Are you ok with this "advanced access" ?

[Stingray]

It's not like it's anything truly new. People who play a game earlier have always paid more. People who don't play till later can always get the game on huge sales, or after price cuts.

Similar to what danutz said, I would look at the "advanced access" price as the real price, and the "release" price as the price cut you'll get if you're willing to wait a week before playing.

Not to mention, if money is a concern for you, then buying games on release is a really bad idea anyway. I don't know of any other industry where you're nearly guaranteed to be able to get something for half the price (or less) 6-12 months later, and in fact get a much better product by waiting.

 

[bjon045]

Suits will never stop coming with new and innovative ways to squeeze more blood out of a stone.

I am suprised they don't have bronze , silver and gold advanced access. 10% more for each day earlier, why not?

They could also add ads to full price ($70) games and make people pay again to get rid of them. Endless ways to make money.

 

[Corwin]

Hey, stop giving these guys ideas!!

 

[Vaelith]

Since World of Warcraft came up a couple times in this thread, it's worth mentioning that in this case the "Advanced Access" is more of a bonus perk for the Epic Edition of the expansion, which has always existed in every expansion launch. The Epic Edition usually offered some high resolution wallpapers, ingame pets, mounts and other digital goodies, and this time it offers the same, with the 3-day headstart on top of everything else, as an extra benefit.

Now, without having any data, seems pretty clear to me that a lot of players who didn't buy the Epic Edition in previous expansions, bought it this time around mosly because of the headstart, so Blizzard obviously knew what they were doing by adding that "perk" into the Epic Edition, but it's not as straightforward as "pay +$20 to play 3 days earlier", they just added that on top of the traditional set of perks for purchasing the Epic Edition, which by the way, originally was named "Supporter Pack" as it was intended for people who wanted to support the company if they really loved the game. The name was changed to Epic Edition about 3 years ago.

 

[JFarrell71]

I'm not sure it's ever extra money purely to play a game early, despite some of the posts in this thread. It's become very common to announce a "season pass" of expansions before a game is even out, and to offer a version of the game bundled with that season pass, often at a discount compared to buying the expansions individually later. More recently, companies have added a few days early access to the game & DLC bundle as extra enticement.

 

[Stingray]

Since World of Warcraft came up a couple times in this thread, it's worth mentioning that in this case the "Advanced Access" is more of a bonus perk for the Epic Edition of the expansion, which has always existed in every expansion launch. The Epic Edition usually offered some high resolution wallpapers, ingame pets, mounts and other digital goodies, and this time it offers the same, with the 3-day headstart on top of everything else, as an extra benefit.

Now, without having any data, seems pretty clear to me that a lot of players who didn't buy the Epic Edition in previous expansions, bought it this time around mosly because of the headstart, so Blizzard obviously knew what they were doing by adding that "perk" into the Epic Edition, but it's not as straightforward as "pay +$20 to play 3 days earlier", they just added that on top of the traditional set of perks for purchasing the Epic Edition, which by the way, originally was named "Supporter Pack" as it was intended for people who wanted to support the company if they really loved the game. The name was changed to Epic Edition about 3 years ago.

It was actually a 4-day headstart (Thurs 3PM vs Monday 3PM). And unlike single-player games, in an MMO it really kind of matters that you be there at the real beginning, lest you potentially get "left behind" by your group of friends, raiding guild, or whatever. Losing an entire weekend is massive for people with jobs and such. (Although the truly difficult stuff is disabled for the first 2 weeks of the expansion anyway, so it's not quite as bad as it sounds.) Anyway, a lot of people were pretty much forced into paying $90 for the expansion as if was the new base cost of one (which it kind of is, if this continues). Somewhat of a different situation than "Advanced Access" in a single player game.

 

[Vaelith]

This may be going too deep into the specifics of a single game, but it actually didn't matter to play during the WoW headstart. All you get to do is scratch your itch a few days earlier, but all progression systems are hard-capped until Season 1 begins; having 16 or 20 days to play before then only means you have 4 more days of boring wait until the exciting stuff starts to happen.

The only people it could remotely matter to is a group of players that's below 0.1% of the playerbase, mostly professional gamers who belong to notorious organizations/guilds who will be competing for the World First titles, and not because they will get better gear, as any gear you get during the pre-season is trivially replaceable once the Season begins. It's mostly because those people level up many different characters to have them all ready to go to fit every situation, as well as get fishing for good gear drops during the first week of raiding, and having a few extra days means they can afford to level up a couple extra characters to max out their chances to get a really lucky loot streak in one of them.

Everyone else who feels like they're missing anything by not playing during the headstart are just fooling themselves into a FOMO that doesn't exist. I don't get along well with some of the current culture around certain games, where anything a videogame company does they're accused as if they're trying to maliciously induce mental disorders on any potential players who may play the game, and this is no different.

 

[Stingray]

This may be going too deep into the specifics of a single game, but it actually didn't matter to play during the WoW headstart. All you get to do is scratch your itch a few days earlier, but all progression systems are hard-capped until Season 1 begins; having 16 or 20 days to play before then only means you have 4 more days of boring wait until the exciting stuff starts to happen.

It all depends on the player. For more casual players, the stuff that happens in the first 2 weeks IS the exciting stuff (like heroic dungeons), they may never do the harder stuff that opens up 2 weeks later (like mythic dungeons and raids). Sucks to not get to discover those things for the first time with your friends because they're 4 days ahead of you. It's the top 0.1% for whom the 4 days wouldn't matter much, because nothing they even remotely care about is available yet. You pretty much got it backwards. Although the top 0.1% is going to buy epic regardless, because none of them would want to wait 4 days to play the game that is basically their life.

Out of all the people on my battle.net friends list (95% of them are ex-hardcore-raiders, but almost all casual now) who are playing this expansion, I'd say about 75-90% ended up buying the epic edition. In past expansions, based on word of mouth (since it wasn't as easy to know as it was this time) almost nobody bought that.

 

[Vaelith]

Yeah I get the feeling the headstart incentivized a lot of the more "hardcore" or "ex-hardcore" players to buy the Epic Edition, but I think they will be disappointed if they expected to have an advantage. Maybe it even feels like an advantage because they got to do some extra quests for reputation, but it's really all peanuts. Nobody will kill a boss or fail to because of it, and definitely nobody will be left behind. My opinion anyway, I've seen very vehement opinions that think otherwise, I just can't see it, from personal experience, having played since the headstart myself.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yesterday I bought the "Day 1 Admission Ticket Version" of "Beyond Park" , because it was reduced to 10 Euros. Sometimes, I buy these "early access" editions when they have become cheap, because of the additional material ... maybe they have become what had formerly been "Collector's Edition" ?

 

[Vaelith]

It's just like theaters/cinemas, which have been doing this for decades. Pay extra and watch an anticipated movie release before anyone else, or get the seat row with extra legroom while the normies will have to wait two hours in a bottleneck queue to watch it with everyone else.

Going to Disneyworld and the queues are too long? No problem, pay extra and get the fast queue, slip in right past all the poor people who are only investing their money reasonably.

Hare to wait long at the station? All good, pay extra and acquire the priority boarding plan, the people who paid just one thousand dollars for the intercontinental flight will know who was the total champion who can easily afford extra 100 bucks and board before anyone else.

The problem with this is not the gaming industry moving in a dangerous direction, is simply capitalism. Which is fair to have an issue with, but I'm afraid that's here to stay. If anything, videogames are extremely late to the party, probably because it wasn't a huge mainstream hobby until more recently.

 

[JFarrell71]

Once again ignoring that this early access usually does not cost more money. Up front, yes. Ultimately, no. Vaelith, you yourself just made that point about WoW earlier in the thread, and then seemingly forgot your own post as you went through a list of examples in which people pay more to get earlier access, and nothing else. I wouldn't personally pay for wallpapers and artbooks and such, but to some people, that stuff is worth the cash and it has little to nothing to do with feeling special.

Painting people as dupes or smugly superior because they'll preorder DLC and in the process get early access says pretty much nothing about them, but a whole lot more about those who like to paint themselves as the incorruptible, impossible to fool consumer.

 

[bjon045]

One must also consider the difference between pricing due to the scarcity of supply of a physical product or service vs that of a digital product. One has near unlimited supply while the other uses price to balance actual supply (including limited space and seasonal variances etc) and demand.

They do it purely to get a little bit more blood out of certain stones.