Where SWTOR Free to Play Wins

A few months ago I was actively criticizing the SWTOR free to play model.

To me it seemed stupid for Bioware to GIVE away the best part of their game.  If you are unaware you can have one character slot and you can play the entire single player leveling experience for free.  Anyone who has played the game knows that this fully voiced leveling path is easily the best part of the game.  Anyone who has played the game probably only did this part of the game and probably skipped over everything else.

The problem, to me, with Bioware’s model was that it didn’t really give people an incentive to buy stuff.

And then they dropped a bomb shell.

The new free to play details went live and boy did it start to all make sense.

If you ever pick up any epic gear in the game you would now need to pay a micro transaction fee to use it.

Although this cuts the nuts off of the consumer this is…. brilliant.  Another game did this, Age of Empires Online.  This is one of the few free to play games that was ever successful in conning me to pay beyond the regular game.

So basically what will happen is you will be playing the free game going tra-la-la and suddenly, you’ll get an epic item from a quest… or a world drop…. or one of the free dungeons.  It will have a lock on the piece of loot and you’ll let it sit there until eventually you start falling apart and are forced to buy this item in cash.

Some might call this a ‘buy to play’ format.  In some ways… it is.

In reality, it’s not.

To actually do anything PvP or end game content you need to get a weekly pass.  The weekly pass itself is a little bit of a s-cam.  Basically a subscription fee costs $15.  But for the average person $15/month sounds a little too steep.  So instead of that you offer $4/week for everything.  Now suddenly they’re making an extra $1 a month off of people AND they’re attracting more people to do this stuff.

People also end up doing a lot more content when they know they only have a short time to do it (and you’re paying by the second people!).  As long as people purchase weekend passes they assures that content will stay active.

Of course as you know I’m as cheap as they come and I will no doubt resist the temptation to make a micro transaction until absolutely necessary.

SWTOR Free to Play Announced

In ultra exciting news SWTOR is going to the free to play model.

Now how is this different, we should ask, from say DC Universe Online.

First I’d like to address the newly released The Secret World.  Now five months ago (before launch) they announced a Life Time Subscription for the game.  And of course in typical Troublmaker style I threw out a controversial video in which I coach people to not get the life time subscription because it is a scam.  It is a scam because at the time it was clear to me The Secret World would go free to play as Funcom’s other two titles (Anarchy Online and Age of Conan) had both adopted free to play.  It was then my opinion that dishing out $200 (that would pay itself off after a year) was not worthwhile because you would be getting the game unlimited for free sooner rather than later anyway.

I however did not say do not purchase nor did I not say do not play The Secret World.  The game is released today and of course in traditional Funcom numbers it is posting average review numbers.

I’d like to differentiate the Funcom transition to free to play from this first time Electronic Arts transition into free to play.  Funcom moved to free to play because they stopped making money with a subscription model.  SWTOR is moving to free to play because it is a better business model.  This can be evidenced by the fact that Warhammer Online… in its 5 year glory is still yet to go to free to play despite being dead for quite some time.

SWTOR going free to play addresses the primary problem people had with getting the game in the first place, that is they wanted a single player experience but did not want to pay a subscription.  SWTOR, unlike other games, is not dying so quickly.  To compare Rift went from 500,000 to 150,000 in under a month, Age of Conan went from 1,000,000 to 100,000 in a month, DC Universe Online went from 1,200,000 to 100,000 in a month, Warhammer Online went from 750,000 to 5,000 in a month.

SWTOR went from 1.7M to 1.3M over a period of 4 months and only recently dropped under a million.  They’re not waiting to die off to make the switch.

It’s time for developers to face it, World of Warcraft was a commercial oddity that no one will ever hit ever again.  Blizzard successfully created a social club with a monthly entry fee.

The new Bioware model will be very similar to the Sony Online Entertainment model.  You will be able to do the quests to Level 50 for free.  If you want more character slots you have to buy them (or delete your character), if you want to PvP you have to pay for that, if you want access to PvE dungeons you have to buy a dungeon pass.

The odd part of this is that unlike Sony Online Entertainment games…. the leveling content is what people want to do.  Honestly, no one cares about leveling in Lord of the Rings Online.  In fact I’d argue that the leveling is the most painful part of that game as if you don’t purchase bonus zones it becomes tedious and almost impossible.  The same is true of Dungeons and Dragons Online and DC Universe Online.  Leveling sucked in these games, you WANTED to do the dungeon and end game content.

The problem for SWTOR so far comes in with that there is no reason to make the jump from arguably the best and funnest part of the game (solo leveling) to their group end game content.  SOE created guest passes whereas if you purchased dungeon access you could (as leader) bring your group into the dungeon.  The content is largely

What Bioware does with their free to play model will in the end decide whether or not the game will succeed or fail.  By having questing up to Level 50 free I have no doubt that the game will have capacity servers on free to play launch, but I don’t know how they will do on the money side of things.

Age of Conan vblog #7: Stupid Volcano Base

So I started playing Age of Conan and that lasted 3 hours.  So instead of posting up all three hours I am doing a highlights reel.  Included in this is the solution to navigating the volcano base to replace the blood of the innocents, enjoy.

Star Trek Online vblog #4: Low Level PvP

So in this video I’m showing off low level ground and space PvP and how they’re really not that well balanced at a low level… and hence not worth doing.  Unfortunately PvP gives you access to special PvP gear and if you don’t do it you get crippled at a higher level.  Enjoy.

Dragonsoul vblog #4: So Powerful I Run Through Walls

In this video I go through the design structure companies go through during beta processes and in particular how it relates to the main activity of the game (quests).  I discuss quest aids (Quest Helper/Auto Route) and also kick some ass.