http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/04/global-agenda-free-to-play-gets-five-times-the-players-revenues-higher-than-they-ever-have-been/?ns_campaign=article -feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0


Read this article, and it made me think of the absolutely terrible business model DAOC is running, and one of the reasons I quit the game. Small player base.

Step it up DAOC, you're one of the best MMO's ever made, no reason for you to die of HIV in the shadows.


--Dulu

If you want to see DAoC go F2P, you need to start talking about what you'd pay for.

F2P is great when you're already RR10, and have all the gear you could want. What's in it for EA?
The whole point of F2P is that they make MORE money, not less. Can you really see
an established player base suddenly start forking out cash for what...Astral?

Or, they have to start adding new, more powerful items/classes, so people will pay for those. That
wouldn't upset the existing player base

Seriously, if they went F2P before they nerfed ToA, you might have had something. People would have
paid for MLs, Artifacts, Scrolls, even the new stuff they added like glass, scales, essences...these
are things people would have paid for, but still optional for the existing player-base.

Or before they made dragon armor stupidly easy to get. Or leveling stupidly fast. Or, or, or...etc.

Too late, imo. F2P only works if they have something to sell. EA-DAoC has already given the farm
away...they have nothing left to sell except realm rank and astral gear, and that wouldn't be enough
to support what we have left of this game.

F2P might be the future, but DAoC will never be F2P. Sorry

Edit: at least not without a complete overhaul of certain areas of the game.

 

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vault space for one thing.

 

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Just make Pendragon F2P, then make people play for the regular servers. It's a win-win really for them. More testers on Pendragon, and boom, free RR13 Advertisement.

 

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The game is badly designed, so F2P would just cause problems. If they allowed free level 50 characters, you'd see even more buffbots logged in at border keeps.

Mythic has restricted their options quite badly. They've been going for months in the direction of scaling the game down and getting all the remaining players onto a single server. If the numbers in that article are any indication of what could happen - getting 5 times the number of players, Ywain just wouldn't cope. The server cap is around 4000 players, although the stats are down at the moment, I'd guess there's around 3000 to 3500 players at the moment. What would they do with 15,000 players? They couldn't cope with it.

Steam is probably also the reason why Global Agenda is getting more attention, free additional publicity from Steam with popups telling players that Global Agenda is part of the great list of F2P games on Steam, along with players seeing their friends playing the game with those small popup notifications.

It's not impossible to turn DAOC into a F2P game, but Mythic would have to start a bunch of new servers just to cope with new players. Maybe this could be a good thing, a bunch of fresh start servers with players only able to create characters on a single realm.

It's really too bad F2P is the future... It pretty much gives developers a reason to make overpowered items and classes, or exclusive content that overshadows non-paid content. In the end, it's likely that you'll not only spend the 15 bucks each month, but more likely that you'll need to spend even more to stay competitive/content. That's why company's are seeing record profits...just think of if a game like WoW went F2P (greedy company as is).

 

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This game could easily go F2P


Astral items, glass, scales, vault space, previous seasonal items, level scrolls (5 levels a pop), CL scrolls, ML scrolls, horses, epic armor, respecs, profiles (so you won't need as many respecs lol), buff pots that offer red level buffs...the list goes on and on.


EA doesn't want this though, because there is a high failure rate seeing as Mythic is implementing it. Nothing personal against Mythic but if you bork switching to F2P, and they very easily could, then it is lights out for the game. So instead, just leave them up as steady cash flow. Easier, cheaper and ensures a steady flow of income to throw at other projects.


EA has completely given up on Mythic. They now have their hopes pegged on bioware. That's why WAR and DAoC see very little attention, let alone attention on important issues. That is why Mythic barely exists as a company, and why they are now more effectively called Bioware.

 

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Yeah, like I said, if they went F2P before they made all the above ridiculously easy to attain, it could have been viable. But honestly, there just wouldn't be enough people who would buy glass? Are you serious? Do you really think
there are enough people who would buy vault space to pay for the game?

I'm not trying to be a jerk here, just realistic. I'd love a F2P model for daoc. The sad reality is that going F2P would have required some serious leadership and vision at a time when few were doing F2P, and that ship sailed about 3 years ago.

 

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Free to play would probably mean the base client, without any expansions, and for new accounts only. That's how it's done in Anarchy Online, the pioneer of free to play.

Established accounts with all the upgrades should still cost a monthly fee.

 

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Sir, I think you have missed the point.

The game would not be going F2P to get RR10 players to buy Astral gear. It would be going F2P to attract NEW players, and get them to buy stuff we all already have. Scales, glass, XP bonus tokens, vanity pets, mounts. Maybe add some new titles, or vault space.

If you knew how many more people play Runescape than DAOC, simply because it's free, you would probably cry.