Hellgate Global is free to play, but as users have pointed out lately, you’re going to have to do a lot of grinding to get the money to buy content off of the auction house.
Tag: cash shop
DUST 514: High End Gear Will Cost Mere Cents
DUST 514 is CCP’s first entry into the MMOFPS realm, where players battle out across thousands of planets for the contractual obligation of players in Eve Online. As with any free to play games, DUST514 will have a cash shop and players want to know what is for sale and how much will it cost? Shacknews reports that high end gear will cost about a quarter. Why? You lose it on death.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re pricing things at the right level, because if you die [you lose these things].”
That same high end gear can still be obtained through regular gameplay, making it entirely possible to play without spending a dime.
(Source: Shacknews)
Allods Online Merges To One Server
When Allods Online was running through its beta period back in 2009/2010, it was praised for the amazingly high quality of gameplay, stability, wealth of content, and prospects for future expansion. Many of us in the press were referring to it as the free to play World of Warcraft, standing high above its brethren. When the game was in beta, there was nothing short of praise from themepark fans of the game’s high quality and deep prospects for success.
Unfortunately, gPotato shot themselves in the foot early on with poor decisions in cash shop items that required players to spend money (and a considerable amount) in order to play the game properly or be able to stay competitive later on in PvP or participating in raid content.
The perfume was later removed and replaced with another, equally unpopular cash shop item which was later made free. Judging by the latest news out of Allods Online, the community has not been so forgiving. gPotato announced the merger of the last two remaining servers in North America, to one.
With one server left in North America, the future presence of Allods Online on the continent is in question. gPotato will need nothing short of a miracle (or perhaps a marketing campaign) to bring this title back from the ditch.
(Source: Allods Online)
TERA Korea Patch Adds In Cosmetic Cash Shop
Ahoy, TERAns! The great part of being on the lower end of the development scale is that kTERA gets all of the updates before we do here in the West. On one hand this does annoy a certain portion of the base who see the developer playing favorites, but on the other hand you might also see the Korean community as something of a guinea pig, to taste test the content for poison before it is brought over to the west. We saw this particularly with the Russian community in Allods Online a couple of years ago and TERA is no exception.
Over on the Korean TERA front, Bluehole Studios has added in a cash shop featuring time-limited and unlimited cosmetic items. There are eye glasses that sell for $2.50 for 30 days or $4 for 365 days. The mount sells for about $21 for 365 days. Before you explode into the comments section, it is important to note that the 365 day label is a farce, the items are listed for 365 days also have a note that they do not get destroyed after 365 days.
While the cash shop is cosmetic, there are gameplay changers included. Each item gives the user a set amount of T-Cat coins (22-30 for glasses, 304 for horse) which can be used currently to purchase twelve hours of crystal protection (no longer lose crystals upon death) and special sealing scrolls which are normally expensive items and are used in crafting.
You can check out the items here. So far no word on the cash shop making its way to North American and Europe.
Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, "Convenience Items" In Cash Shop
In Guild Wars 2 we have three currencies: gold, karma, and gems. Gold is the common in-game currency. Karma, which players earn in-game but cannot trade, is used for unique rewards. And gems are the currency that’s bought and used to purchase microtransactions.
Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.
One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:
We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.
The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.
We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..
(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)
Guild Wars 2: Legit Real Money Trading, “Convenience Items” In Cash Shop
Mike O’Brien has gone on Arenanet’s blog to post about Guild Wars 2’s upcoming microtransaction system. In the post, Mike notes that while the content in the shop has not been finalized, the framework is in place to support it. Mike went on to state that the policy with Guild Wars 2 will be that any player who buys the game should be able to fully enjoy it without having to continue paying, and that players should never be allowed to pay for an advantage, and that the cash shop will be used to buy cosmetic items, convenience items, and account services.
One addition that might surprise Guild Wars 2 players is the legitimized Real Money Trading system, ala PLEX in Eve Online:
We have a new player-driven market that allows players to trade gold for gems and gems for gold. If you want something, whether it’s an in-game item or a microtransaction, you ultimately have two ways to get it: you can play to earn gold or you can use money to buy gems. We think that’s important, because it lets more players participate on a level playing field, whether they use their free time or their disposable income to do it.
The cash-for-gems system will provide Arenanet with a substantial potential revenue increase, as the system has worked for Eve Online with PLEX and World of Warcraft with the recent pet addition.
We have always taken our responsibility to players seriously with the original Guild Wars, and we will continue to do so with Guild Wars 2. We believe the foundation I’ve described here is the right foundation for us to build upon, and we look forward to sharing more details with you in the future as we nail down our microtransaction content..
(Source: Guild Wars 2 blog)
Aion: Truly Free Coming To North America
Last year, NCSoft announced the upcoming free to play transition of Aion…in Europe. In a rather unsurprising move, the developer announced today that North America will be following. Players will have access to all of the content in Aion free of charge, without restrictions on zones, housing, mounts, quests, etc. In addition, NCSoft promises robust cheat detection to ensure that bots won’t take a choke hold over the game.
As a head start, NCSoft will be launching a “Rallying the Troops” event, offering new players a chance to check out the game with no time limit, but a level cap of 40. Returning players will have the ability to have their accounts reactivated for 14 days in the run up to the launch of Truly Free.
Aion Truly Free hits this spring.
(Source: Aion Truly Free)
Guild Wars 2 Opens Door For Non-Cosmetic Cash Shop
By now, I hope that I don’t have to lecture any of you on how important wording is in this industry. When Realtime Worlds said that they had no intention of shutting down All Points Bulletin, they didn’t factor in the results of their ongoing chapter 11 bankruptcy forcing the game to shut down. When Turbine stated that they had no intention of selling equipment with stats at the time, they technically spoke the truth. When Sony answered the free to play question by saying they would not alter existing player’s game, and launching a separate product, they were telling the truth.
Guild Wars Guru has noticed an alteration made to the Guild Wars wiki by user JohnSmith, who is a confirmed Arenanet employee. Previously, the article read:
Yes, micro-transactions will exist. These will be cosmetic additions which will not affect balance or gameplay, similar to the transactions offered by Guild Wars.
Now the article reads:
Yes, micro-transactions will exist. Be assured goods and items bought for cash in GW2 do not offer any advantage over those available in the game through the investment of time.
So the wording changes from only cosmetic items to not being more powerful than existing items. Now, this could simply be referring to Arenanet’s plan to include mission packs and transmutation stones in the cash shop, or the possibility of boosters, or it could open the door for selling equipment that is only as powerful as equipment found in-game. Martin Kerstein of Arenanet weighs in later in the thread.
As usual, everybody just needs to calm down a bit. This change was done to actually make the wording easier to understand – seems like that was not the case.
But the statement in it is still the same: Nothing you will be able to buy in the in-game store will give you an advantage over people who are not buying anything. That is the baseline.
So the outcome is that Arenanet, for now at least, is being vague on a familiar level to companies of the past. For now we’ll simply have to wait for clarification by Arenanet on an exact list of what will be sold in the Guild Wars 2 cash shop.
"No Intention At This Time"
People who read this website know that I am a free market capitalist, so my response to changes in the business model is simply that consumers should, and will, vote with their wallets and their mouths. If a developer does something you don’t like, don’t give them your money, and let them know exactly why in a civilized manner. Marketers are people just like you and me, we need a decent amount of feedback in order to know what players are dissatisfied over.
I think we understand by now that the phrase “at this time” is a back door to allowing a company to do a complete one hundred eighty degree turn on their policy at some point in the future. The safe route for navigating the “at this time” phrase is to remind yourself not to translate the phrase into “we don’t want to do this,” but as its more accurate “we would like to do this, but we feel that the market/demographic may not be receptive to it at this point, or we feel a reminder that we are not doing said action at this exact moment in time will satisfy some of our uneasy customers who we plan on convincing over the next few months.” After all, how many times have you heard “we have no intention at this time of (adding free to play/shutting down/merging servers/cash shop/etc)” only to have that same event occur within a year or two?
“At this time” is still an interesting phrase. After all, for all of us who see it as a verbal form of twirling one’s mustache nefariously while slyly directing the movie’s hero toward the entirely not poisoned glass of wine, there are plenty more who buy into the false promise that it usually accompanies, and it appears to still be a viable marketing tactic. Turbine recently released non-cosmetic gear on their cash shop for Lord of the Rings Online, breaking their previous commitment but justifying it over the virtue that the armor is relatively low-tier. Oh and,
“Furthermore, we have no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store.”
At least not until metrics come back on the recently added gear to let us know if enough people are willing to throw money into the system. Again, as a capitalist I am personally unopposed to the idea of Turbine selling gear for stats. I think Turbine has proven itself responsive enough that if the community backlash is strong enough, they will indeed take the offending items down. For others, however, the message isn’t heard until the servers are a ghost town, and usually by then it’s too late.
But then again, I’m a capitalist, and if an MMO bankrupts due to poor design decisions, it is entirely on the heads of the developer.
“No Intention At This Time”
People who read this website know that I am a free market capitalist, so my response to changes in the business model is simply that consumers should, and will, vote with their wallets and their mouths. If a developer does something you don’t like, don’t give them your money, and let them know exactly why in a civilized manner. Marketers are people just like you and me, we need a decent amount of feedback in order to know what players are dissatisfied over.
I think we understand by now that the phrase “at this time” is a back door to allowing a company to do a complete one hundred eighty degree turn on their policy at some point in the future. The safe route for navigating the “at this time” phrase is to remind yourself not to translate the phrase into “we don’t want to do this,” but as its more accurate “we would like to do this, but we feel that the market/demographic may not be receptive to it at this point, or we feel a reminder that we are not doing said action at this exact moment in time will satisfy some of our uneasy customers who we plan on convincing over the next few months.” After all, how many times have you heard “we have no intention at this time of (adding free to play/shutting down/merging servers/cash shop/etc)” only to have that same event occur within a year or two?
“At this time” is still an interesting phrase. After all, for all of us who see it as a verbal form of twirling one’s mustache nefariously while slyly directing the movie’s hero toward the entirely not poisoned glass of wine, there are plenty more who buy into the false promise that it usually accompanies, and it appears to still be a viable marketing tactic. Turbine recently released non-cosmetic gear on their cash shop for Lord of the Rings Online, breaking their previous commitment but justifying it over the virtue that the armor is relatively low-tier. Oh and,
“Furthermore, we have no intention at this time of selling any raid gear in the store.”
At least not until metrics come back on the recently added gear to let us know if enough people are willing to throw money into the system. Again, as a capitalist I am personally unopposed to the idea of Turbine selling gear for stats. I think Turbine has proven itself responsive enough that if the community backlash is strong enough, they will indeed take the offending items down. For others, however, the message isn’t heard until the servers are a ghost town, and usually by then it’s too late.
But then again, I’m a capitalist, and if an MMO bankrupts due to poor design decisions, it is entirely on the heads of the developer.
MMO Fallout 