Free to play mmorpgs, early adopters and you

This little bottie went to market and this little bottie went free to play...

Quite a few people out there seem to get in a tizzy about games that are brought out on a subscription basis, but then a few months or such in become free to play.

When really this was planned from the start (barring the game being wildly successful in getting subs and keeping them, then they'd maintain a sub system)

The fact is a 'free' mmorpg is better advertising than a television advert and FAR cheaper. What sort of advert do you sit in front of, watching it for hours? 'But it's entertaining!'. Well, maybe you found the old spice advert mildly entertaining - were they giving that away for free?

The reason for subs at the start is a fairly standard business practice, if not commonly acknowled amongst the punters. Remember when playstations or ipods or whatever first came out, they cost alot, but then the price goes down?

The fact is, there are people out there with disposable income (and sometimes not so disposable income) that want to be the first to get some new thingie!

They are the early adopters. They are a way of quickly recouping alot of money.

So instead of thinking "Oh, how long is it before your new mmorpg gives up having a subscription, huh?" as if you know the condition of the industry, realise your not ahead of them, they are several moves ahead of you.

Single player draft for a massively multiplayer game

I'm going to draft out the core combat for the browser mmo I want to make, in a single player gamemaker game. Because that way I know I can code it and see a working (single) player version, instead of trying to get one working in what I know of browser code (which isn't even the right word for it) and all the pitfalls and dead ends that'll involve.

One element I'm going to have is injecting a real sense and even possibility of instant defeat as the monster will have it's fighting approach described under it's name. You also have two attack options - regular and evasive. Normally evasive gives you a large penalty to hit. BUT on certain monster attack descriptions, the monster has a damage output potential that's going to have around a 75% chance of defeating a full health character (let alone a wounded one). If you hit evasion attack at these times, you still have the penalty to attack but you avoid the big damage attack entirely (no dice roll!)! You just have to keep watch while battling instead of clicking attack over and over and over.

Also I kept writing 'killed' instead of 'defeated' when drafting this. I'm not sure if I want perma death or not. I'll write about that gaming hot topic shortly!