Free to play, means exactly what it says. It's free to play, but there is a cash shop and in most cases you have to pay. I don't pay for Team Fortress 2 to play monthly I just pay the box price. Guild Wars doesn't offer a subscription and they make enough money and have a large enough fan base to create Guild Wars 2. World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI make you buy the xpac and than pay your month. EVE Online makes you pay a subscription but all their xpacs are free. Guild Wars is proof that you can make revenue off of those models but many f2p don't go that route. In most f2p it becomes mandatory to some degree to purchase from the in-game shop to move forward. Some MMOs only have progression through their shop and what's the point of even playing? There are only shops that'll sell just cosmetic items case in point Maplestory and lastly, some MMOs will make it a 50-50, like Allods and Runes of Magic you buy cash shop items to increase crafting time, respec your toon, offer chests or items that can be opened and give an item. They also have items that'll help in crafting. Allods has runes that'll improve weapons and so does Runes of Magic which leads me to my other 2 problems I have with free to play MMOs.
Why is there always some type of leveling up weapons and armors. This upgrades to gear are repesented usually as +1, +2, +3, etc (Conquer Online, Corum, Runes of Magic, Sword of the new Word the lists goes on). As the pluses go up the items usually weapons start to get a glow which could and in most case changes color. What's the point of this? It's almost as if instead of creating more gear with different models they give a pre-determined stat increase with each level and a colorful glow to get your wanting it. I sometimes get the feeling in some "Free-2-Plays" the publishers or developers just want to nickle and dime the player to death so the take needed items and throw them in the cash shop, sure you can get them in-game but your going to have to either devote time to farming up some gold to purchase the tradeable cash shop item it the game even allows are the drops are set insanely low. It's the way the item shops are implemented and/or bullshit content or lack there of.
Content is either not there or bullshitted in most F2P MMOs, what I mean is, The put a city in a zone and half assed city with badly translated or bugged text. Quests either doesn't give enough experience to make it worth it or run out before cap which is raised over time to completely absurd numbers and leave you grinding level after level. I know quests are there to cover up the grind but I need that cover up to make me feel like I'm doing something at least some what important. The zone is always swampped with a billion mobs of the same type and when you move 5 yards up you run into either the same mob with a slight difference and a different name or you get a completely new type of mob. The mobs tend to never walk into any other mobs area within the zone.
My case here is why does MMOs have to charge monthly for their games. If they as developers/publishers have the need to do a subscription payment method than why not sweet the deal and offer free expansions like EVE or make us buy the retail box. Why is it set into stone that we need to have a payment model, the only time I get charged to play a F2P or a console game for my 360 is for new content. I don't get charged monthly to play the game monthly why should I have to give money to a MMO company? To keep their servers up? They have over 50k subscriptions at $14.95 and you just released a 30 dollar expansion that at least 25k players bought. You don't need my money to keep your servers up at the very least you've made enough money from 25k individual 30 dollar purchases to keep the servers running.
With the changes come the fans and the blog posts. Most are good well others are good but still have a hint of sting to them. While the prices are more reasonable (24 slot bag lowered from $20 USD - $6 USD) The perfumes have been dropped from 20 for about 14 bucks to 3. Now Keen brings up a good point, the average casual player is going to be playing about 2 hours a night which equals just under a subscription for a P2P MMO but when you add another hour into your play time the price makes a big jump to around $16 USD and like he stated it's still reasonable for a month price in the cash shop.
This is where some question still need answering. Now this is still only open beta and many of the community isn't up passed level 10-15 and because of this we don't know what kind of time will have to be invested into the end-game; PvP, and PvE. We know instances will be locked if you leave them until the next day so running out and paying in-game gold to get the FoD debuff off is a no go. Which is fine by me, but unlike other MMOs if the group in the instance isn't the best and you keep wiping your going to be going through perfumes quick. This is also a concern in PvP, if you keep dying your going to need to pop a perfume when the first perfume's buff runs out. If raids in the Astral and Instanced Raids are going to be longer than 3 hours, guilds might have to consider only going so far as the cost may out weight the rewards.
The other concern lays in how mounts will be handled. Players have read the we will need to buy feed in the Cash Shop to have your mount move at the right speed. Again not a problem but factor in feed with your month "subscription" to perfumes plus the inital cost to buy a mount if you have to buy the mount through the cash shop.
All in all the change was a relief to see and we won't know the damage to our wallets 'till the community, as a hole, moves up the levels and end-game goes into the swing of things.
Global Agenda has released it's first patch and the notes can be found in that link. We have many new features as players to tool and toy with:
- Friend's List - which is just a plain awesome and finely!
- We can now pick what type of mission we'd like in PvP
- PvE allows us to know pick only balanced groups (ones with healer,tank,dps)
- Repaird kits repair Upgrades
- More rare and epic crafting prints
- 2 new conquest zones
- The auction house has some imporvements
- Some devices changes
Just to name a few of the new things. You'd have to read all the patch to get the fine details and such. As for me right now? I'll be taking a break from Allods to get back into the swing of GA things so I can try out the new features!
*Edit: Changes are live
Cash Shop changes are planned for this week in Allods. The forums have still the same tone however, many are breathing a sigh of relief well others aren't budging and even going as far as to poke fun - "What are they dropping a zero?" The point remains at least the developers have notice and are taking action. Even if gPotatoe themselves have no control over what is done, they still have proven to be listening. I hope for the best as I've logged back in after a little two day break as I just have 2 long days so I finally had some time to get invested in my Healer. As I've said before I'm playing this game even to it's death. Now we wait and see the changes.
Let's say it all goes down hill and Allods is put to it's grave than what?
Looking for a new MMO, I could go back to World of Warcraft but I really can't do it anymore. It's not burn-out I'm just done with the carrot their offering. My idea MMO isn't going to be made because I don't have the experience to do such a thing. No MMO is really catching my eye, TERA looks good but I can't help but feel to good to be true. Aion proved beautiful graphics wouldn't keep me as I hate invisible walls. Aika could be good but do I really want to it? Gpotatoe isn't thought highly anymore since this Allods Online. Than again they don't control the developement of the game. Though Gpotatoes other games aren't bad with the cash shops just none of them interest me in anyway. The nothing hurting me from trying Aika being a F2P where as TERA will be P2P, I need to save to move out with my girlfriend, a friend and that friends older sister. So it looks like I'm keeping my eyes open in the F2P market for a bit while I wait for Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, and Final Fantasy XIV. Only time will tell.
Let's see how this Allods situation plays out, I will be there to the end if an end is what happens but it won't stop my wondering eye.
