Marketing can be a tricky business. This is especially true in MMOs, and
particularly when the carrot of "Free-to-Play" is dangled in front of us,
leading us down a path cobbled with microtransactions. Since
Star Wars: The Old Republic switched to Free-to-Play
and the cash shop that would go with it, they have been dangling a number of
carrots-on-sticks to keep us interested and get us spending money on their
product. There's nothing really wrong with that - that's what marketing is
supposed to do - but when the time to eat the carrot finally arrives, and the
carrot turns out to be a scratch ticket with the words "Sorry, Try Again!" in
big, friendly letters, that's a problem.

Since the announcement of the Cartel Market, BioWare has been promoting a
select handful of items that would be available in the cash shop: the
Carbonite Chamber, the Mask of Nihilus social armor, the Kowakian
Monkey-Lizard pet, and the Meditation Throne speeder. Images of these four
items appeared over and over in their promotions. Back in the summer, there
was even a page on the SWTOR website that gave a few more details about each
of the pieces. It appeared that these were items you would be able to purchase
when the store went live.

When servers came back up after the F2P patch, a lot of players flooded in
looking for these items, only to discover that only one of them - the
Carbonite Chamber - was actually available for direct purchase. In order to
get the mask, the pet or the speeder-throne, the other big-ticket items that
BioWare has been promoting all along (and images of which they continue to use
for promoting the store), you have to buy Crime Lord's Cartel Packs for 360
Cartel Coins (roughly $3.25 or so, figuring on an average of about 0.9 cents
per point), or the cheaper Black Market Cartel Packs for 180 (about $1.60).
These Cartel Packs are "surprise packs" of randomly-generated loot with a very
small chance of actually generating any of the big-ticket items. The more
expensive pack has a slightly higher chance of generating desirable loot, plus
a few other items not included in the cheap packs.

In other words, if you want any of the cool stuff they've been luring you
with, you have to gamble. That's exactly what it is - a gamble. Each roll of
the dice gives you a super-slim chance of winning the item you actually want,
like spinning the roulette wheel and betting your money on double-zeroes. This
seems like kind of a bait-and-switch. We were promised one thing (items we
could buy) and given something else (items we could spend money on and
probably not get).

And even that wouldn't be so sleazy if the odds were a little better.
Obviously, these are premium items and the rarity is part of the attraction...
but if one person can spend literally hundreds of dollars on coins and never
win one (seriously, I know a guy who really, really wants the throne speeder),
but the next person can get one with his first purchase using only his monthly
"allowance," that doesn't seem right.

Personally, I spent around 60 bucks on coins and got nothing I wanted. Out of
around 25 Crime Lord packs, I got the following items:

• around 15 or so speeders, all of which are essentially repaints of
  existing speeders, which I distributed among my alts or donated to the guild
• a pile of Rank 5 companion gifts, which I can easily get without paying
  for by running crew skill missions
• two Pink-Purple Endurance crystals and one Pink-Purple War-Hero crystal, all
  of which I gave away or sold because pink-purple is the most hideous color
  imaginable
• two full sets of the female-only adaptable armor, plus an additional top and
  hat. The character who got them is male.
• a hat from another adaptable armor set, but no other pieces from that set.
• a bare-chest adaptable armor piece. All of these orange armor items are
  sitting in my vault. They have no mods in them, the market is totally flooded
  with them, and I certainly have no use for them.
• loads of XP enhancers... for my level 50 Juggernaut. Donated most of these
  to the guild, kept a few for low-level alts.
• a level 35 artifact-quality blaster rifle, an item my Juggernaut couldn't
  use but which was bound to him for a day and a half. Eventually sent to my
  Operative because I wasn't able to trade it up for anything interesting.
• a level 35 artifact-quality lightsaber with an interesting glow effect. This
  is the most valuable item I've found out of 25 Cartel Packs, but it still took
  me about a week to trade it up for something I actually wanted.
• plenty of rare top-tier crafting materials, all of which I donated to my
  guild.
• a handful of mini-pets - a mini probe droid, a couple of lizardbats and a
  fairly common horranth, but not the Ruddyscale Kowakian Monkeylizard, which is
  the only pet I want.
• five "Ball Toss" items, which can be used to perform an emote but take up
  inventory room.
• two banner items - one Republic, one Imperial - that also take up inventory
  room.
• two "glowing eyes" items, one red and one gold. These also take up inventory
  room.
• three emotes - two "Intimidate" and one "Menace." I actually used these.
• three or four "credit boost" items that rewarded me a few thousand credits
  when used. Which is fine and all, but running dailies nets me about half a
  million, and I'm not paying a couple bucks a shot for those.

This is not 60 bucks' worth of awesome loot. This is 50 bucks' worth of guild
donations, and around 10 dollars' worth of so-so stuff I ended up keeping,
mostly for my alts.

I don't have a problem with "surprise packs" in general. A couple of bucks
for a shot at a premium item plus some other junk isn't a terrible idea. But
when it's the sole means of acquiring the items used in the advertising
(besides buying them for outrageously exploitative prices on the GTN), that
seems unethical. I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I know BS when I see it.

The thing is, I would happily pay money for those items. I paid cash money
for equally-ridiculous things in the Lord of the Rings Online. Back in the
day, I bought a Steed of Night for my Hunter, which cost around 20 bucks (1995
Turbine Points). And a Steed of Minas Ithil for my Guardian. And a bunch of
the class steeds for my other characters, all of which cost around 20 dollars
each. And, more recently, a Dwarf-only shirtless cosmetic item that cost about
10 bucks (995 TP). I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff, and I'm absolutely not
alone.

I'd do the same for the premium items in SWTOR. The Mask of Nihilus would
look awesome on my Sorcerer, because I dislike most of the other light-armor
headgear. The Meditation Throne would go great with my tyrannical Juggernaut.
The Kowakian Monkeylizard would make a fine companion for my Powertech. To me,
those items are worth 10 - 20 bucks apiece. When I first logged in after the
update, that's more or less what I was expecting to pay for them. Instead, I
paid the same amount of money I would have spent on them had they been
available for direct purchase, and didn't get them because of an unfortunate
random number generator. I didn't get what I paid for, and that is a pretty
lousy way to satisfy customers.

By all means, BioWare should keep selling the Cartel Packs. At 360 Cartel
Coins each, they're a fun little
gamble. But they should also be offering the items they have been selling us
on since the summer for direct purchase. People will buy them, and they will
keep buying the Cartel Packs. There's no way selling the premium items
directly won't make money. And if demand drops off in a few months, you can
repaint it and sell it again, and suckers like me will keep on buying it. Just
ask Turbine.