Tag: Unchained

[Video] Gamigo Announces ArcheAge Unchained


What happens when you have a game like ArcheAge? Start anew, at least that’s the plan that Gamigo seems to be taking with today’s announcement of ArcheAge: Unchained.

Your feedback over the years encouraged us to provide a different game experience for you, our community. ArcheAge: Unchained is a new way to play the game with a different business model. We’ve changed entirely its monetization which was simply not possible to this great extent with the already existing ArcheAge F2P version.
In ArcheAge: Unchained there is no longer a subscription model. With a onetime purchase, you can enjoy the content as often as you want. You will be able to purchase vanity items via Credits and we will implement seasonal ArchePasses. We are focusing on fairer gameplay which is why we decided to change a few monetization features for ArcheAge: Unchained. There’ll be more information in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned!

For more information on ArcheAge: Unchained, check out the FAQ.

Unsurprisingly: F2P Raises Population, Revenue In Age of Conan


In case you haven’t been following the pattern, when subscription games add free to play aspects the population tends to increase, as well as revenue. Following this trend, Age of Conan opened up its servers to free players over a month ago, and has since seen the related spike in population. How many? 300,000 according to Funcom. The revenues have more than doubled over the first month.

If you take the announcement that activity has more than quadrupled, this gives Age of Conan somewhere around 75,000 active players prior to the free to play transition. At $15 a pop, that counts for around $1.1 million in income per month, meaning Age of Conan is worth over $2.2 million now in revenue, even more since we’re only counting minimum.

This is just a very side thought, but is there even a conceivable future for a game moving from subscription to free to play and still shutting down due to low population? I don’t think there’s been a notable case so far of an MMO going free and managing to continue losing revenue.

Then again I could be wrong.

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.