Winners have been identified and contacted, keep your eyes peeled if you're still looking, seems like there are more of these things going around as it draws to a close.
Seatech Astronomy
The Secret World launch is less than two weeks away, and the only public information I've seen on the beta (as opposed to the relatively open weekend events) is a few blogposts from folks who have beta keys to give away. One of my readers sent me an email containing a pair of such keys. Due to the presumably limited time left to take advantage of these, I'm not going to do anything creative with em - first two emails to my inbox (grnarmadillo@gmail.com) get a key, I'll edit this when they're gone.
Winners have been identified and contacted, keep your eyes peeled if you're still looking, seems like there are more of these things going around as it draws to a close.
Winners have been identified and contacted, keep your eyes peeled if you're still looking, seems like there are more of these things going around as it draws to a close.
Endgame Incentives For the Solo Player
My last post gave one reader the incorrect impression that SWTOR did not have an endgame - in fact, it has solo daily quests, 4-player "flashpoints", and "operation" raids that come in 8 and 16 player size options. These things did not really enter into my thinking for my immediate reaction post upon reaching the end of my class story.
I spend a fair number of hours playing MMO's, but I don't do so on any fixed schedule, which rules out traditional raiding. The things that do motivate me to continue playing are new experiences, such as:
I maintain that Bioware has not done a bad job in SWTOR. Many MMO's try to sell the player on multiple characters using additional leveling content the devs needed to build anyway, but SWTOR is the first game where I'm not only working on my second character before finishing my first, but even have plans out to what order I would tackle all eight of the class stories in. The catch, as Bioware completes their server merges (123 US servers will trans-merge down to 12, while 88 European Servers condense to 11 according to Darth Hater - nearly the worst case of the scenarios I examined last week), is that this continues to be a recipe for a nomadic population which is less well suited to longterm MMO communities.
I spend a fair number of hours playing MMO's, but I don't do so on any fixed schedule, which rules out traditional raiding. The things that do motivate me to continue playing are new experiences, such as:
- Story, if presented in a non-scheduled format (like WoW's EZ-mode PUG raid finder)
- Alternate advancement or similar (including more regular advancement in the case of my SWTOR character, who is still two levels shy of the game's cap)
- Perks and bonuses for future characters
I maintain that Bioware has not done a bad job in SWTOR. Many MMO's try to sell the player on multiple characters using additional leveling content the devs needed to build anyway, but SWTOR is the first game where I'm not only working on my second character before finishing my first, but even have plans out to what order I would tackle all eight of the class stories in. The catch, as Bioware completes their server merges (123 US servers will trans-merge down to 12, while 88 European Servers condense to 11 according to Darth Hater - nearly the worst case of the scenarios I examined last week), is that this continues to be a recipe for a nomadic population which is less well suited to longterm MMO communities.
Legacy Chapter 3
I airquote need because I don't actually feel any especially pressing need to hit the level cap. I already have all five companion legacy unlocks (3 are maxed for extra crafting bonuses and the other two are close). With the class story complete, I have my legacy ability unlocked. I hit legacy level 5 and paid for the human racial legacy bonus because it is a decent bonus to solo play but I'd rather give up half a million credits than wait out 50 levels as a human to obtain it. The one bonus I would obtain for getting this character to 50 is the racial unlock for Cyborgs, which opens up the race for all classes. However, I don't really plan on doing another Cyborg in the near future.
As a solo player, the biggest argument I have for sticking it out on this character is probably that it's easier to earn credits at higher level, which can be used to pay for gifts for companions on my new alts. Somehow, this seems less pressing than experiencing a whole new story - or seven.
Explaining SWTOR Server Merges
My post from yesterday on SWTOR's "character transfer" program has gotten a fair amount of attention, including blockquotes at Tobold's and the MMO Melting Pot, who asks whether the game has shrunk by 90%. To be clear, I don't think the population numbers are that low - at least not yet.
We already knew that the game was down over a quarter of its population. Due to the game's pre-launch guild deployment program, those losses were very likely to cluster on the newly added servers in the launch rush, as launch guilds stayed put on the pre-launch servers they were placed on. As a result, losing 25% of players could leave more than 25% of servers with undesirably low populations. If players were disproportionately leaving servers that never filled up to begin with, and new players (like myself) were disproportionately choosing the most popular servers that remained, it is easy to see how a lot of servers wound up in trouble.
There are also some reasons beyond avoiding the M-word for PR reasons why transfers were used over mergers. With transfers, it's up to the player choosing to transfer to make sure that any characters they already have on the destination server do not push them over the cap. With a voluntary transfer in place of an involuntary merge, responsibility for loss of a name can also be pushed on the player who "asked". In principle, some of the servers that were flagged as origin servers could still be saved down the line, though I think it is more likely that the stragglers will end up merged on a server that has room for them once they're down to manageable numbers.
That said, the sheer numbers of servers in play, combined with the previous population trend and the abrupt talk of free to play do not bode well. We already knew that the game was going to an unlimited free trial model through level 15 - currently seen in WoW and Rift - and that in principle means they are laying the groundwork for non-subscription access to the servers.
Alternate Payment Model
One final thought - when I heard the news from E3, I immediately assumed paid mini-expansion based on some past rumors regarding a survey that EA circulated on this topic. It sounds like they denied this rumor in press interviews, and perhaps for good reason. This idea has been tried before and never goes over well in a subscription game, especially within its first year of release. However, perhaps there is a way to make mini-expansions more like DLC - as an alternative to the subscription rather than an add-on.
DLC has far greater acceptance amongst players in general and Bioware fans in particular. What if, by "free to play", we mean that regular paid mini-expansions come with enough game time - at a discount that offsets the cost of the content for subscribers - to allow most players to beat the content? If for some reason you aren't done and don't wish to subscribe in the interim, you'd be free to revisit the stuff when the next DLC arrives with more included game time. It would still be a subscription game and you would still need to offer value for that option, but there may be some middle ground/hybrid model that hasn't been done before and that might work with the kind of content Bioware is producing. Time will tell, I suppose.
We already knew that the game was down over a quarter of its population. Due to the game's pre-launch guild deployment program, those losses were very likely to cluster on the newly added servers in the launch rush, as launch guilds stayed put on the pre-launch servers they were placed on. As a result, losing 25% of players could leave more than 25% of servers with undesirably low populations. If players were disproportionately leaving servers that never filled up to begin with, and new players (like myself) were disproportionately choosing the most popular servers that remained, it is easy to see how a lot of servers wound up in trouble.
There are also some reasons beyond avoiding the M-word for PR reasons why transfers were used over mergers. With transfers, it's up to the player choosing to transfer to make sure that any characters they already have on the destination server do not push them over the cap. With a voluntary transfer in place of an involuntary merge, responsibility for loss of a name can also be pushed on the player who "asked". In principle, some of the servers that were flagged as origin servers could still be saved down the line, though I think it is more likely that the stragglers will end up merged on a server that has room for them once they're down to manageable numbers.
That said, the sheer numbers of servers in play, combined with the previous population trend and the abrupt talk of free to play do not bode well. We already knew that the game was going to an unlimited free trial model through level 15 - currently seen in WoW and Rift - and that in principle means they are laying the groundwork for non-subscription access to the servers.
Alternate Payment Model
One final thought - when I heard the news from E3, I immediately assumed paid mini-expansion based on some past rumors regarding a survey that EA circulated on this topic. It sounds like they denied this rumor in press interviews, and perhaps for good reason. This idea has been tried before and never goes over well in a subscription game, especially within its first year of release. However, perhaps there is a way to make mini-expansions more like DLC - as an alternative to the subscription rather than an add-on.
DLC has far greater acceptance amongst players in general and Bioware fans in particular. What if, by "free to play", we mean that regular paid mini-expansions come with enough game time - at a discount that offsets the cost of the content for subscribers - to allow most players to beat the content? If for some reason you aren't done and don't wish to subscribe in the interim, you'd be free to revisit the stuff when the next DLC arrives with more included game time. It would still be a subscription game and you would still need to offer value for that option, but there may be some middle ground/hybrid model that hasn't been done before and that might work with the kind of content Bioware is producing. Time will tell, I suppose.
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