Judgement Robes and Ninja Pigs in the world of Moo Shu
Well, I was intrigued enough by the chance to test out Wizard101’s item shop that I snuck back into game today to have a look at what Prospector Zeke was selling.
There’s a Prospector Zeke in every world; he usually gives out the collection quest they have in each world, where you have to find very small things in every zone of a world. Dwarven Smiths in Wizard City, Scarab Beetles in Krokotopia and so on. For this last bit of beta, he also sells items of great power. The Zeke in the Olde Town district of Wizard City even sells a pet dragon.
The Zeke in Moo Shu, and friend
You buy these special items — which are well above the power of the usual items you’d find — with KingsIsle Crowns, which apparently you will be able to either buy, get as part of a subscription, or both.
This interview over at Yahoo says:
Jonric: Since you’ll have a cash shop, how will items sold there differ from the ones we can obtain through play?
Todd Coleman: We intend to offer a pretty big array of items in our catalogue, but we have to be careful that we don’t undermine the balance of the game, shortcut the advancement curve too much, or make it unfair to other players. We haven’t announced specific details yet, but those should be coming soon.
A game that charges a subscription fee AND has an item shop? Isn’t that — double dipping?
They do have interesting things planned for after release… like… pet olympics? From an interview with MMOSite:
MMOsite: What else can the players do aside from monster killing and pvp? How important a role do crafting and player economy play?
Todd Coleman: Most of our focus so far has been on adventuring and advancement. We do intend to add a host of secondary activities post launch, like Off-Campus Housing, Crafting and Pet Olympics… but to get us started, we spent all of our development effort really polishing the core game: exploration, adventuring, questing and dueling.
Anyway, I have not been able to really pin down their plans. I don’t think they have actually *announced* anything publicly — definitely not on their website, and the interviews don’t seem to cover payment plans.
Best guess still is a free to play portion, an item shop, and an optional subscription plan. Basically, every business model, all at once. Is that weird?
Judgment, one of the creatures item shop garb can get you. 125 damage per pip.
Anyway, we’ll probably hear more very soon. But for the sake of their target ‘tween’ audience, they’d better include some sort of free-to-play option, and it looks like they will.
Possibly a bit similar to what Anarchy Online is doing.
Anarchy Online has some item shop where some items can be bought through some “point” system. Either one can buy a bunch of points through cash – that is the only option for those that play for free. Subscribers get some “points” as part of the subscription every month, which they can use to buy items, in addition to buying them explicitly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that is exactly what they do do. I saw on the forums that someone had heard someone from KingsIsle describe their subscription as a “tribrid” plan, but I couldn’t find the original source for that, nor exactly what was meant by it.
Same subscription model plan as what Free Realms is doing from what they’ve announced so far.
North American studios are too scared to dip 100% into the Free-To-Play model. Monthly subscriptions are near and dear to their hearts. They’ll all come around, but it might take new CEOs.
If I were them, I’d be worried of falling into the “Hellgate London Greed Trap”.
If they screw this up, if they try and take too much money from people, if they nerf the free game too much in order to force people to hand over cash, it will severely impact how many subscribers they can get.
Step 1: Get MILLIONS of people playing by making it a great FREE game
Step 2: Worry about making money later
Well, I would definitely make it F2P but with an item shop. The cash shop items they showed definitely pump character power; one even gave cards for a complete heal-over-time, which is just amazing for anyone who doesn’t have life or death magic in their primary or secondary schools. I can’t see how anyone would not use the cash shop, but importantly, every bit of the game would be open to those who chose not to use it.
Plus, my big thing is making fannish comics about my characters. Some of them I have published here, but there’s lots more nobody has seen. So I am ALWAYS looking for unique and cool looking gear; my bags are full of outfits.
I didn’t play Hellgate: London, so I can’t really comment on its subscription plan. But if they had charged, say, $5/month for the game with no F2P or single player option, could that have worked? I wonder.
Both Dungeon Runners and Runescape has F2P model with membership subscription that gives additional benefits, but without explicit item sale. Runescape seems to be doing quite well, Dungeon Runners not that well.
I am not sure how much of either game is nerfed by playing the free part, but I recall some comment on DR playing the free part was quite limiting. Of course RUnescape being a browser-based game helps some with the accessibility also. Jagex (makers of Runescape) has around 350 employees; NCSoft has a handful of people working on Dungeon Runners.
Now, DR is a game I DO play. Or did. The free players could not use good armor or good weapons, and their potions didn’t stack. The game became very, very difficult unless you subscribed.
They later (I believe) removed all those differences, and subscribers got the “Bling Gnome” which ate trash loot and shat out gold.
And NCSoft just laid off most of the DR team.
If the subscriber package KingsIsle comes out with for W101 is compelling enough, I’ll subscribe. The game has a good six months of casual play in it, probably more as they add new content and at this point I am very interested in supporting good family-friendly MMOs that break from the WoW-led pack. Of course, having to play with children is a down side, and many adults have been asking for an adult-only server.
Playing with kids is funny. They just randomly send out friend requests and I accept all friend requests because … I want to make friends! They say nothing, though… but sometimes when I am in a very difficult zone, I have two elite mobs on me, I an juggling the need to buff my defense, debuff them, get damage going and scheduling my heals, and a low level wizard (REALLY low level) pops in. Immediately, a third monster joins in to match the additional player. The kid realizes he is out of his depth and ports out. And now I have an additional elite monster to deal with.
Merde. It gets tough. But I LOVE the W101 challenge. It makes me THINK. So yeah, I would subscribe.
W101 RULES!