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18FEB20 - PRESTIGE PRICING CHANGES
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GM ThunderCat View Drop Down
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    Posted: 18 Feb 2020 at 16:18

Hi all,

PRESTIGE CHANGES
We're making some changes to prestige pricing.

We're generally raising the price of purchasing prestige from the company via PayPal across the board, starting just after midnight (server time) on Wednesday the 4th of March. We'll also be creating a new smaller package of 50 prestige available to purchase - although we will not be releasing a tradable 50 Prestige scroll.

WHY ARE YOU RAISING THE PRESTIGE PRICES?
Put simply... we're coming up to 10 years of Illyriad in a few days' time, and we've never raised the price of Prestige during the last decade.

Average annual global inflation is 3.22% per annum, and so a compound inflation over 10 years would mean that our prestige prices should be 37% higher than they currently are, simply to keep up with inflation. Our costs from suppliers have certainly risen with inflation, and so this is a necessary adjustment.

However, we've decided NOT to apply 37% price rises across the board, as we fully recognise playing Illy is a luxury rather than a necessity for most of you good people - so we've chosen 25% as our general price increase.

The introduction of the new 50 Prestige package means that there is still the minimal price point (GBP1.99 USD2.99 EUR2.49) package available for purchase.

We hope you all understand that this is an adjustment of our prestige pricing at substantially below the actual rate of inflation.

We're implementing this price change at just a couple of minutes into the early morning on Wednesday 04MAR20; so this announcement gives you a couple of weeks' notice in case you want to stock up on prestige at their current prices or stock up from the ingame player-run markets etc.

Of course, the discounts for purchasing larger packages will remain, and have in fact increased! By buying a 3250 Prestige Package rather than a 50 Prestige Package, you're getting your prestige at more than half-price... in all currencies!

WHAT ARE THE NEW PRICES FOR PRESTIGE GOING TO BE?

POUNDS STERLING (GBP) PAYPAL PRESTIGE PRICING

Prestige Amount Trade Scroll Name Old Price GBP New Price GBP Price Per 1 Prestige Package Discount Per Prestige
50 N/A £1.99 3.98 pence N/A
75 Scrap £1.99 £2.49 3.32 pence 16.6%
200 Parchment £4.99 £6.25 3.13 pence 21.5%
500 Page £9.99 £12.49 2.50 pence 37.2%
850 Scroll £14.99 £18.75 2.21 pence 44.6%
1200 Codex £19.99 £24.99 2.08 pence 47.7%
1850 Book £29.99 £37.49 2.03 pence 49.1%
3250 Tome £49.99 £62.49 1.92 pence 51.7%

US DOLLAR (USD) PAYPAL PRESTIGE PRICING

Prestige Amount Trade Scroll Name Old Price USD New Price USD Price Per 1 Prestige Package Discount Per Prestige
50 N/A $2.99 5.98 cents N/A
75 Scrap $2.99 $3.75 5.00 cents 16.4%
200 Parchment $7.99 $9.75 4.88 cents 18.5%
500 Page $14.99 $18.75 3.75 cents 37.3%
850 Scroll $22.99 $28.75 3.38 cents 43.4%
1200 Codex $29.99 $37.50 3.13 cents 47.7%
1850 Book $44.99 $56.25 3.04 cents 49.2%
3250 Tome $75.99 $94.99 2.92 cents 51.1%

EURO (EUR) PAYPAL PRESTIGE PRICING

Prestige Amount Trade Scroll Name Old Price EUR New Price EUR Price Per 1 Prestige Package Discount Per Prestige
50 N/A €2.49 4.98 cents N/A
75 Scrap €2.49 €3.15 4.20 cents 16.4%
200 Parchment €6.49 €7.99 4.00 cents 18.5%
500 Page €12.99 €16.25 3.25 cents 37.3%
850 Scroll €19.99 €24.49 2.88 cents 43.4%
1200 Codex €25.99 €32.49 2.71 cents 47.7%
1850 Book €38.99 €48.75 2.64 cents 49.2%
3250 Tome €64.99 €81.49 2.51 cents 51.1%

Remember, these price changes don't come into effect until a few minutes into Wednesday the 4th of March, so please do feel free to take maximum advantage of the current pricing structure before then!

Thanks very much for your understanding.

Regards,

SC



Edited by GM Stormcrow - 18 Feb 2020 at 17:56
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That's a shame. I already thought it was a lot, now $95.00.... Why are you making it so expensive? That might be too rich for my blood.Thumbs Down

Edited by Kimmyeo - 19 Feb 2020 at 04:48
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While I'm sure a lot of us won't be happy about it, the "why" question was pretty well adressed. As a  business the game needs to either raise prices to cover inflation (which they are only partially doing) , or attract new customers. Since the player base keeps declining, that means those potential new customers come from an ever smaller pool.

Sadly, raising prices will probably result in a decline in sales, leading to necessary new price increases in the future. Meaning Illy will slowly walk the path of most mmos, increasing prices and reducing the amount of customers until the entire revenue comes from a handful of whales.

The solution would be to attract more players, thus increasing the pool of potential prestige buyers, but that would require both in-game changes to appeal to the current market (face it, browser mmos are getting closed down one by one because they often become outdated), and a sizeable marketing budget. Both of which would cost the Devs money, and have the inherent risk of not seeing a return on their investment. 

So, yeah, I'll leave it at that. My three cents if you'd like, adjusted for inflation. 




Edited by Grom - 19 Feb 2020 at 08:28
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I want Moar! MOAR! Angry

Seems excessive to me. I think many players will agree.
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Points: 31 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BayNights Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Feb 2020 at 07:42
Not a good time to be raising prices. Poor enforcement of a positive community and a rash of long term players abandoning the game isn't a good time to double down. Cheers to a better environment and more transparency in a project many of us have invested years in, I'll be saving my coins til then. 

In the meantime, we'll continue smashing the chosen few Shocked
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A minor increase for inflation every year would have been preferable and bearable. One can still lock in the old prices for the foreseeable future by buying in advance, so I do not think people have much to complain about the prices which were far too cheap.

Edited by Dungshoveleux - 20 Feb 2020 at 21:11
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Originally posted by Dungshoveleux Dungshoveleux wrote:

A minor increase for inflation every year would have been preferable and bearable. One can still lock in the old prices for the foreseeable future by buying in advance, so I do not think people have much to complain about the prices which were far too cheap.

Sir. What you are saying is that players can avoid the increases by buying in advance now on current prices ie spending money now, which they did not intend to,  in order to avoid an excessive  increase that will be introduced on the 4th March, irregardless.  Hornswoggle Confused 

Spin, they say,  is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organisation or public figure.  Hmm... The Hornswoggleux  at work Disapprove

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In my opinion as a builder and trader the Prestige price changes are bad for the game and the "pay-to-win" component is getting bigger and bigger as it is going to get more and more expensive to buy Prestige for gold at the market.

Detailed explanation:

The game is balanced around using Prestige to finish buildings. Just the last two levels of a TradeOffice take almost 3 weeks to finish - and to push 30 cities and more you need a lot of them. Thus as a builder you need a lot of Prestige.

A selling point of Illyriad is that you can buy Prestige with gold - you can play the game without using real money to buy Prestige. This requires a healthy Prestige market though - Prestige should be available for affordable prices and at a good quantity.

Thus for a healthy Prestige market we need players to sell Prestige at the market. Thats usually military players that finance their big army with Prestige sales to cover their gold burn. If there is a lot more demand then supply to price is going up and it gets harder and harder for players to buy and use Prestige.

And now we are getting to the problem. As people might have noticed the Prestige price went up by quite a bit in the last year. The main reason for that is that there was a lot more demand then supply. Quite a few of the military players that supplied Prestige stopped playing or stopped selling Prestige over the last years and a lot less players started selling.

With the seasonal tournaments players have even less reason to sell Prestige as troups are used more often and thus huge armies should be less common (exception: PVP players). The changes to the Prestige prices is another reason why people are going to sell less Prestige.

Thus the Prestige price should increase even faster then in the last year (as far as i remember it doubled in the last year). This means that for new players it gets harder and harder to get more cities, and because of that more and more new players are going to stop playing - which is unhealthy for the game.

I do not have a better solution other then "we need more players". I do think though that increasing the Prestige price is not going to have the desired effect of getting more money with Prestige sales.
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People cannot expect something for nothing. No price increases for 10 years - that was a mistake not marginally increasing the prices. But don't moan because they now want to charge for inflation, and not even that. You lot want to have your cake and eat it. Nothing is for free. 
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Originally posted by Dungshoveleux Dungshoveleux wrote:

People cannot expect something for nothing. No price increases for 10 years - that was a mistake not marginally increasing the prices. But don't moan because they now want to charge for inflation, and not even that. You lot want to have your cake and eat it. Nothing is for free. 


I completely disagree with your post. I do not expect something from nothing or something free. I am happy to pay (and did pay my more then my fair share) for games i like and enjoy.

In addition i am big enough as a player to not really care about the Prestige price - i can generate a lot of gold to buy whatever i want. Thus the Prestige price changes affect me a lot less compared to new or smaller players.

The inflation argument might work well for conventional products - it is in my opinion quite different for digital producst. Thus you have to be a bit more careful with your argumentation.

Conventional products (lets take an apple for an example) have a fixed production price and thus inflation matters a lot. In addition the maximal amount of sales to a person is limited (somebody that usually buys 10 apples a week isn't going to buy 10 million because of a sale). Digital products are a lot different as first the production price is a lot harder to calculate and second you can buy an almost infinite amount of the product and use it.

This means that for digial products it is an option to e.g. half the price if you expect that a lot more people buy the products. In my experience as a trader bigger players tend to spend a specific amount of money to sell Prestige and not buying for a specific amount of gold.

The point i was trying to make is that the changes are in my opinion bad for the game and bad for player retention. In my opinion the changes are going to have the opposite effect - instead of getting more money they are going to get less.
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