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Matrix online Then SWG. Whos Next? DC?
azucar
Member Posts: 20
Well i played swg back in precu days before the dark times. then after a CU protest while crashing the servers down they think they would have gotten a clue. But Nope. at anycase i will agree with the lack of content in Swg so perhaps it was only going to be a matter of time before the plug got pulled. but it isnt the only MMO that had its rug pulled ...Matrix Online. Though i never played it i felt bad for those that lost there in game home. never the less after t he NGE i swore i would never play another SOE game again. Untill DCUO. after shelling out 60 bucks for this game. i felt the wow factor at first. the new combat style for a mmo is great. at last i could put my trust in this company once again until i hit the wall. the end game wall.
you see with the one month free you get after paying for the game i was able to get to lvl 30 max cap. and got all of my T1 pve gear set. and a T2 chest. and i thought, if i can get all this in under a months time,
did they just sell me a 30 dollar game with a 60 dollar tag?
has SOE taken a back seat to content and quality perhaps they are leaning on the impulse buyer and the hardcore DC fans?
and with all the hate towards the free to play players being criticised and spoke down to. i hate to brake it to you guys but the f2p players is this game last chance to pull its self out of the the Sh%T pit.
and if the F2P gamers dont bite the bate will DCUO go the same way of Matrix Online, and SWG?
And if so, how long will it take? maybe the end of the licence like in SWG? or maybe 5 years?
What are your thoughts?
Comments
I hope DCUO does not shut down honestly. I love this game, I stopped playing when it was p2p. I am back now but am really hoping this game won't shut down.
I don't think DCUO will shut down. Doesn't make sense.
As a FTP game with a strong IP, it's more appealing than a P2P game with a strong IP because it won't cost new players anything to go check it out.
The game will probably depend a lot more (even more than now) on PS3 players which actually is a good thing as a FTP. That means they won't directly have to compete with PC-only mmos that go FTP. The person looking to play EQ2, LOTRO, AoC or Fallen Earth isn't looking for the same type of thing overall I don't believe.
The appeal of DCU is fast hitting PvP action with console controller type skills. If you put a couple hundred thousand people in this environment for free that makes things interesting.
A game like this is the perfect FTP game for some quick side PvP action without a commitment just like most console players are already used to. They'll buy some packages to unlock some things, buy some costumes, buy some exobytes to PvP with in the arenas and that will satisy most of them. Raiders aren't the target audience of this game really; it's more of the "hero vs villain" which inherently means PvP.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Yes but for the DCU cash shop to keep the game going, SOE must add new items to it every month and content is something SOE have always failed to provide in there games. DCU wouldn't even be F2P if SOE were able to add new content to the game in a timely manner like they claimed at launch and that was with a 100% sub based model nevermind a F2P game.
Every character has a ton of slots for gear.. hands, head, legs, face, feet, eyes, hair, etc. Each piece is connected to a set of some kind: Barbarian, Cyborg, Assassin, whatever. Collecting sets gives skillpoints, which makes your character stronger.
Someone doing FTP will be able to get a lot of the basic sets for looks and styles just running around in the game but a lot of the others won't be available that way. Assuming SOE sells just one piece of gear for $1 (which is likely) that might be almost $10 a set. People will buy that as FTP cash shops have proven. One thing people love it to have their toon look good more than anything, the second is changing their style or look after a certain amount of time, or just mixing/matching.
Blizzard just announced they lost 800k subs, but yet during the same time, they tripled their income and over 60% of that was digital sales. So, they lost people but gained money. This is exactly why SOE went this way and this game is suited much more for a cash shop than WoW.
"The good news is that the company has whooped expectations by nearly tripling its profit for the quarter over this time last year. During this past quarter, Activision Blizzard raked in $627 million worth of sales, of which $148 million is pure profit. A majority of the revenue -- 62% -- comes from its digital sales."
The content is something I don't think a lot of FTP players will care about much overall. Most probably will want to PvP each other, which this game is good for out in the open world and a bunch of lowbies can kill highly geared people pretty well within reason.
Costumes are going to make/break this game and as long as SOE puts that in there, they will make money.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I don't know who is next but I hope it is not my Vanguard...
Be warned SOE bean counters, you come near ma game and it's:
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
I get what SOE are trying to do with there F2P model I just feel its the wrong way of doing it as limiting raids and other endgame content to subscribers only kills off potential income. As a F2P customer Im happy to pay for content blocks that expand my characters list of things to do ingame such as new zones, mission areas , raid zones or powersets but the model SOE went just seems to think I will pay for access to larger chunks of in-game cash Iv already earned which is never going to happen. If I cant access end game content easly Iv zero reason to buy it and zero reason to stick with DCO over the many other MMO's out there.
Every other western MMO that has gone F2P charges the customer for full content blocks such as zones or expansions with full access to everything in that purchase. These MMO's crank out lots of cash store items to keep a steady stream of income coming in that cover all play styles and offer much a better reason to subscribe such as cash store points stipend per month unlike DCU's no cash limit for $15 a month and not much else.
While the cash limit not only kills off raiding for F2P customers it also effects subscribing customers by cutting down the amount of players they can raid with along with never being able to buy or sell items via the auction house with F2P players. Even your comment about style sets and skill points fades a bit as having nothing to do at endgame on F2P makes it pointless what costume or amounts of skillpoints I have.
For DCU to make it long term SOE need to lose the cash limt for F2P, make the monthly subscription option worth it, start churning out cash store content such as playable content and fluff items and give customers a reason to keep playing and paying.