Free to Play – Page 9

TERA Boasts 1.4 Million Users In North America

When TERA announced that player numbers had doubled, and that number was now “over one million,” I had a feeling that since Gameforge was making the announcement that the figure did not include regions outside of Europe. Turns out I was right. In a press release by En Masse Entertainment today, the publisher has revealed that free to play has similarly risen to over 1.4 million users. Maximum concurrent players has also risen dramatically, increasing over ten times its previous number.

“We’ve been blown away by the waves of players logging into TERA, and we’re seeing amazing growth in both registrations and daily users. It’s always great to eclipse the one-million-player mark, and at our current rate, it won’t be long before we hit two million,” said Chris Lee, CEO of En Masse Entertainment. “This success is pushing En Masse even harder to deliver more content and improve our service, so stay tuned!”

To celebrate, from March 20th through the 24th players will be able to hunt Big Ass Monsters for high end equipment and rare drops.

(Source: En Masse Entertainment Press Release)

TERA Doubles Its Players In Europe

Commonly when an MMO heads free to play, the number of active players goes up instead of down. In fact, it is so common that there is more news to be had in a game not seeing a boost in population than there is in one doubling or tripling their community. In Europe, TERA’s number of registered players has doubled, bringing in five hundred thousand new players according to Gameforge. This leaves TERA with over one million registered users under Gameforge.

That seems a little light, doesn’t it? Only one million? You would be correct in that assessment. The announcement of one million accounts comes from Gameforge, which (I will eat my hat if this isn’t the case) does not include the North American service under En Masse Entertainment, nor does it factor in the NHN Corporation hosting in Japan and Korea. Assuming other regions saw similar responses to their free to play shift, that could amount to several million new accounts overall for TERA.

Grab TERA For $10 On Amazon (50% Off)

TERA goes free to play on February 5th, and you can still pick up a copy of the game on Amazon for $10. Why buy a copy of a game that will be free to play by this time tomorrow? If you haven’t been paying attention (and if you have to ask, you haven’t), TERA’s free to play model segregates players into free, subscriber, and founder. Founder status players are those who have a serial code attached to their account, through purchasing a boxed or digital copy of the game. As I pointed out, founder status players have a number of advantages granted to them that a new account will never have access to, even if they subscribe, including a monumentally increased bank storage.

Now here’s the catch: Starting February 5th (tomorrow), En Masse Entertainment will be discontinuing the sale of digital copies of TERA, making founder’s status impossible to obtain unless you happen to come across one of the remaining out-of-print box copies. So if you’re going to be playing TERA, you live in the United States (important), and don’t mind dropping $10, having founder status is ultimately a better deal than running with a standard free account.

And founder status is just an alternative to the free account. You don’t pay a subscription to keep it.

(Source: Amazon)

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It’s Gone

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

TERA heads free to play in February, and if you intend on playing it you might have wanted to get your hands on a copy of the game back when Amazon had it on sale for $5. In fact, if you were thinking about buying it now, you’re too late. The TERA digital edition has already been removed from Amazon, but you can still buy it at En Masse Entertainment’s website for $20. Why would you want to buy a copy of a game when it is heading free to play? Simple: Founder status.

Players who had purchased a boxed copy of TERA (whether digital or physical) and redeem the account key will be granted Founder status, which grants rewards higher in some spots than a free to play account subscribing. Crazy, indeed. Eight character slots per server (compared to 2), a Founder title, an exclusive Terminus mount, 288 bank slots (compared to 72), and a few lesser restrictions over free players. So you’ll buy a copy from EME after the game goes free, you’re thinking. Well, you thought wrong:

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

[TERA] Want Founder Status? Get It Before It's Gone

[UPDATE: It’s dead, Jim. TERA’s digital edition has been discontinued. If you haven’t picked it up by now, you’re out of luck.]

When we launch, we will discontinue all digital sales of TERA, so any remaining physical boxes will be the only way to gain founder status. Please check with your local retailer. Boxes will be available only while supplies last, and no new boxes are in creation.

If you do get your hands on a copy of TERA post-launch, you’ll still be able to redeem the code and grant your account with founder status.

(Source: TERA FAQ)

Vanguard Opens Up More Features For Free

What are you thinking about, Vanguard? Why so distant all the time? Reaction to Vanguard’s free to play transition last summer has been rather positive, but at the same time pretty lukewarm, with players noting the very restrictive free to play model that SOE had implemented as the primary reason behind the negativity. Before Vanguard even went free to play, Sony Online Entertainment was already doing patchwork on opening the game up more to free players, and since then the team has been working on fixing bugs, working on content changes, and planning for future updates.

In a post today, Producer Henry Burgess has revealed that both free players and members will receive a boost in Vanguard:

We have decided to expand and improve on the free- to-play offering for Vanguard. That means everyone can play any race, any class, to any level for free. You can also own a house, create guilds, and do a bunch of other things.

Free players will have full access to all of the game’s races and classes, as well as enjoying an unlimited gold purse and the game’s 50 active-quest limit. Free players will be able to have four bag slots, normal broker fees, 75 bank slots (compared to 25), as well as full access to caravans, brotherhoods, the ability to create a guild, and the ability to own a house. Members will enjoy a boost of 50% bonus experience, 12 character slots, double faction gains, a 10% discount at the marketplace, 20% discounted broker fees, two houses (20% discount on upkeep), 20% discounted mail fees, and a 20% discount on most other fees in-game. All of this with the other features members are already accustomed to (500 Station cash, customer support, etc).

(Source: Vanguard)

En Mass Entertainment Offering Refunds For Subscribers

Yea, this is directly following my article on TERA becoming free, but I felt this topic was important enough to warrant its own commentary. Generally when an MMO goes free to play, you don’t see the developer lining up to hand out refunds for existing subscriptions. More often than not, any additional paid time is simply converted into whatever premium service that is rolling out with the transition. In the case of TERA, however, En Masse Entertainment will be refunding any additional game time on an account should the user request it.

From the FAQ:

On the day TERA’s drops its subscription fee, if you would like a refund you may submit a ticket and request a refund for your remaining game time. We will then refund your remaining subscription after the current month ends. For example, if you purchased a 90-day subscription and have 65 days remaining you will receive a refund for 60 days of game time. The remaining 5 days will stay as elite game time.

It appears that this is only for the North American version of TERA, through En Masse Entertainment. The FAQ for the European transition does not make any reference to refunds.

(Source: FAQ)

TERA Heading Free In North America And Europe

With all the effort that En Masse Entertainment put into telling us that TERA would not be free to play in North America or Europe, the latter of which was contradicted the exact same day by Gameforge staff, I feel we as gamers could at least pretend to be surprised that the hiring of Nexon’s former Vice President as Chief Operating Officer at EME had anything to do with a possible transition. Too far? Alright. Everyone saw this coming. I did, you likely did, even your dog could figure out that TERA was going free to play. Starting in February 2013, you will be able to log in to TERA 100% free.

There are three tiers of membership: Free, Founder, and Elite. Elite is the current subscription model, while founders are anyone who activates a full copy of the game. I know what you’re thinking: What is going to happen to Chronoscrolls? They will be removed from the game and no longer redeemable. Any in-game merchant will buy them for 2,000 gold.

Free/Elite players are limited to two characters per server, founders have eight characters and an exclusive “founder” title.
Free/Elite players are limited to 72 bank slots, founders are limited to 288 slots (max)
Elite/Founder players can send unlimited gold via parcel, free are limited to 10 gold per message.
Free players are limited to 10 broker postings, Founders to 30, Elite to 50
Free/Founder players have a 5% broker register tax.
Subscribers have half of the cooldown rate for dungeon entries, as well as double entries each day.
Subscribers can claim 10 crate keys, a flaming halo, NPC teleport scrolls, and a village atlas which allows quick travel.
Subscribers receive daily XP, Reputation, and Gold boosts.
Subscribers receive an Elite Mount, Founders receive their own exclusive mount

(Source: En Masse Entertainment)

TERA Closer To Free To Play? En Mass Entertainment Shuffles Executives

With TERA going free to play in just about everywhere but North America, stateside fans are no doubt beginning to ask when their time is coming. The latest news from En Masse Entertainment was a post from Minea on the forums stating that TERA will remain subscription based in the United States. A definitive answer, one that sparked mixed reactions on the main forums with some players applauding the announcement and others not as satisfied.

With an announcement gone out today, En Masse Entertainment has revealed that Christopher Lee has been promoted to the position of Chief Executive Officer, replacing Dr. Jae Heon Yang who will step down and continue his role as an executive at En Masse Entertainment’s parent company Bluehole Studios. Mr. Lee was previously Vice President of publishing. Additionally, former Vice President of Nexon America Soo Min Park has been hired as Chief Operating Officer, replacing Patrick Wyatt who had left the company earlier in 2012 but still acts as an external adviser for the publisher. Halo Group Marketing Manager Bryan Koski has been hired to Director of Marketing while TERA Senior Producer Brian Knox will be promoted to Executive Officer.

What does this mean for TERA? Some might see the writing on the wall with hiring an ex-Nexon VP as Chief Operating Officer.

(Source: Games Industry International)

TERA Will Remain Subscription Based In US/EU

Update: Gee that was fast. TERA’s European community manager has posted on the forums to confirm that more details will be released of the EU free to play transition in January.

Please understand that it is too early right now to talk about this but we will have more information for you about the EU version in January.

(Source: TERA Europe)

Original Story: Hold your horses, people. If you’ve been paying attention to TERA’s operations in Korea, you already know that NHN successfully launched a free to play server. Initially just a separate server and originally implemented as a temporary experiment, KTERA has announced that beginning in January, all servers will be converted to free to play:

Starting 2013 Jan 10th, TERA will go free-to-play, and with this start, new contents and changes will occur in political system, raid system, and massive pvp, with alliance and alliance training center?, 10man raid sorcerer’s fortress, and 20man raid kelsaik’s holyplace? and battleground of fire?.

What does this mean for the west, where En Masse Entertainment merged down to three servers? Nothing. TERA’s Community Manager, Minea, posted on the forums to state that TERA will remain subscription based in North America and Europe.

Regardless of the news from Korea, the good news is that TERA will continue to grow and improve with new game contents in North America, and all contents will be available for us should we decide to evaluate their use.

Korea isn’t the only country to be taking TERA free to play. TERA in Japan will also be heading free to play. The details of Japan’s transition are a little unclear, due to some poor translation, but the move appears to begin today (December 26th) with a single server and eventually open up the entire game in February 2013. There is little doubt that TERA will eventually go free to play in North America and Europe, despite EME’s insistence to the contrary.

(Source: TERA)

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