Mysterious Motivations of Players

Are players that hard to understand?  Two talks at this year's Game Developer's Conference, given by directors of high profile online games, suggest that we are still a mystery to people who spend tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars making products to sell to us. 

• Former Diablo III director Jay Wilson stated that Blizzard dramatically underestimated how many players would use the game's auction house feature, how frequently they would use that feature, and what impact this would have on the game's gear incentive curve.  As Wilhelm notes, the game's loot table generally drops random junk under your level, while the auction houses allow players to get optimized loot for their level (the junk gets vendored) for affordable quantities of in-game gold (or cash if you're really so inclined). 
  
• Bioware's Creative Director on SWTOR James Ohlen indicated that they dramatically underestimated the speed with which players would consume content multiple times over.  He claims this crucial misjudgement led them to feel that they had more time work on endgame content than they had in reality.  The team was not prepared for the possibility of half a million players at endgame within the first month.  

I can understand when bugs/exploits or poorly thought design choices creep through the testing process.  The crowdsourced efforts of hundreds of thousands of players will inevitably find something that internal quality assurance could not, no matter how much time you have.  It's a bit harder to understand why, eight and a half years into the World of Warcraft era, developers are still underestimating player dedication in this way. 

The reality is we do exactly what the incentives tell us to do.  If grinding out gear is long and tedious and there is a way to skip to the end - Blizzard's motivation for the real money auction house in the first place was recognizing that this would occur and thinking it would be better to cut out the illicit middleman - players will go that route.  If the single biggest selling point of your product is the story, and the only way to get the next chapter of the story is to continue playing, players will continue to play (in the same way you might stay up all night watching a full season of a TV show or reading a good book). 

Perhaps the real failing in both designs is that the primary incentive - chasing gear or story - is so inherently limited in terms of time.  Once that time has run out, players apparently did not feel that the underlying game was worth continuing.  As we've learned time and time again, incentives are very effective at changing player behavior, especially in the short term, but they are very ineffective in changing player preferences in the long term. 

Hard Sell for the NDA'ed Marvel Heroes

A few weeks ago, a $20 starter pack to the upcoming Marvel Heroes game was on the list of things I was thinking I would probably purchase later this year - I figured that if the game was worth my time at all, it was going to be worth $20 to play as the characters I like rather than the free characters.  Seeing how they've run the marketing campaign since calls into question whether the studio is pushing hard to make money now, before the NDA comes down.  It also leaves no question that they are treating their customers in a way that I am not willing to be treated.

Better buy fast, before we make the deal worse

The initial presale plans were announced on January 9th.  At the time, the $20 single-hero package was described as "over $30 in value" including one hero, two costumes (one of which presumably comes standard on the hero, so really 1 extra costume), $10 in currency, and $10 in "bonus currency" (the larger packages came with correspondingly larger amounts).  The announcement stated that it was a "limited time" offer that "won't last forever".  

Apparently, the "limited time" ran out two weeks later with no advance notice, on January 23rd, and the "bonus currency" disappeared from all of the packages without any announcement.  There was no public comment on the situation for a few days, and then the studio came back on January 28th with a new offer.  In response to "huge demand", they're adding only $5 in "bonus currency" back to the bundles, noting that the original offer was higher for their "earliest adopters".  

The new announcement specifically alludes to how short the first "limited time" was, but declines to provide a firm deadline for the new offer.  They also made the new offer retroactive to January 23rd, suggesting that some players paid for a package in the interim and only noted after the fact that there had been an un-announced change to what they got for what they got for their money.

Context: What is lurking behind the NDA?

While all this is going on, there is also some sort of testing conducted under a non-disclosure agreement.  All we know are a few tidbits from a press tour that did not go so well.  A few articles:

• Forbes' Erik Kain: "Marvel Heroes fails to provide a rewarding, fun action game experience - at least so far."  
• Massively's Justin Olivetti: "I recognized what it was trying to be almost instantly: a superhero-flavored Diablo.  And you know what? That's what it is. Whether that's a horrible, shirt-rending event or something that sounds like a cool mix is up to you. "
• Massively's Eliot Lefebvre: "Marvel Heroes isn't a heroic marvel" (article title)
• Rock Paper Shotgun: And throughout there was one thought in my head: why did they let journalists look at this now? It’s possibly not the most positive thought."

Almost all of the pieces make the point that the game remains in development and could improve (Eliot suggests the issue is a design flaw that may not be fixable).  Still, I'm struck by how consist all of the reviews were.  This mid-December press tour is all the information that we have about a game scheduled to launch in "Spring 2013".  If the developers know that what's hiding behind the NDA is not going to be well-received, that certainly puts a different spin on their push to collect people's pre-purchase money ASAP, and especially before they are forced to drop the NDA.

Purchasing decisions in the pre-purchase era
As a Marvel fan, I would love for this game to be fun to play.  Instead, the picture I'm getting is a game that is neither a good action game (too grindy - kill 100 mobs!) or a good use of the Marvel setting (characters that are basically cosmetic covers over a small handful of archetypes, even if that means the Hulk can't punch harder than a non-super-powered street thug).  On the merits alone, I do not think it is a good idea to make a $20 non-refundable purchase to secure an extra $5 in currency.

As to the marketing effort, pre-order and pre-purchase campaigns are relatively established.  Historically, these promotions could be good for the consumer in the specific case where resources were limited.  When the store is going to sell out of NES cartridges or the server is not going to have the capacity to handle the launch rush, it's perfectly reasonable to allocate these scarce resources to those who were most dedicated and most willing to sign up in advance.  Over time, though, we're seeing more and more deadlines like the one that Marvel is offering that do not appear to have any basis in scarcity or benefit to the consumer and do appear to be timed to encourage a decision with as little information as possible.  MMO players are as individuals critical thinkers who are seldom reluctant to share an opinion, and I continue to be surprised that we as a group tolerate this treatment.

(Tangentially related story - we are now a month past SWTOR's expansion "pre-order" deadline, with no release date and no meaningful information about the expansion's content.  Questionable reasoning aside, I suppose one cannot fault Bioware's communication - they said the five days of "early access" would be reserved for those to paid before January 7th, and there has not been any hint to suggest that customers who pay in full between January 8th and whenever the expansion comes out will be allowed into the new content any faster.  I suppose someone might spin this as an improvement over the game's original launch, in which players were admitted to the headstart in the order in which they paid, but with no transparency as to when exactly that was going to occur.)

January Round-up and February Outlook

With the first month of the year mostly out of the way, what have I been up to?  I previously tracked this sort of thing on Twitter, but it was somewhat cumbersome to review my notes that way, so I figured I'd try a post format instead.

The two biggest shares of my gaming time in January went to the two great financial disappointments of 2012 - SWTOR and TSW.  In TOR I've been leveling my Agent Operative alt with the benefit of numerous unlocks but without the benefits of the subscription - my initial impression is that the penalties to exp as a non-subscriber are steep and potentially problematic, but I'd really like to get to the upper-mid levels before I draw too much of a conclusion on that front.  In TSW, I've cleared out Kingsmouth and Savage Coast and moved on to the Blue Mountains, where I'm finding my build perhaps too effective - I'm almost looking forward to being forced to change to deal with other types of foes down the road. 

I also put some time into pet battles in WoW, which I considered oddly a prerequisite for entering the new expansion because I did not want to go to Pandaria and constantly walk past pets that I could not yet tame.  Actually journeying forth into the new content was something I set aside for when I could clear out some time to dedicate to the task, and that time is tentatively coming up next month.  Blizzard is not confirming or denying whether there are new five-mans in the future patch 5.3, which makes it sound like many of the current endgame activities could cease to be meaningful if I wait too much longer. 

Other things on my calendar for next month include Star Trek Online, which will launch a new featured episode that awards a special anniversary starship reward, and possible Dungeons and Dragons Online.  I've been ducking into DDO from time to time for an evening when I want a change of pace, and the next game update is scheduled to overhaul/improve loot in some of the mid-level content that is next on my list of things to do.  As always, this potentially leaves everything else I could be working on - including my games of choice from this month - sitting on the sidelines, but such is the era we live in.

What are you all looking forward to specifically in the month of February? 

Belated Predictions For 2013

Last year's predictions did not go so well.  I predicted that it would not be a great year for new subscription MMO's, but I also thought that SWTOR would skate by as a high churn subscription title, and that WoW could not afford to leave Cataclysm sitting on the shelf beyond early summer.  Even so, I've found that I have a fair number of predictions either scattered through my blog and other peoples' comment sections, so I figure there's no harm in collecting all of my comic inaccuracy in a single spot.

Anyway, here are my belated predictions - I don't know if this makes my job easier because I have a month of additional information (see first item, below) or harder because there is less time left for the predictions to come true.  In any case, if I have predicted bad things for your favorite MMO this year, rest assured that my lack of accuracy well have guaranteed your game's smashing success.  :)

Rift Goes Free To Play in 2013
First up, a minor cheat by exploiting information that only became available in late January.  Two days ago, I would have said that Executive Producers Scott Hartsman's position against turning the game free to play would be enough to keep it from happening in 2013 - even if Trion's views eventually changed, failing to work ahead on the conversion would keep it from launching this year.

Then came news that Hartsman has departed from Trion Studios.  In the last week, we also learned that Trion's MMOFPS Defiance plans to launch with a buy-to-play model featuring a $60 box and no recurring subscriptions.  We already knew that the online strategy game End of Nations - assuming it survives being in-sourced into Trion proper - was going to be Free to Play.  Going back to last year, Rift already has an in-game store, and then there were the layoffs at Trion and the former End of Nations developers.

Moving this particular game to free-to-play is debatable, but Trion has investors to answer to.  As long as things are going really well, Trion has the ammo it needs to justify why they are continuing to buck the overwhelming industry trend.  If things have started to go downhill - and the layoffs suggest that they have - then we can expect Rift to lose its subscription in 2013.

LOTRO: Helm's Deep Or Bust
As I've previous written, I think LOTRO is under a lot of pressure to increase revenue THIS year.  Turbine's 2008 press release indicated that they have the license through 2014, with options to extend the term out to 2017.  We don't know whether the terms of the option years are favorable, and presumably the studio's new owners at Warner Brothers are capable of re-negotiating a reasonable deal if this is worth their time. 

That makes 2013 the year in which Turbine has to prove the game's worth.  LOTRO will not fold in 2013, but if things go badly it could very well close when the license issue comes due in 2014.  To this end, I expect the following:

• Unlike last year's Great River update or the F2P relaunch's Enedwaith region, we will NOT see a new region added at the current level cap.  The price point on these new optional areas has generally been low, and that makes it a questionable investment that would be better saved for the next expansion.
• Speaking of which, I expect the new expansion to require a minimum purchase of $50, up from $40 last year and $30 the year before.  As with last year, Turbine will offer plenty of opportunity to pay full price early and then discount the thing by 50% for an end-of-year sale once the early adopters have paid up.
• The expansion will bump the level cap to 95.  LOTRO has lots of level-scaling content in past expansions that could be used to level to the new cap and skip buying the new content.  Making the cap higher makes that option less desirable because you would have more levels to grind out.
• The actual battle of Helm's Deep - which, as in recent years, may get delayed to a patch after the expansion launch - will be presented from multiple different perspectives so that solo, group, raid, and monster players can all participate in this iconic bit of the lore.  

I probably won't be bored enough to count come 2014, but we're almost certainly not done with Turbine pushing something aggressive and unpopular into the cash shop and then gauging whether to backpedal based on the customer feedback.  It seems like we can expect this sort of thing roughly every other month.

Asheron's Call 3 Announced
It's possible that Turbine dusted off AC2 just as a lark of a weekend project.  Then again, we know that they've been working on a mystery title for a while, and it would make a lot of sense for them to work in their own IP so that they are not at the mercy of some rightsholder.

Blizzard Updates
This is a Blizzcon year, which means we will probably get some announcements in addition to the oft-delayed Starcraft II expansion.  My guesses:

• WoW's next expansion announced, but will not be ready for beta in 2013.  After years of promising to try and get expansions out in a more timely fashion, Blizzard finally concedes that it's going to be 20+ months like the previous attempts. 
• Blizzard announces a console based non-subscription spinoff of one of its existing IP's.  A recent rumor suggested that this was the real nature of Titan, the long rumored online followup to WoW, but that was supposed to be an original IP.  We know they've been flirting with consoles for years now, and I'm guessing that this is a separate effort.  It will be interesting to see whether it runs on current generation console hardware, as Blizzard's development cycle is so long that next generation consoles will probably arrive before this game does.
• Titan will finally be announced, but will not be playable or in any way suggesting it will debut in 2014. Blizzard has had time to ponder how DIII went for them and see the way the wind is blowing, so this game will NOT have a subscription.  It will instead be designed from the ground up with something - content, characters, etc - that people can purchase to keep the revenue flowing.

Funcom goes out of business in 2013, probably taking its titles to the grave
I'm not going to belabor my analysis from last week - this studio was on shaky footing before TSW disappointed, and I'm not convinced that layoffs alone can balance the books, especially if they hurt the ability to deliver future updates.  I'm not sure what EA does on a day to day basis as the publisher for TSW - if they own the servers, billing system, etc, that would be a major impediment to any attempt to sell the title off. 

New Subscription MMO's
If an MMO studio asked me for advice, I'd say that attempting to launch a new MMO with a box price and a monthly fee is really poorly advised.  However, I don't think the industry is quite ready to let this approach die just yet.  Looking at two major upcoming releases that have yet to announce business models:

• Wildstar: Will definitely have a box price at launch.  I predict it will not charge a subscription by the end of 2013 - either they'll be smart and not try or they'll be forced to reconsider between launch and the end of the year.
• Elder Scrolls Online: With all the hype they're already firing up for this game's beta, this game shows all the signs of having a large budget, and they are declining to state their planned business model.  It's possible that they are going to go buy-to-play with frequent paid DLC and are saving this piece of news to build anticipation for the inevitable pre-purchase campaign. Still, GW2 aside, I will believe that a big budget MMO like this one is willing to voluntarily surrender the monthly fee when I see it.
  
  So I predict Elder Scrolls WILL launch with a monthly fee.  They will probably still have it through at least the end of 2013, but that may have more to do with launching late in the year than with the game's success.  (I do predict they will launch this year - even Blizzard doesn't start its beta process an entire year in advance of release.)   

Kickstarter Chaos
After proudly proclaiming 2012 the year of the Kickstarter-funded game - and cheerfully pocketing 5% of the proceeds with no obligation to help ensure that backers get what was promised - Kickstarter is due for a reckoning.  At least one video game product that received $1 million in backing will go bankrupt before delivering the promised game in 2013.

Kickstarter will make some token changes in response to the backlash, but will remain constrained by their business model - they make money when projects are successfully funded, not when they force creators to post information that dissuades people from backing risky and/or poorly thought out efforts.   Expect some minimal token effort before returning to business as usual, but the incident will cost the site some of its hip status within the blogosphere. 

No big winner, but perhaps balance?
Overall, I don't see a single MMO emerging as the big winner in 2013, the way that Guild Wars 2 arguably won the half of 2012 after its release.  When you look at Syp's list of new MMO's to watch in 2013, half either aren't traditional MMO's or else are unlikely to release in 2013.  As a result, we're likely to get at least 8-9 months into 2013 without a major event launch with the traditional cycle of hype - and all too often disappointment.  (We could go the entire year if I'm wrong and Elder Scrolls slips into 2014.)  Even the slate of major expansions is going to be relatively quiet since many of the big players released something in late 2012.   

This is a real opportunity for MMO's that are currently sitting in the middle of the pack.  Players will still wander from game to game, and now is the time where an existing product, with most of the rough edges from launch already smoothed out, can potentially make a big impression.  Even if all of the things I've suggested come to pass, 2013 could be a good year on the balance if we come out the other side with a solid pool of games that are quietly getting the job done.

Revisiting Cartel Resale Prices

Back in November, I correctly predicted that quirks to SWTOR's non-subscription model would drive down the re-sale prices for unlocks used by non-subscribers.  I then made an unfortunate attempt to apply basic macroeconomic supply and demand principles, concluding that the poor return on investment would discourage people from purchasing the unlocks to resell, thus gutting supply.  I therefore concluded that the time to buy was ASAP, before there was nothing left to purchase. 

I now own account-wide unlocks for basically all of the unlockable restrictions, other than the guild bank (which I don't need because I don't tend to take my guild's stuff even when it's offered)

Here at PVD, I'm not just the author of the analysis - I actually use it for my own purchasing decisions.  In this case, following my own advice caused me to overpay by probably at least two million credits for all of the stuff that I have since unlocked, when compared to better prices I have seen since.  It's hard to complain about that outcome when you consider that the credits I earned while playing at max level with one month of subscription time (some of which I spent starting new alts) turned into permanent account-wide unlocks for almost every feature available in the Cartel store - all without spending a single Cartel Coin.  The total would have been over 9000 Cartel Coins, at a real world cost of at least $80.

A lopsided "exchange rate"
I have been very surprised that the going rate for Cartel market items has gotten so low - many unlocks that run for around $5 in real money are available on the Global Trade Network for prices that non-subscribers can pay (i.e. no more than 350K credits due to the cap).  I would not have figured that people would open up their wallets for so few credits.  More surprising, this trend is not limited to the more expensive unlocks.  Some of the rarest items in the random gambling packs - items that people have not been able to get after spending $200 - are available for maybe 1-2 million credits. 

A few possibilities jump out to explain what we're seeing here.  It's certainly possible that some of the inventory was purchased before people realized how little demand there would be, and that folks have been stuck with stuff they can't sell for months since.  It's also possible that some subscribers do not place any value on the stipend of Cartel Coins that is included in their monthly fees.  Meanwhile, my perception of what credits are worth is defined by what I can get on my max level main, but many newer players are limited to low level income.  Finally, the random packs do mean that some players are going to end up with rare items they don't want, which will go on the market. 

Overall, it begs some interesting questions about who is paying for the Cartel Coins.  I get that there is a demographic that is categorically opposed to daily quests for any reason - I might even count myself in that number if not for the fact that they provide something to do while waiting for the random daily dungeon queue (which I actually enjoy running).  That aside, there's a real possibility that some players who do not own a max level character are dropping substantial amounts for real world money to get their characters set up with relatively modest amounts of in-game money for their leveling experience.  If so, it's a fascinating experiment in dev-sanctioned real money transactions.

Rethinking SWTOR, TSW Relaunches

I've been spending a fair chunk of my time on two of the more prominent MMO's that underperformed in 2012 - SWTOR and TSW - of late.  Both had to redo their business models within the first year of launch, and both revisions left me in some ways scratching my head.

Given more time, experience in the games after their relaunches, and the limited detail the respective games have released, I have new theories about both games... neither of which would be good news for me as a customer of both products.  I get the impression that SWTOR is heavily dependent on its cosmetic item gambling packs and that TSW appears to be running a fire sale to keep the lights on for a few more months before going under.

SWTOR - Funded by Gambling For Items?
As someone who prefers to pay for MMO's on a non-subscription basis, I've had a hard time wrapping my head around SWTOR's new approach.  Almost everything I would have been willing to pay for was either given away for free or else has not been offered for non-subscribers to purchase at all.  I get the desire to sell subscriptions, but how do you make more money by expanding the audience if you're seemingly so opposed to actually making money from the new non-subscription players?

I'm now increasingly thinking that the goal of Free to Play had remarkably little to do with expanding the player base.  Rather, it appears to have been about creating a justification for an aggressive cash shop aimed at the previous subscribers, with gambling for items as its centerpiece.

Bioware reps are currently on an offensive to defend the Cartel packs, telling both the TORWars fansite and the game's official forums that revenue from the packs is funding the rest of development.  They put their money where their mouths are, releasing a second random cartel pack with different random items within around a month after the F2P relaunch, with two more packs already finished and more in the pipeline.

We don't have the real numbers, but the claim makes some sense.  One of the last pieces of content before the incident at Darth Hater was a poll answered by 2,500 readers of the site - overwhelmingly subscribers - said that Cartel Packs and cosmetic armor were the two most popular purchases.  Players who read a third party news site are inherently going to be the most devoted players and not necessarily representative of the average player, but the numbers are intriguing.  From the survey, 24% claimed to have spent over $50 in real money on Cartel Coins, and 12% claimed to have bought 20+ Cartel Packs (which very likely cost over $50).

This is not a random sample, but it does show that there are at least hundreds of players willing to pay $50+ in a single month on top of their subscriptions, and half of this particular sample was spending that money on Cartel Packs.  There's certainly money to be made from the cosmetic stuff - which is priced aggressively - but the random packs have to be a bigger bang for Bioware's buck when it comes to revenue per item sold.  This is a model that would never be tolerated in a subscription game cash store, but F2P may be just the excuse Bioware needed to get both their subscription fees and the most aggressive monetization normally reserved for non-subscription titles.

(Aside: Curse has posted its side of the Darth Hater saga, stating that they took over the site with the new year, and that the entire founding staff departed voluntarily without saying goodbye.)

The Secret Fire Sale?
In the month since removing the TSW's subscription fee, Funcom has announced that they sold 70,000 copies of the game, representing a 30% increase.  They then held more layoffs.  When you look at the numbers in context, you can see why they celebrated the success in this fashion.

According to numbers Unsubject dug up, Funcom was counting on 280,000 longterm sustained subscribers.  Instead, they did not even sell that many boxes - if 70K was 30% of sales as of mid-December then their total sales base at the time was roughly 230K and their current total sits somewhere around 300K.  This would indicate only marginal progress since the 200K copies sold number Unsub found at the end of the launch quarter, when he noted that the financials said the studio had not been profitable since 2010.

The stated business model for TSW right now is that some people are going to continue with the optional subscription, and the rest will pay $5-10 for DLC content as it is released.  This model does not make any sense.  Out of that 300K copies sold:

• Some have left for good, subscription or not.  
• Another large portion - 70K new players and probably a fair number of less dedicated existing customers - are bumming around Kingsmouth and are months away from ever spending money on endgame DLC content.  
• Amongst the previous subscribers, some folks will not care about the optional perks on the now-optional subscription and will drop down to paying a smaller amount for DLC only when it is released instead of paying a subscription every single month.
• There is also the brave handful who opted for lifetime subscriptions - which Funcom appreciated at the time, but who aren't worth that much more income going forward.
• The only new revenue here are new players who pay for stuff and previous subscribers who continue to subscribe but also choose to pay extra for DLC, rather than using the point stipend included in their subscriptions.

With all of the layoffs, it is unclear how this studio is going to manage frequent content updates that people are willing to pay for - a crucial point because now they only get paid when they release new content.  Even assuming that they manage it, I'm just not seeing a source for an increase in sustained revenue.  This game already had a cash shop, and now may stand to make less money from its content depending on what current subscribers do when their time runs out.

Given the unfortunate financials, one conclusion jumps out from this data.  Funcom just sold 70,000 of what are effectively $30 lifetime subscriptions to the launch game because they need the money right now to keep the studio open.  If I'm right, they're mortgaging their future income because otherwise they have no future.

To be clear, I'm not writing this because I hate the game or want it to fail.  I'm actually enjoying myself.  And I'm putting my time where my analysis is by getting as much as I can out of the game right now, because I'm unfortunately not optimistic that this product will be around to play if I wait six months.

A Sad End For Darth Hater?

It's Friday night, which would ordinarily mean a new episode of the Darth Hater SWTOR podcast to download.  However, in an abrupt turn of events, unconfirmed but plausible rumors on reddit indicate there may never be another episode of the show. 

Details are extremely sparse - all we know is that the site has not updated in 2013, including failure to cover this week's patch (normally a mainstay of their daily updates).  The Reddit rumors indicate that most or all of the staff have been dismissed.  Unless I missed it, there was no direct indication that the site was in trouble.  However, the hosts did spend their presumptive final episode reflecting on both the game's first year of release and their experiences over the show's 3+ year run - suggesting that perhaps this possibility was somewhere on their minds. 

We will probably never know enough information to determine whether stones should be thrown at the Curse network, which picked up the site in September 2011.  I'd imagine that hosting the podcasts and images along with paying the staff cost Curse some amount of money, while advertising revenue was very likely down due to the game's limited success.  It's a sad irony that, after spending a year covering layoffs of Bioware developers - many of whom the team got to know personally - the podcast crew may have gotten the same treatment.  Even if Curse has future plans for the site, their failure to let the team say a proper farewell to the community they created is disappointing. 

As a blogger who plays many games, I'm dependent on high quality sites and podcasts like Darth Hater to stay informed about day to day events.  Beyond traveling to cover conventions at personal expense, the show made an unprecedented accomplishment - the coverage of SWTOR's launch came in episode number 105.  I.e. they released over two years worth of weekly episodes about an MMO that had not yet released.  Between the years of dedication and expense - and the reality that only an intellectual property like Star Wars could possible provide enough material to talk about for that long - this benchmark may never be surpassed.

Best wishes to the team, wherever you may wander, and many thanks for your years of hard work. 

New Year's Resolutions for 2013

My annual New Year's Resolution post is usually lengthy but not that insightful - half of the items are short term goals that get done soon afterwards and the other half are more pie-in-the sky things that don't happen at all.  My year for 2012 can be summarized with two lines of facts:

• Prior to October: Level capped characters in seven different MMO's simultaneously, posting on the blog every 2-3 days (11-18 posts/month)
• Post-October: Level capped characters remain in only three MMO's due to expansions I have yet to catch up to, posting to the blog once or twice per week, +1 infant

I'm happy with this turn of events, but it does put realistic constraints on what I can aspire to in-game during the coming year.  A few resolutions, which are more qualitative than specific:

Work on what I have

2012 wasn't all bad when it came to trying new things.  I started and capped characters in STO and SWTOR, along with some very brief (often one-evening) visits to Aion, Tera, EQ1, and TSW.  That said, it was a tough year to carve out time for anything new, and that does not figure to change in 2013.

I currently have what I need (access and game time as appropriate) for content I have yet to use in WoW, LOTRO, DCUO, TSW, DDO, STO, and SWTOR.  I don't expect any of these titles to fold in 2013, but it really makes more sense to focus on my backlog at this point.  I'm fine with my budget where it currently sits, but it's pointless to collect more stuff that I don't have time to play - the best sale price is still a waste if I don't use the content.  

Learn when NOT to beat the business model

While my time is scarce, I do get enjoyment out of snagging a good bargain.  Sometimes, when the payoff is high enough, it can make sense to grind in-game to "beat the business model".  

For instance, according to SWTOR Spy's Cartel calculator, I have unlocked more than 10,000 Cartel Coins' worth of stuff by purchasing the relevant unlocks on the GTN for in-game credits.  This would have cost me $80 in the cash shop, while species and inventory unlocks I picked up for alts during my last month of subscription time could potentially have cost another $40.  I did spend a fair amount of extra time in game sending my companions on slicing missions and farming daily quests (which also awarded several high end pieces of gear for my main) to pay for all of these unlocks, but this was definitely a major payoff for my time.  

Even so, cash shops are a reality of the market today, and I should really make better use of them.  If an unlock is purely cosmetic, it makes sense to do without or set it aside as a reward for earning the credits in game.  When it comes to exp potions and other things that affect the rate of advancement, it's worth asking whether the game is worth playing if it's worth paying to play it less.  However, when an unlock actually impacts quality of life - e.g. not being able to harvest materials I encounter in the world because one of my crewskill slots is locked - it really makes more sense to pay a couple dollars and move on.  

Focus on my perspective

This blog will celebrate its 1000th post early next year and its fifth birthday in the spring.  While limited time has been the most immediate cause for my current drop in posts, the results are somewhat positive. 

I don't view reporting the news as one of this blog's strengths.  I will post immediate reactions sometimes, especially if I have an opinion I'm not seeing from other folks, but often the "breaking news" of the MMO world does not even come with enough detail to support in-depth analysis.  Because I know that most of my posts will not be timely, I'm free to spend most of my limited time working on more of the big picture, such as trends that tie recent developments into past experiences.  

I intentionally don't have a set format or schedule for the blog, because this is a hobby and I prefer flexibility to write what I want.  That the schedule happens to support the kind of posts that I like to write is a happy coincidence.

Thanks to all of my readers, best wishes, and a happy new year!  

2012 MMO Expenditures

I've been keeping detailed logs of my MMO spending for roughly two years now, and I elected to publish them for the first time last year.  My experience probably isn't typical, as I spent a total of $275 on eight different MMO's in 2012, where most people probably stick to a smaller number of games.  That said, two broad observations:

• Game time for specific two subscription titles - WoW and SWTOR (well, it was) - represents about half of my total ($125, counting the first $15 of the SWTOR box cost as payment for the first 30 days).  This number is higher than it could have been due to the annual pass.  Even so, my spending on these two games EACH nearly doubles the next highest item on my ledger.  
• Setting aside those two subscription payments (WoW's was technically discounted), I did not pay full price for anything that I purchased this year - I'd estimate that I paid about half of the asking price overall.  Some of these savings come from retailers looking to dump stock, but many of them were provided directly from the publishers.  It's not accurate to look at all of this as lost revenue for the studios - some of the lower priority titles would not have made the cut at full price.  Even so, sales are a reality of the business, and are going to be a factor for anyone looking to base their business model primarily on one-time buy-to-play transactions.  As the number of games I play increases, it is easier and easier to wait for the sale before pulling the trigger, especially if there is any reason to be concerned about quality/polish.  

And now for the full ledger.  My accounting practice is to bill purchases of content and cash store currency in the year they were paid for, but to bill game time in the year in which it is actually used.  Titles are listed in chronological order.

World of Warcraft: $80 (+$60?) (+$35 to 2013)
I wrote an annual pass post-mortem when the year of game time I purchased through that promotion lapsed.  The short form is that I don't regret the approximately $80 for ten months of game time that I used in 2012, but the $60 Diablo III purchase (which I'm not counting against my MMO budget because it isn't an MMO) that I made in order to get that deal was a bit of a fail.

One big difference between this and past expansion cycles was the early availability of holiday discounts on the brand new expansion.  Through holiday sales and promos, I was able to snag the Pandaria box and a 6o day time card with which to play it for $35. (I have yet to use these things, so I'm counting them for next year.)

Rift: $10.72
As a brief recap, I had paid for the box at launch last year, ended the included month at level 36 or so, and leveled the rest of the way to the game's cap using Trion's frequent free retrial weekends.  Just when I was thinking of coming back for a month, I ran into a firesale on game time cards - 90 days for less than a single month.  Perhaps they were afraid they'd be stuck with unsold inventory if the game went free to play?  In principle, I still have some time left, though I'd have to purchase the expansion - even if I did want to re-roll, I'd probably want access to the new souls.

Star Trek Online: $11.40
I went foraging for an old retail box of this game to snag one month's subscription time.  This is useful because you get to keep any additional storage granted by being a subscriber at each rank (10 levels) tier.  I also spent $5 on the smallest quantity of Cryptic points so I could purchase an early increase to my duty officer cap.

SWTOR: $70
I waited until patch 1.2, which was widely viewed as the patch that was going to finish all of the odds and ends that didn't get done in time for release.  As a reward for my patience, I got the account key direct from EA for $40 instead of the list price of $60.  (I also somehow qualified for the "loyalty" bonus minipet that was granted to current subscribers for sticking with the game during the early months, despite having shown up that week.)  I subbed up for an additional month to get my first character to the level cap, and subbed up again just prior to the free to play relaunch in order to take advantage of some of the grandfathered perks former subscribers get.

EQ2 AND DCUO: $20
I don't remember exactly why I chose to throw $20 at a station cash sale sometime around April/May.  Through a series of sales so aggressive that they forced all content and game time out of SOE's in-game stores for good, I ended up turning that $20 into the $40 Age of Discovery expansion and 6 months of subscription time in EQ2 (I forget the exact discount you get for six month subs, probably $75ish).

(I also snagged the three DCUO DLC packs I did not already own at the time of the "we are taking DLC out of the cash store because our marketing people have broken the payment model" final sale in August, but I think that was from the Station Cash leftover from last year.)

Setting aside the absurdity of how long it took SOE to notice this was going on, I'll be the first to admit that the status quo could not continue.  EQ2 may also have finally tweaked its payment model to the point where paying on a non-subscription basis is worthwhile.  That said, some of EQ2's recent expansions have been so thin that there really wasn't much more than a month's worth of entertainment that a solo player could carve out of them.  It's hard to justify $50-60 for an expansion box plus either subscription time or unlocks if I'm going to get so little time out of them compared to all the other titles on this list - no wonder Smedley wants to get out of the content creation business.

LOTRO: $43
I paid $8 for a small Turbine Point bundle to snag the barter wallet upgrade.  It is irritating that Turbine is so heavily focused on charging for fixes to longstanding design issues (in this case, their addiction to non-stacking character-bound token rewards), and I probably could have earned the Turbine points in game, but I decided solving this problem was worth the $8.

Then Turbine decided that the first expansion to player inventory since 2007 would be exclusive to the $70 Rohan expansion bundle for several months.  Fortunately, Turbine can be counted on to discount expansions aggressively, so I just waited a few weeks and got the bags and whistles edition for 50% off, i.e. less than what people paid for the regular edition at launch.  This bundle also included a fair number of Turbine points, which I will no doubt need to spend on unlocking basic UI improvements over the next year.

DDO: $25
Speaking of Turbine expansion discounts, I also snagged the DDO expansion for 50% off through a Steam sale.  Apparently I was lacking in patience, as Turbine slashed the price further down to 75% off for Black Friday.  I hadn't spent any real world money on this game since mid-2010 (albeit only playing the game sporadically during that window), I suppose a few extra bucks isn't the end of the world.

One could argue whether I actually needed this expansion in the first place, as I do not have any high level characters.  The one thing that I have gotten a fair amount of use out of is one of the bonus throw-ins: a greater tome of learning.  I generally don't favor paying for experience boosts, but this particular bonus actually changes the way that you play the game by adding a hefty bonus to each quest the first time you complete it (reset if you true reincarnate).  This effectively removes the requirement to repeat midlevel content for exp.  I'm happy to repeat DDO's content eventually, but I'd rather not do it immediately, and now I don't have to.

The Secret World: $15
I was poised to skip every single MMO that launched in 2012 until a last minute switch in payment model, followed by an Amazon sale offering the newly buy-to-play title for $15, made TSW too intriguing to pass up.  I had initially passed on this title as much due to my crowded schedule and a few rough edges during my very brief visit to the beta as to anything on the game's merits (such as its subscription model).

The game-changer with the buy-to-play switch is not the amount of money, but rather the amount of time I would need to invest immediately to determine whether the product is worth future subscription payments.  I've spent a few hours with the game so far and it does show some promise, especially as a secondary title.  I can't see how my one-time payment suddenly props up the game's finances, but I suppose it couldn't hurt?

Grand Total: $275 (not counting DIII)
Subtotal for Content/Currency Purchases: $123 (includes $25 of the $40 SWTOR box price)
Subtotal for Game Time: $152

SWTOR Pre-purchase Run Amok: You Should Have Bought Faster!

SWTOR has announced its first miniexpansion, and with it a pre-purchase ultimatum that is as far as I am aware unprecedented in MMO's.  From the page:

"Receive five (5) days of Early Access* if you Pre-Order by January 7, 2013 11:59PM CT // 5:59AM GMT!"

It's currently December 18th, so that gives you three weeks to decide... on paying in full in advance for an expansion scheduled to release in "Spring 2013".  As Syp notes, the fourth bullet point on why you should buy the expansion is that more information is "coming soon", so even Bioware acknowledges that relevant information for your purchasing decision is not yet available.  

EDIT:  Shintar notes in the comments that Bioware are NOT describing this as a "pre-purchase" in their marketing material.  I think that is the more accurate description if they're charging your payment now and not offering refunds (except possibly where compelled by law), but please let me know if you find evidence to the contrary.

Technically speaking, the ad does NOT promise that people who pre-order after the deadline will not ALSO receive the early access.  If so, it is merely badly misleading, trying to trick players into buying now through a false deadline.  That's the good scenario.  The bad scenario is that four months from now you log in and your guild is split into haves and have nots because some people failed to click buy fast enough.

Paid early access programs are ubiquitous for new MMO launches but rare for paid expansions - offhand, I recall one year where SOE gave retailers a one-week exclusive on an EQ2 expansion, in the process screwing over international players who could not physically obtain a box.  There have been a few games that have temporarily shut off additional sales because their servers could not accommodate more customers.  I know of no situation in which a live MMO with adequate server capacity has divided the community in order to teach them an object lesson that they should be paying in full for content before the details are released and months before it is ready.

Honestly, it makes so little sense that I'm assuming the marketing people are just lying through their teeth when they say there's a deadline in three weeks.  Is that really where you want your relationship with your MMO provider to be?  Is this a business practice you really want to support?  If this really is a fair price for a quality product (which is possible - though unknown at this early date), did they need to resort to this type of strong-arm hard-sell?

Choosing SWTOR Alts

One of the quirks to SWTOR's new business model is that players who know roughly what their alts are going to be in the future can save some money by subbing up for one month, and using that time to start new characters. 

• Species locks are not enforced retroactively, so you are free to create premium race characters and keep them after your subscription lapses.  There is also the option to unlock races - including ones that cannot normally be used for all classes - using credits (either directly - for 1.5 million a piece, or for whatever the cash shop unlocks are selling for in your local GTN - as low as 400-600K on my server).  Due to the credit cap, this is also a subscriber-only feature.
  
• Non-subscribers cannot mail credits, even within their own legacy.  This is allegedly to deter credit farming on free accounts and more likely to make it harder for non-subscribers to get around the credit cap by shuttling credits to alts.  (You can mail items - one at a time - to your alts and then try to auction them.)  I typically spend around 100K credits setting up a new alt with legacy perks, such as mount access at level 10, entry level affection perks for companions, basic gifts, etc, and this option is not available without a way to send your alt the credits.  (Note that you should check the GTN for mounts before buying one from a vendor.  You may be able to find one of the more common options on sale for less than the 8,000 credits required to buy a standard mount from the vendor.) 
  
• Nonsubscribers cannot purchase inventory upgrades using credits, only cartel coins (or GTN purchases of cartel coin unlocks, which will cost significantly more for your first few space increases).  Personally, I don't find that I need more than 40-50 slots, YMMV.
  
• TEMPORARY: Currently, non-subscribers are capped from creating more than two characters on their entire account (i.e. NOT per server), but lapsed subscribers can access as many pre-existing characters as they have.  It's somewhat inexplicable that Bioware launched free to play without implementing the item that lets you purchase more slots.  Now they're going to have to spring the restrictions on people down the line.  Note that this bullet will become moot when they do implement the character cap, at which point free players will have the two slots and preferred nonsubscribers will have six.

With all that in mind, I set forth on a side project to start up alts during my one month subscription.  I already had a level 50 Trooper Vanguard (tank) that I really liked and a level 19 Sith Warrior (DPS) alt that I hated because of how much time he spent running between targets that my NPC companion was killing.  I decided to roll through to the six character cap, with the thinking that I won't repeat either of the two archetypes I already had for now.  The good news is that all four alts are ready to go.  The bad news is that now I have to figure out which one(s) to play.  

1. Amargosa, female Rattataki Sith Sorcerer (caster DPS/healing): Purple force lightning aside, this advanced class is interesting in that it's a ranged DPS with regenerating energy that does not depend on how much energy you have remaining.  All of the other ranged classes use a mechanic where how quickly your ammo/etc regenerates scales with how much you have spent.  One downside - your initial companion appears to actively hate you, which I'm guessing could get old. 
2. Kalestra, female Mirialan Jedi Consular Shadow (stealth melee/tank): I chose to make this the tank because I think the Jedi ranged caster path - somehow miraculously finding the same sized debris to throw at foes with telekinesis - looks really stupid. On the downside, I didn't like the other melee class because of how quickly individual targets die in this game, so the consular could suffer the same flaw.  Meanwhile, I was initially underwhelmed with all the rambling about the Jedi code on Tython, but the story picked up a bit as the planet's class story unfolds.  
3. Mirish, female Chiss Agent Operative (healer/ranged DPS): The agent is universally hailed as one of the best storylines, the starting companion is a relatively normal character, and there are a few interesting mechanics going on here including a ranged tree, a stealth melee tree, and full out heals.  One question mark is whether I will start to find the cover mechanic irritating, as right now I seem somewhat limited if I don't have something to hide behind.
4. Chulak, male Twilek Smuggler Gunslinger (ranged DPS): Almost an afterthought, but one of my favorite stories, with a very good Star Wars feel.  I arguably should have flipped the advanced classes on this pairing, as I'm now lined up to have all three healing specs on the Empire and all three tank specs on the Republic, assuming I ever get that far.  Oh well.  One big downside, though, is that I'm really not all that fond of my starting companion, and apparently I'm stuck with him for a bit.  

And so I'm on the fence.  Ideally, I'd choose one Empire and one Republic representing one each of the two archetypes and then backtrack to deal with the last round.  Or I guess I could in principle give the poor Sith Warrior another chance.  What I don't want to do is level more than one alt on the same faction due to how much content is shared.  It's also unfortunate that I seem to be having so much trouble matching up all three of a class story, gameplay style, and supporting cast that I can live with on the same character.  Ah well, I guess trial and error will eventually prevail - at least I'm not paying by the month at the moment? 

Examining SWTOR's endgame

When I first hit level 50 in SWTOR, I was in no hurry to try the "elder game".  My leveling path went solely through solo story content - I don't believe I joined a single group - and I was not in the mood to make the transition to grinding dungeons and farming daily quests.  Having returned, I have been pleasantly surprised to find the game well-designed and executed.  

However, given how much progress I made in a single month, I can see why Bioware is touchy about calling its max-level content the "endgame".  SWTOR's high production value story-driven content is especially vulnerable to growing stale with repetition, and its incentive curve is already buckling under the pressure of how to accomodate new players. 

Grouping for An Assassin

The HK-51 companion has some interesting design.  The droid is a specialized DPS beast designed to chew through the stronger mobs in daily quests - for each five mobs HK-51 damages, he can open the next fight by one-shotting a "strong" level mob, which can save a lot of time and danger. 

My immediate incentive to jump into SWTOR's group content was the addition of the HK-51 assassin droid in last month's patch 1.5.  Though NPC companions are only used while solo - they take up a slot that is almost certainly better filled with a human player in max level content - the quest to obtain this new companion has multiple steps that require group content.  Worse, two of the steps that basically require a second player occur in special instances that are specific to this questline.  With no incentive to ever repeat this content in the future, I rushed out to complete them ASAP for fear that it would no longer be possible to find players who still needed them. 

Setting aside the issue of whether players will ever be able to complete this quest chain in the future, Bioware got what they wanted.  I claimed the free level 50 starter gear from the mission terminal (at the time, there was only PVP gear, but now you can supplement this with some PVE stuff), respecced my character into the DPS tree that sounded easier to play, and jumped into the hard mode flashpoint queue. 

The first few groups got a lousy deal with such a green newbie.  When solo players complained that this arc required groups, many players responded by arguing that grouping should be required for something in a MMORPG.  I'd be curious how many of those players would have changed their minds and concluded that they would rather not have had me taking up a slot in their party.  The good news is that the learning curve settled down eventually, I enjoyed the flashpoint game enough to continue beyond the required two hard mode runs, and eventually I picked up enough gear - and perhaps experience - to vaguely carry my weight. 

Incentives ahead, but short-lived?

Triumph of the very blue speeder bike, obtained for running each hard mode flashpoint once

Your first few group zones at max level in an MMORPG are generally pretty rewarding, as everything is an upgrade.  After running around a dozen hard mode flashpoints - each of the eight options once, and a few repeats - my character has left behind almost all of the endgame starter gear.  Most of my Tionese gear (the PVE starter set - I actually bought this stuff with dungeon tokens, but players now receive it for free) has since been handed down to my companions, while I'm wearing mostly Columi stuff (originally found in the easy mode of the game's first raids), and a few pieces from the next tiers up. 

Unfortunately for the game's longevity, very few outright upgrades remain for me in flashpoint content.  A few pesky drops aside, most of the upgrades that I can still obtain come from the "black hole commendation" vendor.  Like WoW, SWTOR hands out raid quality gear as an incentive to keep players running the flashpoints (and also at least some daily quests).  I could see this getting old really quickly given how much non-skippable story dialog happens in the flashpoints. 

The other goal I've been pursuing are cold hard credits.  On a good day, I pull down several hundred thousand credits, which I've been able to use to purchase a variety of stuff - legacy perks, and F2P unlocks to use when my subscription expires.  This too has a limit, especially for the non-subscriber with the strict limits on currency. 

Overall, it was a fun month, and perhaps there's another month or so worth of stuff to do at some point, but this endgame does not feel sufficiently robust to continue for month after month.  Perhaps it should have been no surprise that the game's subscriber retention suffered as it did. 

Should You Want To Pay?

Should we as players (i.e. consumers) of MMO's want to pay for our games?  Most people who can count will have some level of selfish desire to pay less, get more, and somehow have the developers not go out of business in the process.  That aside, should you want to play a game where you are paying your fair share?  Equally important in the era of non-subscription payment models and cash shops, should you NOT want to play games that are structured in a way where you are not paying much? 

My complaint about SWTOR's new model - which should not be a surprise to longtime readers since I have raised the same objection to several SOE games that have taken a similar approach - is that I actually want to pay them more.  Bioware does not think it's in their interest to allow non-subscribers to pay for a fully unimpaired experience in their product.  If the only two options are to subscribe or suck up quality of life penalties and pay nothing more once I've unlocked the handful of things Bioware is willing to sell, I may just go ahead and freeload.  That's not really the happiest outcome for either myself or Bioware. 

I would argue that studios have done themselves a disservice by hyping the "free" angle on for-profit products that have to make money somehow.  The games can never be completely without cost, and there will always be one restriction that is the most onerous one left no matter how many things the studio relaxes.  (EQ2 may be running into this wall today after several years of doing the dance that SWTOR is doing today.)  Meanwhile, the dual business model creates a variety of expectations, with most non-subscribers misguidedly begrudging every penny and subscribers insisting that their $15 should be the only money anyone is allowed to ever pay and anything more would be "pay to win". 

And so we have the talk of whales, mounts that have gone from $10 outrage to $25 sparkle ponies and perhaps $50 soon, and the ongoing slippery slope of cash shops as studios claim that more revenue is needed and the majority of players rush to say "not it!".  I'm not about to run out and pay hundreds of dollars for premium stuff, but in general I think that players who are not supporting the product can expect to be disappointed with its future direction.  Perhaps the middle ground was the old world in which everyone paid $15 and the developers did whatever they wanted to with the proceeds, but that ship appears to have sailed.  If the result really is a generation of games whose primary revenue stream is catering to the highest cash store bidder, I don't think anyone (other than that one big spender) will be happy with the result.

Punishment or Gameplay?

"In an earlier draft of F2P, we had it so that F2Pers couldn’t use spacebar inside cutscenes and we almost had a riot inside this building. So we being listening to feedbacks the whole way."
 - Dulfy's transcript of a Bioware Q+A

As context for those who have never played SWTOR, the space bar is used in cut scenes to interrupt the NPC who is talking and make them start their next line of dialog.  This can be used when you have to repeat a conversation - for example if you do a quest over (either an alt or as a repeatable quest) or cancel out of a dialog because you were unhappy with the results.  However, the main association that SWTOR players have for "spacebar" as a verb is for the equivalent of refusing to read quest text.  The only difference is that in SWTOR, that "text" is the result of expensive voice acting that had a huge impact on the game's budget.

Having explained that, I have absolutely no idea what Bioware's business people - who unlike myself are presumably paid a decent salary to know what they are doing on this front - could be thinking.  The very idea of using the hallowed "fourth pillar", Bioware's epic story, as a punishment that non-subscribers would have been forced to endure boggles my mind. Bioware has not been afraid to think outside the box for good or for ill - and more often (e.g. restrictions on hotbars) for ill - but this one is absurd. 

During the past week, including the Q+A, Bioware has relaxed more of the restrictions imposed on preferred non-subscribers (i.e. lapsed players and those who have spent money in the cash shop).  Preferred players will now have four hotbars - the number the game launched with - and six character slots (up from two currently, and close to the eight that subscribers had at launch, though this limit is supposedly per account rather than per server).  

On the one hand, they're willing to give away a tremendous amount of stuff that would have been worth paying for.  However, they're on the record as unwilling to budge on things like credit caps, mail restrictions, and content pass pricing that greatly reduce how attractive it is to pay for anything as a non-subscriber.  I get that Bioware is very afraid of being dependent on creating new content for revenue, and would prefer for players to subscribe.  It just seems strange that every change they make shifts the game away from a state where people who won't subscribe are still paying for the game and closer to a state where a single one-time payment is all most players will ever need, want, or have the opportunity to make. 

Is the SWTOR Credit Cap Killing Unlock Resales?

A few weeks ago, I pondered whether SWTOR's credit cap was going to cause issues for the game's business model.  It's a bit early to tell, but the answer may be yes.

To recap, non-subscribers cannot ever have more than 350,000 credits on their person - in context, it's easy to make over 100,000 credits per day doing endgame daily missions.  By design, every item in the cartel market is available for re-sale, subject to a several-day waiting period to deter fraud.  This includes the items whose purpose is to lift restrictions on non-subscribers.  These items have zero value to subscribers (except if they can be flipped for a profit), so the only real market for them are non-subscribers (who cannot pay more than 350,000 credits by definition) and subscribers who are stocking up because they plan to let their subscriptions lapse in the near future.  The latter demographic is limited because the game's model in general discourages people from playing at all while unsubscribed.

Right now, the market is distorted by large grants of cartel coins that were granted to existing subscribers, many of whom seem to feel that these should immediately be spent, rather than saved to pay for future additions to the marketplace.  As a result, my server at least is seeing the global trade network flooded with unlock items that cost several dollars worth of cartel coins but that cost well under 350,000 credits.

An especially egregious offender is the unlock for access to Section X, the new daily quest area and also the home to the quest to claim the HK-51 droid companion.  This unlock costs 600 cartel coins in the cash shop (roughly $5-7 depending on your exchange rate), but the item is also available as a (presumably unwanted) reward in the "cartel pack" gambling boxes.  As a result, unlocking this area for my main would currently cost me rough 75,000 credits, or less than the credits that I can earn back by doing all of these quests once each.

The sector X unlock may be a special case because of the decision to include it in the gambling packs, which players are purchasing in large quantities for the other possible rewards.  Demand for this particular item may be especially skewed because subscribers don't need it and neither does anyone below level 50.  That said, I cannot imagine that a secondary market in which players actually fork over several dollars worth of cartel coins for a day or two's worth of daily quest rewards is in any way sustainable.  If I'm right, either supply will drop to the ground as players realize that cartel coins cost money and stop wasting them, or else something will have to be done about that credit cap on non-subscribers.

SWTOR: Selling Around What They Can Produce?

As the comments on my SWTOR impressions post point out, the obvious alternative to the approach that Bioware has taken with the game would have been to sell access to the game's solo story content.  The game's leveling content is viewed as the best part of the product, and it would seem counterintuitive to have given all of it away for free.  The catch is that Bioware could NOT afford to get into the business of exclusively selling content because they are incapable of making content fast enough to sustain that model.

When you look at the minority of nonsubscription games that do charge for content - Turbine (DDO, LOTRO) and Kingsisle (Wizard 101, Pirate 101) - typically nonsubscribers have to be treated relatively well.  If you restrict the non subscription experience too heavily, players won't stick around to buy content.  For this to work, your content must be produced in small, repeatable chunks that you can release regularly.  Many of the issues we are seeing in LOTRO - bundling purchases into larger packages, preserving poorly implemented grinds and charging for features that no other company bills for - arise because that game's content is NOT bite-sized, repeatable, or quick to produce.

If you can't stay afloat by selling new content, you have to generate ongoing revenue from people using your existing content.   This is the route taken by the majority of nonsubscription games, whether they were originally designed that way or retrofit in a relaunch (like SWTOR).  For subscription retrofits, this often translates into restrictions that nonsubscribers cannot pay to remove, in an effort to make the "optional" subscription less optional.  If you can continue to retain the subscribers you had, collect some new nonsubscription revenue from people who were not subscribing, and incidentally rake in a ton from cosmetic cash store items, the thinking is that you will come out ahead.  More important to your bottom line, your revenue is less dependent on you ability to generate new content.

If Bioware has erred, their error may be consistency.  You don't want to charge too early and drive players away before they've given you a chance, but perhaps they should have been more willing to let people who still aren't paying more than halfway through the game leave.  What I'm guessing they were most afraid of was that introducing charges for stuff that was free earlier in the game (e.g. quests) would have an especially strong effect on players sticking around.  This fear of inconsistency may be what led to the game only charging for things that were introduced later in the level progression, such as group and PVP content.

Misc Notes

• While it is possible to play the leveling game completely free, I'd suggest that almost all players who expect to stick with it will benefit from spending at least some money to qualify for the "preferred" status.  The best bang for buck here is to snag the $5 coin bundle and take either a third crewskill slot for your main or a third hotbar and some points to spare.  If you're willing to go to $10, you can snag both the third crewskill and the third and fourth hotbars for your main (or a third hotbar accountwide if you plan to play alts).  Including the perks for the preferred upgrade, this fixes many of the most glaring deficiencies in your leveling experience.
• The cash shop allows players to pay money to unlock things earlier than it would be possible to earn them through class and/or legacy level.  For example, you previously needed a character most of the way to the level cap if you wanted the legacy level required to pay credits to unlock species for use with all classes.  Now you can pay to have a Sith Pureblood Jedi Knight almost immediately (limited only by the need to get to level 10 first so you can unlock a legacy on which to place the unlock).  It's also worth scanning the character perks tab of the legacy UI, as some options are available for relatively few Cartel Coins and sooner than they would have been if you had tried to earn them in-game.
• Bioware is trying a few tweaks that I haven't seen previously when it comes to the point stipend for subscribers.  Multi-month subscribers get increased stipend rates, and there's also an increased stipend for subscribers who use an authenticator.  I don't expect to change any purchasing decisions over this, but it's a nice perk for those who are already on board.  
• Character slots are a big X-factor in the game's business model.  Bioware does intend to add the ability to purchase character slots, and will enforce limits when they do get that up and running.  The Legacy system is a big incentive to stay on one server, but in principle players can go to multiple servers if the price is too high - in particular, some of the cartel store account-wide unlocks are good across servers.  

Early Observations for SWTOR's Non-subscription Model

SWTOR's big relaunch day has finally arrived.  The model can and probably will change over the coming weeks, but things have settled down enough to get an idea of what we are dealing with.  I have actually gone into the relaunch with a recently renewed subscription - no, not because I wanted to pay $15 for $5 worth of "bonus" coins.  SWTOR as currently implemented may be the first model where it can make sense to jump back and forth between the two payment options.

For endgame, not so much...
For better or worse, Bioware has made the decision to give away most of the game's content.  This leaves them in the position of trying to convince players to fork over cash for playing the game as a service.  Thus, it does not appear that Bioware is keen for existing subscribers to switch to a non-subscription model and pay less.  There are various things to unlock - including some extraordinarily petty options such as a charge to hide your helmet (certainly not mandatory, just petty) - but the bigger story is what you cannot unlock. 

• Endgame content requires the purchase of consumable weekly passes per type of content you wish to play.  Even at the most favorable exchange rate, unlocking two of the four types of content (raid, PVP, space combat, flashpoints) will cost you more than $15/month.   
• Nonsubscribers are stuck with a currency cap that cannot be lifted.  This limit applies not only to credits - the standard currency - but also the various token currencies used to purchase items.  
• Nonsubscribers are also slapped with a permanent penalty to vendor prices, which includes gear vendors that take tokens.  
• The cap plus the penalty combine to make it impossible for non-subscribers to purchase certain token rewards, and more generally require 25% more grinding at whatever you are grinding (raids, PVP, flashpoints, etc) for gear. 

There might theoretically be a very specific niche of players (perhaps if you and a group of friends have an appointment to log in and do flashpoints precisely once a month) that can save with the non-subscription model, but most players at endgame will be worse off for the attempt.

Leveling and grandfathered unlocks
Setting aside the endgame, what if, like myself, you are primarily interested in the game for the solo story content?  This scenario is a bit more interesting.

There are certain restrictions that you can't lift (or won't want to pay for) including the currency penalties (you won't hit the credit cap but you may have problems with commendation vendors on planets) and restrictions on travel.  There are also restrictions on your rate of exp gain, but that is ironically a mixed blessing in that I found the game's exp curve to be faster than I needed and skipped most of several planets to preserve challenge.  And there are things you will probably need to pay for, such as access to your crewskills, probably a third hotbar (I don't know that all four that players had previously - or six that subscribers now get - are completely mandatory, but you will probably need a third bar).

Then there are an odd handful of things that can be unlocked in principle, but in practice are cheaper to unlock via a temporary subscription.  Access to races - which are purely cosmetic in this game - will run you 600 Cartel Coins, but your existing characters are not affected when your subscription lapses.   Your first two inventory upgrades can be paid for with 5000 and 20,000 credits as a subscriber, while non-subscribers must pony up 175 Cartel Coins per unlock - 350 total.  In short, if you're looking to start up one - or better yet several - new characters, a one-month subscription may be the way to go.

And finally, there's the question of content.  The new "Section X" content added with this patch will run non-subscribers 600 Cartel Coins.  This content features new daily quests, which will be markedly less attractive to non-subscribers due to the currency issues, and the one-time questline for the HK-51 droid companion.  This sort of content may well be more attractive as a rental than a permanent unlock.

Looking Ahead
On the horizon, Bioware plans at least one major content drop.  It will also be interesting to see whether some of these restrictions get relaxed - either by default or through additional purchases - as  the model matures.  In the mean time, I don't regret my one-month subscription, and I might even see an advantage to subscribing for a month at a time periodically.

I suppose the risk you run - and perhaps the reason why Bioware is willing to make the temporary subscription attractive - is that you get used to the perks that cost money and do not want to give them up.  Then again, I suppose that is a good thing to the extent that it would mean that you are playing the game and enjoying it enough to want to pay. 

Currency Caps And Cash Shops

Two indirectly related stories over the last week: SOE has implemented a tradeable in-game time card for Everquest 2, while Bioware is testing SWTOR's free to play model and allowing the resale of most cash shop purchases for in game credits.

Both moves seek to harness the desire of customers with out-of-game money to get a headstart on their in-game finances.  In the process, both moves potentially convert non-paying players into sources of revenue by making their in-game currency into an incentive for the moneyed crowd to pay more to the studio.  However, both are potentially hampered by strict currency caps aimed at preventing legacy subscribers from switching down to less lucrative non-subscription models. 

Both studios invested the money to re-launch existing products with presumably hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the hopes of coming out ahead financially.  Thus, both struggled with how to make an "optional" subscription less optional without alienating the new potential customers coming in under the new model.  Currency caps have stayed on the table as a subscriber-only perk because they fit both bills.  New players are unlikely to hit the restrictions until later in their careers, while existing players who bump up against the caps may already be using enough other services to make the subscription worthwhile.

Allowing players to effectively pay others to farm in-game currency for them calls more attention to players who fall in the middle ground, as this type of option will inherently be most attractive to people who are, for whatever reason, looking to limit their real-world expenditures.  Unfortunately, here is where the business models conflict - a player who can offer only a pittance - 18.4 plat in EQ2 or 350,000 credits in SWTOR - is not much of an incentive for someone else to open their wallet and pay the studio real world dollars. 

It's possible that both studios will ultimately relent on the currency restrictions.  Prior to the announcement, SOE's David Georgeson told me on twitter that they were re-evaluating the game's currency cap - in hindsight, perhaps due to this very concern.  Meanwhile, the Bioware folks are still iterating their model, though the game's senior producer stated that the current escrow functionality was intentional as of two days ago.  Perhaps this sort of continued mishap is just the price of doing business in an era of retrofitting non-subscription business models onto existing games. 

Liberté, égalité, free-to-play

Rohan has a post up categorizing what he dubs "payment methods".  This is a more systematic approach to a question I tackled colloquially - you are what you sell.  Current players appear to dislike almost all of the options that Rohan has described for how it appears that SWTOR plans to make money after its non-subscription re-launch.  I would suggest that the real issue at hand is that the changes upset the balance of how the game is developed - and how the developer will value these customers in the future. 

As long as the angry mob is out anyway, let's break out the guillotine and look at this question with the motto of the French Revolution.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité - Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood
Under a subscription MMO model, customers are relatively equal in value.  Longtime subscribers are going to pay more in the long-run, and may serve as pillars of the community in a way that retains more than just their $15.  However, when it comes to the quarterly earnings call, each customer's $15 is the same. 

If anything, this equality motivates companies to focus on endgame. The raider is most likely to quit now if they are out of content, and most likely to be retain-able if the studio makes more raids.  The solo player may also quit when they run out of content, but they might re-roll instead.  Worse, the developers might spend their effort on more solo content only to have the solo player beat that content as well and quit anyway. 

The non-subscription model adds variety to the payment models, and, in so doing, adds Liberty.  A non-subscriber might pay less than $15, while non-subscribers and subscribers alike can potentially choose to pay MORE than $15.  This freedom means some customers are literally worth more than others.

The obvious and most-feared extreme is that the one person who is addicted to gambling for cosmetic items through so called "lock-boxes" is literally worth more than a small guild of loyal players who had been with the game in its previous incarnation.  That aside, having a model where players can pick and choose what they pay for potentially reverses the developer's incentives for the future direction of the game. 

If only a small proportion of players raid - and said players vehemently oppose any mechanism whereby they make themselves proportionally more valuable by paying more money, on the grounds that this would be "pay to win" - then only a small proportion of future development can support them.  By contrast, if the majority of paying customers are located in the leveling curve, that is where the developer must focus their efforts, even if said customers are certain to depart after spending some amount of time in game.

To use another concrete example, the patch will add a new NPC companion, an HK-51 droid.  Bioware hopes that nonsubscribers will pay for an unlock to access the content that awards this NPC.  However, even though companions are basically solo tools that cannot be used in serious group content, the questline requires a max level character and several group dungeons.  Merits of this decision aside, a non-subscription game can ill afford to put barriers between customers and stuff they want to pay for.

With this kind of split in the interests of the playerbase, it should come as no surprise that Brotherhood is in short supply indeed. 

The Captive MMO Audience

Roger at Contains Moderate Peril suggests that MMO players tend to forget that they are also consumers.  He notes that we are fast to blame for-profit companies that kill games for monetary reasons, but slow to hold service providers we are otherwise fond of accountable for failure to provide services.  This sounds reasonable in the aggregate, but I don't find that I have either of these problems.  I also spend almost none of my time doing social activities, like raiding or PVP, that would tie me down to a specific product.  Perhaps these things are related? 

At issue are delays to the Riders of Rohan pre-purchase compensation package.  Roger correctly notes that Turbine accepted payment in full in advance for pre-purchase of a product with a promised date that Turbine failed to meet.  This might in most other circumstances be considered breach of contract.  Instead of complaining, I and various others actually praised the move as a way to deliver a more polished product at what may also be a more strategic time.   

The guys at Penny Arcade once quipped that Blizzard had developed a business model in which they rent players' friends to them on a monthly basis.  No matter how early or late, how buggy or how polished, everyone needs to buy the new content when it is released if they are to play together.  (This part isn't unique to MMO's - I've seen friends pester each other to buy new maps for FPS's, and I don't believe any of them ever received a cut from the games' publishers for this peer pressure marketing campaign.)  A player who does, as Roger suggests, feel that they are not getting acceptable service finds their friends held hostage - there may be various alternative games on the market, but the odds of reassembling the same group are low. 

By contrast, I have the luxury of acting like a pure consumer because there's no one waiting on me to get the new content to fill out their raid group.  I never considered pre-purchasing Rohan, because I know from past experience that Turbine will offer steep discounts within a month or two (the new date is not that far from Black Friday).  I'm not thrilled with Turbine's decision to bundle in a bunch of extras I don't want to justify a higher price tag for the expansion package, but I don't need to pay the premium that will be required of the captive portion of the audience. 

Ironically, the cost of expanding the MMO demographic beyond the traditional social, group-oriented player may have been that the market actually is less tolerant of the things that studios got away with in 2005 when it was a smaller but more loyal playerbase.  For good or for ill, perhaps millions of players are now free to quit games like WoW and SWTOR precisely because less of the MMO audience are captives.