Or maybe it’s not that tragic; the mas­sively unpop­u­lar changes in Mabinogi NA’s pre­mium pack­age pol­icy seems to stand firm in the sea of crit­i­cism and dis­con­tent.  I have naively thought that, maybe, Nexon isn’t that regres­sive and maybe, just maybe, given time, the in-game items that have since become unob­tain­able will be brought back.  Since I’m con­vinced that things will not get bet­ter any time soon, I shall ded­i­cate this post to my favorite attrac­tive micro-transaction sys­tem for all times that no longer exists.

To make this as con­struc­tive as pos­si­ble, I strongly rec­om­mend a Mabinogi player like you–whether you’ve been caught in the wave or not–to read this neat lit­tle essay first.  It gives a good intro­duc­tion on the sit­u­a­tion and focus on impor­tant impacts which new ser­vice could inflict to the com­mu­nity.  Though (by the look of it) the essay is writ­ten some­time right after the announce of the new ser­vice, hence the more the­o­ret­i­cal word­ing.  Allow me to elab­o­rate the argu­ment by list­ing some casual obser­va­tions on how the Mari server has changed since the G9 update.

Story of Nao: She Has Gone Rouge

The mes­sen­ger and exe­cu­tioner of Nexon’s Holy Con­tractGod­dess’ wills–Nao Mar­i­ota Pry­deri, has gone rouge.  Yes, she will still revive you on spot, to full stats, and bless your equip­ment.  Yet instead of get­ting poten­tial of 3 (revives/in-game day) * 40 (in-game days/real-life day) * 30 (real-life days/Fantasy Life Pack­age) = 3600+ Nao revives per $15–, sub­scribers and non-subscribers alike are now pay­ing for 30 Nao revive stones per $7.  Even though the most grindy player could not be grinding/dying/Nao-ing24/7/30, the com­par­i­son still holds its ground, that is, the new ser­vice is a com­plete rip off com­pare to the old Fan­tasy Life Pack­age.  As a loyal sub­scriber of the old Fan­tasy Life Pack­age, I’m still pon­der­ing whether this should taken as an insult by Nexon NA.

Story of the Bomb: in-your-face

Peo­ple could care less about “emer­gency” bombs but I find it ironic: not long ago when mod­ding itemdb.xml could still make ran­dom item into (then unre­leased) pre­mium items, peo­ple, included me, had fun spam­ming the new ver­sion of the escape bomb in dungeons.  There was as fix to root out the mod… and now it’s “fixed” once again: they have been taken out of sub­scrip­tion pack­age and now have a price tag of 5 bombs/$0.99.  To me, the price laugh­able.  Escape bombs are some­thing not nec­es­sary but is still good to have them.  Mobs recover pretty fast from being bombed by one of these, and the dam­age is rather pathetic.  I guess the pvp fanat­ics can rejoice a bit now for no more bomb­ing in pvp, lol.

Story of the Dyes: fash­ion can­not be stopped

Ok now, even though I dub Mabinogi as a “Fash­ion game in dis­guise of an MMORPG”, the demise of reg­u­lar expirable dyes that play­ers with large bank of char­ac­ters can amass every week, did not unleash much of a havoc onto the mar­ket.  Aver­age price of dyes is merely a mir­ror of the over­all con­di­tion of the mar­ket… it appears that only large cir­cum­stances like out­break of gold dupe, and rel­e­vantly, the very removal of the dyes’ exis­tence,  would cause their price to change sharply.

I don’t know whether Nexon had the inten­tion to level out the dif­fer­ence between the rich and the poor in game, but by remov­ing Advanced Play and reg­u­lar dyes, they effec­tively killed the most prof­itable aspect of those who have many char­ac­ters on an account and is sub­scribed to Fan­tasy Life or Advanced Play.  Yet play­ers of that cat­e­gory whom I know of, can effi­ciently farm dun­geons and/or doing in-game craft­ing that the cur­rent inabil­ity to sell dyes did not make them broke.  One could argue that the action of amass­ing dyes with many char­ac­ter itself is a abuse of the sys­tem… but do remem­ber, it is them who made dyes largely acces­si­ble when the aver­age play­ers, whom in time, got richer and were in search of pret­tier clothing.

Unfor­tu­nately I do not assume the role of dye sup­plier here since I only have 9 char­ac­ters… it is more than evi­dent that the con­se­quences of the removal of dyes are felt by all.  A sim­ple con­clu­sion: it’s much harder/more expen­sive now to dye equip­ment now.

Or maybe we should take a peek at what kind of dyes are avail­able now…

  • Non-expirable clothing/metal dyes — $0.99 ea.
  • Fixed color / flash­ing cloth­ing dyes — every paid rebirth, which is $7.9 and up
  • Fixed Dye Gachapon — $0.8 ea.

I assume that peo­ple who reg­u­larly rebirth would enjoy choos­ing one out of ten fixed dyes on their dis­cre­tion.  The other two options, namely the ran­dom dyes and dye Gachapons, are by nature, too ran­dom and most likely, will not give one the color one wants.  I never bought any Fixed Dye Gachapon before so I have no idea on how often a good color dye comes out from it… but I guess buy­ing dye Gachapon is still a bet­ter idea for reselling value.

Also, there is no fixed metal dyes.  Even though you don’t really get any fancy out­comes from a metal dye, it is till sad that there is no way to dye your metal equip­ment with­out pay­ing nx.

So, fixed dyes are now dom­i­nat­ing what’s left of the dye market–now with about 50%~100% price increase com­pare to pre-G9 times.  Peo­ple now know to “save & trade”: get fixed dyes from either rebirth or gachapon, sell the unwanted col­ored ones and buy the dyes with desir­able col­ors.  Tt’s inter­est­ing to see how the dye mar­ket is more demand-driven… or rather, more fashion-driven. However much I’d like their price to stay where they are now… with eas­ier method of get­ting money from shadow mis­sions, it’s only nat­ural to assume a con­stantly ris­ing price tag for pop­u­lar col­ored dyes.

Story of Oth­ers: San­ity Check

No more expe­di­ent Waxen Wings? Sure thing, keep more Hous­ing Fly­ers around.  No more 1x1 stack­able fire­camp kits? Sure thing, just gonna kill more trees.  No more free coupons of var­i­ous kinds? Sure thing, I have 20 pets so I can care less.  No more free Full Recov­ery Potions?  Sure thing, high rank Potion Mak­ing isn’t just for show.

But Skill Reset Cap­sule for $2.5? I lol’d.  By the time I can earn enough gold that is equiv­a­lent to $2.5, most likely I’ve earned the AP that I need–without der­ank­ing a skill.  The price is just insane; prove me wrong if you want.

Story of the Lost Ones: Unnoticed?

Not all daily items from Advanced Play can be obtained now.  The three kinds of Elixirs are now lost for­ever until Nexon shows some com­pe­tency mercy.  The group who is affect the most by Elixirs turned unob­tain­able is the mages.  Those who depend on buy­ing Mana Elixirs to spam adv magic in dun­geons and those who wish to train Mana Form­ing alike, are screwed by Nexon (and per­haps its inabil­ity to notice the fact that play­ers can­not get elixirs anymore).

In con­clu­sion, by cheapen the price of Pre­mium Ser­vice pack­age from $14.9 to $10.9, Nexon is expected to earn a lot more from peo­ple buy­ing crap through Item Shops.  Do notice that the price reduc­tion has no impact on how much a player pays for nx–players have to pay $15 to use the $10.9 ser­vice regard­lessly.  Good news to me: I can live with­out Nao and every­thing Nexon removed from the service.  I’m still reg­u­larly rebirthing like pre-G9 time, hence I am glad to know that I won’t be pay­ing more rl cash than I used to.