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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.
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.
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.