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much if i tr relatively shortly thereafter but so far i m loving this build posted by green armadillo at 9 22 pm 2 comments labels business models ddo my characters pvd monday august 27 2012 most threatened by gw2 rift wilhelm has an interesting post about current events in rift that got me thinking about the week s major release while blizzard is making their traditional obligatory response to the guild wars 2 launch by rolling out a new patch tomorrow there is a tradition to uphold after all i m wondering that wow may not be the game with the most to lose this week when you look at what distinguishes the remaining mmo s and in particular the surviving subscription games i m much more worried for rift my personal experience in the world of telara was that it was technically well executed but very dry solo where the game shined was in groups and i spent more time leveling with other people than i have in any other mmo before or since when i read over accounts from people who have stuck with the game it seems that most have done so because their friends or their guilds have chosen rift precisely because it is at their best when enjoyed in good company now in guild wars 2 you have a game that was supposedly developed under a philosophy where the first question was always how systems would affect players ability to cooperate servers and levels probably the biggest barriers between players are functionally gone the subscription fee is gone and with it the constant financial incentive to quit the game tapping mechanics that cause other players in the area to become competitors rather than collaborators are gone open world events that encourage cooperation are in ironically blizzard dodges a bullet by having a major competitor choose not to tackle wow head on while trion s model is most similar and most in the crosshairs the trion response wilhelm says that his rift server got pretty deserted during the gw2 prelaunch events which is certainly anecdotal and probably a common experience around the mmo world this week however the approach that the gw2 devs had planned was no surprise given the game s lengthy and relatively public development cycle thus trion has had time to respond within a few months of gw2 s anticipated release rift has added a popular auto mentoring system much like gw2 s approach removal of faction barriers to grouping which gw2 intentionally never had and a new world pvp system albeit with some kinks to join longstanding features like free instant server transfers and cross server groups and yes incidentally a discount on a year long subscription paired with an expansion a move that blizzard tried at the swtor launch when it was widely regarded as a transparent attempt to lock in revenue before players canceled their subscriptions to go play a new game the fact that the competitor lacks a monthly fee can t help that math any i don t expect trion to fold anytime soon even so they may have as much riding on where the dust settles after this launch and their forthcoming expansion as any other game on the market posted by green armadillo at 7 56 pm 6 comments labels business models guild wars pvd rift wow friday august 24 2012 expansion launch timelines this week turbine somewhat unexpectedly delayed lotro s expansion set to go live in about two weeks back into mid october i haven t been in the beta but spinks made a round up and it sounds like the expansion was in pretty good shape other than the mounted combat system it s certainly possible that this is part of the problem mounted combat is reportedly a substantial chunk of the expansion and some of blizzard s experiences with vehicle dragon combat in the wrath era suggests that players do not love being forced into something that changes their playstyle some of lotro s game systems already have a bad reputation for being grindy and i could see some concern if this one was also buggy to boot that said the more i think about it the more i m wondering that the real problem is the release date calendar turbine claimed the september 5th date back on june 5th but on june 28th guild wars 2 declared that it would launch early access aside a mere week earlier on august 28th blizzard responded by placing wow s expansion on september 25th and later added to the scuffle by putting patch 5 0 with talent changes and other system updates on august 28th turbine isn t new to this game and they re not afraid to launch against competition the moria expansion launched the week after wrath of the lich king then again turbine has never placed another product in physical stores since that day that said i m wondering if they just didn t like their odds of seeing their expansion drowned out by most of the known mmo world descending on either wow or gw2 they ll still be up against rift with its un announced expansion launch and possibly some other tidbits perhaps the end of the year eq2 expansion or swtor s relaunch but i like their odds better in october than right here and now posted by green armadillo at 8 03 am 3 comments labels baseless speculation business models eq2 guild wars lotro wow wednesday august 22 2012 digital retail undercutting last week there was a one day 50 off sale on ddo s new expansion there is no box to purchase or mark down and the client is downloaded through the conventional patcher i had it fully installed and up to date before i made the purchase so effectively all i was purchasing was the key for access to the expansion content this was provided at a 50 discount not by turbine but rather by steam as their daily deal turbine perhaps understandably did little to promote this sale to current players who do not yet own the expansion i only found out about it when ddo cast re tweeted a tweet about the sale in fairness the expansion has been around for a few months now so most dedicated players probably snagged it at full price personally i was almost certainly going to wait for a sale anyway so it s not like i jumped on this instead of paying turbine directly though at least they would have gotten to keep the whole 25 through a sale on their own store much like physical retail the daily deal on steam does get a slot on the frontpage that all steam users see when they log in each day i have no idea whether the studio provides steam with a discount in exchange for this coveted placement but it would not surprise me presumably being discoverable by steam customers is the primary incentive for games going on the service in the first place especially for online games that can generate ongoing revenue that cuts out the steam middle man the secret world s investor update states that increasing distribution through channels that include steam will somehow help their current predicament they may not be the best exemplar but most mmo studios not named blizzard seem to think steam s cut is worthwhile they can t all be wrong can they posted by green armadillo at 7 36 pm 1 comments labels business models ddo thursday august 16 2012 incentives for world events my initial take on rumors of a swtor world event this month was that it would be a good time to re subscribe to get characters in order for the free to play relaunch i m going to want a couple of races especially chiss that are unlikely to be free for non subscribers and they have announced that races for existing characters will be grandfathered at the relaunch then the event actually landed rohan and werit have some good qualitative impressions of the event while full spoiler guides can be found at places like darth hater and dulfy s my first apparently incorrect impression from the reward list was that this was a daily quest gear grind in which case i was decidedly uninterested in reality the event is a scavenger event designed to be done once per character most of the rewards are legacy bound allowing players to spread the token farming amongst multiple characters in fact we found out today that the event will wind down on tuesday after having been live for a mere week on one level i respect the willingness to make an event that is not designed as a multiple week grindfest however while having such a short event does make for a unique experience for people who happen to be around i m not sure if i will have the time to play it even if i do decide i m willing to resub for this purpose between this and the rakghoul infection one time events have represented a surprisingly high proportion of bioware s post launch content in the game i suppose the event may still be a bigger draw than a comparable number of quests in a patch but it s a tough call whether this is a good use of developer resources posted by green armadillo at 6 33 pm 4 comments labels business models star wars wednesday august 15 2012 rift to remove player factions today trion announced plans to functionally all but remove factions from rift as far as i can tell all guilds group content instanced pvp the random groupfinder already puts mercenaries into cross faction groups so this is only a change to queueing chat and most other functional portions of the game will now be shared between factions quest content lore and the two capitol cities will remain in place presumably because re writing all of the above would be a prohibitive amount of work trion is spinning this as the two factions recognizing the need to come together against common foes after having beaten four of the six elemental dragons this isn t actually new we saw it in the game s first world event back in march 2011 and frankly the faction system added so little to the game that i was questioning what purpose it served before launch even happened one area that may be kind of screwed up is non instanced pvp residents of pvp servers will be locked out of most of these features good i suppose if you rolled on that ruleset because you really like it but bad if you are being left behind for pve purposes at least trion offers free server transfers there could be some odd quirks in terms of faction spying trash talking etc but some of these are 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...