So, uh, The Secret World is dropping its subscription fee, Guild Wars style. Kind of. Still not clear on what this means for the monthly issues. EDIT: RPS interview that fleshes a bit more out http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/12/interview-the-secret-world-drops-subscription/
That is verrrry interesting- I do like playing mmoy games every so often and with no sub fee this may be right up my alley.
If you are a lifetimer you get 1200 points per month , the first DLC they release is free for anyone that is subbed as of dec 1st. DLC should cost between 5/10 bucks (less than the monthly stipend given to the subbing folk) Subs will not go away entirely. Lifetimers get a bigger discount on everything else in the store (20percent) and both sub and lifetime get an item per month.
I talked to Funcom staff a little via Twitter this morning about some concerns. I am a lifetimer, and I knew going in that I might not quite get to the break-even point, but this is sooner than I expected. The economics of lifetime haven't changed too much in that you're still getting to play and you're still getting all content updates without paying anything ever again. Given that other people are still getting for free what you paid a fair bit of money for, though, they needed to reward their lifetimers for their MASSIVE support. Points are an okay way to do that, but I was jumpy about it because, well, "free points for fun cosmetic crap" is unsatisfying when you can't actually use it on fun cosmetic crap because those points are already spoken for to get you the content that you already paid two hundred fucking dollars for. Anyway, Funcom assured me that if, as a lifetimer, I buy all the content packs with my free points, there will still be money left over to buy fun stuff. If that's true I am basically okay with it. We will have to wait and see if it is true, but that's the official comment right now. Personally I think the right thing to do would have been exactly what they're doing now except to give all the content to lifetimers without requiring them to spend points on it. Lifetimers took a massive risk, and frankly it does not appear to have been a good one, and they should be treated like fucking royalty for it. I do have two other major concerns. One: Aux weapons are part of the issues and any future ones will have to be bought. Rocket Jump is borderline essential at this point; if other aux weapons turn out to be that useful, it will suck an awful lot to not know if your group will have them available. If that happens, in the short-term, it will make Cabals more important. In the long-term I think it will cost them players. No one likes pay-to-win. Two: This may be a nonissue, but I am worried about whether there will be enough for F2P players to do once they hit endgame if they have to buy future content. Right now endgame is nightmare dungeons and the NY raid. This has never been the WoW sort of MMO where you stay logged in all the time, but with the monthly content packs there was always a reason to log in at least regularly. I don't know if that's true for F2P players, many of whom won't be buying the updates. And if the updates aren't planned as monthly anymore, that's a loss for subscribers and lifetimers. They say some new content will be free. That had better include any new dungeons and raids, because I will be pretty fucking angry if I'm forced to sit in Agartha and type "LF2M DPS Tokyo raid, subs only."
Oh good. I just got the game for $5 from Green Man Gaming and was not planning on keeping the subscription as I'm not really all that into it, but for free I will definitely hop in on occasion.
Has it even been 6 months? I guess this further cements the death of subscription play. I will however be grabbing this now that there's no sub; it always sounded intriguing but with my time constraints subs have no longer been a valid option for oh, 3 years now. The real question will be how good of a F2P implementation this will be. I note something about "content packs": are those actual globs of new content in the game that will only be available to subs and/or for pay, kinda like DDO? Isn't that going to just lead to massive fragmentation of players?
I'm excited about this news. I'm trying to decide if I want to restart a new character or pick up Victoire where she left off in Act 2. I haven't played since August.
5 months, they launched in July. So if you bought a lifetime sub on launch day, you had a $40/month subscription.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/...rld-Joel-Bylos-On-the-Buy-to-Play-Change.html Once more from the top. As of right now , if you have bought the game it is on for you. As of right now if you were subbed before this point you get the next content update free, otherwise you have to pay between 5/10 bucks. Core updates are automatic (Pvp/mechanics) Anyone subbed will receive enough complementary points to get the DLC. Thus for a regular 15 sub that puts you even , for a lifetime you get some bonus points on the side. These are funcom points and attach to the funcom account. You could use them for a Conan purchase if you have that attached. Anyone who buys the client will get up to the current patch with no strings, no hassle til the game gets turned off (if/when). Think Guild Wars ..you buy it you got it. DLC was coming as updates to all zones as 1 story mission. They announced issue 5 was going to be a self inclusive storyarc in Solomon Island. If you don't have it you just don't see it. Considering most the content was setup for solo, I don't see how this really will cause any sort of divided caste system in the game. If this game was dependent on 5 player groups getting things done sure. All the current instances are there, including the raid. Maybe you might have to pay for a raid a few months down the haul but it will likely come as a full pack (optimistically) and thus have more than just new raid. Really the link above says it better than I do.
TSW has its MMO stuff like dungeons and raiding and whatnot -- and in my opinion, by and large, much better done than any other MMO, absolutely 100% including Guild Wars 2 and WoW -- but the big appeal of the game is largely solo or with-your-friends anyway. TSW is about story and investigations and lore. Not having done, say, Hell And Bach will have no bearing whatsoever on your ability to interact with players.
I can't deal with a subscription but now I will play this from time to time if I can find a deal on the base pack. Before this I've regularly seen the base pack for less than $10, but a quick look around shows it at $30 everywhere now. Anyone know of a deal on this somewhere? They also have this ARG going starting 12/21 that looks kind of cool.
The ARG is already kind of started. I got an email, others have gotten phone calls and texts and whatnot. $30 is the standard price right now, down from $50 at launch. Other than that you'll just have to watch for sales if you don't want to pay the $30. Green Man Gaming had it for $5 a couple days ago, it was cheap at the Thanksgiving sale on Steam, and it'll probably be on sale again in the Steam holiday sale.
It's funny, Mr W and I were talking about this exact model for TSW a couple weeks ago, when discussing it's inevitable F2P status, but didn't expect to see it this soon. I figured the basic pack would come without optional content which you could buy, perhaps at a discount, but apparently it will all be included up to date of client purchase. My sub actually ran out on Dec. 1 so I'm not sure whether I get the first DLC free or not. This will be a great change for my TSW play style, which goes hot and cold.
I agree with Inigma, lifetime subscribers need all content free from now on plus points, hope that works out in a satisfactory way.
I actually *wish* I had ponied up for the lifetime account now, but alas I was frugal for once. Although I get it why they (and pretty much all MMOs now) need a "free" to play model, as a player I hate being interrupted in my gameplay by nickle and diming adverts. How intrusive is the microtransaction model in Age of Conan? If its not so bad there, maybe it won't be so hard to live with in The Secret World...
Lifetime -gets- it all for free. Seriously 1200 funcom points per month, a dlc update each month that costs you maybe 600 points. The rest is your gravy for paying out in the first place, plus a unique item. Currently I think the unique item was a mayan headdress or it might have to do with the ARG. Those who didn't get ARG emails, it came from what google assumed was spam. Check spam folders for something about the end of the world.
It's unsatisfying to me because the idea was "as thanks for lifetiming here's some points to spend on fun cosmetic crap." Except you can't, because there's not much of those points left after you buy the content. They should be giving us lifetimers fucking blowjob-o-grams. Instead I feel unappreciated.
This *is* Funcom, be careful what you wish for!! And yes, it was in my spam folder, but it literally *just* showed up, as I have been meticulous about checking my junk mail daily since I signed up. So which one of you is a Secret World informer?? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited to clarify that it was an ARG message in my spam folder, and not a blowjob-o-gram...
Man the last 24hrs has broke the devs over there over this.. http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=62808&page=76
Going to repost Joel's relevant response here. He seems an upfront guy. Wish things were working out better for his game. Let me tell you why. 200,000 sales was not enough to support a team the size we had at launch, and cuts were made. Good people had to go. And so we held on, hoping that people would notice that we were delivering monthly updates. Hoping that Guild Wars 2 was mostly hype. We believed in The Secret World as a subscription and we hoped that players would keep coming. Still, any fool can draw a line on a graph and see where things were going. And so the business guys made a call. They gave us a timeframe. There were meetings about this decision. Discussions. A lot of opinions. Don't blame the business guys, they allowed us a lot of freedom. Different arguments were made, models suggested and scenarios projected. We tried to build a new model that will work for everyone. It has to be attractive to new players, to bring them in. It has to reward old players, to keep them happy. I believe that growth = sales, not squeezing our current customers for everything that they are worth. I am not a money maker. I'm not doing this job because of my detailed knowledge of economics or my savvy investment skills. My job is communicating outwards and inwards - I set the direction for the game based on the conversations that I have with the community and the developers. Perceived value for GM players has gone down, I am not blind to it. But there is this: I don't want to say goodbye to any more of the good developers that I work with. I'm tired of it. I have been through it four times now. The business guys win because I couldn't make it work as a subscription game. That's why. That's about as brutally honest as it gets at 1am.
Yeah, I've seen that. And I get it, really, I do. I don't begrudge the change of business model, I want the game to do well and it was always clear F2P was happening sooner or later. And I'm nearly satisfied with the ask. But I think what I'm asking is more than reasonable. And since a lot of people seem to agree with me, I think it would work out better for Funcom that way. We are much more likely to put more money into the game if we feel fairly compensated than if we feel slighted.
So what's the bet that it'll be cheaper in the Steam sale? This is the problem with the Steam sale, pull the trigger now, or wait for a better deal.
Yeah, I thought of that, but it'll probably $10 or $7.50 or thereabouts, and the difference isn't enough to cause me any lost sleep.
And this is a key problem with the buy-to-play approach. There will be some people out there who will wait until TSW is $5 again, like it was at GMG. I think the B2P hybrid TSW is using is almost the worst possible choice. If they want people to try it out, F2P would have been a much better option. Instead, the box cost is still a barrier to trial.
Yeah. It's called bargain hunting. The game wasn't gee-whiz-bang enough for me to buy it at full price with a sub. They've already determined that they're not going to sell it at full price without a sub, and we've seen that the price can fall as low as $7.50. So why should I pay $30? I spend lots of money on a F2P game. I'm happy to do that because I feel I get value for that money. If they give me value, I'll give TSW money too.
Apropos of the conversation about price point, Amazon has the download version of TSW for $14.99 right now, which was low enough to get me to bite. http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-41018ecret-World1-Download/dp/B007VTVKG6/
Does the key from the amazon sale work on Steam? LOL Marcin... bought. Sheesh, my backlog is stupid big but this is a no brainer at 15 bucks.
It does not work on Steam afaik (I didn't try it), but the key they give you registers directly at the TSW web site and you can download the client from there.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. That behaviour is completely sensible for you, but terrible for Funcom. Why buy it for $30 from their site when you can wait a few months and get it for $7.50 on Steam? Funcom theoretically changed their revenue model to let more players in, but they've ended up tying themselves to a game of retail discounts where they end up getting less money and still have a barrier to trial (i.e. that box cost). B2P was a great idea when sub fees were the norm. Now F2P is a lot more common and I don't think TSW's B2P hybrid looks particularly attractive in contrast.
I agree with UnSub that the deal, however good, may not have been Funcom's best option. Like him, I am also concerned that people will just bargain-hunt for the game, and I agree with Dean that that's totally rational behavior. But I have to admit I'm becoming a bit exasperated with consumer entitlement complexes, and not just in gaming. The game went from $50 + sub to $30 and no sub, and as soon as it did that people started to ask when it was going to go on sale. It just got a 40% price cut, assholes! How much more of a sale do you want? These things cost money to make! If you stop giving the people who make them money, they stop existing. It seems emblematic of a general consumer unwillingness to pay what things cost. If most people turn out to be like Dean -- and they well might, god knows League of Legends makes money hand over fist -- then great. I'm just worried that a game I love might die under the weight of free riders.
There were a lot of boxes and keys out there that had to be cleared out. Once those are gone my guess is that the only place you'll be able to buy TSW will be Funcom's website for full price. It's what happened to LOTRO when it went F2P. For a month or so after you could get the box on Amazon for $10 and it was a great deal. Once those ran out and you could only get LOTRO content direct from Turbine, the price went up.
We are officially 2/3 less terrible at raiding. Last time it took us three separate days to get the raid boss down (because we had a guy who kept dying). This time we got it in one in about nine pulls.
