Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
This game should be free2play
Free2Play games reach the most players, and players are needed to fill game worlds, and with all the systems you guys have planned for this game it only makes sense to try to have as many people as possible actually in the game keeping it moving and shaking, why isn't a free2play model being discussed?
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Comments
I feel as though the argument you're trying to make comes from your own inability to afford to pay a full game price + possible subscription fee. Which is fine, we aren't all made of money, but its also rather a selfish proposition to try and negatively affect the overall quality of a game and it's community by trying to have it cater to your own personal needs.
As my grandparents would tell me as a child, "nothing is really free." There's almost a universal truth in MMORPGs (and commercial products in general): free to play/use means a decline in the quality of the service provided to the detriment of all those except those who can afford to pay money for more.
By making it free to play, you would be separating the community into two distinct parties: those who can afford to spend extra money to get in game benefits of varying levels of "pay to win" and those who can't afford/are unwilling to spend money and thus are always one step behind unless they work much harder. With a buy to play/subscription model, you are putting everyone on an equal, level playing field from the start.
Similarly your argument that free to play reaches more players isn't exactly true, because buy to play MMOs tend to do extremely well and gain a hell of a lot of players for various reasons. Just look at World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Black Desert Online and more. Even Dark Age of Camelot is still going strong. There are multiple reasons for this:
1) Buy to play immediately implies a "better" gaming experience. People are intrigued because they assume that, if a developer is charging money for a game, they have a reason to believe it's worth that charge.
2) Buy to play + subscription implies a longer overall lifespan and near guaranteed support for future updates and content. Final Fantasy 14 gets major content releases every few months adding new dungeons, bosses and quests.
3) The market is utterly over-saturated with poor free to play MMOs and players are beginning to realize that they're a little bit of a scam.
4) Larger marketing budgets.
Free to play MMOs aren't there to make a game more fun for you than it has to be to get your money. They will cut corners and add various limitations to players to make up for the fact that they don't have a guaranteed source of monthly income; with the goal of trying to incite players into spending money on their cash shop. Those who don't are left behind, while those who do generally end up spending more money on these games than they would if they paid for a subscription MMO. Free to play business models aren't much better than legal, overpriced scams.
Thankfully people have started to realize this. The free to play monopoly is dying and buy to play/subscription MMOs are making a return thanks to crowdfunding.
Finally, Ashes of Creation encourages people to invite friends and advertise through the referral system. By having a good game in the works, a dedicated fanbase and a method for rewarding them if they recruit their friends, AoC is simultaneously meeting it's player-base needs and cutting down on marketing costs so they have more money to spend on the actual game.
I mean, you will probably end up paying for a f2p game to be competitive anyway.
and... technically using the referral system it would be possible to play the game for free... if you get enough referrals sent out you could have a subscription free of charge infact if you had enough referrals and they spent some $$ on the game you could be paid to play.
[/quote]
They wouldn't have to put a p2w aspect in the game only if they got lazy, and decided to go that route, which is common in mmorpg's because communities don't seem to want to hold developers accountable for their bullshit, but i digress, look at black dessert i believe they use a subscription model and still offer cash incentives, that cannot be attained with ingame currency so that argument is trite. As for subs, and b2p models offering a stable income, there's an argument for that but the amount of players turned off by a paywall will probably put a damper on the game's success before p2w even becomes an issue.
THIS GAME SHOULD BE FREE2PLAY
</blockquote>
I feel as though the argument you’re trying to make comes from your own inability to afford to pay a full game price + possible subscription fee. Which is fine, we aren’t all made of money, but its also rather a selfish proposition to try and negatively affect the overall quality of a game and it’s community by trying to have it cater to your own personal needs.
As my grandparents would tell me as a child, “nothing is really free.” There’s almost a universal truth in MMORPGs (and commercial products in general): free to play/use means a decline in the quality of the service provided to the detriment of all those except those who can afford to pay money for more.
By making it free to play, you would be separating the community into two distinct parties: those who can afford to spend extra money to get in game benefits of varying levels of “pay to win” and those who can’t afford/are unwilling to spend money and thus are always one step behind unless they work much harder. With a buy to play/subscription model, you are putting everyone on an equal, level playing field from the start.
Similarly your argument that free to play reaches more players isn’t exactly true, because buy to play MMOs tend to do extremely well and gain a hell of a lot of players for various reasons. Just look at World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, Black Desert Online and more. Even Dark Age of Camelot is still going strong. There are multiple reasons for this:
1) Buy to play immediately implies a “better” gaming experience. People are intrigued because they assume that, if a developer is charging money for a game, they have a reason to believe it’s worth that charge.
2) Buy to play + subscription implies a longer overall lifespan and near guaranteed support for future updates and content. Final Fantasy 14 gets major content releases every few months adding new dungeons, bosses and quests.
3) The market is utterly over-saturated with poor free to play MMOs and players are beginning to realize that they’re a little bit of a scam.
4) Larger marketing budgets.
Free to play MMOs aren’t there to make a game more fun for you than it has to be to get your money. They will cut corners and add various limitations to players to make up for the fact that they don’t have a guaranteed source of monthly income; with the goal of trying to incite players into spending money on their cash shop. Those who don’t are left behind, while those who do generally end up spending more money on these games than they would if they paid for a subscription MMO. Free to play business models aren’t much better than legal, overpriced scams.
Thankfully people have started to realize this. The free to play monopoly is dying and buy to play/subscription MMOs are making a return thanks to crowdfunding.
Finally, Ashes of Creation encourages people to invite friends and advertise through the referral system. By having a good game in the works, a dedicated fanbase and a method for rewarding them if they recruit their friends, AoC is simultaneously meeting it’s player-base needs and cutting down on marketing costs so they have more money to spend on the actual game.
[/quote]
1. I could afford a game, and a subscription price, year's of playing wow has shown me it is hardly ever worth it, it's a waste of money compared to time i actually spend playing which leads to resentment, which leads to gradually saying fuck it and finding something less taxing and more rewarding nice try tho.
2. Old capitalist trope of there isn't enough of everything for everybody which has been disproved resources are bottlenecked, not because there isn't enough to go around, but because it's how it's been done, and nobody has successfully challenged it nice try again 2/2
3. You're assuming that whatever f2p system would be inherently broken and imba, see wildstar. You're on a roll kid.
4. ok.
I mean, you will probably end up paying for a f2p game to be competitive anyway.
[/quote]
If the game is good people will stick around, MMO hoppers aren't just hopping around for the dick of it, a lot of us legit like the mmorpg niche but the games saturating the market are trash by western standards, because most of them are simply ported from the east, but game made in the west and ported to the east make a killing, when they are good in the west first.
and… technically using the referral system it would be possible to play the game for free… if you get enough referrals sent out you could have a subscription free of charge infact if you had enough referrals and they spent some $$ on the game you could be paid to play.
[/quote]
Make a game accessible to everybody that people want to spend money on that doesn't break game immersion/balance - problem solved it doesn't need to have a pay wall as a barrier to entry.
[/quote]
Make a game that people want to spend time and money in and you won't have to resort to paywalls, as a barrier to entry, it's a turn off honestly. I don't see this game having the player base to support the functions that they boast about with a subscription model nobody is looking for a game to spend 15$ a month on
[/quote]
If they are going with subscription, they better release tons and tons of new content, or people will drop the subscription. Subscription doesn't mean, oh, "you can pay your designers to improve the game and fix bugs." It means you better create content and make it feel like it worth pay that $10 or $15 a month. I hopefully they are going do like WoW, or BDO, and have huge game update that adds tons of content, with small updates around that adds new raids and other things. I hope they try and make it up to FFXIV and/or WoW levels, but that depends on how much they are willing to advertise this game, and how much they are willing to interact with the community.
I have to agree with the prior statements, F2P game s usually find themselves needing another source of income which usually comes from an in game shop, this could easily turn into a P2W scenario. Making the game subscription based would allow for Intrepid to have a reliable source of income which can be used to pay their designers to improve the game and fix bugs. I’m not saying that a P2P game won’t become a P2W game but it’s been stated that AoC won’t become P2W. Stealing Shunex’s point, if you convince enough friends to play the game then you could possibly either have to pay very little for your subscription, nothing at all, or even be payed to play. I feel like F2P games are fine but they often are P2W games as well. I personally prefer P2P games because it means there will be a minimum quality of the game that I can expect. For AoC I don’t expect minimum quality since from what I can see so far, it’s already surpassed it.
</blockquote>
If they are going with subscription, they better release tons and tons of new content, or people will drop the subscription. Subscription doesn’t mean, oh, “you can pay your designers to improve the game and fix bugs.” It means you better create content and make it feel like it worth pay that $10 or $15 a month. I hopefully they are going do like WoW, or BDO, and have huge game update that adds tons of content, with small updates around that adds new raids and other things. I hope they try and make it up to FFXIV and/or WoW levels, but that depends on how much they are willing to advertise this game, and how much they are willing to interact with the community.
[/quote]
Honestly with all these crowdfunded shit storms being released to early do you think they will have it set up like a wow or bdo?
1. I could afford a game, and a subscription price, year’s of playing wow has shown me it is hardly ever worth it, it’s a waste of money compared to time i actually spend playing which leads to resentment, which leads to gradually saying fuck it and finding something less taxing and more rewarding nice try tho.
2. Old capitalist trope of there isn’t enough of everything for everybody which has been disproved resources are bottlenecked, not because there isn’t enough to go around, but because it’s how it’s been done, and nobody has successfully challenged it nice try again 2/2
3. You’re assuming that whatever f2p system would be inherently broken and imba, see wildstar. You’re on a roll kid.
4. ok.
[/quote]
1. Well then go and play a free to play game instead of trying to ruin this one for those who hate them.
2. That has nothing to do with my post.
3. All free to play systems are inherently broken in some way. Some are just less broken than others.
4. Ok.
This is the last reply you'll get from me though, at least until you can learn to have a proper discussion that doesn't just consist of "you're wrong though" and "heh, nice try kid".
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/6JtGTIA.jpg" alt="This is basically how I imagine you look when you reply like the way you are." />
[/quote]
Well, all in all we don't know officially what the business model will be as of yet. However, it seems they want to change the MMORPG industry and removing the P2W stigma that has plagued the gaming community for the last decade. Keep an eye out for official news.
Alternatively, if you wish you can join the Community Discord for more in-depth conversations with Steven and the team:
https://discord.gg/zsQupUf
Probably the most successful MMO that has a non P2W model is GuildWars2. But look at that game.. I've played it a lot. And I've played WoW a lot.. and still play FFXIV. I can tell you.. GW2 has no where near the quality of content that WoW , FFXIV or ESO offers. Its great to play for a few months, but it has no longevity as you simply run out of things to do. After the game launched the Dev team went down to a small skeleton crew and they simply can't afford more devs despite probably having one of the largest population any F2P MMO has.. oh.. and I forgot to mention, GW2 is not even really F2P, its B2P.. so you'd think they would have enough money with all these box sales.. but the ugly reality of MMOs is.. they take A LOT of money to upkeep... at least if you want polish and quality content.
Probably the most successful MMO that has a non P2W model is GuildWars2. But look at that game.. I’ve played it a lot. And I’ve played WoW a lot.. and still play FFXIV. I can tell you.. GW2 has no where near the quality of content that WoW , FFXIV or ESO offers. Its great to play for a few months, but it has no longevity as you simply run out of things to do. After the game launched the Dev team went down to a small skeleton crew and they simply can’t afford more devs despite probably having one of the largest population any F2P MMO has.. oh.. and I forgot to mention, GW2 is not even really F2P, its B2P.. so you’d think they would have enough money with all these box sales.. but the ugly reality of MMOs is.. they take A LOT of money to upkeep… at least if you want polish and quality content.
[/quote]
I can't agree with you. Guild wars 2 just aims for different kind of players. WoW aims for the more high end gamers, PVP and Raid races for world firsts and great events and all. Where GW 2 aims for a more open world event player base where everyone can take part in the fun. And I think they make a great game and great content. With the story seasons and all, they bring in new maps and content. so I see no reason why GW2 would stay behind WoW. It took WoW also a while after release to get to the first big expansion that you would need to buy. And GW2 has an ingame shop where you can buy non essential things for the game. And the real money currency can be exchanged for ingame currency and the other way around, to reward long time player.
For F2P there is a great way, look at Warframe. Everything you can get with real money you can work for and the real money currency in Warframe can be traded between players for ingame items.
Both games are great, have a better story compared to WoW for the time they are out, atleast GW2 compared to WoW as Warframe is a different kind of game. But I think a B2P with ingame shop where you can only buy thinks you can farm or are not really needed can work just right. Put in dyes or outfits you can put over your real armor and things like this. When player like what your are doing they will go and throw money at you. But if you force them to pay and they don't like it they will leave and never come back.
For marketing, Youtube can be a great help. Use Youtuber that focus on the game, mechanics, lore and all and give them a helping hand. Use Twitch and Youtube to bring the game closer to the consumer, a monthly stream or so with some of the developers to show the community what you are doing will help big time to get closer to them and help them to see that you are in fact working on it and they can tell you what they want or what they like or not.
Even if WoW is one of the biggest MMOs out there I don't really think you should follow the example as they have declining numbers on active accounts after a few weeks every time they bring new content. So the Server going empty Soon after the "Raid race" is done. And then they just wait for the next expansion or next Raid instance to come out and play other things in the time and pay nothing. I think having things for long time motivation and an non essential Item ingame shop is a better way to keep more player for a long time.
[/quote]
Not F2P this would force them to make things for the Itemshop that are needed to progress in the game. B2P and then an cosmetic and maybe a few boost items or qualey of live Items. This would force them to stay creative if they want money and deliver good stuf. because if there is no good stuff that people would buy then they did a bad job and would feel it in their numbers. But then it would not end up P2W.
I have good experience with the shops in Warframe and Guild wars 2 they make enough money to support the money and keep it alive and still not become P2W.
For F2P there is a great way, look at Warframe. Everything you can get with real money you can work for and the real money currency in Warframe can be traded between players for ingame items.
Both games are great, have a better story compared to WoW for the time they are out, atleast GW2 compared to WoW as Warframe is a different kind of game. But I think a B2P with ingame shop where you can only buy thinks you can farm or are not really needed can work just right. Put in dyes or outfits you can put over your real armor and things like this. When player like what your are doing they will go and throw money at you. But if you force them to pay and they don’t like it they will leave and never come back.[/quote]
You need to check your facts my friend.
You claim that WoW focuses on players who enjoy raiding and PVP, however, even Blizzard recognizes that the heavy raiders is but a small percentage of their players.. The truth is most players don't have time to focus on raiding and world first as you suggest. Further to this, GW2 has WvW and does host some Structured PVP tournaments. I actually think the SPVP in GW2 attracts more players due to the fact there is no gear gap between players. Also, let's not forget that GW2 has also added raids to their game in an attempt to satisfy the small percentage of players who cried about not having them. So ultimately, both games kind of aim for the same same kind of players. Sure they both have some differences, like most MMOs do.. One of them was B2P with cash shop items, the other is B2P with B2P sub model.
Can you guess which one of the two games does better financially? Can you also guess which one releases the most content? Sure GW2 does release some content.. like the Living Story. but hey.. it takes them 6 months to release one chapter and it takes me 2 hours to play through it. Not exactly the quality content i'd like to see from an MMO game. Even Heart of Thorns was a huge bust. Probably one of the worst MMO expansions ever created.
But hey, lets see how good their B2P / Cash shop model is working.. here's some NCsoft financial reports that shows you the Sales made by games (includes cash shop sales):
http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/10/ncsoft-reports-q4-2015-sales-surge-for-guild-wars-2-bump-for-wildstar/
so yeah.. GW2 Sales surged in 2015 Q4 due to Heart of Thorns..
But have a look at what happened right after..
http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/11/ncsofts-q2-2016-financials-wildstar-up-guild-wars-2-down/
As you can see, in 2016 Q1, they dropped a little. Ppl were still trying to digest that crap that was served on a silver platter called Heart of Thorns. But in 2016 Q2, wow.. sales dropped by half! There you have it. Everyone had digested HoT and regurgitated it.
Finally in Q3 2016, GW2's sales are somewhat stabalizing, they see a small dip but not much.. though still half of what they were when HoT was released, and still significantly lower than what they were prior to HoT being released.
http://massivelyop.com/2016/11/10/ncsofts-q3-2016-financials-see-declines-for-wildstar-guild-wars-2-and-blade-soul/
So when a company's income varies so much from Quarter to Quarter based on how much players are spending on Cash shop, it creates a very uncertain environment for the players and for the devs. Devs never know when more of them will be laid off, and players never know when they will get to see new content. Its a bad business model for MMOs in general. GW2, as great as the game is, seriously lacks in content.. The only saving grace it has is that it takes you months to craft 1 legendary weapons and some OCD players gotta have em all, so they keep playing to attain their goal of having all the cool Legendary weapons...(Legendary Weapons are actually pretty sweet)
We simply cannot compare games that use the F2P model like DOTA2 and Warframe, to an MMO. MMOs have quests, stories, dungeons with complicated boss mechanics ect ect.. all these things take sooo much more DEV power than lets say adding a new map in a F2P shooter. or adding a new Hero in DOTA2. It really boggles my mind that some MMO players just don't seem to understand and appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into MMOS compared to these other F2P games.
Also, I chuckled at this.
I don't even know why I bother responding to this..
Maybe its because GW2 is voice acted and makes it easier for you.. but you probably just never bothered reading any quest in WoW.. let's be honest.. most players don't. they just click confirm to skip the wall of text and check their maps to see where the quest is. I assure you however, that WoW and Warcraft in general, has a GIANT amount of lore and story.
I wonder, how many books can you buy at a library about GW2? Story books.. with Lore and stuff. Don't worry, I'll save you the trouble of googling it yourself:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/shop/guild-wars-2-novels/
There's 3 books. Ghosts of Ascalon, Destiny's Edge and Sea of Sorrow. But hey, you know what, that's not really fair since WoW and Warcraft in General has been around longer than GW2, so let's look at books for GW1... Oh wait.. there are none. but I did find this Guildwars wiki lore page...
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lore
Now let's compare with Warcraft:
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Novels
Oh, and let's check out what I come across when I google Warcraft Lore:
http://blizzardwatch.com/warcraft-lore-books-guide/
I think you get the point..
You need to check your facts my friend.
You claim that WoW focuses on players who enjoy raiding and PVP, however, even Blizzard recognizes that the heavy raiders is but a small percentage of their players.. The truth is most players don’t have time to focus on raiding and world first as you suggest. Further to this, GW2 has WvW and does host some Structured PVP tournaments. I actually think the SPVP in GW2 attracts more players due to the fact there is no gear gap between players. Also, let’s not forget that GW2 has also added raids to their game in an attempt to satisfy the small percentage of players who cried about not having them. So ultimately, both games kind of aim for the same same kind of players. Sure they both have some differences, like most MMOs do.. One of them was B2P with cash shop items, the other is B2P with B2P sub model.
Can you guess which one of the two games does better financially? Can you also guess which one releases the most content? Sure GW2 does release some content.. like the Living Story. but hey.. it takes them 6 months to release one chapter and it takes me 2 hours to play through it. Not exactly the quality content i’d like to see from an MMO game. Even Heart of Thorns was a huge bust. Probably one of the worst MMO expansions ever created.
But hey, lets see how good their B2P / Cash shop model is working.. here’s some NCsoft financial reports that shows you the Sales made by games (includes cash shop sales):
<div class="">
<blockquote><a href="http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/10/ncsoft-reports-q4-2015-sales-surge-for-guild-wars-2-bump-for-wildstar/" rel="nofollow">NCsoft reports Q4 2015 sales surge for Guild Wars 2, bump for WildStar</a>
</blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="http://massivelyop.com/2016/02/10/ncsoft-reports-q4-2015-sales-surge-for-guild-wars-2-bump-for-wildstar/embed/#?secret=pAzmgbu8X9" data-secret="pAzmgbu8X9" width="600" height="435" title="“NCsoft reports Q4 2015 sales surge for Guild Wars 2, bump for WildStar” — Massively Overpowered" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
</div>
so yeah.. GW2 Sales surged in 2015 Q4 due to Heart of Thorns..
But have a look at what happened right after..
<div class="">
<blockquote><a href="http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/11/ncsofts-q2-2016-financials-wildstar-up-guild-wars-2-down/" rel="nofollow">NCsoft’s Q2 2016 financials: WildStar up, Guild Wars 2 down</a>
</blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="http://massivelyop.com/2016/08/11/ncsofts-q2-2016-financials-wildstar-up-guild-wars-2-down/embed/#?secret=Lu9cxSgEoF" data-secret="Lu9cxSgEoF" width="600" height="435" title="“NCsoft's Q2 2016 financials: WildStar up, Guild Wars 2 down” — Massively Overpowered" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
</div>
As you can see, in 2016 Q1, they dropped a little. Ppl were still trying to digest that crap that was served on a silver platter called Heart of Thorns. But in 2016 Q2, wow.. sales dropped by half! There you have it. Everyone had digested HoT and regurgitated it.
Finally in Q3 2016, GW2’s sales are somewhat stabalizing, they see a small dip but not much.. though still half of what they were when HoT was released, and still significantly lower than what they were prior to HoT being released.
<div class="">
<blockquote><a href="http://massivelyop.com/2016/11/10/ncsofts-q3-2016-financials-see-declines-for-wildstar-guild-wars-2-and-blade-soul/" rel="nofollow">NCsoft’s Q3 2016 financials see declines for WildStar, Guild Wars 2, and Blade & Soul</a>
</blockquote>
<iframe class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="http://massivelyop.com/2016/11/10/ncsofts-q3-2016-financials-see-declines-for-wildstar-guild-wars-2-and-blade-soul/embed/#?secret=T056DW36H1" data-secret="T056DW36H1" width="600" height="414" title="“NCsoft's Q3 2016 financials see declines for WildStar, Guild Wars 2, and Blade & Soul” — Massively Overpowered" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
</div>
So when a company’s income varies so much from Quarter to Quarter based on how much players are spending on Cash shop, it creates a very uncertain environment for the players and for the devs. Devs never know when more of them will be laid off, and players never know when they will get to see new content. Its a bad business model for MMOs in general. GW2, as great as the game is, seriously lacks in content.. The only saving grace it has is that it takes you months to craft 1 legendary weapons and some OCD players gotta have em all, so they keep playing to attain their goal of having all the cool Legendary weapons…(Legendary Weapons are actually pretty sweet)
We simply cannot compare games that use the F2P model like DOTA2 and Warframe, to an MMO. MMOs have quests, stories, dungeons with complicated boss mechanics ect ect.. all these things take sooo much more DEV power than lets say adding a new map in a F2P shooter. or adding a new Hero in DOTA2. It really boggles my mind that some MMO players just don’t seem to understand and appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into MMOS compared to these other F2P games.
[/quote]
Then maybe it is different between EU and US server or where ever you play. At the end of Cata (where I left WoW) the History of my server and the servers I tried to play in between was this. At classic the servers were full all time. At WotLK most servers were empty just a few weeks after a raid was released. Many guilds had player with 4 and more weeks offline time because they had the raids done. And yes most player and guilds I asked back then and even where I was in were as good as dead between Raid content. After BC there was no reason for most player to stay online after the Raid content was cleared. Most made enough money so there was nothing to be worried and farming mats for crafting was also done fast at reales of every expansion and when new Raids came out. The guild with the most Server first on my server was playing other games for most of the time as Cata was released and WoW was only pulled out when a new Raid was out.
This may just be my personal opinion but I had a few high level character on different Server and the same situation.
And for facts. I think in GW2 you confuse seasons with episodes. So far for Living World season 3 we have episodes realeses in July 2016 one in september 2016 and one in November 2016. So not one every 6 month. They may be short but they are done great.
For the financial part, I can only say from my perspective and because my taste is just this MY TASTE. but the lack of money comes from less interesting content in the shop. sure some interesting things were in there, but also things they already had in there so most people would have this already. The thing is. you only pay for what you like. Many things in WoW never interested me as much as others. I never liked Raids as much as others. But the things i liked were taken out for the most part or made useless. And they still took my money for every month. Sure one does better then the other, but will the Devs listen to the base they have on a pay leash? Or will they listen when they don't make as much money as they did before?
And to your second comment. Lets not get aggressive here ok? No reason to attack.
And I know that WoW has a ton of LORE and a ton of STORY. But GW also has a lot of LORE not as much as WoW but the STORY in GW2 is still a better one then the one you can experience in WoW. WoW has 3 games that come before WoW while GW2 has only one with a few expansions. And I know the Q in WoW and read a shit ton of them. Most of the WoW Books are in my bookcase. But on the same time you can say some books say that other books are either wrong or haven't happened. So some needed to be seen as alternate lore. But still in my eyes the Story in GW2 is better, not only from the story itself but the way it is delivered with the personal dungeons and all. In Maguma the NPCs behaved like the first part of the story realy happened and also later the things you did had impact. You don't feel just like small worker ant in a hive. that is the difference in storytelling in GW2 and WoW. I agree there is more lore to WoW but the ingame story is just better delivered in GW2.
But this is just personal tast. Maybe we don't have the same tast, but this is no reason to get insulting or anything.
Perhaps I was a bit aggressive and I do apologize for coming off as a jerk. Maybe you're right that GW2 has a better story presentation than WoW. It's also much more recent. This however, does not justify that the B2P or F2P model is better than the P2P. If I want a good story, I can just go buy and play Witcher 1 through Witcher 3. That being said, I do appreciate MMOs with great stories. If you've never played FFXIV (another sub MMO), and you enjoy good stories, I will have to say that this one blows GW2 out of the water by A LOT.
But honestly, most MMO players don't play MMOs for amazing stories, even tho its a nice bonus, we play them for the social aspects that you just don't get from the amazing single player story games.
Have a look at all the shitty F2P MMOs that have released in the past 10 years. I've played almost everyone of these shitty MMOs and I always find myself returning to the good old fashion P2P ones because of the quality.. the polish... the content.. the customer support. ect ect.
I personally really wish for AoC to be successful, and maybe you're right that F2P is better in a sense. Due to all the crappy MMOs we've had in an already oversaturated market, players nowadays barely give MMOs a second glance, and quickly move on to other better things. A lot of players might not even give AoC a chance because it requires a sub and maybe they can't bother with that. So it's definitely a tough call, and F2P would at least allow these "On the Fence" players to give the game a try.
This is why AoC has this cool referral system tho... If you can convince 7 friends to join the game and start playing, the game basically becomes F2P for you. I don't know about you, but I have a lot of friends, and many of them will actually try something out if I can honestly tell them its worth it and a lot of fun. So If I've played AoC during alpha and beta, and I know that game is amazing, I know I can easily convince a few of my friends to join in with me.
Also, there's the potential for AoC to have some kind of 7 - 14 days trial to allow players who are on the fence to at least give the game a try for free and then decide if they wish to sub after.
Even if AoC starts off with a small core playerbase due to the P2P model, I think that if the referral program works as intended, that population could grow really fast at an exponential rate.
…
Perhaps I was a bit aggressive and I do apologize for coming off as a jerk. Maybe you’re right that GW2 has a better story presentation than WoW. It’s also much more recent. This however, does not justify that the B2P or F2P model is better than the P2P. If I want a good story, I can just go buy and play Witcher 1 through Witcher 3. That being said, I do appreciate MMOs with great stories. If you’ve never played FFXIV (another sub MMO), and you enjoy good stories, I will have to say that this one blows GW2 out of the water by A LOT.
But honestly, most MMO players don’t play MMOs for amazing stories, even tho its a nice bonus, we play them for the social aspects that you just don’t get from the amazing single player story games.
Have a look at all the shitty F2P MMOs that have released in the past 10 years. I’ve played almost everyone of these shitty MMOs and I always find myself returning to the good old fashion P2P ones because of the quality.. the polish… the content.. the customer support. ect ect.
I personally really wish for AoC to be successful, and maybe you’re right that F2P is better in a sense. Due to all the crappy MMOs we’ve had in an already oversaturated market, players nowadays barely give MMOs a second glance, and quickly move on to other better things. A lot of players might not even give AoC a chance because it requires a sub and maybe they can’t bother with that. So it’s definitely a tough call, and F2P would at least allow these “On the Fence” players to give the game a try.
This is why AoC has this cool referral system tho… If you can convince 7 friends to join the game and start playing, the game basically becomes F2P for you. I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of friends, and many of them will actually try something out if I can honestly tell them its worth it and a lot of fun. So If I’ve played AoC during alpha and beta, and I know that game is amazing, I know I can easily convince a few of my friends to join in with me.
Also, there’s the potential for AoC to have some kind of 7 – 14 days trial to allow players who are on the fence to at least give the game a try for free and then decide if they wish to sub after.
Even if AoC starts off with a small core playerbase due to the P2P model, I think that if the referral program works as intended, that population could grow really fast at an exponential rate.
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F2P is not good, there we both can agree. To make a good game at all with just the Itemshop is hard and I have never seen any MMORPG make this the right way. Only game I can think of with a good Itemshop only financing is Warframe, but this is no RPG. Maybe we really need this wall. I think giving 14 Days tails out is a good idea, or maybe something like WoW has with the Level 20 cap for free. Do we know how much the box and the month will cost? I think if the Box itself costs 50+ then a free month should also be included. this would be up to 6 weeks playtime to test it out. More then some other AAA titles give you this days on actual playtime.
B2P I think of GW2 and also Diablo 3. But D3 has the advantage of being a Blizzard licence and they have the milk cow WoW. And even then I think they have a lot of flaws that get to me.
I also hope this game will become as great as the building hype it creates. I just hope they have enough ways for payment XD getting money from Germany to some place else is annoying XD.
In the Past you can see that all f2p games flopped after a while.
P2p games like wow are still growing since a lot of years.
So we can see that P2p will be the better one.
IS, like me and all others players, dont want both of thoses choices.
And No, even if BDO is very cheap game he is not Free2play.
(Archeage too since you need patron for everything anyway).
Or why ppl don't want to pay monthly subscription (around 15$) but they don't have any problem to spend 100$ in p2w item shop?
For me as long as everyone have the same chances from the very beggining and everything they have achieved depends on their hard work, I can enjoy the game. Most of my friends are exhausted by f2p/p2w games, where only credit card decide who is the best.
So imo subscription is the best solution for Ashes of Creation and gives everyone fair and free from p2w content even if the cost of this will be a a bit smaller community of players.