Sente

This is hardly anything new - just usual pricing approach for NA vs Europe.

Add VAT and shipping costs and the actual cost difference will be smaller - it will also vary over time as exchange rates fluctuate. And unless the game is region-locked people could just buy it from a US online game store and get it shipped back here instead.

Currently the USD/EUR exchange rate is that 1 USD is 0.75 Euro.

150 USD + 20% VAT = 180 USD.

Since this is a CE witha bunch of stuff in it I suspect it will not be dirt cheap to ship to Europe from US - don't know about US postal prices for packages, but I guess it would cost at least 10-15 USD, possibly more.

So perhaps 190-195 USD, which is not far from the corresponding cost for the European priced version.

Shipping a package (up to 5kg) from Sweden to US would cost 34 Euro with DHL and about the same price with the Swedish Postal services. If the US prices are similar then it would end up cheaper buying the CE to the European price. Shipping cost within EU with DHL for the same is 15 Euro, a 19 Euro difference.

If you would want to bother with the CE that is - which I wouldn't. Point is though that it might not be cheaper to buy the CE at the US price in the end.

@Wic
VIP players pay a monthly fee which other players do not. As part of that fee, they get some paragon points. They pay for these points just as much as anybody else, it is just part of a bundle.

My MMO "home" is City of Heroes - seems I always return for a bit of virtual spandex.

Perhaps not fallen in love with exactly and not quite "home" such as CoH, but Guild Wars do fill a bit of a special spot for me, even though there can sometimes be long times between play sessions. It always feels good to come back and play it.

@SnarlingWolf

You know, in order to take advantage of sidekicking you _have_ to play in a team and it very much encourages playing together in teams (the City of Heores version, that is).
Maybe you are confusing it with level pacts?

@DarkWalker

And Tabula Rasa had it before DCUO and Rift as well, but of course after City of Heroes.

@grendel69

If you have been a customer for 7 years and bought Going Rogue then you should have access to everything except the incarnate content and any paid for content they released after the Freedom conversion.

7 years is more than enough to get yourself enough Paragon rewards up to top tier, which would include inventions access and lots of that. If you have bought Going Rogue then you would have acess to Going Rogue also.

Have you used all Paragon Rewards tokens to fill up the tiers?

Time off from work? No, never.

No change in perception really.

I have had the impression for a long time that the Arenanet team has been given both time and resources to rethink and re-evaluate what makes an MMO and what makes people excited about playing an MMO - and take nothing for granted.

Has the EQ2 mentoring system changed much lately? If so, what are they doing then that tops the City of Heroes mentoring/sidekick system - which almost completely eliminates level concerns.
As long as you have a character with a compatible alignment you can do pretty much anything together - and be beneficial for everyone, besides the fun part.

Guild Wars is also pretty nice in that the level part is pretty much a non-issue also, since getting to max level is kind of an extended tutorial, timewise.

Tabula Rasa is the first one that comes to mind and not only because of the picture for this post :)

There are some others that comes to mind, but I am afraid bringing them back may taint the memories of those games a bit - both players and games have changed a bit over the years.