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re already possible trion also recently added a three way pvp system where players choose to join one of the sides independent of their racial faction alignment so i suppose they may intend for this system to replace the game s original lore as always tip of the hat to trion for doing what they think is necessary rather than allowing a situation they clearly felt needed to be corrected to continue most developers would not consider doing something this dramatic to a launched game as long as the two factions are always fighting the same enemies anyway there is very little value to the two faction system since developers don t really have the time to develop completely separate content for their factions this is a logical alternative meanwhile blizzard is supposedly ramping the alliance horde rivalry back up other than the detail that the horde s hated warchief is the final boss of the expansion the whole galactic war thing kind of rules out merging the swtor factions i don t know that anyone is going to come scrambling to follow suit in retrofitting their games but it will be interesting to see whether future developers stop doing two factions simply because that s how wow did it posted by green armadillo at 5 42 pm 5 comments labels pvd rift social star wars wow monday august 13 2012 aggressive marketing vs content and convenience no content for station cash as wilhelm s analysis notes soe is getting out of the business of allowing station cash to pay for anything that was previously worth paying for under the old subscription model no expansions or other content and no subscription fees they are fully entitled to do this indeed it s puzzling that they are just now noticing that station cash sales were reducing the cost of their product i m pretty sure that february 2010 s sentinel s fate expansion was available for station cash after the one week retail exclusive window as bhagpuss notes they even managed to announce it properly and in advance on the downside they just learned that lesson the hard way but at least they learned it rather than repeat it the last time i took part in a triple station cash sale sometime around april i was on the fence about whether to purchase 15 or 20 worth of credit i elected the latter rather than fund the stuff i wanted to purchase out of my existing balance i figured that i would likely use the extra sc to pay for content or game time in either eq2 or dcuo having learned that this month is my last chance to spend the sc on content i elected to call the 5 a relatively cheap reminder of what happens when you purchase more virtual currency than you have immediate plans to spend i cut my losses and grabbed three dcuo dlc packs that i may not ever use rather than continue to hold a sc balance that increasingly cannot be used to buy anything that i want aggressive marketing as spinks kindly noticed just last week i was rambling about whether the dlc model for mmo s is actually sustainable i ll be the first to concede that paying soe 20 for all of the paid content they added to both of the two soe games i played over the course of a year certainly does not fall into the sustainable category that said i d have more sympathy for their desire to receive an honest day s pay for an honest day s work if it weren t for their own self inflicted and self described aggressive marketing practices the problem is that the cost of station cash item can vary by more than six fold if you stack a triple station cash promotion with a 50 off sale and a walmart exclusive point card bonus players did not create that situation and you don t see soe similarly crying about the need to protect the revenue they need to offset costs of the mounts and vanity items they will continue to offer in the sc store for nominal prices that exceed 10 per item per character to preserve this aggressive regime they are cutting off the ability to pay with store bought cards to my knowledge eq2 s most recent expansion was not offered in retail stores presumably due to the retail cut so sc was one of the last avenues available for those who don t want to provide a company that got hacked last year with their credit cards they re also removing a mechanism for price discrimination by players like myself who don t play enough to justify 220 annually in expansion and subscription fees but who would otherwise be happy to support the product given how thin this year s content is i ll be hard pressed to justify yet another 40 expansion box potentially the third in 20 months this fall if i have to pay full price p s in a mostly unrelated story bioware s single player dlc division has some commentary on how successful the model is the comments have a distinct feel that people who don t like it are out of luck because every single player game will be diverting content from the release game to paid dlc within five years posted by green armadillo at 8 49 pm 3 comments labels business models dcuo eq2 pvd friday august 10 2012 psa swtor racial grandfathering details are presumably subject to change but this week s swtor community q a has a previously un answered tidbit about the game s free to play shift previously created characters will not be locked due to their species though they will be subject to limits on character slots we already knew that no classes would be restricted so this appears to mean that you can have all of your old characters i d also be shocked if they did not offer character slots for sale to non subscribers while companies do want to preserve some incentives to subscribe more slots means more characters which should in principle mean more revenue regardless of payment model for players who have their eye on some of the non human races this is potentially a significant benefit to re subscribing prior to the changeover and creating any characters that have been on your to do list personally i plan to wait for the rumored august world event if you are considering trying the game in november and have your eye on a specific race it might also 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 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