Obtaining in-game stuff with out-of-game resources is cheating, even when done via official channels.Īnd even when kept within those constraints, vanity items are still disgusting and I'd be very annoyed at the devs for adding them, especially if they aren't kept toned down. Their developers have lost their love for the game and replaced it with a love for money. As in, if people could just throw down money to buy weapons or boost stats, I'd leave. Anything more than vanity items and unlocking features that subscribers already have is unacceptable. " So, that being said, microtransactions? Ideas anyone?"īut seriously. So, that's why we're starting with Lite Mode, and then trying to work our way out from there, potentially adding microtransactions to Lite Mode and so on. For us to build a complete microtransactional system and try and tune it to anything approaching what Turbine did would at least be a six-month development process. For one thing, microtransactions are a huge deal in F2P, and directly result in the success stories you mention (the other thing you don't mention is how D&D Unlimited had a ton of their subscribers quit over the change, just that their monetization of F2P microtransactions made up for it). But we probably are going to try Lite Mode before anything like F2P. Going F2P would cause us to raise player counts and the like, and I'm aware of that but it's very unlikely to be on the order of what you're hoping for.Īnyway, Crusader, you're more than welcome continuing to make points and whatnot and while I can't read your entire first post right now, I will come back and do so. (and no, bandwidth is not a big concern for us right now). It's not uncommon for a midrange MMO launch to include a marketing campaign around $15 million, I wouldn't be surprised if they spent at least $1.5 million on their F2P campaign. Turbine did a huge campaign for D&DU when they released it. Even if I did a big press push, it's not likely to cause that, we just don't have the marketing reach or cachet of WoW or even EVE. Transitioning to F2P is not likely to cause us to have some sudden influx of people like you describe (zillions of people! dogs and cats living together! mass hysteria!). There've actually been quite a large number of Android people online (our #2 platform, after Windows) who almost never talk and just seem to quietly go about doing their thing. participation in those respective events and locations. Player presence in any one event (NW) or location (B8) is not an indicator of anything other than. Average player counts have not decreased in the way you claim, even before the KickStarter press gave us a big boost. So, let's dispense with any illusions that this is a simple undertaking. I'd guess, at a ballpark, they had about 40 people on it for a year? (I'd have to look up the GDC talk to be sure, I think they said how much time they put in). It was a huge undertaking, they totally restructured the game and built an extensive microtransactional system, and then spent a great deal of time with metrics to tune this microtransactional system to the best effect (finding ideal price points, measuring demand for specific types of content, a whole lot of data-mining). I also said I was sitting in the room when Turbine gave their GDC talk on how the did the D&DO F2P conversion. This was the only source of info I could find about such conversions after a cursory google search (I don't have time to do anything more involved), but the results speak for themselves.Īlso, inc said they are currently open to a f2p discussion, which I assume means they've dealt with the issues previously stopping them before here In that link, you will find 2 examples of conversions from a paying subscription model to an f2p model. The entirety is quite an interesting read and supports most of what I wrote in the OP, but this in particular is about converting from a paying model to a f2p model: I have yet to hear from the devs whether this is in fact true or if they have any plans to deal with it if it is.Īs for other factors, take a look at this part of the free to play wikipedia article. So far, the only possible source of a loss that we (the commenters and I) have found is the fact that the devs may not have enough bandwidth atm to sustain so many players.
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