Comments on: Why Not Sell Epics?

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:07:54 +0000

Right, thanks for the correction. It’s been a while since I looked at that in GW. ;)

By: Dan Gray

Dan Gray — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:37:06 +0000

A small but important clarification:

“Hell, GW is still selling maxed out PvP characters with all the skills already unlocked (or have they stopped doing it? I have no idea).”

Guild Wars does not ‘sell maxed out PvP characters’, so much as PvP characters are already maxed out. You have the ability to create a character at max level, with max attribute points from the word go. That said, they do charge for skill and equipment unlock packs…

Guild Wars 2 will be similarly tailored to the skill>time crowd, having PvE characters and equipment brought to a set level when entering a structured PvP zone. It will not require any RMT at all to be entirely competitive from day one.

By: Dan Gray

Dan Gray — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:23:16 +0000

I think if there was a risk that gear could be recognized as ‘not properly earned’ people would avoid buying it in the first place. The status is as important as the stats. It wouldn’t make business sense to Blizzard to make their product so much less attractive.

By: Dan Gray

Dan Gray — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:20:07 +0000

The negative perception surrounding F2P MMOs with item shops has been fading for a few years now. It certainly wasn’t DDO that got that ball rolling – though it may currently be the best example.

By: Borror0

Borror0 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:20:07 +0000

It just goes to prove how easily people distort facts to support their worldview. For someone who wants RMTs selling powerful items, DDO is a premium example of how successful a game doing just that can be… when DDO does not do that.

Quite the contrary, the successfulness of DDO’s transition is about how well-implemented within the game the DDO Store is (ie it does not feel tacked on) and how careful Turbine was at not angering us too much.

Got to love the confirmation bias!

By: Stabs

Stabs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:16:13 +0000

It’s not a matter of telling him he’s not welcome. It’s about me not wanting to play with people who don’t have basic game knowledge.

The old model was level slowly > learn your class > do end-game 5 mans > learn your class > start raiding > learn your class as you wipe loads > be an uber raider and have lots of shiny epics.

The new model is just the last step of the old model. Destination without journey.

Not a game I’d want to play. The guy who bought is epics is welcome to what’s left when I leave. Maybe he’ll pay someone to turn the lights out when everyone leaves.

By: Zubon

Zubon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:17:20 +0000

Hitting the original question: hardcore players will place more support calls. We hit more bugs, and we hit them more often. If they are new bugs, hey, free beta testing. Quite often, though, I would hit known bugs, occasionally the same one multiple times per day, and it required a CSR to fix it. See my time in the first year of City of Villains for examples.

All costs considered (wages, facilities, overhead), if you consume 1 hour of CSR time per month, you have wiped out any profit on your account, and you may have offset out all revenue period. There may be other benefits to having someone stumble over all the bugs, but the third time this week my Mayhem Mission is bugged in CoV, no one is gaining from that customer service transaction. Hardcore players can repeat content faster than you can patch it.

By: Ramon

Ramon — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:41:36 +0000

Yes, that just adds to the weirdness. But the fact that DDO is doing _anything_ of this sort has now legitimized the practice for all American MMOs :)

By: Julian

Julian — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:04:10 +0000

Hell, GW is still selling maxed out PvP characters with all the skills already unlocked (or have they stopped doing it? I have no idea).

Since GW is not a gear game, but a skills game instead, it’s a minor interpretive step to take to realize they’ve been doing exactly this and the sky hasn’t necessarily come down on them yet.

The trick is that GW has never been a sub-based game. Maybe that’s why the earth hasn’t opened to swallow them yet.

By: Syncaine

Syncaine — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:52:27 +0000

Mailbox mods are the difference between today’s WoW mailbox UI and what WAR launched with. (multi-item, auto-fill, one-click removal, etc)