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lso be worth your while to download the newly unlimited free trial through level 15 no promises that these characters will also be grandfathered but it would seem like spending effort to make sure they slam the door on the fingers of potential customers would be counterproductive posted by green armadillo at 8 55 pm 0 comments labels business models housekeeping star wars thursday august 9 2012 a reset too far lyriana hit level 91 leaving her a single level about 1 4 million exp away from eq2 s current level cap armed with bonuses from vitality and veteran status i m pulling down 8000 exp per quest completion and a few hundred exp per mob this could take a while the last time eq2 raised its level cap back in 2010 s the sentinel s fate tsf expansion soe provided only two overland zones for an increase of ten levels the previous ten level increase had added four overland zones this resulted in some absurd quest design in which one hub awards nine quest completes for killing seven mobs just to hand out more quest exp even with this extreme measure players were level 90 within hours of the expansion launch the irony was that tsf had a variety of factions and repeatable quests solo players could have used to earn reputation it would have been a far better expansion with a smaller cap increase 2 5 and a faction curve that allowed solo players to continue leveling as they worked on daily quests last year s destiny of velious expansion did not raise the cap despite adding two overland zones and again offered robust endgame daily quest options this expansion too could have come with a few levels that continue into the daily quest grind the game s current cap increase two levels came with a single overland zone this should have been fine except for a minor problem an aggressive gear reset obsoleted every single piece of content that existed in the game prior to the current patch other than an extreme hard mode raid that was only marginally more rewarding than current easier content as a result all the factions i failed to complete last expansion are no longer worthwhile in their place is a single daily quest once per day i can do a single dungeon assisted by my mercenary in exchange for a piece of random level 92 gear there are some other repeatable quests in the new zone but these are pretty much pointless as there are no factions or items associated with them effectively you re just grinding exp there are some things i can do to speed the journey along i have some veteran reward potions stashed away i probably still earn non zero amounts of exp from last expansions content even if i no longer need the rewards and i can always betray and or mentor down or even group that said it does seem unusually wasteful to cast aside so much content with so little to take its place posted by green armadillo at 10 06 pm 3 comments labels eq2 my characters pvd wednesday august 8 2012 can we monetize mmo s via dlc the use of a free to play monetization model requires careful placement of your best content what i call carrots on the other side of payment opportunities that i call gates game monetization expert ramin shokrizade writing for gamasutra we ve had a week to process the bombshell of swtor s sudden albeit in development through november planned change in business model many of us myself included have thrown out roughly the same ideas about how the game s solo leveling story content was its best feature while its endgame appears to be failing to retain players for the sake of argument i will assume mr shokrizade means that bioware should have monetized access to the story missions which he calls the best parts of the game i was fumbling around the same suggestion a few months ago in light of rumors about a potential added fee for the game s forthcoming new planet this seemed inconsistent with a subscription model and i had assumed that they would not take the subscription off the table so early could selling access to content throughout the game perhaps on a planet by planet basis similar to lotro s model really have doubled or tripled bioware s revenues i m not convinced for a number of reasons it would be hard to justify the 60 fee for the box if very little of the content were included while retail definitely ate a chunk of this revenue we know that over two million copies were sold that s a lot of microtransactions just as charging the monthly fee rewards players for finishing early charging by the planet rewards players for skipping optional content or quitting outright if they re not loving the story offering up opportunities to quit every few levels might not be in the developers best interest especially if you run into players like myself who struggle to find a class with both a good story and fun mechanics the real issue though is development costs say that bioware could have sold the base game with just the act i stories but no subscription for the full 60 and charged some amount of money per planet per class thereafter this doesn t add up to much more than the revenue they get from their single player offerings and paid dlc which cost much less to develop further adding more planets in the future may well be cost prohibitive a theory that i suppose we are about to test alternately mr shokrizade may be implying that bioware s mistake was developing this kind of game in the first place for swtor we know that the subscription model did not pan out and i stand by my initial reaction to the new plan confusion about how a model which does not charge for story content fixes the problem of players beating the story content and then quitting tobold seems to agree meanwhile for all the hype concerning the performance of turbine s approach to free to play which is roughly what we re discussing here there are some signs that turbine may be struggling with the sustainability issue we are seeing both point bundles and expansions bundled into larger and more expensive packages while more and more power is added for sale in the store that said if the answer really is that we can t have games like swtor because there is no way to make them commercially viable that s a pretty big disappointment for the future posted by green armadillo at 9 22 pm 5 comments labels business models ddo lotro pvd star wars tuesday august 7 2012 scaling and novel loot like many players i have been quick to complain about the gear treadmill how mmos focus on the acquisition of gear that increases arbitrary stats by arbitrary amounts only to have the increases canceled out by corresponding improvements in the stats of the enemy the story of class foci in eq2 goes to show that the alternatives aren t that much easier last year i picked up two major upgrades that go beyond mere numbers the bonus from my epic class weapon and a pair of boots that removed the cost from a key buff allowing my buff based class to cast 20 more buffs this week i logged in to find the same pair of boots missing the focus effect the boots when i got them the problem as i noted at the time was that this bonus was so large that it became mandatory on future gear upgrades when april s patch increased the level cap along with a full gear reset soe went in and added a generic class focus stat that effectively says your class buff here on every piece of gear you loot this was pretty much pointless so the system got another overhaul in this month s patch now the foci are an inherent part of your character earned as you level and there s correspondingly one fewer line of text on every piece of gear in the game the boots today with the key effect moved to my class focus tab the random stat buffs are doled out to replace a separate portion of the focus system which was tossed because there was generally only one sensible choice in some ways this is a win for players a key mechanic is available earlier in the level progression and we have neither the irritating scenario of having to find groups for old content still required for the epic weapon bonus at least for now nor the absurdity of having the same stat assumed to be on every piece of gear in the game that said the major thing that made certain pieces of gear somewhat unique and desirable is gone leaving only arbitrary quantities of arbitrary stats posted by green armadillo at 9 14 pm 1 comments labels eq2 my characters pvd friday august 3 2012 players cannot win in the ea vs zynga lawsuit as scott jennings notes the stakes are high in the lawsuit between electronic arts and zynga relatively few mmorpg players are likely to find sympathy for the defendant given their reputation as the lawsuit notes has previously been accused of grand theft intellectual property by smaller studios who could not stand toe to toe with the studio in a fight i haven t gone anywhere near either game but tobold called this coming two weeks out given his prominence in the page rankings i m half surprised that his post is not exhibit a for the plaintiffs that said consider for a minute the consequences user interfaces in the mmo world are not known for their originality if you ve played one hotbar based mmo you will find that the competition has intentionally designed their systems to reduce your learning curve when you take their product for a test drive all talk of wow clones aside is this really a bad thing for players these interfaces survive not just because they are familiar but also because they work in that context i m concerned about a massive company with massive numbers of lawyers establishing a precedent for killing games based on their similarity to a competing product the us system of permitting patents on abstract concepts has created an environment where companies can no longer create new devices without paying someone either a competitor or someone who never intends to market a product for broad patents on the concepts behind their inventions small and independent developers face enough challenges without the potentially prohibitive costs of licensing concepts from the ea s activisions and yes zyngas of the world who can afford to litigate i realize that the iterative evolution of mmo s the conduct that zynga stands accused of and the state of the rest of the us intellectual property system are potentially three distinct points i d just like them to stay that way posted by green armadillo at 10 46 pm 3 comments labels business models thursday august 2 2012 gameplay trumps business model the conventional wisdom in discussions about the future of the subscription mmo is that the continued success of world of warcraft proves that players are willing to pay each and every month for a quality product i think the quality of the product and the experience ultimately trumps the business model which is precisely why i m not buying this theory what if the truth is that every mmo that has succeeded under the subscription model has done so because that game at the time offered a compelling experience that was not available elsewhere looking at mmo history through this model have games succeeded despite the monthly fee because players had nowhere else to go to get that particular experience and not because of it what portions of the conventional wisdom survive under this alternate model for events and which fall by the wayside survivors of the subscription era according to mmorpg com s list of all games by business model there simply aren t that many mmorpg s with a mandatory subscription fee left on the market many are either abandoned veterans that aren t worth the money it would cost to relaunch them or newbies that have yet to prove they can last under a subscription model setting aside the 9 1 million subscriber gorilla for a moment let s look at the highlights eve online poster child for this model whether it s space piracy corporation scheming hardcore pvp or fully player driven wars for galactic domination eve always has offered something that no other game on the market attempts rift technically speaking having a well produced game that sets and meets achievable goals and therefore delivers the most consistent update schedule in the industry isn t part of the in game experience what i d suggest is unique based on my experience playing the game and comparing it to the other quest based mmo s on the market is the focus on playing with other people soloing in rift is 100 feasible and supported but it just feels flavorless compared to all the other solo quest mmo s by contrast trion has made it easier than any other game to join groups and i ve had more fun grouping including while leveling and even healing pug s than any other recent mmo i ve played incidentally if i m correct guild wars 2 may be a bigger threat to rift than wow since its content is closer to what trion does well darkfall i don t know exactly what their state of financial success is as the game is currently charging a reduced monthly fee and no price to create an account again though the game offers hardcore sandbox pvp of a kind that mainstream games run screaming from ffxi another title where i m not so informed about current success in the past though this game has been the rear guard of numerous old school mechanics like harsh death penalties lengthy travel and grinding mobs to level but without the pvp focus of other more sandbox ish games ffxiv is harder to gauge because it only began charging a fee recently warhammer online at the risk of kicking a game that s down i d suggest that this demonstrates the flipside of the model things like solo quests group dungeons and instanced pvp warfronts would not have been enough to sustain a subscription game because there were alternatives with these features on the market in 2009 the unique portion that they did attempt to provide rvr proved less than compelling due to incentive and population balance issues i m not going to try and rehash this analysis for the heyday of every mmo in history but a cursory examination looks promising everquest brought the diku mud model into 3d dark age of camelot did the open pvp thing correctly with a third faction to balance populations lotro back when it was moderately successful while charging a mandatory subscription combined solo accessability with a far more immersive story experience than the competition had to offer in 2007 games that failed to catch on often have a reason poor execution e g vanguard or lack of differentiation dcuo versus similar action based gameplay in non subscription console games many of which are even online these days what about wow all of which brings us back to wow and the conventional wisdom at its launch wow fit the model to a t it was the only game on the market offering the virtual world experience to players who wanted to solo or otherwise shed the inflexibility inherent in past group oriented mmo s today though every game that launches is derided as a wow clone what is this dinosaur still doing if a subscription game indeed cannot endure viable competition i would sugg...
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