WoW goes F2P, sorta

[Giggles]

I don't mind reading about Warhammer. My Conan discussion was I guess technically OT to. If they do release a version of Warhammer that is F2P soon that goes beyond the level 10 cap, I may give it a try. That is, unless GW2 comes out first, then I doubt I'll look at it at all.

[Alaris]

As far as I'm concerned, this discussion is more about F2P than about WoW.

[djacob]

Ok cool, I was just wondering about that cause I wasn't discussing it's f2p nature at all... then I added that so yeah. Hmm... if warhammer released f2p content above level 10, would I play it again? Personally no, though I can see someone trying it out for the first time if it does, who knows they may even like it.

Quick warning though, the unlocks in the book cause increases in loading time. A new character for me could load in 30 seconds whereas my lvl 40 took 4 minutes. I think I had around a thousand unlocks on it? You get them for exploring zones, getting full sets of armor, finishing public quests, killing a certain amount of one type of enemy, etc. If you level from pvp you won't have to worry about it, but if you do pve at all be careful or you'll be disconnected from scenarios before you even load in them. The benefits from unlocks aren't really helpful anyway, they only work in pve and quite often have the reverse effect of what they state, making them bad to slot in the first place. So if you're leveling off of one type of enemy, make sure to stop before hitting significant numbers; such as 1000, possibly 100 and 250 as well it's been a while.

Hmm, was going to write something up about how going f2p would cause them to introduce a cash shop with pay to win or pay to advance items... but apparently they released a cash shop after I stopped playing. $20 for switching servers, $9 for a starter mount (so you can run faster than anyone who doesn't buy it from lvl 2-20, though only 25% faster), $10 for a trusty mount (use mounts while in combat starting at lvl 20, 55% dismount chances as opposed to 100% and 60% speed boost as opposed to, I think, 40%), $5 for actual vanity items (I think), $10 for a one time level up, and $10 for a pet (kind of like the fire imp but you can use it at max level). This is while they're keeping the subscription model. That isn't even taking the rvr pack into account, link here: http://www.warhammeronline.com/vermin/. Apparently the "new" armor was scrapped beta armor.

Frankly, I think they'd let warhammer fold before they allowed people to play it for free up to max level/rr40+. They've always seemed desperate for money and hugely aware of the price of their precious servers. Although I am aware part of the reason for merging servers is simply because you need quite a few people in the zones to create a fun pvp environment, merging servers has been their go to solution.

I've never seen them advertise the game anywhere (cause that would cost money, right?), I've never seen them allow transfers without closing servers down, at least up until the $20 cash shop transfer, and the bonus renown days/weeks were usually only used during server transfers to influence which server order and destruction would go to. They were never balanced so that both sides would want to fight each other, it was always lopsided so one realm would go do dungeons or take a short break, except for the diehards of course. With all the new order/destro pouring in it quickly turned into 100-300 zergs vs npcs balanced at keeping 12-18 players at bay.

So yeah, when I heard that some of the team for warhammer online went to help with swtor, I did a facepalm which turned into a head/hand-to-desk.

[RD]

I've never seen them advertise the game anywhere (cause that would cost money, right?), I've never seen them allow transfers without closing servers down, at least up until the $20 cash shop transfer, and the bonus renown days/weeks were usually only used during server transfers to influence which server order and destruction would go to. They were never balanced so that both sides would want to fight each other, it was always lopsided so one realm would go do dungeons or take a short break, except for the diehards of course. With all the new order/destro pouring in it quickly turned into 100-300 zergs vs npcs balanced at keeping 12-18 players at bay.

Yeah, the two realms were never balanced, that's for sure.

As far as advertising: Funny that you bring that up. When the game first launched, I worked on a campaign for them. They WERE crazy concerned about spending money and ended up pulling the campaign shortly after it launched. Part of the problem was that they were in bed with another agency. The other agency was a branding agency, and they kept some media live after ours went down and I heard it (obviously) did pretty terrible. I laughed about that because the people we were working with at Mythic were jerk-faces.

They also said that, even right after launch, the most users didn't end up subscribing to the game and those who did only stuck around for like three months.

[djacob]

Yeah, the two realms were never balanced, that's for sure.

As far as advertising: Funny that you bring that up. When the game first launched, I worked on a campaign for them. They WERE crazy concerned about spending money and ended up pulling the campaign shortly after it launched. Part of the problem was that they were in bed with another agency. The other agency was a branding agency, and they kept some media live after ours went down and I heard it (obviously) did pretty terrible. I laughed about that because the people we were working with at Mythic were jerk-faces.

They also said that, even right after launch, the most users didn't end up subscribing to the game and those who did only stuck around for like three months.

Lol, why am I not surprised to hear any of that. Three months sounds about right as I believe that was the cheapest (per month) subscription you could get. People probably bought that figuring it was less expensive than the one month at a plan rate, and then realized their mistake during those three months.

[sorudo]

well, even when i played with 200X xp rate i still got bored from playing WoW, there is nothing fun about the whole damn game.
no action, no story i could find, no originality and no urge to play the game at all.
the only thing i like about the game is the music, but that's about all there is.

[shawn]

well, even when i played with 200X xp rate i still got bored from playing WoW

Plays a private server, doesn't read the quests, complains about being bored and a lack of story.

Are you for real? I know you've been posting for years, but I still can't tell. Isn't it difficult intentionally trying to be that ridiculous all the time?

Maybe for your next trick you can play Portal 2 with no sounds or subtitles and some of the scripted cutscenes taken out so you can tell us how bad that game is too.