Price Check in Aisle 2 for Kingdom Armor

I'm the proud father of 3 year old twins and a 6 month old. I also happen to be leasing a 2003 Volkswagen Jetta and a pile of rust that's vaguely reminiscent of a 1991 Jeep cherokee Sport. The math isn't that hard to do. Dad coerces the pile of rust to travel to work every morning, and Mom has the Jetta for the three kids. Well at least until the 6 month old actually requires a new car seat in a few months.

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Three children in booster seats cannot fit into the back seat of a compact car. Furthermore, having three children within 2 feet of one's head while driving will drive you insane (now you know where I get it from).

The solution is pretty simple right? Buy a new car. Trade in the Jeep for a minivan and surrender to suburbanite utopian life! So that's precisely what my wife and I are in the process of doing. We took a look at our budget, looked at the monthly bills that we'll have to pay and figured out how much we could afford. Then we went out car shopping ... we did have to adjust the budget to take into account the salary that Warcry will be paying me in a month or two and the retainer that Turbine will be paying me for consulting services but in the end we were able to get our minivan.

So what the heck has this got to do with AC2?

If you look at the way that we spent our money it ends up being the sum of certain fixed costs. For example you have your: power bill, heating bill, monthly upgrades to the PC, rent/mortgage, weekly tab at the local exotic dancing bar, and the weekly flowers to apologize to your wife for spending time at the local exotic dancing bar. Then on top of that you have your periodic big costs like: moving, insulating your computer room with a foot of cork on each side so that you can use RogerWilco without having your wife think your insane, or buying a new car.

The current economic model employed by AC2 is very unusual. There are no regular consumable cash sinks within the game. All of the money required for the game is in the form of a stage/gate approach. In other words you have to save up once, then spend, then you never have to face that cost again.

While the price tag of 600,000 gold for a suit of kingdom armor is intimidating, there are fortunately items in the game that have a value associated with them, like ebon pyreal and assorted smelly bits and pieces of mutilated tyrant. However, that said, that still sounds like an awful lot of gold to try and scrounge together.

Does it need to be this much?

Well, yes it does. It's really not that much money. It's relatively easy to pick up a few thousand gold by prostrating the residents of the temples and taking their worldly possessions on behalf of the clergy. There has to be a place for this money to go. It requires a bit of a shift in playstyles. Ara, Knight of the Golden Flame Rekindled rarely had any interest in the vermin that fell under his blade. He'd wade through a field of undead and leave them lieing on the floor in his wake. They wouldn't have anything of value to Ara and he had no interest in fondling their rotting carcasses. However, Ara recognized that due to the exorbitant fees necessary to wear brighter, shinier armor with which to impress Aluvian women, he would have to get on his hands and knees and sort through the assorted stinking remains. Granted, the women aren't standing downwind of Ara anymore but he does look damn pretty in his armor.

Because money had relatively little importance in many respects, and because certain monsters were unlikely to ever drop anything of interest, many of us got into the habit of not bothering to loot. We need to loot now. Most of us have adopted the loot/transmute paradigm - frequently transmuting before we even know what it is. Now Turbine needs good methods to relieve us of that financial burden. Quests with financial requirements will work, but it would be preferable to decrease the financial aspects of many of the quests and create a consumables system.

The consumables could be magical components, sharpening stones for weapons, and arrows for bows. It could also be as mundane as food and required lodging (i.e. sleep in an inn) once every 20 hours of in game play time. Housing will likely have a monthly fee attached to it when it's introduced. Until then, try not to psyched out by quests that appear madly intimidating due the costs associated with them. Just remember that you don't have to bills pay, there are no taxes in this game world and the gargantuan costs are sort of necessary to make money have some sort of value.

Cheers,
Ara