f13.net

Fallen Earth now in the hands of GamerFirst (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fallen-earth-community), the same people that resurrected All Points Bulletin.

FE's website is currently down, expected to come back online tonight at 2300 EST, with a REALLY high chance that it's now a F2P game.

Of course, they could still be subscription-based and just getting a hand, but.. :awesome_for_real:

It was great little game which had no end game. Not sure how gamers first gonna address that but I hope they will - it is definetely a game which could use more players

I actually wouldnt mind dicking around with it if it were free.

It's obviously the week for it.

I know people will debate me on quality grounds, but I see this as a sign of how far from workability the sub payment model has fallen - you have to grab a big player base at launch for a box+sub game to survive, while the F2P titles are better at growing because the first one is free.

Especially since it is the F2P crowd who are out buying these fallen sub-based titles.

How many fail MMO's have we really seen grow though?  EvE and DDO are the only ones that come to mind.   FE seems like a good choice either way but only if they are going to actually spend cash on it.

Any game going F2P was a shitty game.  It's like saying that all games eventually end up in the discount bin and therefore they should all start there anyway.

LOTRO wasn't shitty.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't shitty.

Well, with Steam sales we are starting to see just that actually.  People know things will go on steam sale and label things as "buy on sale" (myself included) before launch.  Its not exactly the same thing, but its darn close.

Also, F2P is becoming popular because it gets around the "playing one MMO" problem.  Most people just aren't going to sub to more than one game at a time I don't think.  With F2P games you can have 5 or 6 installed and spread that 15 bucks around to whatever you feel like at the moment. 

There are lots of games that aren't "shitty" but neither are they worth 15 bucks a month (especially if you are already subbed to something else).  But they might be worth 3, 4, or 5 dollars.    Now, I think there are bigger issues with the F2P model - such as having a shop that doesn't alienate that very crowd I'm talking about.   I've seen a lot of cash shops where that 3-5 dollar range won't buy you very much fun, and the pure free experience is barely existent. 

Free Realms has just about the perfect mixture.  Lifetime sub for $35, Monthly for $5, and a fair amount of things for free, and a cash shop that's constantly added to.  (Though their larger content updates have slowed, unfortunately.)

It means that for the people who pick it out of the discount bin it wasn't worth paying the full price. Or they buy it 'late'.

Not all sub games are fantastic either, but some of the stalwarts have had time to build that audience and keep them. A MMO launching today is up against competitors from UO onwards and players aren't as willing to give a title time to grow. Especially when the standard charge is $15 a month and for that price you can play the market leader.

The box+sub model isn't working as well anymore because players expect a lot if they have to pay $60 for a box and then $15 a month. And if a title doesn't deliver in that first 30 days, they go elsewhere  and generally don't look back. F2P means you can at least trial the game for no money down and then (in general) only pay for what you want.

A problem I think with a straight sub-fee is a lot of people don't want to play these games all of the time, often the fee is just too much of a threshold if all I want to do is jump back in for a few days to see if I still like the game/anything has been fixed.

Sure some games give out a free week once in a while, but then I have to feel like revisiting that exact week.
Which then makes me feel like I have to play it too intensely to make sure I don't want to resub  :oh_i_see:.

STO just pulled me back in with that steam-deal, which never would have happened for a full monthly fee.
It still sucks, but at least they got that €3 from me ... bastards.

It's funny. MMOs are shedding sub fees. Things like console games are trying to add sub fees.

Tide be turnin'. Watch Diablo 3 have a subscription fee. Watch me pay it without saying a word.

Difference is, MMOs have traditionally needed a consistent source of income to stay in development.  The CoD elite thing is basically just going to monetize something players are already doing.

Frack that.  I like Diablo, but I don't like it 'that' much.   :ye_gods:


Which is the way it should have been for a while now.  I'll bet a lot of MMOs could have been saved (or more quickly folded and forgotten) if they had been doing this since '05.

Also, here's another 'revolutionary' idea; screw NDAs on MMOs.  If you've got something to hide until the last minute, you're not trying to hide 'trade secrets' and encounter mechanics that anyone with half a mind could figure out nowadays.  You're trying to hide how bug-ridden and unpolished your rushed POS title really is.  Haters are gonna hate, and companies that copy shit are gonna copy, regardless of before, during or after your game tanks.  If it's not ready for a true 'beta' state, in which the game has all the features you want it to have when it goes live and all that's left is balancing and bug squashing, it needs more time in the oven before you expose it to the unwashed masses.

I honestly beleive that that would put you in a small minority. Just doing a quick search, hm - Diablo 2 was on the top 10 sales charts as late as 2008, eight years after it was released. Battlechest was in the top 20 for 2008, even though it was the price of a full new game. Battlenet supposedly still has 11 million people using it (though that is shared with Starcraft, but still). Heck, they were still releasing official updates to the game as recently as March 2010.

Yea, it's going to be a fucking unstoppable beast when they finally release it, and they know it.

I agree. The common theme of these MMOs that go F2P is that they all had terrible problems at release (which had nothing to do with their fee structure): Missing contents, crappy gameplay, killer bugs, etc. Then went F2P in a desperate attempt to avoid becoming completely abandoned while they try to get out some hail mary patches that could turn the game around.

If anything a monthly fee for Diablo 3 would just be for multi-player shenanigans.

Like most (actually, all) Blizzard games, I don't play for the multi-player.  The single-player campaigns have always been epic treats of lore and gameplay that easily justify me spending a one-time price on.

If they ever do put a monthly tag on for single-player/offline content, yeah, frack that.

Actually, my memory is they needed a consistent source of income to pay for the bandwidth and servers. (I think in reality they "need" it for money hats.)

I like F2P/Cashshop games just fine, but I'm sort of worried that it's becoming ghetto-ized in terms of failed MMOs going to a half baked F2P system. The only one that's come even close to decent was LOTRO. But from playing Grenado Espada, if it's designed from the bottom up, the payment model can be made very transparent and a lot better integrated.

Getting back on topic, the Fallen Earth site and forums appear to be back online after a 24 hour downtime for transferring power to their new cash-shop overlords maintenance.   :awesome_for_real:

No new details on Fallen Earth's situation changing, besides their new owners taking over.

Would the F2P crowd actually be happy with LOTRO though?  I ask because anytime I see someone spout nonsense about F2P it's pretty clear they don't want to spend much money beyond the box price.   LOTRO's model isn't going to do that for them.

Which Blizzard are you talking about?

You're right, LOTRO doesn't follow the usual model, but it's at least something more than "gimped game for free or pay full price for a sub" which is basically what EQ2 is. LOTRO is basically selling the game via "modules" with a lot of extra fluff. It's not perfect, I had some real issues with the horse route thing and having to re-buy the lowbie areas, but it's ok.

When I think of good free to play, I think of games you can play indefinitely for free and make their money on short cuts or customization. Free players either grind a little longer or they exchange in game currency for the out of game they need to pass gate points (which is just another way of grinding more). Actually, now that I think of it, I can think of a fantastic F2P cashshop game from the west: Puzzle Pirates. It's a great model. You can play indefinitely for free and the advantage for paying for things in cash is very well balanced against buying the dubs with the in game currency.

Apparently not the one you're thinking of.  :pedobear:

It seems perfectly sensible to me to beta a game before all the features are in. Lengthy and vigorous testing - which I think we want developers to carry out - might involve introducing major new features one at a time and seeing what breaks.

How can any developer be expected to conduct genuine testing, which necessarily involves releasing code with bugs and things missing, if every tester with a blog is giving a running commentary? And major gaming sites would presumably write up "beta impressions" too.

Abolishing all NDAs would punish devs for launching genuine betas at an early stage and reward those who don't "beta" a game until they launch a markering* exercise three weeks before launch. It wouldn't make for better games.

*Edit - marketing

Some games drop NDA for beta but leave it up for the more formative stages of development.  :angryfist:

I believe you are misusing that emote, unless you're thinking of a Blizzard that looks sexy in footsie pajamas.

Incidentally, you would have a point if one were to ignore the existence of World of Warcraft and Michael Moorcock.

Right this is my point.   F2P advocates bring up Lotro/DDO but I can't really believe they think of it as what they really want.   More like they hope it's a stepping stone away from subs.

Come now...there's so much solo content in WoW it very well could be a single-player RPG  :grin:

There's a lot of content in an encyclopaedia, it doesn't mean it's full of great game lore.

I think of game lore in wow as a mixture of juvenile poo jokes and bad cultural references, but there's apparently enough lore to spawn a series of NY Times bestselling books tying into it.

The NYT book list is no more a gauge of quality than Billboard's song lists.

It's a gauge of popularity and successful sales, as Billboard is.

Quality is subjective; popularity is not.

The quote in question was 'epic treats of lore', not 'popular crap'.  :grin:

I'm trying to figure out which Blizzard game had preteen upskirt shots.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1143749/UpshotOgre.jpg)

If you took all of the example sentences from one of those huge dictionaries, I bet it would make a best selling novel.

Liked Fallen Earth because the developers were so clearly into it. However their progression plan of launching a niche game and planning to release massive and regular slabs of new content was destined to fail. I don't see a f2p budget being able to fix that either.

Has Gamer's First done anything with APB? Because I think all of their other games have been purely imports? They tried to make some changes to Grenado Espada to make it a full AAA release, but failed miserably and after release reverted to the pure Korean version.

I feel like they failed in even creating enough interest from the get go.   Some of their choices didn't help the marketability at all.

I just Recently resubbed. I had no idea they had teamed up with Gamer's First. I rejoined as Fallen Earth has so far been the one game I have really enjoyed that has kept my interest.

They were interviewed this week on Massively.  The devs state that while a F2P conversion hasn't been announced or confirmed, it is "on the table."

I'd play again if that happened.  Gotten back into APB this week for the same reason.

Cop or crim?

One of each on Joker, though mostly been playing my criminal.  I can do things without really needing to go against other players if I'm not in the mood.  "Latency" if you're looking to do a heist or want an easy takedown.  Can't remember what my enforcer's name is off-hand.

My crim is an Asian gangster named Longwang, haven't played him much yet, been mostly doing the enforcer angle.

/Charlie Sheen

There it is! (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/15/gamersfirst-announces-acquisition-of-fallen-earth-with-new-f2p-b/)

Funny how I started to play APB again and think "Huh, I might give them a bit of money for this", and now Fallen Earth goes free to play by the same provider.

I haven't read any of the info, is there anything indicating my existing character would be brought over?

There's nothing indicating it wouldn't be.

 :uhrr:

That's less "free" than freemium even.   "Hey guys you can play for free or you can pay us 30 bucks a month to have a bunch of stacking party buffs which let you roll faces left and right!".

I think that's a clever approach. The people who readily open their wallets won't be resented by the hoi polloi for buying their success or the latest objet d' conspicuous consumption, instead they'll be desired groupmates. Social heroes. Aspirational in a quite different way.

Isn't that completely backwards?   If it didn't stack I'd agree with you.   If it's 5% damage that's 30% in a 6 man group.  Perhaps the resentment will be gone after all the people who hate it quit.  Is that what you meant?   I guess if you play Pay2Win games enough you have a different viewpoint on what people resent.

A chart has been released that compares what you get and don't get with the Free 2 Play conversion.

Fuck. Restricted trading, less XP, slower crafting with daily limits... WTF is the point?

It's a 'proposed' list, but considering the price of free, I don't think it's that bad.  You're not limited on content in any way.

Wasn't AP kind of essential to the character?  How can a reduced rate work at all?

That looks better to me than what 'free' gets you in most F2P games. EDIT: I should say, most pay games that converted to F2P.

I might fire it up for free just to run around the game world again - I was really impressed with it even during early alpha but I thought they hit a awkward middle ground with the RPG/Shooter mechanics that made the game mostly unfun to actually play even though it had a lot else going for it.