Originally Posted by
Bloodskerr
This is gonna be a long post but its worth the read.
Extremely great vid and I totally relate to it. Same goes with SacredKnight's comment.. And I will explain how in my two most significant experiences in MMOPRGs.
I started playing MMORPGs over 10 years ago, and in this time I was able to encounter 2 very good games with completely different gaming experiences.
The first was Runescape, which I played for 4 years. It's a huge game made by Jagex, and I still have my account there to this day, with most skills maxed..but many new ones have been released since I stopped playing. It's user friendly, complex, and improving everyday since its release in 2001. Its holds the Guiness World Record as the worlds largest FREE MMORPG and the most updated game. This is important because it clearly shows their way to run things work, and sets an example as how free MMORPGs should be. I stopped playing cause I grew up and it's extremely time consuming.. Being able to only play in PC, I grew apart from it, starting playing mobile and console games.
Runescape has both a F2P world and a P2P. Their P2P works with a membership system... Playing for free you have access to a pretty huge world, which is loads of fun and amusing for a long time. If you choose to subscribe to P2P, you would pay a monthly fee which varied depending on how long it lasted.. I used to pay $89,99 for the 12 month membership, about $7,50 a month... You got access to its entire world with pretty much limitless options of skills, PvP, quests and items. This, along with its constant updates on events, skills, items and quests, makes it the award winning game it is. The economy is unmatched and balanced unlike any other game I have ever played, and there are very few "useless" items like the rares and epics in this game, which are the majority.
Another aspect to it that was so attractive is the balance. As a f2p player, you could only play with other F2p players. P2P items did not work in F2p worlds. You could use them but they gave no stats in the free worlds. This means that f2p players could only pvp in free to play worlds... And p2p players could pvp in both, but if they chose to go to a free world, they would have to use free world items. There were many different types of PvP arenas for wars, ctf, tdm.. And even an area in the open called "wilderness" where anyone could kill anyone and acquire their items.
As a player you could be a warrior, archer or mage.. But you could vary anytime you wanted, training each specific skill and using the corresponding items of that class. You weren't stuck to a single class ever. What defined your build was items and skills trained, allowing you to adapt to any given situation. You could even be a mage with a bow, or an archer with a 2 handed sword. And some of these builds were extremely effective.
In summary, paying for the game allowed you access to areas that could lead you to a completely different experience, a place where you had access to new skills, could acquire gold faster and level faster. But you still had to work for it.. It was just a tad bit easier. There was no way of buying gold, other that Real World Trading, which was bannable and later made harder to do by updates like limiting an ammount of gold you could give a player without anything in return.
The second game is Perfect World. I played for 2 years, also a free and very fun game. But the best players were the ones who spent real money on it. You had to pick your class upon creating you character.. Barbarian, Sacerdote or Archer. The money you spent was converted to items in their store, which you could sell for the gold in game. Spending 500 dollars on the game you could have enough cash to have the best equips in the game, guaranteed.
Levelling was hard and playing 2 years I reached lvl 90... The cap back then was 101, must be higher now. PvP mechanics worked in huge clan wars arena ( one for each of the various areas of the map.. Whoever won, "conquered" that area), or out in the normal world. But to attack or be attacked in the normal world you needed to turn on a PVP status on your character.. You had your time to decide when you were ready for it.
---
To sum it all up these are two amazing games with different P2P mechanics, both of which in my opinion blow AL's out of the water. In one, you become part of a membership with access to a gaming experience that could last for years. On the other, cash was king... But you got what you paid for, and there was only so much advantage a paying player could have compared to another paying player - that was decided by skill.
Here, you may pay hundreds of dollars with little or no guarantee at getting good items, and if you're not smart as how to convert plat into gold, you may have to spend $5,293 buying gold directly from store just to have an arcane ring.
Thats messed up.
Of course it's not my point to compare the gaming experiences in these games, there are many variables that come into play, such as platform (especially platform), profit goals, technology and time on the market. But theres definetly something STS can do about its P2P mechanics, because gambling with people's money is hardly the best thing to do if the game is to last as long as it can.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks