No Free Lunch
Nov. 27th, 2012 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenBeen thinking about The Old Republic’s Free-to-Play model. It’s pretty limiting, especially compared to the MMOs I’m used to like Star Trek Online. Trek online gives you basically the whole game for free – subscribers get some bonus inventory slots and free cash store fun-bucks every month, little things like that, but gameplay wise, they don’t get anything free players can’t get.
The Old Republic, on the other hand, limits everything. Free players get reduced experience. Can’t equip purple quality items. Can’t really use the crafting system. Can’t access their bank or guild bank. Are limited in how many space missions and flashpoint instances they can do a week. Have only half as many interface bars, for crying out loud! There’s not a single aspect of the game where they’re not limited or outright barred until they pony up some cash.
I think The Old Republic is taking the wrong approach. To begin with, its method seems build around encouraging people to subscribe – but the game already failed as a pure-subscription model, and adding a fairly frustrating free option isn’t likely to give them many new long-term subscribers. Second, it feels a bit desperate – STO’s welcoming, it gives you the whole game seemingly confident that people are going to enjoy the free stuff enough to want to buy extras from the cash store. The Old Republic, meanwhile, seems to be holding a lot of stuff hostage to make you need to buy the extras to get the proper experience.
Thirdly, with Trek Online, cash store purchases… well, serve as advertisements for themselves. Since most of the extra stuff is largely cosmetic, you want to show it off. If I see a Caitian captain in mirror universe uniform flying an Excelsior around Federation space, it gets me thinking “Hey, that’s a cool-looking ship and captain. I’d really like something like that…” Meanwhile, in the Old Republic, if the guy next to me has paid to use the extra items and to craft and to get the proper number of interface bars… well, I’ll never know, he’ll look the same as my freeloading smuggler.
It’s frustrating, because underneath it all, TOR has some good stuff – but the people running it don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing.
The Old Republic, on the other hand, limits everything. Free players get reduced experience. Can’t equip purple quality items. Can’t really use the crafting system. Can’t access their bank or guild bank. Are limited in how many space missions and flashpoint instances they can do a week. Have only half as many interface bars, for crying out loud! There’s not a single aspect of the game where they’re not limited or outright barred until they pony up some cash.
I think The Old Republic is taking the wrong approach. To begin with, its method seems build around encouraging people to subscribe – but the game already failed as a pure-subscription model, and adding a fairly frustrating free option isn’t likely to give them many new long-term subscribers. Second, it feels a bit desperate – STO’s welcoming, it gives you the whole game seemingly confident that people are going to enjoy the free stuff enough to want to buy extras from the cash store. The Old Republic, meanwhile, seems to be holding a lot of stuff hostage to make you need to buy the extras to get the proper experience.
Thirdly, with Trek Online, cash store purchases… well, serve as advertisements for themselves. Since most of the extra stuff is largely cosmetic, you want to show it off. If I see a Caitian captain in mirror universe uniform flying an Excelsior around Federation space, it gets me thinking “Hey, that’s a cool-looking ship and captain. I’d really like something like that…” Meanwhile, in the Old Republic, if the guy next to me has paid to use the extra items and to craft and to get the proper number of interface bars… well, I’ll never know, he’ll look the same as my freeloading smuggler.
It’s frustrating, because underneath it all, TOR has some good stuff – but the people running it don’t seem to have a clue what they’re doing.