anything you asked me or how I responded? You asked me "Why do people continue to come to the forums and complain, why not just take your money and go?" My response is that what you are presenting is a false dichotomy, I can continue to play the portion of the game I enjoy without giving them any more money whatsoever, RotHC has nothing in it for me, it looks like a shoddy waste of time. If they offer a content update that I might want to buy, then perhaps I will buy it. In the mean time I will play the content I want for free. Sooooo what was the point of your big old TLDR post above?