People have inexplicably made waves with commentary about "free to play" WoW due to a surprise change to the game's free trial program. There is no longer a time limit on the previously 14-day free trial, putting the trial on the same footing as similar programs in Warhammer and Conan (until that game's actual free to play relaunch anyway), but that change is less significant than it sounds.
Extended capabilities?
As far as I can tell, the only real changes are that trial players now have longer to reach level 20, and that all players (trial or otherwise) now get access to the TBC expansion (including Blood Elves, Draenei, and the two starting areas that did NOT get revised in Cataclysm). It sounds like "upgrading" to a real account permanently cuts off your "free to play" access to that account, so the real impact of these changes seems limited. Trial accounts are banned from joining guilds or inviting other players to groups, so there's no real way for a community of trial-capped 20's to form and push the limits of what can be accomplished at that level; most trials will eventually have to convert or quit.
That said, if you do not have an active WoW account, don't care about all the previously existing restrictions on trial accounts, are willing to put new alts on a throwaway trial account you may never use again to avoid sending Blizzard any money, and wanted to check out some of the new lowbie content in Cataclysm, this change may be for you. You could have done all of this before by signing up for new trial accounts every 14 days, but I can imagine some advantage of a more open-ended timeframe in which to do so.
If this is your plan, you may find my guide to Cataclysm starter zone revamps (no Goblins or Worgens for trial accounts) and old world leveling paths useful. By my count, Trial accounts have full access to sixteen zones, plus however much of the content in the four level 20-25 zones you are allowed to access at level 20, so that's a fair amount of content to visit.
Business impact
Free TBC, on the other hand, is potentially significant for retailers. Basically every physical or online store that carries computer games has boxed copies of TBC, and it appears that these should no longer be sold to anyone because it is no longer possible to own a plain vanilla WoW account. If this is the case, we might be talking about literally a million obsolete boxes at various stages of the retail supply chain, which likely puts this issue at an entirely different scale than previous cases of out-dated expansions or closed MMO's with boxes still left on store shelves.
That aside, it now costs $10-20 less to buy your way up to the current expansion, but my guess is that most people who wandered off before hitting level 20 and/or 2 weeks weren't coming back anyway. There are a few folks who might finally make it to level 20 one hour at a time, and a few folks who choose to stay perpetually at level 1-20 for free, but I don't see this move making a huge difference to the subscriber count.
Incorrect Convention Predictions for Summer/Fall 2011
My track record for incorrect Blizzcon predictions is so epically bad - last year all my calls were proven wrong before the show even started - that I've decided to get a head start and expand my coverage to be sure that I can be totally wrong about even more 'con's. Without further ado...
Inaccurate Predictions for SOE Fan Faire (to be disproved by 7-9 July)
The new EQ2 class will be the fabled Beast Lord, and the new expansion will have something to do with the destroyed moon of Luclin. The new expansion will come out sometime later than previously (perhaps May 2012) and will NOT increase the game's level cap. Given that EQ Next was no more than concept art last year, it won't be playable this year.
There really isn't another choice of class that I've ever heard anyone suggest serious interest in. Of course, I didn't hear much call for a premium vampire race either, but finding a home for a new class in a game that already has more classes than it knows what to do with is a bit more work than a mostly cosmetic new race. It really wouldn't make sense to spend the time on something that no one would care about, the melee pet class is the only option I can think of that isn't covered by the game's two dozen existing classes, and the Beast Lord was tied to the lore of Luclin in the original EQ.
My guess on Luclin arises partially from similar reasoning - this game isn't getting any younger, so it doesn't make sense to save its most recognizable expansion ideas for some future rainy day. There is the minor issue that Luclin doesn't exist anymore, but my guess is that this expansion will be very light on new content. Smokejumper came out and said that he'd like expansions to be more about new features than new content, and I would guess that the additional content that is being added in the content patches of Velious is coming out of the dev time that would have been available for the next expansion. In that context, a Cataclysm-like plot in which chunks of the old moon fall on underutilized zones may fit Smokejumper's plan.
Finally, the level cap. I have not heard a single complaint that DOV did not increase the level cap this year, or a single desire for it to be increased next year. Quite the contrary, the only thing we absolutely know is coming next year is the Qeynos revamp (following this year's Freeport revamp), and there was the whole kerflaffle about giving away max level characters, which only gets worse as the game accumulates more than its current 90 levels. Meanwhile, last year's TSF expansion was a mess in large part because they raised the level cap far more than the limited new adventuring content could support, and nothing suggests a different scenario this year. I guess they could go for 1-3 levels as Ferrel has suggested from time to time, but I don't see a real reason why there need to be any this year, and thus I'm predicting zero.
Inaccurate Predictions For Pax Prime (to be disproved 26-28 August)
I don't even know who is exhibiting this year. I'm guessing that Trion and Turbine are in, since they were in last year, and that Blizzard and SOE are out, because they have their own events.
The Turbine booth will assuredly be busy hyping the new LOTRO expansion, but I don't expect major news to drop a mere month out from the expansion launch. The real news here will.be the mystery non-druid class to be added to DDO. My guess here is a modified version of the pen and paper Mystic Theurge, which can cast both arcane and divine spells at the cost of reduced progression in both schools. I predict that the DDO version will be a stand-alone class (i.e. does not stack with other classes) with a single set of spell slots for both schools (since DDO uses a more MMO-like SP system instead of DND spell slots). Someone will find some creative use for it, and it will be easy for Turbine to make because it doesn't require large amounts of new mechanics; it's basically a Sorcerer with slower spell acquisition and a wider spell list.
The Trion side of things is harder to predict - to my knowledge, they've said next to nothing about patch 1.4, other than the assumption that it will contain the guild banks that were not ready for 1.3. At their current pace, patch 1.4 will be in final testing or live and they'll be hinting at the contents of 1.5. Six months post-launch is too soon to be talking paid expansions, so it would surprise me if anything of the sort came up.
Incorrect Blizzcon Predictions (to be disproved 21-22 October)
Having been told last year that Diablo III will not launch in 2011 and Titan, the Mystery Fourth Project, will not be announced until 2012, takes much of the guesswork out of this year. DIII will take center stage, accompanied by the SCII expansion (which finally got some face time this year).
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Blizzard will opt NOT to announce the next World of Warcraft expansion at this event. This would break past precedent - all three past WoW expansions were announced at Blizzcon, and you would ordinarily expect the new expansion to roll out at this con - 10 months post-Cataclysm - to start building hype for its launch at the 18-24 month post-Cataclysm launch. The problem is timing.
Blizzard planned 2-3 patches for Cataclysm before they ended up breaking 4.1 in half and spending seven months to get both parts out the door. At their customary 6-month patch cycle, we'd expect to see the patch that was previously the second patch of the Cataclysm era hitting the test servers around this time, with the third patch and the final battle with Deathwing presumably at least six months beyond that (i.e. June 2012). If that's the timetable, October seems a bit soon to be looking beyond the Deathwing era. Maybe they can hold Blizzcon 2012 earlier, or announce the WoW expansion at some other event in early 2012?
Whenever they do get around to announcing the expansion, I predict that Nozdormu and the Infinite Dragonflight will be the stars of the show. I do not expect any significant changes to the now out-of-date lore of Outland and Northrend, but we could see a slight tie-in where players heading to those unchanged continents are specifically told that they're being sent into the past to prevent the Infinite Flight from changing (relatively recent) history. I'm also going to predict neither a new class nor new races. Blizzard has said that they like to alternate because of art demands of a new race, but I just don't see a niche for a new class in a game that is already struggling to deal with the 30 subclasses of its 10 classes. I predict that there will be five new levels - unlike EQ2, I think there is a demand for more dings, but I don't think they want the talent point inflation that comes with 10 levels.
And that's what I've got for the year's three big cons. Have fun pointing and laughing over the next four months. :)
Inaccurate Predictions for SOE Fan Faire (to be disproved by 7-9 July)
The new EQ2 class will be the fabled Beast Lord, and the new expansion will have something to do with the destroyed moon of Luclin. The new expansion will come out sometime later than previously (perhaps May 2012) and will NOT increase the game's level cap. Given that EQ Next was no more than concept art last year, it won't be playable this year.
There really isn't another choice of class that I've ever heard anyone suggest serious interest in. Of course, I didn't hear much call for a premium vampire race either, but finding a home for a new class in a game that already has more classes than it knows what to do with is a bit more work than a mostly cosmetic new race. It really wouldn't make sense to spend the time on something that no one would care about, the melee pet class is the only option I can think of that isn't covered by the game's two dozen existing classes, and the Beast Lord was tied to the lore of Luclin in the original EQ.
My guess on Luclin arises partially from similar reasoning - this game isn't getting any younger, so it doesn't make sense to save its most recognizable expansion ideas for some future rainy day. There is the minor issue that Luclin doesn't exist anymore, but my guess is that this expansion will be very light on new content. Smokejumper came out and said that he'd like expansions to be more about new features than new content, and I would guess that the additional content that is being added in the content patches of Velious is coming out of the dev time that would have been available for the next expansion. In that context, a Cataclysm-like plot in which chunks of the old moon fall on underutilized zones may fit Smokejumper's plan.
Finally, the level cap. I have not heard a single complaint that DOV did not increase the level cap this year, or a single desire for it to be increased next year. Quite the contrary, the only thing we absolutely know is coming next year is the Qeynos revamp (following this year's Freeport revamp), and there was the whole kerflaffle about giving away max level characters, which only gets worse as the game accumulates more than its current 90 levels. Meanwhile, last year's TSF expansion was a mess in large part because they raised the level cap far more than the limited new adventuring content could support, and nothing suggests a different scenario this year. I guess they could go for 1-3 levels as Ferrel has suggested from time to time, but I don't see a real reason why there need to be any this year, and thus I'm predicting zero.
Inaccurate Predictions For Pax Prime (to be disproved 26-28 August)
I don't even know who is exhibiting this year. I'm guessing that Trion and Turbine are in, since they were in last year, and that Blizzard and SOE are out, because they have their own events.
The Turbine booth will assuredly be busy hyping the new LOTRO expansion, but I don't expect major news to drop a mere month out from the expansion launch. The real news here will.be the mystery non-druid class to be added to DDO. My guess here is a modified version of the pen and paper Mystic Theurge, which can cast both arcane and divine spells at the cost of reduced progression in both schools. I predict that the DDO version will be a stand-alone class (i.e. does not stack with other classes) with a single set of spell slots for both schools (since DDO uses a more MMO-like SP system instead of DND spell slots). Someone will find some creative use for it, and it will be easy for Turbine to make because it doesn't require large amounts of new mechanics; it's basically a Sorcerer with slower spell acquisition and a wider spell list.
The Trion side of things is harder to predict - to my knowledge, they've said next to nothing about patch 1.4, other than the assumption that it will contain the guild banks that were not ready for 1.3. At their current pace, patch 1.4 will be in final testing or live and they'll be hinting at the contents of 1.5. Six months post-launch is too soon to be talking paid expansions, so it would surprise me if anything of the sort came up.
Incorrect Blizzcon Predictions (to be disproved 21-22 October)
Having been told last year that Diablo III will not launch in 2011 and Titan, the Mystery Fourth Project, will not be announced until 2012, takes much of the guesswork out of this year. DIII will take center stage, accompanied by the SCII expansion (which finally got some face time this year).
I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Blizzard will opt NOT to announce the next World of Warcraft expansion at this event. This would break past precedent - all three past WoW expansions were announced at Blizzcon, and you would ordinarily expect the new expansion to roll out at this con - 10 months post-Cataclysm - to start building hype for its launch at the 18-24 month post-Cataclysm launch. The problem is timing.
Blizzard planned 2-3 patches for Cataclysm before they ended up breaking 4.1 in half and spending seven months to get both parts out the door. At their customary 6-month patch cycle, we'd expect to see the patch that was previously the second patch of the Cataclysm era hitting the test servers around this time, with the third patch and the final battle with Deathwing presumably at least six months beyond that (i.e. June 2012). If that's the timetable, October seems a bit soon to be looking beyond the Deathwing era. Maybe they can hold Blizzcon 2012 earlier, or announce the WoW expansion at some other event in early 2012?
Whenever they do get around to announcing the expansion, I predict that Nozdormu and the Infinite Dragonflight will be the stars of the show. I do not expect any significant changes to the now out-of-date lore of Outland and Northrend, but we could see a slight tie-in where players heading to those unchanged continents are specifically told that they're being sent into the past to prevent the Infinite Flight from changing (relatively recent) history. I'm also going to predict neither a new class nor new races. Blizzard has said that they like to alternate because of art demands of a new race, but I just don't see a niche for a new class in a game that is already struggling to deal with the 30 subclasses of its 10 classes. I predict that there will be five new levels - unlike EQ2, I think there is a demand for more dings, but I don't think they want the talent point inflation that comes with 10 levels.
And that's what I've got for the year's three big cons. Have fun pointing and laughing over the next four months. :)
Ineffectual Cash Store Bitternesss
EQ2's Associate Producer, Emily "Domino" Taylor, is puzzled by player reaction to item shops - why, she asks, are players simultaneously angry that the shop exists and dismissive of its offerings? The answer, I would suggest, can be found in her own long-running "what do players want?" series; players occasionally ask for things that may be both nonsensical and not what they actually wanted. The complaints about prices of cosmetic items are more of a pre-emptive sour grapes defense against an indirect price hike that the players are not willing to pay.
The 68-dollar gorilla in the room this week has been Eve's new cosmetic monocle, which consumes items worth several months' worth of game time in exchange for a cosmetic item for one character. The clever thing about this approach is that the price was never designed to target the player who actually opens up their wallet and pulls out $68 because they want a monocle. Rather, the intent appears to be to encourage players with more in-game ISK currency than they know what to do with to destroy in-game-timecards, rather than allow them to get cheap enough on the in-game market that the average player can avoid paying the monthly subscription.
Fair but unbalanced?
The in-game cash shop draws the level of bitterness that Domino and others observe because it is simultaneously egalitarian and undemocratic. Until CCP sticks even more 0's onto that price tag, the cash store approach means that anyone who wants to pay can, and, at least in principle, can mean that those who are unwilling or unable can still play the base game for the old price. In principle, the extra revenue could be the difference between survival or closing for your game of choice, which would seem to be a good deal for everyone.
At the same time, the process is inherently undemocratic in that there is no real way for those who are opposed to "vote against" the cash shop. Unless you are willing to cancel your subscription altogether, your vote is +/- zero, and the guy who is willing to pay for the monocle's vote is +68, and the short term net total appears to be positive. Meanwhile, the financial incentives will almost certainly drive future development in the way that the guy with the monocle wants.
In the long term, I think it is possible for cash store creep to do long-term harm to a game's reputation; for example, I think the uproar over EQ2's new class was rooted in SOE's decision in December to add the game's first new race in three years to the game's cash store, rather than including it in the $40 expansion box. Unfortunately, this impact is not going to be apparent immediately in the short run, and the result runs the risk of destroying the village not to save it, but as an example to other village owners.
Companies want to appear responsive to customer feedback, which is why protests sometimes work as Spinks notes (with the caveat that a PR event does not equal changing the policy), but there's very little even the large majority of customers can do if the company's minds are made up. In this case, ineffectual cash store bitterness sometimes feels like all unhappy customers have left.
The 68-dollar gorilla in the room this week has been Eve's new cosmetic monocle, which consumes items worth several months' worth of game time in exchange for a cosmetic item for one character. The clever thing about this approach is that the price was never designed to target the player who actually opens up their wallet and pulls out $68 because they want a monocle. Rather, the intent appears to be to encourage players with more in-game ISK currency than they know what to do with to destroy in-game-timecards, rather than allow them to get cheap enough on the in-game market that the average player can avoid paying the monthly subscription.
Fair but unbalanced?
The in-game cash shop draws the level of bitterness that Domino and others observe because it is simultaneously egalitarian and undemocratic. Until CCP sticks even more 0's onto that price tag, the cash store approach means that anyone who wants to pay can, and, at least in principle, can mean that those who are unwilling or unable can still play the base game for the old price. In principle, the extra revenue could be the difference between survival or closing for your game of choice, which would seem to be a good deal for everyone.
At the same time, the process is inherently undemocratic in that there is no real way for those who are opposed to "vote against" the cash shop. Unless you are willing to cancel your subscription altogether, your vote is +/- zero, and the guy who is willing to pay for the monocle's vote is +68, and the short term net total appears to be positive. Meanwhile, the financial incentives will almost certainly drive future development in the way that the guy with the monocle wants.
In the long term, I think it is possible for cash store creep to do long-term harm to a game's reputation; for example, I think the uproar over EQ2's new class was rooted in SOE's decision in December to add the game's first new race in three years to the game's cash store, rather than including it in the $40 expansion box. Unfortunately, this impact is not going to be apparent immediately in the short run, and the result runs the risk of destroying the village not to save it, but as an example to other village owners.
Companies want to appear responsive to customer feedback, which is why protests sometimes work as Spinks notes (with the caveat that a PR event does not equal changing the policy), but there's very little even the large majority of customers can do if the company's minds are made up. In this case, ineffectual cash store bitterness sometimes feels like all unhappy customers have left.
Triumph of the Second Violet Proto-Drake
The final achievement I completed was already a four for one deal, since completing the continent completed the fires of the world, which completed the Fire Festival, which completed the holiday meta. I decided to throw in one more achievement for good measure.
 |
| What a long strange ding it has been |
Overall, the holiday achievement grind was nowhere near as bad as it was back in 2009, when it pretty much literally drove me out of Azeroth to pick up EQ2 (which I suppose has worked out well enough). I'm still not convinced that limited time holiday events are a good place to put a grind, but at least the current system is something that you can do without going too far out of your way. Other than the torch thing that I had to cheat with an add-on, and the hunt for a female dwarf for the creepy Easter achievement, there wasn't anything this time around that was actively non-fun to complete. If you're looking for the occasional change of pace from the daily (quest/dungeon) grind, I suppose there are worse ways to go.
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