Daybreak Offers $400 Guild Hall In EverQuest 2

Another day, another pricy item (or two) in a free-to-play game's cash shop that's making players rend their garments in anguish.

Today's culprits are the Highold and Skyshrine Capital Guild Halls in EverQuest 2, which can be had for 350 or 400 of a special kind of ticket, respectively. Those tickets, of course, each cost $1 in Daybreak cash, putting the price of the Guild Hall at $350 or $400 -- or a little less if you've bought DBC at a discount or have lots saved up from the stipend you get from being a subscriber for some length of time.

You can also buy tickets that other people put up for sale for in-game currency, though that means the tickets will still have to be purchased by someone for real money, or at least DBC. Hey, at least they're not gated by RNG lootboxes!

Naturally, a $350+ "micro"transaction has some players up in arms. There's an 18-page (and counting) thread on the EQ2 forums that hits on all the usual points: it's a cash grab, hey it's only cosmetic, EQ2 is dying, a big guild can get the money from multiple players, this is awful I quit.

Maybe the biggest damage, though, is the PR hit and rifts something like this causes in the community. For an aging game like EverQuest 2, that can be severely damaging, but maybe the game is in such a state that the powers that be don't care about the "social" damage that can't be accounted for on a ledger, as long as it brings in the money.