Blog post on MMORPG: NCsoft "sold out" Guild Wars

[dwturducken]

^^^^^^^
evil genius

 

[Lily Barclay]

As far as doing end game ops with only two skill bars, the possibility of this depends entirely on your class. My smuggler has three and a half bars of skills that I use. My juggernaut might be functional with two bars. Barely. People are going to leave out things like interrupts and "oh shit" powers, and that is what will make the game harder for other players. I don't count inventory items. At most my toons h have three slots for them, and I rarely need then. But when I do need them, I don't have time to pull up my inventory. And no, I am not fighting with that huge clunky ui in my way. Tab targeting in this game is horrible. So yeah, the end game in SWtOR might technically be reachable for f2p, but there's no way I'd call it playable. Unless you are just talking about dailies. You want to spam that boring crap, more power to you, but hard modes? Not functional without burdening other players.

I will be unsubbing when a better game comes along to throw my money at. Unless they fix it. They won't.

[Lily Barclay]

I am not so certain that those are available to a truely F2P player... hard modes that is.

Ah okay. Well then neither is the end game. Because that's it in this game. Spamming hard modes for gear (that f2p can't wear).

Edit: In order to do ops. I forget about those because I can't stomach the grind to get to that point.

[Lily Barclay]

Yeah I'm not sure if it's a one off or a license.

[AeternalDreamer]

Well, compared to what the F2P was before for Star Wars: TOR, it's great now. I mean, it was very limited before, you could only get to about level 15 if I recall correctly. I've actually resubbed to TOR since I can't bring myself to pay to play CO and I don't pay a monthly fee for CoH anymore. I can afford to pay for one mmo monthly sub again, and I like having all the benefits on my game. I can see why people might get aggravated at the things that are locked out for Premium and F2P, but you're essentially able to play from level 1-50 for free. That's all the story content.

[Adrenalin]

Actually, TOR is adding two more bars to the F2P, as well as a few other minor adjustments. I believe EAware is having the same problem they always have, the pains of learning how to run an MMO while directly in the trenches. I do however think they can be taught, as long as they continue to listen to their player base.

[NecrotechMaster]

The thing that pissed me off most of all, more than the clunky interface {and that's saying something, considering I'm a UI primadonna} and lack of preview was the fact that there was no way at all to gift anything, whether for the in-game store, or master account purchases.

Remember those dollar starter pack offers? I would've bought a dozen {instead of only two} and handed them out to people if I didn't have to set up each account manually.

I mean seriously. Gifting online purchases is not an optional thing anymore.

i agree with that, having a gift option would have definitely been the way to go, i mean you can gift poeple games on steam, whats the difference in gifting an in game item to someone?

it is very likely that the market design and stuff was partially forced on them from the parent company, or nexon

[Victoria Victrix]

Parent company if anything, Nexon were *not* in the picture when Freedom was launched...

....well that depends on how big your tinfoil hat is.

Taek Jin Kim had just married his second wife a couple months before.

Who was a former Nexon executive before she married him.

[corvus1970]

So your hat smells like thanksgiving?

AWESOME! 

[dwturducken]

Every once in a great while, your "British" shows. It's kinda cute.

[corvus1970]

I guess the fact that i said Christmas and not Thanksgiving gave it away right?

For me it was less that, and instead your use of the phrase "bin it"

[dwturducken]

"Bin it," "adverts," "at university" rather than "in college"

Some folks on here, for whatever reason, are lingually indistinguishable from an English speaking North American. Some are clearly not native English speakers. I've been reading your posts for three months, and, while you may have mentioned it once or twice, this is the first time I've actually seen idiomatic differences. 

[Aggelakis]

Ads or advertisements.

Ages 16-18 are still in high school for us. You graduate high school typically at 18 (some at 17). College/university is synonymous and covers all post-HS education other than short certification courses which usually take a few months and don't count toward college degrees.

[srmalloy]

Yeah I agree with you.  But SWtOR has definitely done all they can to make sure no one stays truly free to play.  It's like they are trying to bully players into just subscribing.

Having the "Check out the benefits of becoming a subscriber" button on virtually every window you open is one of the things that, I fear, is rapidly going to become tiresome.

[General Idiot]

CoH had a store button on almost any window that might conceivably have anything related to in it in the store, but at least it was small and mostly unobstrusive. From the sound of it TOR is... not so much. Which doesn't surprise me really, though it does make me wonder if the profits they make by forcing people into subsribing if they want a full featured game outweigh customers they inevitably lose by being so blatant about it.

[dwturducken]

I haven't found the "store" to be obtrusive in any of the games. Sure, the cool stuff is behind a paywall, but it's not obnoxious or limiting. Granted, I haven't gotten beyond about level 25 in any one game (STO).  The free CoH account that I made was obtrusive. The store icon couldn't be turned off on the main play screen. I never felt limited by it, just annoyed, aside from not having all of my veteran rewards.

[FatherXmas]

It reads as tin foil hat conspiracy conjured up by the author due to the controversy over the new Ascended class of loot and nothing more.

[johnrobey]

Meleagar's article reads like a (decent) fan-zine, not a pro-zine (professional magazine, if "pro-zine" is unfamiliar.)   It also raises valid points, many of which have been discussed here.  As a player I'm willing to do a certain, limited amount of "grinding."  As a player I like the Free to Play (F2P) model as an extended trial to see whether I like the product enough to subscribe.  One of my friends is an MMO player of considerable experience (she now gets paid to develop wikis so has to play even games she doesn't like) whose initial raves over GW2 soured in about two weeks, for the reasons Meleagar writing about (cash shops/pay-to-win) and others.  Meleagar also seems in favor of a Consumer/Player Bill of Rights (another topic we've discussed on these forums.)

Myself, I'm happy to pay $15-25/month for an MMORPG subscription.  For myself, it's good entertainment value for the dollar compared to movie house prices or even NetFlix DVD rentals.  I already know from LOTRO that I'm better off subscribing if I'm going to play beyond casual low level, because it will cost me much more as "premium"/silver than as a subscribing VIP/gold player.  Meleagar raises some interesting issues, and I wonder how long it will be before Industrial Engineers, Psychologists and others are brought in to figure out the best most cost-efficient way of fleecing the players.  Maybe they're already here.

If Meleagar's prediction about online MMORPGaming is correct, then it's likely I'll switch back to stand alone computer games, such as Civilization.  Barring that, I'll break out a deck of cards and gather some friends.  If my hand warrants it, I'll start the bidding at One No Trump.

[houtex]

It reads as tin foil hat conspiracy conjured up by the author due to the controversy over the new Ascended class of loot and nothing more.

This.

And this tidbit, from the article:

"Essentially, the game has become a pay-to-win scheme."

I was unaware that MMOs were 'winnable' in some way, except to get to the pinnacle of character development.  And then make a new one, or keep stayin' on top with that badass.

The Portals, Quakes, and Dooms (sans PvP) are 'winnable'.  Mario Kart is winnable.  Zelda is winnable.  The Original Adventure (The Heathkit version is my fav... LPWI babies.) is winnable. 

How do you win at MMOs?  Just curious.  Perhaps I can be enlightened. 

/Don't play that many... but they all seem to be "level up to the top and you... uh, got there.  Keep playin' or something."

[CG]

After you reach the level cap, you improve with gear.  Since you can buy gear in the store and there's a stronger PvP aspect to Korean style games, you can pay to win in those if the store sells better gear.  Winning in this case is beating all the other players.

Even in WoW, you need to run lower level dungeons to get the gear to challenge higher level raids and eventually beat the expansion's "boss" (winning).