Eurogamer: $12,000 castles and $2100 deeds - inside Shroud of the Avatar's booming housing market

well..... this game is for rich folk, if you want to buy deeds/houses together, so i cant afford to play the game like i want too. personally i think the prices on houses and such are way over priced for a game thats not even completed yet! A game you dont even know if youll like when they finally do a live release ep1!

In this game only the rich people can get the bundles they want! Us poor folk who where here at the start that paid 1000's of dollars for a game that wasnt even released yet, are screwed now since they have the wheels moving! Your welcome Port! Thanks for making prices on things ridiculously expensive, yeah i know i can get a hat or a back pack for 5 dollars "whoopie!" you can keep all the extra BS in the bundles (worthless to me but prolly could sell to someone else cheaper than you offer! 550 for a village lot is way expensive, i typically spend 50.00 on a game that is completed! Just saying way overboard!

You guys have many NPC cities/town that are empty, you have plenty POTs that are empty! Theres maybe 2 or three POT's worth even going too since when you get there its pretty much empty! they may have hundreds of houses (mostly put up by the POT owners since they have the money to do that!) Tax free place anywhere deeds should be more available! (hey port, your game is not even finished yet!) why not have those towns filled with people so when the newbs come in it actually looks like lots of people play and love this game!

NPC towns are ............"crickets", POT towns are full of empty houses that are just there for looks (thats it) makes it look like a big active place which it is not!

The economy is screwed right now here in the US, why not give us a break????? After all we spent money on this game that none of us would probably spend ever to help you out! I know i will not kickstart a video game again! This one was too expensive! (live and learn i guess!)

 

Hey! Thats Portalariums way of making a medival reenactment PC game! The Nobels are rich and have land by birth right!
The hard laboring normal people live bei the Nobles rules and play 90% if their time for the Rent of a row lot!

So dont complain.. thats roleplaying XD

 

Us poor people from the start of Kickstarter ( me included) save our money and get what we want when we can afford it. This is not a rich players' game. We don't have to buy anything from the add on store. I made a moondial to go with my darkstarr moondial and forgoes the ornate one in the add on store version. Choice.

 

Haha finally sarcasm used properly

 

Nobody dislikes the game that much that they don't realise that the devs did all they could to please the "normal people" after all they did to please the RMT folks... the problem is the order in which we were announced the priorities.

It feels insulting enough that many of us who fell for the kickstarter promise of a GAME, and not a virtual collector sims with ever increasing virtual property value, planned in advance.

Yet we're still here, trying to collect the crumbs that were left for us, hoping we can make a small sand tower (forget a castle) out of it.

I personally LOVE the art, the feel of the game, the story of the books... its all very nice, I could enjoy the game if I was some neophyte roleplayer that didn't know how quickly RMT ruins a community. However that is not the case, and the idea that we don't need roots (as in D&D, tolkien, dragonlance) is very repulsive to me

 

I understand saving for items, but the prices are way to high! , it is not the greatest game ive ever played, the way its set up is if you've got money you get what you want (that's not a fantasy game that's reality!) for 550 that half my rent, then when we get into bigger packages, that is rent!!! So keep on defending the game with your plastic shield! and larp sword! The game at this point is not as good as you think or say, I understand you are a fanboy of this game! Nothing wrong with that, but I have to look at it from a perspective that is reasonable, and right now prices on something that is not even completed is way out there! I save up the same amount for rent and bills, this game does not take precedence over real life!

Edited** Sorry was just talking off the top of my head Greagoir, no harm was intended so I'm taking out the derogatory statement on butt kissing. There are some people that take it to the highest degree on here as far as "greatest game ever!!!" I tend to disagree as much as they support!

 

"OP" - if you feel that what I am typing is derailing your post please let me know ill start a thread somewhere else on the particular topic I am currently posting on.

 

It's quite on topic... and I used to be a total fanboi too Duke Greagoir is a UO roleplayer and you cannot diminish him so, he's attentive, thoughtful and his comment wasn't directed at you, that is not feet kissing

You have to see though, its intended, we've seen it first for UO market, then penny stock market, then housing market, and now virtual collector market. It's a merry go round...

Some people will say "well its clever, a proven way to enhance value"

others will say "well its immoral, making money just for speculation and juggling with loans and securities ? no thank you, I favor virtue and hard work" (ie. me)

Theres nothing much we can do about it...

 

edited

 

Isn't it the most well thought out, most perfect virtual collector game you have ever seen with a perfect pitch for the perfect niche ? The definition of game seems so flexible these days... a game requires intrigue, intuitive community building, dynamic quests that respond to user choices, consequences...

We don't have game, we're not game... we're sims.

I realised it a while ago, but now its sims on steroids Which is an accomplishment in itself... competing EA, great move I can only lift my hat and shed a tear. I followed my love of the art, its all that matters at the end of the day.

 

this has become a facebook type game and social media outlet! I enjoy paying it to an extent, but I do not enjoy the pricing of things to make the game more enjoyable!

 

It's unique, but not what I expected.

The virtual items have me intrigued I must say. It's sort of like the home shopping network, an antique rarity company and a gaming company all had a baby together But it's more about the funding of it, which I do understand they need to do. I do expect big things to happen over the current year which are very promising. I noticed UO becoming a feeding ground for virtual buyers and sellers just after their Siege Perilous Shard opened. I knew it was going on before then, but when I saw a single player place the first house of the shard up and then sell it for around (if I remember right) $700-$1700.00 it really brought that idea home for me. Before that time, I had never truly seen it as something people actually made real money on. And BTW it was "The Fellowship Guild House" which was first purchased, placed and first sold on that shard Very fitting for a history of The Fellowship I thought We did go out with a bang though.

But I believe it's possible now, to have acquired a pledge for SOTA and then sold it later for profit without ever having used it. I've never sold anything, but I like the idea that I could if I wanted to. But this is our coming out year and I do have high hopes for "the game" to become what it set out to become.
This year will tell is my guess.
~Time Lord~

 

The raffles destroyed the prices on those deeds, so I don't think that's a very good example.

But a pledge with any kind of tax free place anywhere deed would be easy to profit off, I would think.

 

True, but for someone who doesnt want to spend $$$.. lets be realistic. How long does it take before the difference in IGG from a Taxed deed and a Tax free - Pays for itself?
Its wellll over a year.

Its very easy to buy taxed deeds of upwards to city without entirely to much hassle.
(i actually just responded to this exact thing in better detail on a reddit comment on /shroudoftheavatar lol )

I dont know if you could neccisarrily profit off a tax free... but from what ive seen you can get easily 90% of the original value back from most bundle items. But thats beyond my personal experiance.

 

I don't agree with that at all. I would take any full pledge at the price paid in a second, and I am 100% sure I could sell all the items in that pledge, at a higher value then was paid originally.
Edit: IGG or cash, wouldn't matter but I can't imagine getting less than what was paid. Sell me your pledge if you disagree.

 

Umm pay taxes on that for a few months and then come talk to me. Nobody wants to do that.

 

Are you talking an earlier pledge? Or current bundles..

Because no. There are not a lot of people buying bundles and making money piecing them out.


High level pledge rewards from before persistance? Maaaybe, like i said. Dont know and havnt seen much of those kiicken enough.. but id be surprised if you could pull a profit realistically.

Okay? And simple math tells me..
Tax free row lots are this much in igg. Rent is this.
I know last time i compared row and village it was well over a year before break even point.

Town isnt any better..
What i just paid for taxed town vs what tax free ones work out to igg.. its like 2 years of taxes difference...

Example?
300-400k to buy taxed vil deed.
Tax free was about 1.1 mil best price i saw.. but lets even say 800k .. thats 400 days of taxes...

 

Yeah i don't need to spell it out for you... then your wasting your gold. I guess you need to ask yourself if you will be using that deed for a few years? If the answer is yes - you're going to be a sad panda if you didn't buy a tax free.

And yes I was talking about the expired "pledges", not the "bundles" that you can still buy right now. It doesn't cost anything to pay attention.

 

Here in Thailand I can get freaky with my money, but back in the USA I'd be hard pressed by living in a single room apartment while eating bananas to afford even my starting pledge, so I can see how some may feel about how all this $ vs igg vs virtual property value discussion may seem. But since I do have some disposable income, it was very surprising to me when I first saw many of my fellow New Britannians gobbling up early pledges for later sale. before then, making money from playing or buying virtual property in any video game seemed quite silly to me.

This exchange of ideas between our @Adam Crow & @MrBlight brings home the link between $ vs igg into a much better focus for an old duffer like me. I see within there's a difference between "player perception" and "investor perception" when it comes to our virtual property. For some, they'd just never liked the idea of paying any ingame taxes, while the other view seems more like an actual studied view, yet may still seem like a hassle for some to fool with.

The link between $ & igg can't truly be separated from what I see and read here, which means that whatever will effect the actual $ virtual value will always effect the lower igg market pressure or desires. Some people just want the tax free lot without all the stuff it came with which, having the ability to piece sell it all, seems to add to our virtual market's longevity in interests. The wizard homes I think are a good example, because they are no longer available, yet what that means to me, is that there's a likelihood of some future bundle which may bring them back in a more grand form.

We have a player base right now that brought us through those first baby-steps of our development, but now are being told that our game will be actively and monetarily advertised, which means to me that new players are coming, which can't help but to further and improve those virtual marketplace values for all our old stuff, with the more solid base within it all, being held by those tax free lots.

I don't know how you all feel about any of that, so I thought I'd just throw that out there because I know I'm still learning.
~Time Lord~