$20 Says Darkfall “Relaunch” Is Free To Play


When was the last time you heard the phrase “this patch is like a completely new game?” In my line of work (work? Blogging), a whole lot. Such is the case with Darkfall, where on the Epic Blog head boss man of Aventurine Tasos Flambouras talks about a complete relaunch of the game. How much of a relaunch is it? Well it is certainly no linguine, and it is without a doubt not just an expansion pack.

This relaunch is not an expansion.

Thank you, Tasos, but we need more information.

It’s a new game we’ve been developing in parallel with the current version of Darkfall. The scope is massive, and it has been difficult to stay on schedule after several unexpected issues we’ve had with the current version, changes and additions we decided to make for the new version, some business developments, and the decision to add the siege system into this version of the game rather than in the relaunch.

That’s more like it. But let’s discuss the title of this post, and my assurance that this is likely a prelude to a free to play announcement, and continue reading the announcement:

There are shifting priorities having to do with business issues for this relaunch, and another part being some Asian developments we also need to take into consideration. We can assure you that everything we’re doing in this regard is in the best interest of our players and of Darkfall, and that the relaunch of the game will be very exciting for everyone.

I distinctly remember Dave Georgeson saying something along these lines shortly before Everquest II went free to play, when they announced big changes coming but wouldn’t actually announce free to play because the service was going to be considered a new game, because the existing community would have flipped the chess board and went home if they had to share space with the freeloaders. By that I’m referring to the comments about making this decision for the betterment of the community.

The current estimated completion date for development is August, which makes release somewhere between now and when Rift consumes World of Warcraft as the most subscribed MMO…In Burundi. At least we can be assured, despite the vague language, that this isn’t a prelude to Darkfall shutting down or being sold to Gamersfirst. It’s a new version being developed, Tasos isn’t in the process of lifting Darkfall up so he can suplex it.

How High Can I Get? Star Wars Galaxies Edition


I did this back when Tabula Rasa announced that it was shutting down, and wanted to do the same with Chronicles of Spellborn but never managed to download the proper client in time. When Star Wars Galaxies announced that it would be shutting down this December, I took it upon myself to start up an entirely new character, no aid from others, and see how far I could level it before that time. Those of you who know me will know I am notoriously slow at leveling in any MMO, so the idea that I might not get to 90 in the course of six months is a very real proposition.

My character, a Twi’Lek smuggler class, is currently at level 13, and I will be posting updates on my progress in the weekly “Week in Review” section. Hopefully I won’t have my usual distraction from the handful of games going free to play this summer-oh hey Hellgate and Age of Conan!

DC Universe Adds Microtransactions


I’d love it if WordPress didn’t write my URL before I’ve finished writing the title for the post. DC Universe today launched its move into microtransactions. Right now the game only offers three items, with more on the way no doubt. The items are proto-bots offering convenient repair on the go, vault tickets offering access to the vault instance, and a pack of five vault tickets.

I’ll let you guys throw around the slippery slope theory on how this is the lead up to free to play and pay to win, and call Sony ‘$OE’ and John $medley.

Age of Conan: Free To Play Comes Today


Age of Conan’s anticipated romp into the free to play world goes live today with the release of Age of Conan: Unchained. Heading over to the Age of Conan website will greet you with the above splash page. The game servers came down approximately two hours ago, and will be offline for another six (estimated). When the game comes back online, players both free and paid will be able to log in and see the new changes, not the least controversial will be what Funcom decides to stick in the cash shop.

You can see the trailer below. Blood and Glory, Funcom’s attempt at hardcore PvP (with looting players) does not go live with this update.

To those of you still confused about what is being offered for free, read this. Yes, I am aware that the Free to Play update was originally called Unrated.

World of Warcraft: The Endless Trial


Haters gonna hate. Blizzard announced today that the previously 14-day trial will now be indefinite. Players can experience all that World of Warcraft vanilla has to offer, up until level 20, with no time limit. Players are also able to sample sections of Burning Crusade, and may create Draenai and Blood Elf players. Players looking to buy into the full game will find the World of Warcraft Battle Chest at a pretty good price at their local stores and on Blizzard’s website.

And who knows, perhaps this could lead to a free to play option at one point in the future. Not any time soon enough to hold your breath over, but sometime…in one dimension or another.

Sony Station Pass Discount Is Here!


Much talked about, not really examined deeply, Sony has come through with their promise to reduce the price of Station Pass. Starting today, players can gain access to the entire Sony Online Entertainment library for $19.99 USD. In addition, players who purchase longer term plans will find that the prices have come down on 3, 6, and 9 month subscription packages.

You can find the whole list of details here. I’ll remind you again that certain games must be owned for the subscription to become active. For example, you must purchase the client to Star Wars Galaxies before you can play the subscription as part of the package. Star Wars Galaxies will only be part of the package until October 15th, in preparation for the game shutting down.

Mortal Online: Not Against Selling The Game


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but so is speculation. Ever since the sale of Earth Eternal following its almost invisible launch and shut down, I am convinced that any MMO has a potential buyer as long as the owners are willing to sell. Over on the Mortal Online forums, Henrik Nystrom has posted the type of long, rambling message that only I could beat or fully appreciate, in which he talks leadership, testing, and potential buyers for Mortal Online.

His somewhat frustrated rant can be summed up rather effectively: StarVault would love to have more testers, better tools, and more developers, but they don’t have the resources. You may remember that Mortal Online is running at a loss due to a lack of subscribers, resulting in two cost cutting measures according to the company over the past few financial reports. Henrik then goes on to speculate on selling the game:

If there is not enough resources we will have to adapt and see what options we have… There are plenty of major companies that have their eyes on Mortal, and have had so since the beginning. They know exactly what is needed to develop and release a game such Mortal on your own, and that alone is a huge accomplishment which we are proud for. They know its almost impossible to develop a large scale such MO with such small team and they are very eager to get their hands on both the game and the team.

Henrik then points out that if StarVault does sell the game, the buyer may very well change the core of the game.

If they share the exact same vision with full loot, full pvp, monthly payment however is another question. Which I guess why most of us is here, us the devs as well, but if it means that if some of those core features changes when a company have the rights for it and it gives a bigger player base then that’s what they will go for most likely.

You can read the entire post at the link above, but it sounds like StarVault’s financial troubles are stinging more than they did a few months ago.

What Happened This Week: Macrotransaction Edition


I skipped This Week in Review last week because I only had three days worth of posts for the previous week. This week, I want to continue the Week in Review articles by starting out with a question, and it pertains to Star Wars Galaxies. It’s always a downer to hear that an MMO you play is shutting down. If you currently play the game. do you continue playing until the game shuts down, or do you consider any more invested money a waste? If you were an ex-player, do you rejoin to savor some memories or to see the game off, or do you stay away? If there is free time, do you take advantage of it?

But enough of that, what happened this week?

1. What Does Star Wars Say For Sony’s Other Titles?

This one is obvious: not much. It’s important to remember that Star Wars was canned because Sony and Lucas Arts decided it to be the best decision rather than renew the contract at the end of the year, likely partially because LA doesn’t want two full Star Wars MMOs on the market, even if they wouldn’t really compete (two completely different points in time).

Looking at Sony’s other lineup, it’s safe to say neither Everquest nor Everquest II are going anywhere, the two games just make too much money. Free Realms makes a lump of  cash, as does Pirates of the Burning Sea and Clone Wars Adventures. DC Universe is still trucking along with the server meld bringing the community closer together.

My only title of note is Vanguard. Although Sony has expressed interest in taking Vanguard free to play, doing so would require a good investment of capital, one that the company could deem not worth it ultimately. If I had to choose one game from the list, Vanguard would be high on the list, although likely not #1 as the game has barely any overhead left. Most likely, I would say Planetside, although I believe Sony will time Planetside shutting down with the release of Planetside Next.

2. Rift Shuts Down Servers…Subtly

Trion reminds me of Blake from Glengarry Glen Ross with his ability to tie “good news” and “you’re fired” in the same sentence. If you haven’t been paying attention, Trion recently announced that a few servers would be transferred over to “trial” status, where free trial players would be segregated off to. Of course players have the option, and you will be suggested to do so upon logging in, to transfer off of the server, free of charge.

Who says Trion doesn’t know innovation? This is probably one of the most subtle ways to merge servers I’ve seen in the history of MMO Fallout, nay, the history of the genre. Character creation has been disabled for non-trial users on those servers, and the restrictions for under level 15 characters are being removed in the near future so all of your currently made characters can leave the server. There are a lot of trial-tagged servers, too. Around twenty, from my understanding.

3. Eve Players Are Overloading Perpetuum

Perpetuum Online! That game I talked about that one time with the place and the thing. With all the talk of people leaving Eve (Over four thousand committed to unsubscribing so far, according to the Eve forums), their natural destination should be Perpetuum Online, right? The game is essentially Eve on the ground, and with mechs instead of space ships. If you said yes, you would be correct.

Over in the forums, Perpetuum has been hit with some good, healthy (for the wallet) overpopulation, resulting in queue lines to log in. I don’t normally laugh at MMO drama, but this is pretty funny. It’s like a picture of a concert, where the band is giving the middle finger to the audience who are, in turn, giving it back.

4. Maybe CCP Just Bit Off Too Much

Thinking back, perhaps CCP is in the same situation as Cryptic Studios. Sure, the game they run is raking in the cash, but that profit may be dwarfed by the development costs of their other games. CCP has DUST 514 in development for the PS3, and we all know how expensive PS3 development is, as well as World of Darkness. The cash shop may be a way to supplement their income and get the games out faster, but it’s a prescription that is not fitting well with the community.

But as many Eve players have noted, the price of the cash shop items barely factors in. Where the players are getting angry isn’t in CCP’s initial action, but in the response given to the controversy. You can read the events in the Eve Online category on this blog but for a quicker image, just go back to my concert analogy.

Down to brass tacks, if as many players are leaving as committed (over four thousand and growing) and stay gone, this could put a serious damper in CCP’s development of DUST 514 and World of Darkness.

5. Funny Fifth Thing.

CCP: For The Love Of God, Stop Digging!


One of the biggest elephants in the room these days, not just for EVE but for the gaming industry as a whole, is virtual goods sales and microtransactions.

You could call it that, but let’s start at the beginning of this fiasco. Eve Online recently launched Incarna, an expansion pack that both CCP and the community have been waiting for, many for years. Countless times has CCP referred to it as a technological and artistic achievement, and boy did it go down with a whimper rather than a bang. You see, when Incarna launched, the attention was not on the technology nor the artistic value. Instead, players had a bone to pick with CCP’s pricing for the cash shop.

Utilizing a new currency, the cash shop items were priced far above player expectations, up to nearly $70 for the ocular implant. To make matters even more interesting, these are all avatar clothing pieces, so not only will you be the only person who will see your $70 implant, but you’ll only see it at certain points in the game.

Not interested in just leaving a turd on the carpet, almost no time had passed before an internal memo was leaked, and then confirmed to be real. The memo, bearing a distinctly memorable “Greed is Good?” catch phrase, discussed the possibility of adding in more cash shop items, including ships and bullets and guns and more, in direct opposite to CCP’s previous promise of only selling vanity items on the cash shop. It’s worth noting that the memo was asking for employee’s opinions, and not stating a determined corporate policy. Regardless, the forums exploded.

Then CCP put out this press release, and stated the following:

People have been shocked by the price range in the NeX store, but you should remember that we are talking about clothes. Look at the clothes you are currently wearing in real life. Do you have any specific brands? Did you choose it because it was better quality than a no-name brand? Assume for a short while that you are wearing a pair of $1,000 jeans from some exclusive Japanese boutique shop. Why would you want to wear a pair of $1,000 jeans when you can get perfectly similar jeans for under $50? What do other people think about you when they see you wearing them? For some you will look like the sad culmination of vainness while others will admire you and think you are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Whichever it is, it is clear that by wearing clothes you are expressing yourself and that the price is one of the many dimensions that clothes possess to do that in addition to style and fit. You don’t need to buy expensive clothes. In fact you don’t need to buy any clothes. Whatever you choose to do reflects what you are and what you want others to think you are.

Did CCP just relate a $70 ocular implant, which likely took a whole two or three hours to develop, to a $1,000 pair of jeans that are likely individually hand crafted? You bet they did. Personally, I think the better analogy would be to compare it to $1,000 pajamas. If you spend $1,000 on pajamas, you are indeed a sad culmination of vainness (I don’t think that is a word) and no one is going to look at you like the coolest thing since sliced bread, given no one will see you wearing them.

This is a super shovel we’re dealing with, and it wasn’t long before yet another CCP email was leaked. Now, Eve News 24 states that this is not completely confirmed true, but their sources close to CCP say that it is. Aside from noting that 52 monocles had sold in 40 hours, this was also dropped:

 I can tell you that this is one of the moments where we look at what our players do and less of what they say.

I 100% agree with the above statement. I love a good fight, and if the Eve Community is truly firing out of all cylinders (and not just aesthetically on the forums), the missiles will be directed right at CCP’s pockets. I’m sure my fellow writers (the ones getting paid with actual careers) will slash my tires for saying this, but the only effective way of cancelling is cutting your subscription. Not buying the items won’t work because so little work goes into them that CCP could stick at the 52 monocles and still come out making an enormous profit off of them.

Otherwise I think it’s fairly clear that the “we’re not selling non-vanity items” is about as genuine as John Smedley promising that Everquest II would not go free to play, fulfilling said promise by simply calling it something else.

But ultimately, I find myself asking a question a few others have asked me. Why am I covering this? Like I’ve said before, Eve Online’s community ranks pretty high on the loyalty scale. Where CCP will eventually throw themselves into the pit they just dug is when the community no longer trusts them, and departs for a new horizon, and if the scale is tipping against CCP’s favor, this is likely where it starts.

Let's Talk Free To Play "Customers"


Today I wanted to talk free to play, primarily the base that makes up the players and customers, two terms I want to keep separated for the purpose of this article. Let’s take Lord of the Rings Online as an example. A player is someone who downloads the game for free, accumulates Turbine points using in-game rewards and not buying them, and makes it as far as he can before running out of free points, getting bored, and quitting. A customer is someone who pays, be it in any amount of Turbine points, or through the VIP system.

I used Lord of the Rings and not Runescape because Runescape free players are, in a way, customers. Although they don’t pay any money out of pocket, they view advertisements which, according to Jagex’s financial reports, made somewhere around 7% of their revenue in 2009, and have likely remained about the same since. Getting in free players is a financial incentive in itself to Jagex.

For the rest of you, however, I’m going to use the drug analogy. Your first hit is always free, because the goal is to get you hooked and going back for more. Going back to Lord of the Rings Online, my readings are sporadic, but from my understanding a player can get around level 30 buying quest packs (many of which are rather cheap) using only the Turbine points given as task rewards. By that point, your next inclination is likely “well that Turbine point card at Target is only ten bucks. Might as well buy one.” Of course you know where the addiction goes from there.

But the companies that make free to play games aren’t sinister drug dealers who want you hooked, they recognize that the players who pay will be footing the bill for the players who do not, so they offer incentives to dole up some money. Turbine offers free points for VIP members, others offer extra bag space, better loot, and higher experience for subscribing.

Like drug dealers, you have to learn to avoid the bad ones. There is a very fine line between incentives for subscribers and punishing free players. Years back I had a chance to talk to an ex-customer service rep (not here on MMO Fallout) for a Korean MMO whose player (not subscriber) numbers rivaled World of Warcraft’s. What I found most interesting was the company’s policy on free vs paying members. A lot of the time, paying members were allowed to cheat, farm gold, use bots, etc, while free players would be routinely banned for minor offences. The internal policy was that the people were paying, so why not let them do whatever they wanted? As for the free players, “screw em.” There would be many more to take their place.

Harsh, but I’ve been called rather unsympathetic for indifference towards a group I’ve referred to as “permanent freeloaders” in the past so not at all surprising. What you need to understand when entering a game with full resolve that you will never pay a dime, is that the company has minimal interest in your presence. Sure you might bring friends into the game and they might pay for some stuff, but your demands will be met with a deaf ear.

On games like Runescape, Champions Online, etc, I often hear the permanent freeloaders complain about being treated like wallets waiting to be opened, but why would you expect anything else? A grocery store doesn’t offer free samples because you look famished and they’d like to feed you, and a developer doesn’t offer up their game for free because they hope less people will pay and more will simply enjoy the game. At the end of the day, the company has to pay its employees, and they’ve found a way to do that but far more efficiently with the free to play system. Like I said with Dungeons and Dragons Online, going free pays off more.

One of MMO Fallout’s core principles runs around MMOs as like a relationship between the developer and player, and free to play just goes to further the analogy. Developers have realized over time that a great majority of customers need to see what they’re getting into before they want to saddle up and cash in, and this system is just the way to do that. To go even further, a good cash shop game is like a gorgeous person you meet at a public place. You talk, have some things in common, and decide to have dinner. Slowly, but surely, you get to know each other better and the relationship becomes solid and loving. Next thing you know, you’re buying your love that brand new 2011 Kia to go in the garage of the house you just bought together. This is the best way to form a long-lasting relationship.

Then you have folks like Astrum Nival (Allods Online) who approach you in a bar, drunk, and just start dry humping you and spilling martini all over your good clothing. When you push them away, they get angry and violent, and start shouting about how you should be privileged to even call for their notice, and how anyone else would be throwing themselves at them. Sure, they might get successful with one or two people, but none of the relationships will be long, they will definitely be expensive to those they sucker in, and the ordeal will probably just put their partners off of forming future relationships.

Are we still talking about video games?