There are new items, stock rotation. Call out in Gen Chat on your shard, there are a lot of them still out there.
Oh, I didn't realize the stock rotated. I wanted to buy one with cash because I don't really have much gold lol. Thanks for the tip though!
What shard you on?Oh, I didn't realize the stock rotated. I wanted to buy one with cash because I don't really have much gold lol. Thanks for the tip though!
I'm on Catskills.
Are you in game right now
Yep. In Skara atm.
not gonna take that bet Dot, i needs mah money!!Stock rotations? In a digital store?
They have virtually unlimited shelf space, there is no reason to rotate stock, just sale prices.
Who wants to bet that UO will get screwed out of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale again this year, either on Origin or the in-game store...
Somehow I can't even feel sorry anymore if they had to close down UO tomorrow. So much incompetence.Stock rotations? In a digital store?
They have virtually unlimited shelf space, there is no reason to rotate stock, just sale prices.
Who wants to bet that UO will get screwed out of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale again this year, either on Origin or the in-game store...
Agreed..however stock rotation is a good idea. Except not with stupid items like that. I've always petitioned for them to add monthly dye specials and thing people would actually want. Problem is..they people would cry P2W or it's NOt fair "insert cry face" even though...They had a month to get it lol. Think about it. 1 special store dye not available in game once a month for .99¢ 1 charge. If there's 2000 active account and each account buys 1! Just one! Even though you know the nerds will buy hundreds to resell. That's a quick $2000 monthly revenue! They could literally pay someone $400 a month to add one dye and make $. Even though all they'd have to do is click, copy, paste, edit hue..10 minutes!!
In a digital store, stock rotations are a horrible idea. You never lose a sale by have the item available when the customer wants the product... but very easy to lose a sale the other way around.
There shouldn't be any sales on UO codes or items. People would just stock up and then re-sellers would have them back at regular price so they could try to make some margin. It hurts Broadsword's bottom line to do this. In consideration of their current small staff size, my guess is that every dollar they get counts significantly.
Sorry, but UO isn't such a special snowflake in the MMO world that it can continue to charge full price for its content ad infinitum. Were we flush with players, your argument might have some validity. But when weighed against EVERY OTHER ONLINE GAME HAVING SALES ON CONTENT, notsomuch.
Yes, quite frankly, it is a special snowflake. Ultima Online isn't "every other online game".
Semi agreed. However the whole purpose of something like this would be bringing normally non-existent capital into the game. It would have to be small, cool affordable items. I say Dyes because everyone always wants Dyes and it's very easy to make them. They could release 5 new Dyes every 3 months. So after 3 months those 5 Dyes go into a sort of "archive" and after a year those Dyes become permanent staples or they even put them in a bundle say instead of .99¢ each all 5 for $3.99 what they are doing is keeping fresh stock rotating throughout the store, which keeps people spending money $1 is nothing when you look at it. So for me to buy a pack of 10 Dyes for $10 would mean anything monetarily wise, but for UO development it could work wonders. Cause you know people will stick up on them. Heck they could even make money raising events and add Development cash goals like a little Kickstarter type thing at the store. They come up with ideas which I'm sure they do but don't have the funding or money backing up the man hours. So let the players speak. Set goals and timelines. A new armor pack to add new armor wearable into the game. Say it's going to cost 30 labor hours and they need $5,000 to make it happen quickly. They throw a donation Sash up in the store that goes from $1-$1000 with tiers. $1 gets you a basic Sash that just says like I supported Ultima Online or something. And the higher the tier the better Dyed Sash or whatever. I'm kind of rambling and it might seem nonsensical..but simple business could generate tons of cash for this game. I'd say 90% of people who play are 18-60 we all have money, continue to pay to play a 20 year old game. App micro transactions could really boost involvement and revenue so they can put out nicer content or even hire people to put it out more often. Even have monthly contests. Submit your best art formatted the way they need it formatted and pay the winners with game store credits. It's just amazing how they don't even try it seems to really market this game at all. I'd be first in line to submit art, lore, a story line, music or whatever they need.
UO is a niche game, not a special snowflake. It runs on the original subscription model while most MMOs have long abandoned this in favor of a freemium structure. So UO players are stuck paying ~$13 a month, plus any content since '09s SA expansion (excluding ToL), plus we have an item store on top of that. So EA gets a free pass to triple dip?
Your assumption replies on the idea that all UO sales are a foregone conclusion, thus any discount = lost revenue. I disagree with this premise as just wrong. There are plenty of sales to be had in UO that will ONLY happen when there is a discount. Never offering any discount leaves all of those sales on the table. For items with no real cost other than generating the code, I think it makes for horrible business.
That assumes sales are price elastic, which I do not believe they are. If the player base was much younger, I might be inclined to believe discounts would drive some additional sales. As the player base for this game is much older, and played primarily by people who have discretionary income, most of them probably aren't waiting around to save $2 dollars to purchase a token or code from the store. They will just buy it when they need it. The ones who are looking for discounts will try to find tokens in-game or by other third party sellers, which are generally always offering discounts when comparing prices to the official store.
So your own post contradicts itself. For a good portion of UO the sales are price elastic... not because we don't have the income, but because we think some of those digital items are overpriced to begin with. Even so, you acknowledge that there are buyers looking for discounts... and that business is going to 3rd party sites. Why not have the discounts in the UO store and let that money go straight to the game?
You do realize that NO MONEY goes to the UO Store, all the money goes to the Origin Store and that is owned and controlled by EA, BroadSword has ZERO control of it. If UO had a sell in the on-line store it world not affect EA one iota.
I realize the origin store is owned by EA, this is true. I do not believe that there is no benefit to Broadsword for increased profits from UO, either through the store or subscriptions. While what you say may be true, it would make absolutely zero business sense for Broadsword to contract with EA to manage UO if they had no opportunity to increase their profits if UO became more profitable under their management.
EA uses real money and sells funny money that you use in UO. If UO has a sell using funny money that does not necessarily equate to EA making more money, it just means that UO sells more pixel crack with funny money. The only way EA could make good real money is to have a sell on UO related items in the Origin or BS has a sell and we can spend or funny money on Mythic, Xfer and Soulstone Tokens. EA will never discount online money or anything UO related for that matter and UO will probably never discount the 3 high selling items. The only way for BroadSword to become more profitable is #1 attract new players or #2 get current players to open up more accounts. Those two things puts real money directly into EAs pockets. BroardSword manages UO, EA controls UO. UO to EA Can we run a black Friday Sell in the UO Store, EA to UO Lol NO
The origin store sells sovereigns and expansions, both of which cost real money... real profit that I argue does in fact benefit Broadsword. A sale on those items in the origin store would undoubtedly lead to some extra sales, which means extra profit. End of story.
So now we have gone from UO having a sell to EA having a sell and we all know how well those went in the past. EA has a policy to NEVER discount online money/gametime and once in a very special blue moon EA will discount some UO related items but those have been so far an few that nobody ever expects it and IMHO EA will not discount anything UO related ever again because it wants to milk as much as it can out of UO. When BS took over UO it had what 10 or so people and now we are down to 5 and you think BS got to keep that extra money or do you think EA cut the BS budget to reflect those salaries, my money is on CUT.
There is a difference between the price elasticity for an end user (the final consumer of a product) and third party sites that are stealing the margin away by hoarding and then just selling at nearly full price for their own profit... money that on a dollar for dollar basis I would still rather see going to Broadsword/Origin/EA. I acknowledged that in my very first post on the topic.
Whether the items in the ingame UO store OR the Sovereigns in the Origin store go on sale the effect would be the same. One must buy sovereigns in order to buy items in the UO store.
Money is money. You think that the end users money is some how different than the 3rd party sellers money when they buy from the origin store?
Not that it's too important, even if the sale were 50% on Origin, there would be a slim profit margin for 3rd party resellers since they generally sell much lower than Origin.
no, but they will never go on sell as EA has a policy to never discount online money or gametime.
I don't see them in the store currently
They must have run out of them. LOL
This was my chief complaint today. UO is almost always screwed out of these sales, especially the past years. There was a sale, some years back.. on a couple of items.Stock rotations? In a digital store?
They have virtually unlimited shelf space, there is no reason to rotate stock, just sale prices.
Who wants to bet that UO will get screwed out of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale again this year, either on Origin or the in-game store...
