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Dungeons & Dragons Online Goes Free-To-Play
Dungeons & Dragons Online developer Turbine has announced that they'll be launching a new version of the game, called Eberron Unlimited, which makes it free to play, with the option of using micro-transactions to buy certain items and customize characters. Players will also be able to earn points through normal play that they can spend in the DDO Store. There's an additional option to pay a normal subscription fee for priority access to servers, a monthly allotment of points for the store, and extra character slots. Further details and a sign-up for the beta are available at the game's website.
Having just pay-for-play sets a threshold. You'll still have annoying players, but not as many. I'd want a "Play at +1, ignore Anonymous Cowards" option for the "VIP" (for-pay) accounts.
I'm a dick to people in WoW only because it's the last fun thing to do. Raiding? PVP? I'd rather just grief. Even with pay-to-play, you spend your $15 a month to play how you want, I spend mine to camp people, troll the realm forums, and do old content with friends.
I, of course, do not ninja loot like some people or interfere with a guilds progression. That's where I draw the line.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Wow, it must have really sucked to fly under my radar...
Anyway, I should contribute something to the discussion.
The whole point why successful dating services (yeah who would have throught MMOs and Dating Services had something in common) charge is to create a cost-of-entry that separates serious participants from the rest of the population.
By making a game free-to-play you are inviting disaster as many /.'ers have pointed out.
In fact game studios would do far better to charge MORE for certain options.
I know at least 400 VN board members that pleaded with Mythic for a 21+ and over server for DAOC. We were so damn sick of the 10 year olds playing...
Same with the hard core role players. They were willing to shell out $20 a month for a hard core, RPG server.
I'd wager you would also get some people to kick in $5 extra a month for say 40 and older servers also for people that still remember how to spell OKAY.
Seriously free-to-play means every idiot and their cousin can get on. Remember how pissed the techie crowd was with AOL and COMPUSERV for bring ever no-nothing to the Internet?
Seriously look what happened to WoW when they started their free trial program. First week alone on Tichndrius there where 200+ people spamming Gold ads in Ironforge forever renaming it LAGFORGE and SPAMFORGE.
Even after the tweaks to shut up folks on trial accounts you still had to contend with starting an alt and have 100 level 1 bots camping every spawn with some level 40 (at the time) telling you that if you want to kill stuff you had to play him 10 gold. (We had a big problem with Cross Realm extortionists back then...)
Seriously D&D Online must have sucked pretty bad for flying this low under the radar and making a free-to-play version sounds like a really really bad idea...
But hey I love being proven wrong. It happens once in a while and I find it refreshing.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Why? There's absolutely nothing wrong with what he does. Death in wow has zero penalties, and it's absolutely within the game mechanics to grief people like he does. Maybe you need a -1 reality check (aka overrated) mod?
Eve allows tons of griefing, as does darkfall, as does any game with PVP, especially if you're on a PVP server. The victims that are bad players always cry out like no other, which feeds and entertains those who choose to grief. If you choose to carebear all day then do so, that's your $15.
And if you ever want to visit griefer central, try out EVE sometime (also with a monthly charge).
EVE is a game that revolves around griefing. Griefers camp strategic points in space. Anti-griefers hunt the griefers. Industrialists supply both sides with new ships and supplies. Occasionally there are large scale lagfests where groups of people destroy lots and lots of each other's ships to compete for griefing rights in a certain area of space.
The reason why this is so successful is because, as a post a few up from here notes, what is there left to do? It's just not worthwhile for a company to write that much content for people paying only $15 a month. And in a virtual world like that of EVE, PvP tends to evolve into griefing instead of even matchups or other formal PvP.
mmmm...forbidden donut
Not picking on your post specifically, but it's interesting that within 10 minutes of my original post I got two responses telling me that if I don't enjoy WoW PvP I shouldn't roll on a PvP server. What's interesting is that I wasn't expressing an opinion on PvP, I was just stating that there is a penalty to it.
It's also an interesting response because it's the same knee-jerk defense of WoW PvP I've read in many other forums. If you don't like it, go away. If that's become such a quick response to anything that seems even remotely to be an attack on PvP, maybe that says something about how PvP is broken in WoW. Can you play on a PvP server without griefing or being griefed? What if all your friends are griefers and refuse to roll on anything but a PvP server? Is there any point to playing on a PvP server besides being able to one day grief others? Do people even distinguish between griefing and PvP anymore or is it basically, "You're on a PvP server. Expect PvP all day, every day. Oh and by the way PvP means that as you're out questing you'll encounter random groups of PvP equipped max level players who will kill you and camp your corpse."
And no, I don't play WoW so I don't need advice on what server to roll on. I'm just a bit disappointed in what PvP has come to be defined as. I tell my WoW playing friends that when I want to PvP I'll load up DoD:S or TF2. That's consensual PvP.
mmmm...forbidden donut
It's sad that we live in a MMO gaming world where everyone who isn't a rude, ruthless prick of a griefer is derided as a "carebear." Some of us play games to actually have fun, you know. Not all of us are anti-social outcasts looking to take our anger out on the world.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
being an asshole to other players. Something about playing PvP seems to bring out the desire to be an anonymous fuckwad towards other people. Probably because there are no consequences, and partially because it grants the illusion of power to the PvPer, even if it is only the power to annoy.
Its a shame too, because I have enjoyed PvP in the past in games where at least some people had a sense of sportsmanship (early DAOC for instance), but that sort of player seems to have disappeared, buried in the mass of total asshats that the hobby throws up like so much putrid trash.
I no longer PvP in any game because I just don't want to be bothered spending my time associating with people whom if I met them in real life and they talked and acted the way they do to me in game, I most likely would kick them in the nuts repeatedly.
It is possible to PvP and not grief, it is possible to PvP and if you win, not Tbag or asshat your enemy, it is possible to lose without whining. If you join a PvP server you know you are facing the worst of online humanity, you can expect conduct that wouldn't be tolerated in grade school by people who don't seem to have passed grade school. At best they are a loathesome pile of shit, obscuring the few decent players I have met and in a lot of cases they aren't even very good.
I think the answer is to stop PvPing. Fuck those guys, if they can't play nice, don't play. Its a waste of time. I enjoy other aspects of games quite happily and always have. I just gave up on PvPing because the quality of people I had to associate with wasn't worth the bother. Plus the gameplay gets kind of stagnant eventually as well.
Queue the PvPers responding to diss me and call me a carebear etc.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid