Is it really fair to the community though, to force the entire community to pay an additional monthly fee, or to only charge a small portion of the community an OPTIONAL additional fee?

If your a P2P model, your subscriptions have to cover not only the operational costs, but the 3-5 years of game production costs; be it real money or 10-12 hours aday of sweat equity by the dev team (Not to mention a very expensive looking toaster oven).

If your looking at a game with 500,000 subs that has been out 8 years, then its about cash. When you talking about a game with 2-3000 subs, its about trying to pay the current expenses (including salary's for a dev team still actively improving the game) AND recover the production costs, since a game is likely only going to be a going concern for about 10 years.

Personally, I would rather let that starving college kid play for $10 a month and I'll pay an extra $10 a month for MT items, instead of charging everyone $15 a month.

BTW, should you need more money: introduce recurring fees instead of MT. They are absolutely common in this industry

I can imagine there are a lot of casual gamers who don´t play every day. Their subscriptions runs out and several days pass until they buy their nex code. So you get perhaps only every 35-40 days their 8.95 EUR.

And the everyday players don´t need to care about going into your shop and redeeming a code every month

My two cents.

I left Eve about a year ago bar a quick jump back due to boredom, that jump back lasted 1 month and I left again, assumably for good this time.

I left Eve because killing ships became boring and repetitive with little feeling of a job well done. For example, I killed an Thanatos (A Carrier, for those none Eve players), the pilot in local expressed dismay and I thought I was about to get carebear tears, I did not!

What I got instead was a drab, boring chat about having to sell one more GTC to buy another ship and fit. He wasn't depressed, he wasn't upset, he was so matter of fact over it that my game died instantly.

Paint your mechs anyway you want, I really do not care. Just make it so that when I blow it up the 'pilots' get upset about the loss and has to work/invest in game to replace it.

I can understand this, but make it a option.

I used to pay for one of my EVE accounts with GTCs from Shattered Crystal but then I moved to monthly subscription on my CC because its more convenient. You can be pretty sure: When there is a CTA and you rush from work home to get in fleet, most probably your account just ran out, you have to buy a code, redeem it and the website is currently very laggy. I´m pretty sure,  a lot of people would appreciate the comfort and a permanet flow of extension points and if it ends in a 5% higher monthly income, its ok.

Of course someone can buy a code for a month or a whole year, but that can burn a hole in your pocket in this month, even if you have no problem paying the regular montly fee.

Just to quickly point out EVE expansions are free and always have been.  Other than the original boxed Simon & Shuster release the client is also free (several boxed versions have been released recently though).

So in that respect Perpetuum and EVE are pretty equal.

@Arga
I am aware that this game has a tiny community atm, and that the dev probably lose money. But that’s to be expected for a new game/company. What they should have in mind now is the long term. That’s why players are in too. We want to stay, make us stay !

What I am saying is that a MMO game company should raise and cherish its gamers community. And RMT is clearly a bad thing if you want to have a wealthy, solid community.

Maybe we can compromise ? The new vanity features could be temporarily sold, then 3-6 months later it becomes free, for example. The RMT would act like an exclusivity right. It’s still bad, but there is the perspective that it becomes free soon.

The main point is to assure the game’s and communities’ coherence.

A 2003’s Eve vet once told me « the community IS the game itself ». I never heard a deepest statement about MMOs. A game can be awesomly good, there is always a moment when you will get bored of it. But you wont get bored of a good community. EVER.

No, its the price to "buy" an account. You have to pay for the game and the first month of sub.

For reference, EVE does not charge for expansions.  You get them.. whether you want them or not.

Everyone else already pointed out the important bits.  I watched the forums with fascinated horror at Incarna's launch.

I'll point out something off the bat - I am the carebeary 'oooh pretty character it's me!' left the CQ open, sat on the couch watched the TV player who has in the past engaged in "MT" in P2P before (an insidious way they did it - digital CCG, you get 'loot cards' that can be brought into game, 80% vanity items, but also mounts that gave stats/higher speed aka 'game changing'.  They were in no way game breaking, but I'll flatly admit it - I never played the CCG and over a month blinked and went, woops!  I just spent 150USD to get one of these:

  http://image.playerauctions.com/P/B/201 … 7bc3c2.JPG

For reference - was anyone jealous of it?  Sure, but it didn't break their hearts, cause I was *lucky*.

Why 150?  Well, because each cardpack is 4.95.  And then you trade the cards with, say, EQ1 players who wont use EQ2 loot cards.  And you could always get lucky...  It was gamblers anonymous, insidious, and I'll tell you this -- there wasn't a damned RIPPLE in the forums about it.

And played Requiem and bought stuff - specifically mounts, *and they only last 30 days*  (yay for bouncing bodies and bloodsplatters though!).  Just never got into WoW because I have a personal issue with bright cheery colored people killing things. 

So.  I was CCP's TARGET AUDIENCE for MT.  I have NO ISSUE with MT if it is what it is - a microtransaction.  I heard of the redonkulous prices before I ever opened the aurum store.  You have to understand.  They were charging 14.99 for a month's sub and 20.05 for a shirt for your character.  And I understand the logic behind it (possibly a PLEX sink; who knows how many PLEX are floating in game atm cause I sure don't and if they spent that nest egg already how you say, wooops?) but they tried to sink it WAY TOO FAST.

I was just dissapointed at the prices.  I wouldn't be able to participate.  I'm no kid, but I couldnt afford an extra 20.00 a month; I was already paying for 3 subs.

And thats an important point to bring up.  Its a RARE person who dualboxes WoW or EQ2, etc.  People who do tend to 'quad-box' and are unusual.  There's no need to have multiple accounts in those games.  You grind monsters, you get exp.  So in general, each of the  (yes yes I know I OWNED A SPARKLEPONY! ::cries:: ) players is only paying one sub.  So dropping 25$ for a sparklepony?  Well tbh wow's forums DID rage over it.  But some peopel did buy it.  Sure.  That's 40$ one month but back down to 15 the next.   

In this style of a sandbox model if you want to do more than one thing, it only makes sense to have more than one account, its not just a wild grind on your DPS alt or your healer alt.  To be honest, I think this is likely what makes a lot of the community hesitant about MT - not because RARRR IT RUINS GAEM but because 'ohwow... but i already have 5 accounts subbed.. qq."  If you're already paying 75, rounding it up to an even 100... no. 

BUT.  All that aside that's not what pissed me off.

What pissed me off was, while I'm watching the live feed of the Jita protest, and listening to the eve-radio broadcast with the CSM people and the reporter from massively on a feed split out to about 3000 listeners, and that damned Hillmar letter broke live and they read it live, and I heard, basically, 50,000 rabid fans who love a game possibly too much for their own good sometimes referred to ... well, like this:

Experts?  Thought leaders?  Predictable feedback?  My nose was twitching for a minute, and I realised the devs had gone from caring about their playerbase (as much as they can obviously, its not like they send me flowers on my birthday) to treating us like like a pack of Skinner rats whose behavior would be broken down into statistics; convinced of their hypothesis that we would happily shock ourselves to get a monocle-shaped bit of cheese when, to be honest, the grate-floor cage was getting uncomfortable to begin with.

I always hated reductionalists.  So I won't spend my time with them once they show their colors to me.

I'm going to go on an Op now.  I have stuff to blow up.

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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this,   , but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.