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Dark Age of Camelot Releases Old Expansion as Patch
Popular MMOG Dark Age of Camelot has had several expansions since its launch, and recently the Shrouded Isles expansion was released to the playerbase as a patch to the game. This essentially ensures that anyone who purchases even the base game is upgraded to the better graphics engine of the Shrouded Isles expansion. The patch is downloadable from FileFront and ValueCommerce. Another notch in the trend of Massive games trying to emphasize free content additions as a selling point.
Isn't this the qualm of all early adopters? You're taking a gamble whenever you make a purchase. It can be an educated and calculated risk, or it can be a folly. Everyone is entitled to their right to complain but at times like this it isn't very sensible.
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
WoW has all but destroyed the player base of DAoC. Their endgame relies on a large number of people playing, and unfortunately it's spun into a rut thats going to take a miracle to fix. WoW and EQ2 have finally nailed the coffin shut on that game imho.
Mythic has had no real compeition in their niche until now. I hope they enjoyed their hayday while they had it.
They got to use it for months (year(s)?) earlier. Think of all those suckers that paid for Doom and Quake! Phew!
They don't get access to the zone as far as I heard (but I stopped playing my 50 Valewalker when Trials of Atlantis came out and haven't followed Mythic much after that), only the updated graphics engine. They use NDL's (Numeric Designs) rendering engine (same one used for Elder Scroll Morrowind.) Their "expansions" tend to fall along NDL's updates to their engine. Hmmm....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Welcome the the world of MMORPGs.. Everyone with staying power does it.
EITHER
A) buy each new expansion for $19-$29 OR
B) wait 18 months or so and buy the special combo pack with the original+ last 3(6/9/etc)expansions for $19-$25.
C) get a free "buddy" key that includes all current expansions to "share" with a "friend"
Playing on the bleeding edge is expensive. Waiting a while is cheaper... Eventually Doom3 will be $19.95 and I'll buy it. Or it will be included free with my subscription to PCGamer.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Mythic only released the engine for free, you still have to pay for the Shrouded Isles content. The only reason the SI engine is being offred as a free download is because the DAoC classic engine will no longer be supported once Catacombs is released tuesday. Not as generous as it first sounded eh?
Wow, this is this first time I've wanted to respond to slashdot post with a biblical parable.
Here's the short version:
Guy needs help havesting. He hires 10 day workers for X money to do the work. Around noon, he goes out and snatches another 10 to do work. At 2, he gets 10 more. At the end of the day, he's happy. He pays X money to each person.
The people working all day are pissed. "Why do those guys get the same reward for less work?" they ask. The land owner replies, "I told you that you would get X for your labor, and you got it. Our arrangement was fair."
Boom. You paid for content. You got it. Life was good. If someone else is given it as an incentive to play later, that's fine.
Um - I would hope they are charging more than what it takes to maintain the game. They are a company in business to make a profit afterall.
I don't consider the extra content free - it makes me much happier paying the monthly fee when I know that there are quarterly "expansions" included in that cost.
As to CoH vs. WoW - to each his own. I've been playing CoH since June and still haven't seen and done everything. Admittedly I only have time for a couple of hours everyday, so I am by no means a hardcore MMO player.
I tried the beta for WoW and just couldn't get into it. I'm sure it's a great game and lots of people seem to love it. Not enough spandex for me though.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Mythic had 2 expansions "Foundations" that they released free of charge. One was an entire housing system and zones and the other was a makeover of the RvR zones and system. They have done a pretty good job with making sure that the 12 dollars a month doesn't just go to bug fixing and server costs it also pays for added content if you want to download it. On top of that they have had 2 yearly pay expansions (with the 3rd being released tomorrow Dec 7th)
I hope more companies follow Mythic's lead and make the standard monthly mmo fee actually feel like it is paying for something.
1: Spend three years paying coders and devs to write a huge, immersive video game, an order of magnitude more complex than most console titles.
2: Invite 200,000 people to play on it.
3: Manage it for less than 2.5 million a month, while adding content, maintaining and adjusting game balance, keeping sufficient live CSRs on duty to answer help requests and appeals, and make it fun to not only the hardcore gamer, but the casual player and roleplayer as well.
once you can pull this off, you can bitch about mmo fees. until then, you can't say a got-damn thing.
these things are fucking expensive to run.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...