Today the digital edition of Sentinel’s Fate hit the virtual shelves.  Since I bought a physical copy, the only reason I would have to buy the digital edition would be to get the Guarding of the Learned appearance armor that comes with the digital edition.  My first point of confusion is that on the steam page for Sentinel’s Fate, is that it says:  Coveted Guarding of the Learned armor* to provide extra protection on your journey.

Wut?  Since when does appearance armor provide any extra protection?  My guess is that this is simply flavor text written by someone who doesn’t actually know jack about the game.  Oh wait … there is an asterisk.  Maybe the footnote explains it.  Nope, all it says is: * In-game item: Limit one (1) per character. Non-transferrable. No cash value.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/24190/

My problem with all of this is that for a person new to the EQ2 experience, there is a chance that they will see this on Steam,  think: “Wow, that armor looks awesome!  I am sooo going to make a bad-assed magician using that armor”.  Then they buy the game and not ONLY can they not wear their new armor until they play through the first 20 levels of the game ( a fact not mentioned anywhere on the Steam page, and fairly important since it is also never mentioned that this is appearance armor ), but when they do reach level 20 they find the armor is for looks only and has zero stats.  They might feel a little misled given that the selling point claimed that it would “provide extra protection on your journey” implying that you would have a leg up in the game thanks to this item.  Shame on you Steam/SoE!

Another point I am confused on is why we were given a $10 coupon to buy the digital edition of Sentinel’s Fate when the only reason to do so would be because you want the appearance armor.  So $40 – $10 = $30.  Thats a $30 piece of appearance armor?!  Wow.  Holy shades of Allods Online Batman!  Ok, so you would also get 500 station cash too, so to be fair, its more like $25 piece of appearance armor which is still way more than any other set in the store currently.

I don’t know what to do.  The appearance armor does look nice, but I think it is simply a pallet swap of the armor I already have from the physical edition.  Truth be told, the $10 coupon would be better spent giving it away to my brother, who has expressed interest in getting into EQ2.  That way he can catch up with all the expansions and rediscover the game, and SoE potentially gets a new customer vs. me having another piece of appearance armor I might never even use.