On this episode of Foreign Fridays, Spunkify checks out Dragonball Online an MMORPG currently only available in some Asian countries.
F2P Cast: Star Wars and Jessica Brohard (Ep.33)
On this week's Cast we welcome Jessica Brohard, host of "Free to Play Weekly", to the cast and chat it up about a few new releases and one GIANT game going free to play. Damina plays "Slender" and we get to see some of her reactions, and we tie it all of nicely with some viewer questions. Jump in and post your comments on the SWTOR free to play model and make sure to post your weekly bombs!
Free-To-Play Cast is the official podcast (and videocast) of MMOBomb.com about free to play multiplayer online games. Free-To-Play Cast takes on the week's biggest news with plenty of opinion, weekly bombs, community feedback, guests, interviews, laughs thrown in for good measure and much more. Have fun and expect a new episode next week! (every Wed or Thu)
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Da-Bomb to Guild Wars 2 It has got to be one of the best games if ever played.. The first beta weekend I played I was instantly hooked by everythink! I also love the fact you can level in World V world PvP and that feature in the game is a cool thing anyway.
To anser the Question of the week...
Yes the Subscription based model is going to DIE! Very very soon... I alllso hope it will die to. Free To Play FTW.
A question to the next free to play cast would be, Whats the main game you guys/gals play so other people can come and say hi if they allso play that game.
I had been thinking about this the past few night's working GraveYards! ( Fitting for Sub game's)
I thought long and hard about this, and how& why thier play bases are dwindling.
We as players and consumer's are getting flooded with them.
Even with the Best F2P game's, There are so many of them,Really we can only play 1 at a time anyways.
The Sub game's Don't need to go F2P, It won't help make players stay, For we get about 2 a month of these types of game's.The only one's that this affect are the die hard fan's of that game.
Instead of that 15$ a month. They now end up paying more for the item mall garbage that change's thier game. To a P4F and they will,Just because they love the game.
Sub game's need to start realizing this and making those game cards. ( 2 month's or 60 days)
Timed.
Example: If i logged into day, as soon as i log on i have 24hour's till another day is subtracted.
The reason i have not bought WoW time,TSW time, SWTORP time,(Warhammer online, Years ago was the last i purchased). And a few others i own.When i buy time i feel like i am committed to playing thier game and nothing more!To get my money out of it.But a week later i am bored or need a break only to have my time wasted!
By adding this kind of timer, Everyone of my sub game's would always be filled up.Like WoW losing 2 million sub's. If they did the Pay to Log in ( 1 day deductt for a 24 hour span. leave for a day or 2 and come back still at 59 day's.Sure they won't make The huge Profit's they once were,But they would still be getting some kind of money from those 2 million.
What do you think?
I would buy the time for all my games if this was changed !
Inflictious
and thank you magicman for the beta key!!! much appreciated,i signed up for first wave and have been waiting since :P
The other fact is that it locks in your points. For example: if you kill two people and get 200 points but then get killed right after you will lose 25% so you will only get 150 points total. However, if you taunt after those kills even for a split second you get a bonus (+1-60%) as well as lock in those points meaning you get anywhere from 202-320 points. Therefore it makes sense to taunt as much as you can which is why people do it all the time.
"I don't know if I would call it pay-to-win though."
I think you need to define what pay-to-win means to you Magicman, because I find it strange that you say Blacklight is pay-to-win and you aren't sure about Bullet Run. For me there are at least two schools of thought on pay-to-win: 1) a game where a basic purchase will give a player serious advantage and 2) games where the cash shop has exclusive items that give a serious advantage. Examples to clarify: 1) Face of Mankind: if you pay the monthly fee you have a ridiculous advantage over free players. 2) Wolf Team: there are cash shop items which if you stack them up you can get something like 4x HP/armor and 2x damage. Sorry for the archaic examples but I thought they were good examples of the extremes.
I dislike the SOE f2p business model (which kind of put me off trying any of their games), and I'm not a big fan of fps games (I'm also not very good at them), so I'm probably not going to play Bullet Run either. It looks quite nice however, and I appreciate the unique setting.
Looking at SWTOR's f2p model, I feel its like a even more restricted model than SOE or Turbine ones. Blocking raids? That should not happen. All game content should be accessible, even if its limited to only a few times a week. And yet, there is an apparent lack of endgame content, and EA deems the game a failure...perhaps EA should do a SquareEnix and try and rework the game completely like SE did with FFXIV?
Overall, I do believe however that even though there are big MMORPG games/expansions being released this year (namely GW2 & Mists of Pandaria), MMORPGs are on the decline currently and the genre on the rise is the Dota-style/ARTS/"MOBA".
I gotta agree with Magicman's finale question reply, that NCsoft probably has the best f2p model at the moment (the Truly Free model).
As for whether or not the subscription model is busted, I think its on the decline (in gaming at least), but it won't die yet...not for at least a couple more years. I have a hunch Blizzard's next MMO in the works, Titan will be a subscription based MMO, initially at least. After all, its what they're used to.
Great episode though, enjoyed it thoroughly :)
BTW, this is my first time watching a full F2P cast episode and I'm wondering, what is A-Bomb & Da-Bomb?
For the ? of the week I feel for the most that played games are slowing down ,but u will alway have those faithful to those games and willing to pay for them too . And Free to Play games is going to be here to stay for a along time as well . Again another grand show u all .
Well, for atleast saying that Aion would be the last MMORPG that he would play, if it came to it.
For those of you who haven't played it yet, Aion is an incredible MMO, & definitely worth experiencing. The best part: the game is NOT pay to win, or even pay to have fun. Items in the cash shop have no effect on game play balancing.
Blood for Blood, Asmodians!
And here is a thing thats seems bloody obvious but just came trough my head. A game which went from pay2play to free2play will probably never be as good as if it launched free2play because:
1) It has been obviously designed to be pay2play from the start, making it free2play will require quite some changes.
2) The devs made the game in the first place pay2play becase they DIDN`T WANT the game to be free2play, therefore, transitioning the game to free2play is something they probably hate and don`t care as much because it means something bad already must have happened if they are now required to make the transition...
Even so, it seems that free2play games become better and better, so the free2play revolution wasn`t a bad thing afterall.
I don't think the subsription models are dead. Although I don't play any games that use them. But alot of my friends are still playing wow. But for SWTOR I never played it but the game is even more expensive then WOW. Wow is 20 euros for 2 months and SWTOR would be 30 then. It's 10 euro more expensive.
Some of my bombs.
Da-bomb for all the recent beta especially firefall and Raiderz. Raiderz is very awesome, and then I realise this game is just only in beta stage. I can't wait to see this game going to open beta. And firefall has a good dev team. They update the game often. So you are never bored.
But I have an also an A-bomb for firefall. The game is now heavily PVP focused/grinding. There are no real quest lines and/or dungeons. And they still need to optimize the graphics engine. But these 2 games are for me an thumbs up.
I have also seen the hunter blade first look, and I think you would be better of playing vindictus, C9 or if you like open world Raiderz.
Thank You
Chefmadness
First, about the Hunter Blade, I think that it is a bit unfair to talk bad about it, you know, probably is not a high budget game, with a small publisher, and they have to face a huge competition, Vindictus, DN, C9 and will soon face RaiderZ... if the game was launched a few years ago, it would be a game that at least people would try.
Btw, you were talking about a game that changed in CBT, Kung Foo changed a lot to come back as Legend of Martial Arts, better controls, graphics (the game couldn't resist because it was too old); you also have games like Perfect World, LoL and Jade Dynasty that got lots of changes in the graphics and content...
I wouldn't give a thumbs up, but I don't know about a thumbs down
About Bullet Run, the game is fun, it is a generic but it made me play a lot... but the shop is too much, anyone with a better weapon or more upgrades in the weapon do have advantage, even if the guy played to get that, it is just painful to play against better guns... the amount of money you get scale up when you lvl, but so the price of everything. It is a painful grinding, not a lot of options of weapons (at least nothing interesting), the accuracy is weird sometimes, it is just not worth it to play hardcore... but overall, a nice game to play sometimes, better than Combat Arms and some other generic shooters (at least imo).
btw, the comentators of SMC are better, SMC seems like a real television show
About Star Wars... yeah, I knew it would be f2p and I knew it would be that fast (I gave it 3 to 6 months)... problem: it is a EA f2p game
I will check the game (never did, I don't play p2p or free trials) but I am a hardcore pvp player and I wouldn't pay if the game had great end content and will definitely not pay for that crappy end game.
Seriously, if they had WOW as a competitor, now they will have Allods... and they could win with a smart cash shop, but with limited content they wont.
Thumbs up for going f2p, thumbs down for being EA f2p xD
About the WOW question... Allods can be as good and popular if they work more the cash shop and content, maybe not as much players because, as you said, there are way more choices; and as MMO, there IS a game as successful as WOW now, LoL.
About NCSoft improving, yes, it improved, but the best model? I didn't like Lineage 2 cash shop... I think that Valve, Riot and Gamania (at least what I saw so far) have the best f2p model for sure.
question of the week: I think people just can't see yet (EA obviously still can't) that the p2p is already "dead"... yes, some games might stay p2p, EA might launch another p2p before they understand that, but it is dead already... it died the time big games like TF2, AoC and DCUO went f2p, in that point it was clear that p2p couldn't hold playerbase anymore, that's why I gave 6 months for Star Wars to go f2p before their CBT begins
Even Blizzard already said that it is looking at the f2p market, a guy from Blizzard said they were interested in the f2p model, in a panel they said that Blizzard All Stars might be available to everyone with the free version of StarCraft... so I don't think that any other game besides WOW will survive as a p2p, and WOW is surviving for now only because they have hardcore fans and huge content
sorry for the long post and poor english
It's a zombie mmo in the making. They could really use some support. They are dedicated zombie fans and video game creators.
Check em' out. They just recently announced a PC release, which is awesome!
and yea thanks for answering that and its kinda cool i never really thought about it that way i mean when u said even blizzard aint gunna be able to make it that popular like they did with wow kinda hit me, is this the reason blizzard is coming out with its free 2 play game (possibly titan no 1 apart from blizzard employees really know :P) but yea
about the comment question of the day is yup they are dying fast and hardddddddddd and how i see it is that gaming industry works in cycles and for the next 5 or so years we are gunna see an increase in free 2 play games because right now that is wat is in fashion for the gaming industy and that is wat is making money so yea sub is dying :P
thanks for great episodes :P seriously still giggling from how u said my name :D
I think Damina wanted to make me cry!
:D Again Another Fine Show .
Thanks for Da-Bombing me!
Little upset that after 33 episodes and being here since day 1
That not even Magicman has Da-Bombed my Uber Awsomeness. lmao ;)
Glad you enjoyed Slener!
When Damina said to herself " Why did you marry him"?
I want to know why you married Ronald Mc Donald in your alternate universe to!
Question of the week:
Subscription models to me are on hold!
Reason i say this and strongly feel that once we get new technology in our gaming.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFoh75sbSU
There are already Virtual body suit's,That someone half way around the world can touch you and you feel it.
People have hemselves where they can directly hook thier body's up to a computer." Matrix" Yes but it is already in our world.
I remember Sony actualy had a simular PS 9 Commercial Televised before the launch of PS2.
Right now F2P is a fad that might last until,maybe 2022,That's when the Subs will be back with something so indepth that F2P won't even be able to touch,For about 12 years.
Subscription companys you can bet are already working on something to bring them back!
Agree with me or not,But in all my years of gaming . I've seen alot before most of you were even born. lol Even you My Friend Magicman. :)
Thank's Magicman
Inflictious
Peace !
F2P is a good model if done right and there are still options that haven't been truly looked at yet as well. I'm playing a few F2P games and the model gives me a chance to do so. If I were paying a subscription for games I'd have to pick and choose which games I like the best now I can try all the games I want and if a game sucks I can just uninstall it and forget about it.
Star Wars: The Old Republic going F2P was something I saw a long time ago. I agree with you Magicman that maybe they should have waited. I like the idea you had of being able to download the game for free, get a free trial (I think 2 weeks to a month is fine...a week is a little short to really try out a game, especially if you don't have time during the week to play). Will it succeed or not? I'm not sure. I played the beta and I wasn't really sold. The game didn't really feel like the Star Wars universe to me (not the universe in the movies). Also I'm not a fan of auto attack, just that is a turn off. I would have much preferred if the style was more like Force Unleashed. Or even like RaiderZ (which I'm having fun playing BTW).
Also I enjoy pvp and my opinion on the pvp in swtor is it is very bland and uninteresting. I hated huttball. Some like it, im just not one of them.
Da-Bomb to Bioware for making SW:TOR F2P to a point. I just wanted KOTOR 3, and while it's not quite that... It's close enough for me. Raiding in tab target games has died. Not that it's a bad model, it's just everyone and their mother has raided in WoW and everything gets old at some point.
A-Bomb to Activision for making Blizzard tank. Literally, once they took over after BC, WoW went downhill and crashed into a fiery blaze.
2nd A-Bomb to the 900,000 cash cow P2Win games such as every PWE game out there and every browser game that has copied another (have you seen all of the games that are exactly like another but reskinned?!?!?!?!). That's 100% businesses trying to milk people out of their money.