Which, of course, is what I do all the time. It's partly due to something Wilhelm was complaining about, namely how tough it can be in most games to find anything at all in the cash shop that seems like it's both good value and worth buying in the first place. For me, it often seems as though everything in most in-game stores is either ridiculously overpriced or hard to figure out why anyone would want it at any price.
I spent a decade playing Guild Wars 2, for example, and in all that time just about the only things I ever bought were storage upgrades. Those were useful but, like just about everything in the Gem Store, very expensive, so I always waited until they went on sale, which they reliably did - once a year.
Even at that attritionally slow rate of purchase, I still had all the storage space I wanted, if only because of diminishing returns. No-one can ever have enough storage space in GW2 for the intentionally overwhelming torrent of very-slightly-not-quite-worthless items that rains down on you whatever you do but at some stage having more room to stash it all just adds to the sense of desperation that the flood is never going to stop and you'll drown in all that junk you can't quite bring yourself to destroy.
Ahem. This wasn't supposed to be a post about GW2 and its many shortcomings. Or, for that matter, about inventory management, although I could tell you some tales...
Getting back to the point, thanks to a combination of overpriced and/or unattractive stock in the shops and my personal psychology, which, thanks presumably to convictions instilled in me, growing up, by people who lived through two world wars and a global depression, leads me to feel a lot more comfortable with funds unspent than with the not exactly essential goods or services those funds might have purchased, I tend to build up a lot of savings in any game I play for more than five minutes.
It doesn't help that I also suffer from choice paralysis. If a game is lucky enough to have developers willing to fill their stores with useful and attractive items at reasonable prices, my eyes glaze over as I stare at them through the shop window, incapable of deciding which to buy.
The EverQuest II cash shop is pretty good as these things go. There's a lot of vaguely useful stuff in there, not least because Darkpaw has been running a soft Pay-to-Play regime for many years. At least, it has if you want to get groups or, god forbid, start raiding. Then you either have to come at the game like it was a full-time job or get your credit card out.
Or, so I understand, from the forums, which I confess may not represent the most unbiased testimony. As a solo, casual player, though, none of that really affects me at all. I could buy Familiars and Mercenaries and throw them down a well to boost the various buffs and boosts and bonuses that gives but why would I bother?
Ditto the xp boosts and spell research reducers and all the other time-saving devices. I don't even use most of the ones I get for free, so why would I want more?
Same story with the cosmetics. I have so many of those I literally had to designate a character to hold them all in storage for everyone else. That character has a bank full of costumes and appearance gear. And still no-one uses any of it!
All the while I'm not buying anything from the cash shop, my funds keep increasing. Not because I ever spend a cent on cash shop cash. Not for at least a decade and a half, anyway. I did, once, back in the glory days of SOE, when Smed's team were so far out of touch with reality that they ran Triple Station Cash sales and let you buy expansions off the back of them.
I bought some Station Cash then, alright. Everyone did. It was like they were giving it away. And then, naturally, I never spent most of it. I still have it. Some on my main account. More on the account that used to be my main account back then. And still more on Mrs. Bhagpuss's long-dormant account. And her second account. Darkpaw's accountants have got to love us...
Most of what I have on my subbed account doesn't come from those long-ago sales but from the monthly 500DBC stipend that come with the subscription. That adds up over time. 6k a year and it's a rare year when I spend even a third of it.
When I logged in this morning I had just shy of 35k in the bank.
So I bought an island.
Frostfell has started. I knew it had because I saw Stargrace's post about it last night. This morning I thought I'd check if there was anything new for this year, which there isn't, really, other than the expected stuff you can buy either for gold and platinum in game or for DBC in the store. There's a new Achievement and some new places where you can mark your name for everyone to see (Always inexplicably popular.) A couple of odds and ends but no new quests or anything like that.
And, really, why would there be? Do you have any idea how big the Frostfell event is? No? Go read Angeliana's post on the forums then! She lists over two dozen specific quests, many of which are actually quite lengthy chains, and that's not even all of them. Plus the gazillion other non-quest activities and entertainments you can enjoy between now and the fifth of January. It sounds like a long stretch but if you wanted to do everything, it'd probably take you that long.
But as I was skimming the list I spotted something I hadn't seen before: "Introducing your own wonderland."
A Prestige House. Now that's one thing I will spend my funny money on. I bought one only a couple of months ago, during the other big holiday of the Norathian year, Nights of the Dead. I think I mentioned it in passing but I didn't do a post on it. I was probably waiting until I'd decorated it, which of course I haven't.
Haven't set foot in the place, in fact. Redbeard was saying only yesterday how decorating wasn't really his thing. He was spurred into talking about it by the arrival of housing in World of Warcraft, my own thoughts on which I originally intended to include in this very post. We're a long way in now, though. It seems a bit late to start. Probably better to save it for a post of its own.
Decorating kind of is my thing, as in I enjoy it and I'm not bad it it, both in game and in real life, but in both cases the downside of decorating is that it takes ages. I have several well-decorated houses in EQII, not all of them on the account or even the server I currently play on, but every one of my characters has at least one home and most of them have several and I just do not have the time to make all of those houses look good.
Or even most of them. I ought to log everyone in and count the houses one day. I would guess that, just on my main account alone, there are more than fifty. Who has time to decorate that?
So, naturally, I've just bought another. Only this one is a little different.
Most Prestige homes, even if they're really full zones, which in EQII they often are, come with a pre-built residence of some kind. Mara, for example, the place where my Berserker has been living for many years, ever since he moved out of his huge, sprawling Maj`Dul mansion, is a full zone with a complete town, many of the buildings in which are fully habitable.
Winter's Island, the absolutely beautiful new Prestige Home I signed the deeds on today, is exactly that: an island. Small, somewhat bean-shaped, in the middle of a blue, blue sea. It has an odd climate. Winter at one end, Fall at the other. Grass or snow. Bare branches or autumn leaves.
All around, sticking out of the sea like spikes, are rocky islets. At least twenty of them by my count. Most of which you can get to and build on.
The place is big. Bigger than it looks. I flew between the two farthest-apart rocky islets and timed myself on a stopwatch. It took more than three minutes on a fast flying mount. Just to ride from one end of the main island to the other takes half a minute.
As Angeliana says "There is so much potential." There really is because all you have to start with is some land and a lot of sea.
Here's where EQII differs from many theme-park MMORPGs when it comes to housing. (The exceptions I can think of would be WildStar, which hardly counts any more, and maybe Rift.) You aren't limited to decorating. You can also build.
In the before-times, back when Mrs. Bhagpuss used to be big on the decorating scene, all building had to be done by re-purposing existing furniture items, something people did with enormous imagination and skill. Latterly, though, Darkpaw has catered to the obvious demand by supplying actual building materials, bricks, tiles, stairs, doors, windows, the lot, all of which you can obtain in abundance both through crafting and questing and via the Cash Shop.
I have never built anything in EQII. Which, now I come to think of it, is weird. I build things all the time in survival games. I've been doing it for years. Until now, though, when I'm in Norrath I've been content to stick to decorating.
Will Winter's Island change all that? I have no idea. Yet.
If I do get the building bug, though, maybe it'll finally give me something to spend my imaginary money on.
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