Making the leap from mobile.
Tag: Free to Play
Demonstrably: Citywars Savage Is A Cute Little Demo
This week I played the demo for an upcoming MMO called Citywars Savage.
Citywars Savage is a quaint little upcoming MMORPG with a pretty cool premise. On the surface the game promises hack and slash combat coupled with crafting and resource management. Dig a little deeper and on the list of planned features you’ll find the ability to build and claim your own territory to battle against other players and their cities.
The demo itself took me roughly 45 minutes to play through, it takes you through a mostly linear pathway where you’ll learn how to make money, how to buy and equip better gear, and battle it out against the monsters dotting the small landscape. If Citywars showcases any idea well, it’s how good you can make a game look with some filters, lighting, and fog effects. It runs great, and ends with you killing the Death Knight.
Of course the big feature that’s being advertised with Citywars is the ability to hire and program your own NPCs. Looking at the store page, Citywars will have a graphical interface to streamline the process of coding your own NPCs to do stuff like gather resources and handle crafting while you’re out doing better things. I’ll be fully satisfied if I can program my NPCs to chatter while they are going about their business. It’ll be like having my own RuneScape bot farm.
I’m pretty sure I also encountered a dev while playing, as the game has voice chat and immediately zipped over to me and started chatting about how to access various interfaces. Now that’s customer service.
I can’t wait for more of Citywars to come out and I recommend checking out the short alpha that is available on Steam.
Steam Releases: Stay Out
Want a new MMORPG loosely based on the Stalker games? You’re in luck. Last week saw the launch of a new survival MMO on Steam. Stay Out is the latest in Stalker-inspired games developed by Mobile Technologies LLC. The title was previously called Stalker Online and may have changed its name to avoid copyright problems with the guys that created the actual S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.
And it is free to play.
“Discover a world full of dangers and incredible events, which has its own laws and principles.
Become one of the “Stalkers” – people living the romance of the unknown, able to overcome any trials in search of artifacts on the territory of the Alienation Zone.
Take a look beyond the edge of the unknown, where the secrets of nature and deadly dangers await the daredevils at every turn.
Survive in harsh conditions, when you count every sip of water and every match.
Secret laboratories, life forms of unknown origin, mysterious anomalies, and strange artifacts that challenge our knowledge of the laws of nature – all this is a huge world of “Stay Out”.”
Reviews for the game are presently mixed, with players noting a pay-to-win cash shop as well as horrible translations into English and a tutorial that is boring and doesn’t really do much to teach you about the game. There are also complaints about people griefing as well as the pvp system that allows players to camp outside of towns and kill newer players to steal their inventory.
Play at your own risk.
Source: Steam
Vicious Circle Goes Free To Play, Refunds Everyone
Back in September we reported on the failed launch of Vicious Circle, the latest title from Rooster Teeth Games. In that time, the crew has been working behind the scenes and at the start of the month announced that not only would Vicious Circle be going free to play, but that those who bought founders packs would be refunded.
“Why is Vicious Circle going Free to Play? In short, the game didn’t succeed. We came together on a super creative ambitious new project, put our hearts into it, did our best to support it, and it didn’t work out, and that’s okay. Not every idea we have will be a success. We have to fail to find success. Servers will remain up because we made a game and we want the community to still have a chance to play it. We don’t want price to get in the way. We remain proud of the work that was put into the game and want as many people to have the chance to experience it as possible.”
Don’t get too excited about that free to play, though. While the game is going free to play, Rooster Teeth has no intention of supporting the title outside of some bug fixes.
Source: Steam
Free Steamy Sundaes: October 20 Edition
Today’s Free Steamy Sundaes is brought to you by caffeine, toxic consumer advocacy, and viewers like you. I don’t know how to casually introduce a new column I had the idea for while shopping for a new coffee grinder, so I’m just going to refer to Free Steamy Sundaes like it’s been going on for weeks and you’re all very familiar with it. So naturally everyone knows that this column is a weekly list of free to play games and demos that released on Steam last week.
- Dragon Call – Free to Play (Doesn’t really support English)
- Summer Daze At Hero-U – Demo
- ???? – Free to Play (Does not at all support English)
- The Magician’s Research – Free to Play
- Desolation: Chapter 1 – Demo (VR)
- Haunted Gas Station – Free Game
- Nino’s Isekai – Free Game
- The Black Masses – Demo
- Morok – Free to Play
- Hexterio – Free to Play
- Derpy Pirates – Demo
- Shadows of Kepler – Demo
- Night Shot – Free to Play
Destiny 2 Explodes On Steam, Six Figure Traffic
This may come as a massive surprise, but Destiny 2 has launched on Steam alongside its free to play update and players are flocking to the game in droves. The PC servers have attained over 220,000 peak concurrency in the past couple of days and people seem to be pretty happy.
Current review scores for Destiny 2 put the game at a 75% “mostly positive” rating with a lot of the negative feedback surrounding players whose characters didn’t transfer over properly or people who have a problem with Bungie’s changes to characters (everyone starts out at 750 power now). Destiny 2 is currently #12 on the Xbox most played list and is no doubt doing just as well on PS4 if not better.
Albion Online Goes Free To Play April 10
Albion Online is officially going free to play. Starting April 10, you’ll be able to jump into the fray without being required to buy a game pack. Free accounts will be under no gameplay restrictions and can take part in all aspects of the game. The business model will not be changed, being built on premium status as well as a vanity-only cash shop.
As a thank you to their present customers, Albion players who buy the game before April 10 will receive a Specter Wolf mount, 1,000 gold, and 3 days of claimable premium. Starter packs will be discontinued as of April 10 and will be discounted until that point.
Overall, the game is doing very well. We have a fully staffed development team of 35 people, just released our sixth major post-release update, and have a stable and growing player population.
However, we’re also convinced that Albion Online can be taken much further. Our mission is to bring back that old-school, hardcore MMORPG feeling, to as many players as possible.
In today’s world, a 30-dollar paywall – the price of our cheapest game pack – is a massive deterrent for trying out a new game, especially one as unconventional as Albion Online. We believe that by removing the initial paywall we will be able to grow Albion Online as a game and continue to further expand our development team to bring you even more content updates and exciting new features going forward.
Ultimately, we believe this step will help us realize our long-term vision for the game.
The Story Continues: Funcom Announces Secret World Legends Expansion
The secret world of The Secret World just got bigger as Funcom today announced the first story expansion since the game went free to play last year. Continuing the main story, Dawn of the Morninglight leads players to investigate the faction of the same name.
The Morninglight began in The Secret World’s story as seemingly insignificant threats with the player finding bodies of their agents present seemingly wherever a disaster occurred. As the story went on, the Morninglight’s insidious nature began to show itself, and in Dawn of the Morninglight players will finally get the opportunity to infiltrate the secretive organization and see how it ticks.
“This is it, this is the next chapter every Secret World player have been waiting for,” says Josh Mills, Producer for Secret World Legends. “Ever since we left off in Tokyo before going free-to-play, players have been wanting to know what happens next. The whole team is really excited to finally be able to provide some answers to that and taking the story into a location such as South Africa has been an absolute blast. This is Secret World Legends unlike you’ve ever seen it before.”
(Source: Funcom)
H1Z1 Goes Free To Play Following Population Drop
In the past four years, H1Z1 has been announced, launched into early access, promised as a free to play title, converted into a pay to play game, split into two products, rebranded, and now Daybreak Game Company is going back on its original decision to go back on its decision to launch the game as part of their “Free to Play Your Way” library, and will be making the game free to play. H1Z1 officially launched earlier this month as it also deals with a major drop in concurrent player count.
Excited gamers can get their hands on the Battle Royale mode for H1Z1 while current owners can look forward to a bundle of free goodies. Daybreak Game Company has also directed players to Steam’s refund policy which allows them to refund purchases within two weeks or two hours of game time, whichever comes first.
It is also worth noting that this does not affect the survival mode of H1Z1, dubbed “Just Survive,” which has not announced a free to play transition.
(Source: H1Z1)
[NM] Lawbreakers Discussing Marketing, Dismisses Free To Play
Lawbreakers launched nearly one month ago, and suffice to say the game hasn’t been that well received on PC. Despite boasting a “mostly positive” review score from those who did pick up the title, the population peaked at 3,000 and has plummeted to a present 163 concurrent users as of 9am EST on a Wednesday morning as of this writing (by comparison, the recently free Brink has 813 people playing). Cliff Bleszinski has called the game a “marathon, not a sprint,” dismissing concerns over population issues and expressing hope that the game will see an increase in players over time.
But if you’re holding out for free to play, it isn’t being discussed. Over on the Steam forums, when asked about plans to address low traffic, the following response was given:
To answer the original question “when”, I can only say “soon”. We had roadmap meetings with Boss Key last week on what they have planned for the rest of the year. We’re working out a marketing plan to support that new content and reach out to more people. We’re also doing regular updates to the game based on player feedback, so we are listening and acting on the issues that come up.
We are committed to the long-term success of the game. And no, we are not discussing F2P.
The person quoted is a representative of Nexon, the publisher of Lawbreakers. The statement was later reiterated in the same thread:
We are not discussing F2P, and the OP is correct, it doesn’t really solve more issues than it brings with it. We are still working on patches (next one is next week), future content as well as addressing player pop.
Boss Key’s plans to revitalize the game will have to be seen, but at its current trajectory the game is going to need a big marketing push in order to get its name out there.
MMO Fallout 
