Free-To-Play Switch Going Well For D&D Online

babboo65 writes "Dungeons and Dragons Online is enjoying a second life in terms of player count and buzz, all thanks to its new business strategy: giving the game away. Turbine is making their MMO as accessible as possible, and that includes making players who don't pay anything as happy as possible. Subscriptions are up 40 percent. Ars explores how free can be very profitable."

Comments

The game

[Sinryc]

The game is a whole lot of fun. I really hope this serves as an example for future online games. Micro Transactions really aren't all bad, especially the way that Turbine is doing them.

Re:The game

[Professor_UNIX]

I won't walk, I'll run away from games that employ strategies like this in the future. I got into a browser game a few years ago called Travian that promised to be "free" and you could buy "gold" if you wanted extras like instant builds or NPC merchant trading or +25% resource production boosts. I quickly realized that if you wanted to be in the top 500 players on a server of about 1500 active players you HAD to buy and use gold or else there was no way to keep up. I got so addicted to it that rather than wait 15 minutes for a resource to build I'd just insta-build it so I could move on to the next building level.

The problem was that by abstracting the currency it made it far easier to spend out of control. You'd pay $25 for 600 gold (~4 cents for each piece of gold) and you'd spend 3 gold (12 cents) to NPC trade, 2 gold (8 cents) to instabuild your queue of up to 2 things at a time (if you had the "plus" feature which added the queue for 15 gold (60 cents) a week), 5 gold x 4 (80 cents) to boost production of iron, wood, clay, and wheat, 3 gold x 2 (24 cents) to boost attack and defense bonuses by 10%, etc. The NPC trading was by far the worst money sink since it was so easy to abuse. You *could* trade with normal players, but nobody really does past the first few weeks of game play (the game round lasts a year) since it is impractical to try and find a trade for tens of thousands of resources... so you NPC trade it instantly for 3 gold (12 cents).

So, at a minimum you'd spend $6.56 a month for the Travian Plus feature plus +25% resource boosts, +10% offensive and defensive bonuses. That at first seems reasonable for running such a cool game, but I was averaging around $100 a month on gold because of NPC trading and instabuilding. My coworker had it worse because his two sons were playing and he was even worse with the instabuilding. His monthly Travian habit, including his two sons' costs were running him around $300/month. FOR A GAME!

So no thanks, I'll take a $15/month subscription fee ANY DAY over a microtransaction arrangement where you need to eventually spend obscene amounts of money just to be in the top players.

Re:The game

[MrMista_B]

Your problem isn't the game, it's that you want to be 'in the top players'.

Most people don't care about that.

That you do, is nobody's fault but your own.

Re:The game

[Targon]

This is where you clearly have never even looked at the game in question(DDO). The game does not revolve around player vs. player, though there are some very very limited forms of it in the game(in certain taverns there are combat pits).

The DDO method of free to play is really giving you an unlimited taste of the game for free by offering a bit of free content without making all content for free. You have the option to either play the free content on multiple characters to generate enough "Turbine Points" to purchase additional content, or you can pay real money for Turbine points which you can then use to get the content package of your choice. If you don't like being limited in what you can access, you can just become a normal $15/month subscriber to get access to all the content in the game. In a month or two, if you don't want to pay the monthly subscription any more, you can switch back to free to play, lose access to the non-free content you have not purchased, but you don't LOSE what you have accomplished. Those who pay the monthly subscription also get 500 Turbine Points each month they are a subscriber, and those points can be used to unlock content for the free to play if the player decides to go back to Free to Play status.

So, DDO offers the best of both worlds. You get free to play with micro transactions, and you get subscription based for those who want all the content the game has to offer. There are also no "player rankings" as such, so no one really cares about who has the absolute best stuff, as long as your skill at playing your character is at an acceptable level(clerics who don't heal, or who don't know how to use mass healing spells in a raid situation may upset others for example). There is also a tolerance for poor equipment levels to an extent as long as party members know about it in advance so it doesn't kill what the group is trying to do.

And, this is why DDO is seeing good subscription numbers from the release of Free to Play. Some people may upgrade for only a few months to get full access to the "premium" content in the low to mid levels, and then switch back to the Free to Play and then only buy the few high level premium modules they want access to after that. Or, if new content is released often enough, they may stick with their subscription so they don't have to buy each new content pack as it is released.

Re:The game

[CarpetShark]

you want to be 'in the top players'.

Most people don't care about that.

I think most people would like to be in the top players. They realise, though, that most of the top players have sacrificed years of their lives for that little level number on their profile and shinier weapons, and (very sanely) don't want to compete on those terms.

As an aside, this might mean that having some sort of safety cut-off for addicted players could make the game better for those healthier, less addicted players.

Re:The game

[Applekid]

Your problem isn't the game, it's that you want to be 'in the top players'.

Most people don't care about that.

That you do, is nobody's fault but your own.

I don't know about Travian, but, most "free" games I've played have content that's not available except for the Top Players. Well, sure, it's available but the second you enter the dungeon or get to the boss or whatever, you're squished pretty soundly. That's because these top tier events are balanced for those at the top, who get there using in-game paid help. To me, that's just as good as locking people out for non-payment.

It's the right of the game developer to do that, of course. But they shouldn't really be billing it as a "free" game if you can't fully play it without paying. They should be honest and admit that if you're not prepared to pay, you're not going to play it all.

If I wanted to play a game where chance of winning is directly related to the money I spend, I'd play Magic again. At least WotC doesn't pretend it's a free game.

Dark Dungeons

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Matthew 7:13-14
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

How much easier could Satan be making it than providing the game for free online?

Some required reading

Re:Unlimited trial

[cgenman]

Note that you're also paying for convenience. You can buy anything with in-game earned currency, or you can just plop real cash down and buy things. Players that have more time than money can grind everything, and players who have more money than time can fund development of the game.

Also do note that this is a pretty common mechanic in Asian MMO's. When a player has only intermittent access to gaming cafes, you have to find ways of monetizing the gameplay which doesn't lock players into repeating payments. Pay-or-play-for-items is one such strategy.

Second Life

[MrMista_B]

Second Life has been doing this for years and years, relying soley on microtransactions.

From all accounts, they're still doing very well.

Re:Second Life

[fake_name]

The big difference is in Second Life those micro transactions are between players; Linden Labs takes a cut only when players convert ingame currency back into real money.

Re:Second Life

[gutnor]

The content of the "game" is also provided by other players. So, not really that much different, money goes to people generating content.

Re:Unlimited trial

[Wildclaw]

Players that have more time than money can grind everything,

Unfortunately, due to how the currency system is setup, that grind involves repeatedly creating and deleting characters, as the amount of a currency a single character can earn is limited.

As a cheap bastard

[Miner Willy]

I wholeheartedly support this courageous move.

Re:YPou Fail It

[X0563511]

This is why you never code your bots while drunk.

Whoever did this should be ashamed.

No offense Turbine, but make MAC versions

[Shivetya]

because I am not loading a windows partition just to play games.

One reason I like Blizzard is that they have kept us in the loop for a long time, even before it was simple

Re:There are two ways to do it

[sapphire wyvern]

The real question is, what are the "neutral", "chaotic" and "lawful" ways of going about it?

After all, we're discussing D&D Online...

Re:Plays on Linux

[larryj]

Linux/OS X launcher:

https://launchpad.net/pylotro

Puzzle Pirates

[ZorbaTHut]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Doubloon Oceans on Puzzle Pirates yet.

A while back Puzzle Pirates set up a bunch of new servers with no subscription fee. Instead, they had a second currency. Besides Pieces of Eight, the standard currency, there was a new one called Doubloons.

On normal oceans, you could play for free with some restrictions, or you could subscribe and have all the restrictions lifted. On Doubloon oceans, you buy off those restrictions with Doubloons - some on a monthly basis, some on a 30-day-played basis (my 2-year-old character is about three weeks through his first "30-day-played" badge. I don't play often.) You can buy off only the restrictions you care about, or you can buy off everything, or you can even buy "super-badges" that give you more capabilities than you'd have normally on a subscriber ocean.

The trick is that you can convert PoE into Doubloons. And not at a fixed game rate, either - it's player-driven.

So let's say I play Puzzle Pirates for the fun of it, and don't care about all the subscriber features. I go out pirating, I make money, I buy doubloons off the market, I can get my badges.

Or, alternatively, let's say my time is valuable to me and I don't feel like grinding. I go blow $20 on doubloons, then trade them for a huge number of Pieces of Eight. Now I'm rich, and I can go buy the pretty clothes and furniture that I want.

Everyone wins! Including the publisher! Because, remember, at no point in this system can you actually create PoE with doubloons or vice-versa. It's always a trade. If a group of players want to spend $10 in doubloons on a bunch of high-level features, someone, somewhere has paid that $10.

Eve Online does something similar. Now, Eve is a subscription-based service, but you can also convert timecards into items called PLEXes. Pilot License Extensions. Each PLEX is a 30-day subscription, and PLEXes can be traded, at will, on the open market. So, again, if you don't want to pay any money for the game, you don't have to - make the money ingame, buy a PLEX, use the plex, repeat. As long as you can buy one PLEX every month, you're set! (You may have to subscribe for a few months to gear up your PLEX-making.)

Alternatively, if you want a small fleet of battleships, go buy some timecodes, turn into PLEXes, and sell. Lots of money, lots of battleships!

Everyone wins!

I took the bait and tried out DDO two days ago

[default luser]

After reading this story on Ars (Slashdot is always days late), I tried out the free account system. Three things that really made me happy:

1. They never asked for a credit card. I just created an account like I was signing up for a forum.
2. The download was quick and painless (maxed-out my 25Mbit connection, was playing in 30 minutes).
3. I felt so free that I didn't even feel bad about not getting the chance to play it last night.

I've been itching to try one of these MMOs, but couldn't stomach the monthly fee (I don't often have lots of time to play, and I also tend to put a game down after a couple months, then pick it back up later). For me, a monthly fee would be wasted. I like this pricing structure because I won't be forced to pay for anything, but if I really like the game I could see myself making small purchases here and there. If I find I really like this, and get worried about spending too much, I still have the option to upgrade to the VIP account for the normal $15/month.