EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey guys.

Ok so first thing first, I do enjoy this game, and i'd like to buy a "premium" account in order to fully enjoy it.

Though there are some things I really dislike with this.

First thing is : for USA, the game is 15$ a month, 15$ = ~11.30€.
For european, the game is 15€ (19.87$)

This is very uneven. And the 5€ activation fee is not making this any better.


Second thing, the activation fee.

Why this?
I mean, I hope it's automated.
Or do you have some chinese kid manually activating accounts?

No seriously, I just can't understand what this is for, and that's a serious brake (20€ for the first month! or 20$ -> 15€ for americans...)


Third thing :

Maintenance time.
It's 11am UTC.
means, 12am in Paris, and 6 am at NY.

European are mostly awake, so losing playing time (45min yesterday, 1h today, ...), while americans won't have that kind of break in the day.



Y U NO LIKE EUROPE?

Yea, that sucks, but 1€ = $1 rate is common. It gets a lot worse when you live in Europe, but in a country with it's own currency. For example, in Poland 1€ = 4PLN. To give you some base point: a shiny new AAA game costs 150PLN, monthly EVE subscription is 60PLN, that's almost 50% of the price for a new AAA game. In US, new AAA game costs $50-60.

EDIT: Just to make things clear - it's not only an EVE problem. Many Internet products have that 1to1 exchange rate penalty.


Disk space + few other things needed for your account I presume.



There is no easy way to resolve this. EVE is not divided into realms or servers. Entire world plays in a one instance. What's night time for you is a day time for someone else.

Troll score: 0/10

Prices are bit in favour of US, but then again, you can use shatteredcrystals to buy your GTC and pay in dollars, as EVE is 1 server so buy a GTC (from legit sites) anywhere at any currency and you are fine.

And for DT, where did you live last weeks, last time my DT was more then the regular 30 minutes was when they deployed Crucible expansion, regular downtimes usually last less then the 30 minutes they say they will last.

On avg. the server is only down for 10 minutes or so, and as it's in the middle of the day for the EU (I'm playing in UTC+1) most of us don't care as during the week we are at work/college/what every you do during the day and in the weekend it's dead on with lunch times, so DT is actually a nice wake up call to get some food.

First of all, you don't have to subscribe if you don't like the price. Sure plenty of other MMO's who charge less a month. But none of them are EVE:
Name MMO's with 2 FREE expansions a year, who aren't filled with emo-raging teenagers and who allow you to do anything you want at the time you want (aka Sandbox vs rollercoaster themepark MMO).

But on the difference between USD and Euro. As it's a fixed 1 = 1 exchange you complain now but if the exchange rate changes to benefit the Euro we wouldn't hear you complain that the US players have to pay more.

To give you an idea, Shatteredcrystal sells GTC (2 PLEX = 60 days) for 35 USD, last time I bought them this was around 26 Euro at current exchange rate, means you pay about 13 Euro for 1 month of game time.

Also, upgrading your trial account to a full paid account using a PLEX means you don't have to pay the 5€ subscription fee.

There is usually a fixed exchange rate between different currencies in MMO as if you make it that everybody pays the same you have to update your game prices every single day as exchange rates change every single second.
** Actually name 1 thing that is exactly the same price in the EU and US, even normal store items are at different prices at different countries **

And buying from legit US websites for GTC isn't a "hack", it's totally legal, it's just people that actually do some googling to find those sites (and with that paying a bit less money to the game) are getting value for their efforts.

You know CCP are European, right?

Not that they use the Euro. Sensible enough to stay out of it.

Im sorry the exchange rate is inherently unfair to euros. But to a greater degree I feel they kind of run the joint because they took interest in the game far quicker then US players did.

If you feel Euros deserve more bang for there buck they are a lot of the power players in the game.

CCP will probably never adjust there pricing as they view it is comparable to other mmo's. As far as I know they've always kept the the current pricing scheme the way it is.

We as a community vehemently bashed there attempts to make some extra dough via micro transactions so they cant make there money that way. So it has to come out of subscriptions.

If you dont want to pay for subscriptions and still want to play eve, find the quickest way you can to make isk and buy plex. You'll never have to pay that subscription fee again if you have that method down.

CCP is pretty free handed with this game. You can even request a 48hr account reactivation to try and make enough isk to buy a plex. You just make the request and bang your back in no money out of pocket.

Also if you have a friend who gives you a 21 day trial and you sub they get a plex. Ask them to shoot that or some of that your way.

I dont think anyone is trying to troll you. But if you really think this one thread magically will make CCP change there pricing scheme over all or just for you this thread is a troll.

How have you managed that?

Only recently DT went to about 11:40 and on 24 January I was still unable to log in TWO HOURS after the end of the standard DT period and, being a newbie who didn't understand that this is routine, got hell 'n' all flak on the forum for asking why.

Official reason why euro prices are higher is that CCP needs to add VAT to european prices.

Also, official reseller list if you want to buy GTC: https://secure.eveonline.com/etc.aspx (not working currently for some reason)