So much for not charging subs for Makeb

Find me level 1 mods/armorings and enhancements and I will find you non-cartel market level 1 orange gear

Plus, you can get the level 1 cartel market gear from the GTN without even touching the Cartel Market. In fact some level 1 Cartel Market pieces are so common that they cost even less than the 10-14 green-blue gear. But you wouldn't even need to buy those because doing the Esseles or the Black Talon will get you your first orange pieces without paying anything and most importantly by playing.
What's your point?

Although I agree that from a marketing perspective, pricing vanity items higher than actual content doesn't make any sense, I'll repeat what I said before:
Who. Cares?
Let them charge 100$ for a vanity item. So what? They will not make the money they want to make and they will eventually have to lower their prices. Right now they are testing the market to see what people are willing to pay and for what items (color crystals, orange gear, mounts etc).

Really, OP, this is just QQing for QQing's sake.
I will attribute this to your love of the game, because I too do not want to see it go down.
But if unreasonable prices on vanity items (that I can get through the GTN anyway...) is what we need to keep this game going, I'm all for it. Let them charge 1000$ for a mount. See if I care.

Also, bare in mind that vanity items' prices, whether we are talking about a Color Crystal in Swtor or Apple's iPhone, is NEVER in line with its value. It's not a mathematical equation where you put production cost and a fixed margin on one side and get the final price of the item on the other side. Vanity items have the distinct quality of being as valuable as people consider them to be and they are priced accordingly.

Unless of course... this whole issue here is that you just want that set that costs 1200 coins and you do not want to pay that much for it or buy it for a hefty amount of credits from the GTN... in which case...

I have looked for any quote from any of the developers that stated this particular expansion would be free to subscribers and have not found it. The only discussion I could find was this back in August.

What (if anything) will subscribers have to pay for after F2P launches?

I wish I had a solid answer for you on that. We’re still in discussion about some of the larger content updates that we’re planning. Great example is the planet Makeb. We’ve talked about Makeb, we have a lot of plans around Makeb. I wish I could give you more details, but I can tell you that I think the playerbase is going to be really, really pleased. More story content. New and interesting things for the players to do. More systems and interesting functions in the game … I can’t go into a lot of detail, but around things like that … This is a pretty big piece (of content). It is probably all that I can say. It is definitely still for discussion whether we sell that to the subscriber or the subscriber gets that for free because it is a big beefy chunk of content.



http://www.swtor-life.com/video/the-...nterview/7112/



In reading this discussion no where does he say it would defintely be free only that it was still up for discussion.

In the real world, gold has intrinsic value. If there were an infinite supply of gold-plated bathtubs, then they would be dirt cheap. I'm not saying that your opinion on EA's pricing is wrong, but that analogy doesn't hold water (no pun intended): Once an item has been designed in SWTOR, there is literally zero overhead to produce more of that item. Tuning the price from that point forward is purely a matter of maximizing revenue over time.

EDIT: Our thread -- which was about the pricing of cosmetic items in the Cartel Market, has been folded into a thread about the expansion. So if my post seems out of place, that's why.

I like how you call it QQ'ing when I question pricing. (Seems to be a trend on this forum whenever someone says something that isn't unquestionable praise.) I questioned the reasoning why something that takes more man hours cost less than some things that are simply recolored. I am asking for clarification on why the prices in the shop are so high comparable to that of the new expansion. The fact that you have resorted to calling my post a QQ speaks volumes about you. I feel I presented a reasonable argument and your resolved to try and discredit me based on what I have bolded out of your commentary. WHICH I addressed in an earlier post that you obviously did not bother to read.

My question still stands, when will the pricing in the market be addressed in relevance to the expansion and pretty much in general.

EDIT
O WOW Thanks BioWare for merging my thread into the one about you all supposedly lying about subs not having to pay for Makeb. How does the pricing on the cartel market in relevance to the cost of the expansion HAVE anything to do with you all being accused of lying about charging for Makeb? BRAVO.

But it does hold water.
Materials might not be an issue here but rarity is. That's why the Overlord's Chair costs 2mil+ while you can find a normal mount for 9k. But still people are willing to pay credits and real life money to find/buy it. So as long as they keep something rare and as long as that something is considered "cool" by the community, they can charge for it as much as they want and there will be people willing to buy it.

Yes, the pricing of gold is only as valuable as the perceived consumer demand for it. Gold has no actual practical value (unless they are used to conduct electricity in our electronics), I hope we all know that and that's why I picked it along with vanity items in-game. Both really add nothing except having bragging rights that you have said item. Yeah you can argue that gold can be used for buying power, but that's not the statement I am making here.

If you were hungry and stuck in a desert would you like to carry a bunch of gold bricks or some survival gear? This, I hope is a no brainer.

So I got it all wrong? You're not actually complaining?
I like how your whole post is about how I unfairly said your post is just QQing (and btw, QQing is the trend on this forum, not praise) yet, I see no effort on your part to discredit what I said as nonsense. Oh, except that my post "speaks volumes about me".

So I went back and re-read your post:

So...it's not 1200 CC that you don't want to spend, it's 1200 CC that your friends don't want to spend...
I don't see how that's SO different from my assumption, but you could start by explaining to them that they could buy a no-name shirt or a Ralph Lauren shirt, both of the same quality and time put into making them. Chances are the RL shirt will cost about 100$+ more than the no-name one just because they can sell it for that much. And that they will be perfectly fine wearing the no-name one, because it's essentially the same thing with a different logo on it.

Is that answer more in line with your question?

Yes, but the question is whether EA will earn more money by increasing its sales' volume (lowering prices). Your point about perceived value through rarity is only tenuously related, because the items we're discussing are only artificially rare (whereas gold is unavoidably and existentially rare). Yes, some items in SWTOR should be kept exceedingly rare for vanity purposes, but what should constitute a vanity item isn't cut-and-dried. Should the only hood-down jedi robes in the entire game be high-end vanity items, or are they -- as the design suggests, given that they're wearable at level 1 -- simply an extension of the character creator, a means by which people can suit their look to their characters' story?

Those two categories -- vanity and character customization -- aren't necessarily synonymous. We're not talking about the infamous EVE Online monocle here; we're talking about the general pricing of outfits. Uniqueness -- the ability to preen in front of other players -- is important, but it's not the only factor involved in a customer's decision to purchase an outfit. If you think a retinted armor skin or a similar-to-every-other-armor-but-for-the-hood's-placement outfit should be a status symbol, then we have an irreconcilable difference of opinion. You draw the status symbol line in a different place than I do, but rest assured, whether you realize it or not, you do draw that line somewhere.

My point was that there isn't an infinite supply of gold. People who sell gold items have to adjust the price of those items based on the cost of materials, and gold is a very costly material. That's why your analogy's flawed. I'm not interested in debating whether gold is valuable to a starving man in a desert; that's less than irrelevant.

This is exactly right. As I posted earlier, they danced around the questions and NEVER said it was free. While it may feel sneaky that they never said one way or another, they never, ever said it was free.

In the interview they dance around the question the same way.

The reality is folks, they never planned on giving it away for free. Get over it or move on. Your choice.