It hasn't been the cheeriest week in news and commentary here at PVD, so thanks go out to DDO Producer Glin for offering up a lighter story by declaring July Turbine's Official Unofficial DDO Podcast Month.
When you follow as many games as I do, podcasts play a crucial role in keeping up with the news. Even so, DDO seems to have an unusually robust podcast community for the size of its playerbase. There are any number of possible explanations for this. Perhaps DDO's demographics skew older due to the DND license, and this somehow means that the playerbase is disproportionately capable at podcasting. Perhaps Turbine's support (Glin personally appeared on two podcasts this month, and other Turbine devs have visited both DDO and LOTRO podcasts) helps foster the community. Perhaps Jerry Snook, the host of the 177+ episode DDOCast, is such a DDO institution that he inspires everyone else to offer their own take on the DDO-related podcast.
Whatever the explanation, the result is an array of entertaining and informative podcasts that any developers should be proud to call their own. Even so, it's a bit unusual and refreshing to see a developer acknowledging the full range of the community, including shows like Psycho da Angry Drow and the Rant Squad (home to expletive-laden critiques of Turbine's work) and the DDO Cocktail hour (where every episode is a drinking episode).
Conflicting EQ2 Payment Models In Action
A conversation over at Ardwulf's place helps point out how counter intuitive SOE's decision to offer F2P EQ2 alongside its subscription parent really is.
In the currently announced model (which could be changed during the Alpha/Beta), non-subscribing players are completely forbidden from equipping group dungeon drops. There is no option to pay to unlock this ability, group content rewards are simply irrelevant to anyone who does not want to pay the $15 monthly subscription. Non-subscribers are also unable to purchase the ability to access the broker or carry more than 18 plat (at level 90), both of which are all-but necessary for repairs and consumables at endgame. This makes no sense for a traditional free to play game. If you want to sell players increased power, you have to allow access to content that actually requires more powerful characters.
The Gear Dilemma
The problem is that EQ2 is not going to be a pure free to play game. If you could unlock the ability to equip Fabled loot, such as through the one-time Silver/Premium account upgrade (conceptually similar to what DDO has), raiders who are currently paying the monthly fee could sit down and calculate the cost of dropping down to free to play. $35 to copy over their characters, some amount of money if their current race/class is not one of the free options, maybe the $10 silver upgrade, and suddenly a couple months' subscription fees are looking like enough to raid the latest content (expansion boxes will cost F2P players extra, just like the traditional sub players) in perpetuity, without paying any more monthly sub fees.
The purpose of going Free to Play is ultimately to make SOE more money, but their decision to hedge on the two payment models has put them in between a rock and a hard place. Without the restriction on gear, they could lose the fees from existing raiders. With the restriction on gear, they lose out on potential item sales as players on the free servers either avoid dungeons (why run a dungeon when you can't equip the loot) or jump to the paid servers (with their less "robust" cash shops) in search of a more group-enriched community.
Meanwhile, the free servers will be left heavily skewed towards the free classes and players who have too many restrictions to do group content long term (why stay on a server that charges extra for standard features like races once you're paying the same fee?). This will damage SOE's ability to convert new free players into longtime customers.
If only....
Whether or not you agree with the decision to offer a free to play option for the game, that decision has been made. Now that it has, segregating out group players to a separate set of servers does not make sense. Most of the problems I'm describing could have been mitigated by absorbing the PR hit of taking existing servers F2P (somehow, Turbine seems to have survived this) and designing a payment model that does not need to be designed to keep current subscribers away.
If they had taken the existing servers free to play, the influx of free players could have been directed to underpopulated servers (basically all of them other than Antonia Bayle and Nagafen) with existing communities that could have helped SOE convert the newbies into longtime players (and maybe even subscribers). Instead, it now seems almost certain that SOE will have to eat the PR hit for merging these servers, which will only exacerbate the perception amongst existing players that they are being neglected and cannibalized in favor of the shiny new cash shop server.
UPDATE: Feldon reports that SOE is also adding in-game merchants that sell items for station cash to the regular (non-free-to-play) servers.
In the currently announced model (which could be changed during the Alpha/Beta), non-subscribing players are completely forbidden from equipping group dungeon drops. There is no option to pay to unlock this ability, group content rewards are simply irrelevant to anyone who does not want to pay the $15 monthly subscription. Non-subscribers are also unable to purchase the ability to access the broker or carry more than 18 plat (at level 90), both of which are all-but necessary for repairs and consumables at endgame. This makes no sense for a traditional free to play game. If you want to sell players increased power, you have to allow access to content that actually requires more powerful characters.
The Gear Dilemma
The problem is that EQ2 is not going to be a pure free to play game. If you could unlock the ability to equip Fabled loot, such as through the one-time Silver/Premium account upgrade (conceptually similar to what DDO has), raiders who are currently paying the monthly fee could sit down and calculate the cost of dropping down to free to play. $35 to copy over their characters, some amount of money if their current race/class is not one of the free options, maybe the $10 silver upgrade, and suddenly a couple months' subscription fees are looking like enough to raid the latest content (expansion boxes will cost F2P players extra, just like the traditional sub players) in perpetuity, without paying any more monthly sub fees.
The purpose of going Free to Play is ultimately to make SOE more money, but their decision to hedge on the two payment models has put them in between a rock and a hard place. Without the restriction on gear, they could lose the fees from existing raiders. With the restriction on gear, they lose out on potential item sales as players on the free servers either avoid dungeons (why run a dungeon when you can't equip the loot) or jump to the paid servers (with their less "robust" cash shops) in search of a more group-enriched community.
Meanwhile, the free servers will be left heavily skewed towards the free classes and players who have too many restrictions to do group content long term (why stay on a server that charges extra for standard features like races once you're paying the same fee?). This will damage SOE's ability to convert new free players into longtime customers.
If only....
Whether or not you agree with the decision to offer a free to play option for the game, that decision has been made. Now that it has, segregating out group players to a separate set of servers does not make sense. Most of the problems I'm describing could have been mitigated by absorbing the PR hit of taking existing servers F2P (somehow, Turbine seems to have survived this) and designing a payment model that does not need to be designed to keep current subscribers away.
If they had taken the existing servers free to play, the influx of free players could have been directed to underpopulated servers (basically all of them other than Antonia Bayle and Nagafen) with existing communities that could have helped SOE convert the newbies into longtime players (and maybe even subscribers). Instead, it now seems almost certain that SOE will have to eat the PR hit for merging these servers, which will only exacerbate the perception amongst existing players that they are being neglected and cannibalized in favor of the shiny new cash shop server.
UPDATE: Feldon reports that SOE is also adding in-game merchants that sell items for station cash to the regular (non-free-to-play) servers.
EQ2's Unsustainable F2P Divide
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
- Abraham Lincoln
Everquest 2 is joining the free to play bandwagon, but with an unusual twist. SOE has opted not to jump into the F2P pool with both feet. Instead, the current stated plan is for the game to maintain the existing subscription game as a parallel separate service to the new "EQ2 Extended" F2P model.
This model is untenable and a bad deal for both free and paid players.
A hollow win for the solo player
Any time you add a new option for paying for an MMORPG, there's going to be someone, somewhere, who comes out a winner. On paper, that winner would be the solo WoW Tourist demographic, like myself. If you are prepared to settle for one of the extremely limited number of free race/class combinations, or to pay a one-time fee to unlock something more interesting from the full list, you can have the entire game up to level 80 indefinitely, for free.
(By "extremely limited", we mean that 15 of the game's 19 playable races and 16 of the game's 24 playable subclasses are locked down. This leaves free players to choose from four races and eight classes for a total of 32 out of the 456 race/class combos in the full game.)
As a solo PVE experience, this content was good enough that I was willing to pay to level through it last year. On paper, I don't think that I absolutely needed anything on the list of paid perks to level. However, the reality is that I spent a ton of time on my trip to level 80 working on crafting (pointless, the free tier can't even use the expert-level spells that I went to so much trouble to craft), leveling alts (locked down by an extremely low character limit and the race/class restrictions), and running the occasional group content with my guild (more on this in a minute). Without these things to break up the grind, I don't know that I would have made it all the way to the cap.
Buyer's Remorse for the Free Player?
If that's the story of the winners in this transition, the losers are anyone who intends to continue playing beyond the most cursory sightseeing tour of the leveling content.
As the system is currently described, all non-subscription players are completely barred from equipping legendary quality items (and, of course, the higher quality Fabled). In the 70's and 80's, even the solo quest and rep rewards are legendary. This also rules out literally all loot from group dungeons. That's right, a game called "Everquest" just banished all group content to a subset of players who choose to pay a recurring subscription, which rings in at the same $15/month that everyone else has to pay.
So let's say that, after a few weeks of using the new Free to Play version of the game as an extended trial, you decide to pony up. The subscription offers temporary rental access to the 16 locked down classes, but you'll STILL have to pay individually to unlock the 15 races that are included FOR THE SAME PRICE in the original subscription game.
Worse, your options if you actually decide to go looking for groups are going to be hamstrung. Free players have zero reason to ever join your group, as they cannot equip the loot that drops. On top of that, the free class selection deliberately focuses on the most basic options, leaving out popular group classes like Bards, Enchanters, and Shamen. Even if you chose to unlock one of these classes, earning yourself plenty of group invites, your groups may struggle as the population skews strongly away from the other utility classes that you need to complete the content.
Maybe all of these drawbacks are making you reconsider your choice to play the free to play version of the game after all. If that's you, kiss all the time and money you've spent on the game so far goodbye, as characters cannot be transferred to the subscription game and anything that you pay to unlock (other than future paid expansion boxes, which both payment models are required to purchase) will be irrelevant if you switch over.
Given that option, you'd have to love the game a whole heck of a lot before you even consider paying SOE to start over.
Abandonment of the existing servers
Meanwhile, what of the existing players? Well, they're to be left alone, exactly as they are today, out of supposed deference to the wishes of existing players not to have items that confer in-game power sold through the item shop. (This deference excludes experience boost potions, which have been available in the "cosmetic" item shop since day one.)
The problem here is that new players will be funneled first to the free to play model, and those that decide to upgrade will want to jump to the most populous server possible. SOE might as well go ahead and merge all of the servers besides Antonia Bayle (the game's most popular) and Nagafen (the last surviving PVP server) now, because populations everywhere else will only continue to dwindle.
Meanwhile, with group content so heavily locked down on the free servers, the game's demographics will likely shift dramatically away from players who group. The addition of new content to the game will follow the money. That's not a good thing if the reason why you are playing EQ2 is for the group content. Perhaps this is as it should be, if the numbers who aren't doing group content represent more money in the long term. Unfortunately for SOE, attempting to shift a six year old game away from its strength and towards things that other games do better (solo, PVP) is a very risky proposition that will only pan out if the game can stand up to head to head scrutiny against competition that focused on those areas from day one.
Ending the hedge
Personally, the argument that they're leaving things separate out of deference for existing players would ring more true if SOE didn't have a consistent track record of pushing through unpopular expansions of RMT and item shops in defiance of those same customer expectations. I think that it's more likely that they're just holding off on sending the golden subscription goose to the butcher for as long as possible so that they can get a better idea of whether people will actually pay to see the golden wolf cub they're planning on feeding the carcass to.
Perhaps there would have been turmoil and upheaval if SOE had instead chosen to rip the band-aid off. That said, as with previous expansions of RMT in SOE games, relatively few players would have actually followed through on threats to quit (and many of this vocal minority may quit anyway, seeing which way the wind is blowing in this compromise). More importantly, with all players under the same roof, SOE would have been forced to confront and address the problems that everyone faced together. Instead, the team will pit the two sides against each other to see who can bring in more money.
The irony is that the damage this struggle is likely to cause may ultimately leave the game - along with its market and brand name - weaker for the lack of resolve.
The ROM Exp Curve As A Loss Leader
“This is, of course, the one thing that I really dislike about item shops – when the developer identifies an aspect of the game that is not fun, their incentive is to create a consumable cash shop item instead of actually fixing the problem.”- Me, talking about the LOTRO Free To Play transition, as quoted by Syp
I hit level 20 Druid/20 Rogue in Runes of Magic over the weekend. The dual class system remains interesting - for example, my Druid has gained "elite" skills as part of her Rogue subclass that allows her to cast shadow spells fueled by her rogue energy bar as primary nukes, leaving most the majority of her druid mana bar available for heals.
Meanwhile, though, I've started to run into an issue that various commenters have been pointing out since I started posting about the game. Parts of the game experience are beginning to reflect the game's business model.
Scrounging for Exp
ROM actually offers a total of three sets of quests for getting from level 1-10 - one zone aimed at each race, and one additional zone for players to move to for leveling their secondary class. I've cleared out all three. Somewhere in the mid-teens, I found that I was bumping up against quests that were giving me some trouble, and it made more sense to burn through the content I wasn't using for some quick additional exp to get a leg up.
Of course, every game has some neglected mid-levels, but I've never found myself scrounging for exp before level 20. In any other game, the solution would be a simple design decision - add more quests or decrease the number of quests needed to level. In this game, though, the entire game and all of its leveling content are a loss leader designed to get players into the item shop, which is the sole source of revenue since there are no charges of any kind for access to content, classes, levels, etc.
At level 20, none of this is a big deal. I'm here to sight-see, and I'm accomplishing that. In the long run, though, players report that the game becomes much more grind-focused with every additional level range. The intent is to drive sales of exp potions, daily quest reset tickets, death penalty removers, etc, but the net effect is that scrounging for exp is an intentional feature of game design.
Side note on the death penalty
Speaking of the death penalty, on paper it's a relatively mild thing - about (exactly?) 5% of your exp to level in "exp debt" which takes 70% of all earned exp until it is paid off. (Some of this debt is forgiven if you touch your tombstone, located at the place where you died, but note that this ONLY removes debt - if you paid off the debt before reaching your corpse, e.g. by turning in a quest to a questgiver who happened to be near the respawn point, that exp is lost.) The thing that I find frustrating is the manner in which I die.
I've died about 10 times to date, and almost all of them have been due to one of the two reasons:
- Elite mobs that look identical to the non-elite mobs they're standing next to, other than a slight increase in size. When you're chain pulling 20 mobs that are dying in 15 seconds each, it's very easy to fail to notice the only visual warning, the eagle on the mob's portrait, until it's too late.
- An odd terrain bug/feature where mobs abruptly start doing about double damage and taking about half damage from my attacks. My best guess is that this is a bonus for being above me, as it happens most frequently when the mobs are flying or when the ground is not perfectly flat and the mobs are ever so slightly above me, and it goes away if I kite the mob to more level ground. If this is intended behavior (either for tactical reasons or anti-exploit), it isn't documented anywhere and the only way to tell that you're doing it wrong is to look at the size of your incoming and outgoing damage numbers before it's too late.
An Uncertain Early Verdict
ROM seems to be a relatively polarizing game even within the opinionated spheres of MMORPG discussion. The game's fans sing its praises, based in large part on the general quality, non-existent entry barrier, and relatively unique class structure. The game's detractors have taken it upon themselves to warn the masses about an increasing grind (which I'm starting to see), poor customer service (my account was not yet able to purchase diamonds during a sale, and account services helpfully informed me that my account was no longer broken after the sale was over - I declined to buy anything at that point), billing issues (which I avoided by not purchasing anything, but am prepared to believe), and the well documented fact that the game offers straight up power for cash.
From my perspective, the game is still winning my playtime at the moment. My visit to Taborea was motivated in part by market research, and I am indeed learning things I did not know or expect about the business model. (For example, I'd expected travel to be much more of a pain, but it turns out that I can instead use a daily quest alternative to get a temporary mount, and I've gotten way more than enough free samples of the cash shop teleport runes to carry me through a number of levels to come.) Watching the dual class system come into its own has also been worth the price of admission (in time, not money) to date. My outlook might be very different if I was looking for a longer term home, but ROM is certainly shaping up to be a decent vacation spot.
That said, though I expect to continue playing this game until it stops being fun, I am starting to think that I am unlikely to pay for the privilege. I'd be happy to pay for one-time purchases, such as the mount, but the developers are apparently so uninterested in such a small sum of money that they've made it easy to avoid paying it. I'd be willing to pay for additional content, as I have in DDO, but the game doesn't offer any. The main option for supporting the game - paying to lessen a grind that exists only to try and drive payments - simply doesn't appeal to me.
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