I'm actually not that big of a fan of ARR. Admittedly, I haven't played it all that much (maybe 15 hours total over the first 3 beta phases). I enjoyed FFXIV 1.0 in its later stages, so I'm a bit bummed out with all the changes that have happened with ARR.

With that being said, graphically ARR is a gorgeous looking game (as was 1.0), and I really like the animations.

I intend to keep testing the game a little, see if ARR will somehow hook me with something interesting. I just don't have my hopes too high.

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

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Originally posted by AlBQuirky
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I would bet the people who are going to spend money on a F2P title are the people who are going to do it pretty quickly. If someone hasn't spent money in a F2P game after a few weeks, they aren't going to.

I mean, for every P2P MMO that releases, players don't wait to see if a game is going to hold their interest for months before spending the money on the game. They spend the money right away. I would expect that same general behavior to hold true regardless of the type of game someone is playing.

This is all just speculation on my part, though I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.

 

Well that's the thing with P2P MMOs, and not just MMOs but any games you can buy (single players, consoles, etc), you generally won't find out if you like the game or not before buying the game. This is sort of the "accepted reality" of the gaming industry. F2P offers an alternative to let the players play as much as they want without investing.

I can certainly see F2P players spending money very early on in the cash shop, that would not be unusual, but I'd argue that a fair portion of F2P players who spend money only do so after they've enjoyed the game for an amount of time that they feel spending money is "worth it".

Personally, I've only spent money on 2 F2P MMOs after playing for an extended time. One of which I've been playing for 4 years, and still play on and off today. That number might increase if I stick with RIFT though, it's a decent game. 

Seems Trion are considering adding a new cluster server to add 2 shards (keyword : considering). That's according to the devs on the RIFT forum.

Update: Daglar wrote this on RIFT forum: I just got off the phone with our engineering director. The proposed plan that we are going to be reviewing and finalizing in the morning for North America is to split the existing shards into two clusters and add an additional shard to each of those clusters.To give you guys a little background, our current population limits are more related to the total number of users in a cluster as opposed to on an individual shard. By splitting it into two healthy clusters we may be able to greatly increase the number of users on a per shard basis.We will also be reviewing Europe and determining how to further address the issues there.~Daglar

http://forums.riftgame.com/general-discussions/dev-tracker/364427-daglar-good-chance-new-servers-tomorrow.html

So glad to be a Patron, highest wait time I've had was 6 minutes on Deepwood. *Rubs it in*.

In all seriousness, Trion poorly measured the influx of players that would come from the F2P change and likely assumed that their 8 NA and EU servers would be able to handle it. Give it 2 weeks and things should be shorted out and most tourists will have left.

Oh, before I forget. A GM mentioned that some people in the queue might "freeze" meaning that their timer won't go down (ljust the visuals I believe). The GM said that players can close the game in such case and reopen it without losing their position in the queue (although this only lasts for a few minutes).

Originally posted by Lustmord

Originally posted by xzyax

I like numbers, I am a numbers guy... it is something I find enjoyable when I am not able to play games.  I guess we all have our vices.  

Last post on this thread.  

Thanks & Good Luck!  

Gonna have to call BS.

He's not crunching numbers for any other games. If he was a numbers guy, he would see the invalidity of the Steam numbers and cast them aside.

Probably on the payroll of AV's competitors.

[mod edit]. The numbers he posted have always been accurate, and the sources have always been credible and verifiable. That was also the case with the old DF1 where 2 websites (1 for NA and 1 for EU) compiled the amount of clanned players and updated it's roster at a decent pace (I think it was weekly, not sure), which could be verified by players by simply logging into the game and counting the amount of clanned players.

The numbers speak for themselves. Ignore them all you want, they are facts whether you like it or not.

The Steam numbers presented by xzyax covers simply the Steam sales of DarkFall, which many players claimed to be what Darkfall needed to be popular. However, it turns out that the numbers are low, and these numbers are from Steam themselves. 

[mod edit] but if I may ask: what competitors? There really isn't any competition to Aventurine in this small PvP MMO niche. The only potential competitors would be I guess Mortal Online, which is hardly a threat and likely has even lower numbers, and EVE, and let's be clear here, there's no way CCP would feel threatened by AV. Beyond that, AV doesn't really have any competitors.

Originally posted by Spiritraiser
You need new account to use the Raptr, right?

You do, yeah.

But if you have a xFire or Steam account that has registered hours playing RIFT (is RIFT available on Steam?), then those hours gets added to your Raptr account automatically. Trion has been doing a lot of giveaways through Raptr, so it's worth it if you're a big RIFT player. They've probably given well over 10-15k free boxes + 1 month sub through Raptr since RIFT launched, plus a lot of fluff like mounts or costume items (no stats items that are just cosmetics).

Originally posted by Muerte_X

Yea, DFUW is not going to have the level of crafting/building you want. Houses come in 4 (?) varieties/sizes, but they are random loot from chests, not crafted. This applies to all furnishings as well. I have heard that all housing plots (which are predefined plots) are already taken; I have no idea if this is true, but even if they are almost full you would have to get ridiculously lucky to both find a house deed and a plot for it at this point.

I know even less of clan holdings, but I would expect that the clan leads make all decisions on building and placement, so you will most likely not get to participate much beyond donating money and mats...

IDK, try out wurm if you are feeling frisky and don't mind terrible graphics, or as always there is a savior on the horizon (AA, Repop, or EQ).

If it's anything like DF1 (which it probably is), Clan Leaders don't make any decisions regarding the placement of any buildings in a Clan City. You simply need all the materials, select the building you want to create, and the building rises from the ground at a predetermined location (by the developers). The same goes for walls and all that fluff boxes they have. 

Originally posted by aRtFuLThinG

Originally posted by MMOExposed

It's a brand new iP, not Starcraft or WoW 2. What you all don't understand about that.

It WAS going to be a brand new IP, but article now says they are RESETING

 

Should probably read the article before you come down on commenters.

Titan IS a new IP. When they say that they are rebooting it, it most likely means the same thing SOE did with EQNext where they trashed everything and went back to the drawing board. It happens.

I've just discovered today someone has reached the center of Peter Molyneux's Curiosity game. For those who are not familiar with Curiosity, it was a giant cube composed of other cubes, that were also composed by other cubes....and so on. The goal was to destroy every layer of the cube to reach the center, and players were able to purchase stronger "pickaxe" (don't remember what they were called) with real money to be able to destroy more cubes per click. The catch is that only 1 player could reach the center and discover the reward, after which this would signal the end of the game for everyone. 

Well the center has been reached, and the reward is...odd. The player will now take the role of "God" is Molyneux's upcoming game called "Godus", where he will be able to dictate the rules under which players will play through. What's more, is that for every sales of Godus, that player will receive a small cut of the money.

You can watch Molyneux's video (22Cans company) here : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhzb9OUWrXU

Suffice to say, Molyneux has a pretty unique way to look at games. No wonder that Peter Molydeux twitter spoof came to life.

By no mean do I want to defend Neverwinter or anything, I've not even played it, let alone install it on my computer and do not intend to, but this "66% of players support a wipe" thing raises a question. Out of those 66% who voted in favor of a wipe, how many of them have spent money on the game?

I mean, who exactly is paying Cryptic and keeping the game rolling? The paying customers. Do these paying customers want a wipe? Now that's a different question. Also, a wipe would entail quite a bit of work from Cryptic (viewing all accounts and reimburse all purchases, etc).

Originally posted by AIMonster
Combine the Rift with the Virtuix Omni Treadmill (and possibly other hardware like Razor's Hydra) or a Kinetic (which is coming to the PC) and you can get a very good affordable VR experience and a nice workout.  The potential in Simulators and FP Horror games is especially nice, but it could potentially be a decent experience in any First Person style game.  Here's a video of TF2 using the Rift + Omni.  This could very well be the future of gaming if this hardware starts to sell well.

Funny you should post that.

Just today they posted on youtube a short video of the Omni, Rift, and the Hydra. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvODo6E8B30

They're also shooting for a kickstarter on June 4th of this year.

Originally posted by winter

 The game (Neverwinter) is free to play. want to play for a year with a epic mount it cost you $40 want to play WoW for 2-3 months with a mount and its gonna cost you $60 or more (ie box price, monthly subscription, and then cash shop for the mount)

   Nothing is ever free and if you actually stop to look at how much your paying in F2P, Subscription, or B2P games  neverwinter is  a pretty good deal (GW2 just for the base games gonna cost you $60 before you even get to buying a mount. WoW  well over $100 to play for a year before you even buy the cash shop mount etc.)

   Most people agree that the Cash shop should be toned down on its prices but its amazing how some people will complain yet pay 2 or 3 times as much for less from a B2P or subscription game. Because suddenly its like those subscription and box cost don't exist when they buy the $25 cash shop mount as well.

If I buy a B2P, I'll be spending $60 on it tops and I'll have a full game to play with. $40 for what is simply a "mount" versus $40-60 for a full game is quite a leap. Sub games I couldn't care much about, I haven't subbed to one since 2010.

I do play F2Ps however, and even then, the mounts usually range from $5 to $20 (for some games where the mounts have some crazy bonuses). $20 being the highest price I had ever seen...until today apparently.

Originally posted by BillMurphy
No, SMITE is released now.  But they did this for a long time too.  Hell, I think DOTA2 still is.

 

DOTA 2 is still in Beta, but I'd argue that DOTA 2 is an odd case. For one, everything in the Workshop is purely cosmetics and primarily made by the players (so players get a cut for each sales), I'm ignoring of course the spectator tickets for tournaments because I'm not entirely sure how those work, and then there's the Compendium where the sales goes to the IT3 Prize Pool.

 Valve seems intent on trying to ease the New Player Experience before launching the game (which is currently very harsh on new players). It's a wise choice in my opinion.

Originally posted by Arakazi

Yeah, some of us felt the same about Rift, SWTOR and so on and so on. I'm too disillusioned at the moment to believe that some game that we have heard very little solid information about is going to charge in and save the day. Hard fact is that Rift pretty much failed. It was too similar to all the other games that it was competing against to really stand out. Too grindy to keep peoples attention and too much more of the same.

I agree with the essence of your post, but I wouldn't say that RIFT "failed" so much in comparison to other titles like SWTOR. RIFT had a fairly decent start, it wasn't a massive population, but they didn't suffer a massive drop either and Trion has been able to keep the game running as P2P for over 2 years now, while adding content at a surprising pace.

Certainly the game's shortcoming has gradually killed the population, along with other large titles like GW2 that just chipped further into the playerbase, but I don't think I'd call RIFT a failure for that. I see the move towards the F2P the same way I saw it with LOTRO, it was just the next step.

Ultimately, that RIFT could remain P2P for a few good years were as other P2Ps and B2Ps had to go F2P within 6 months shows that at least RIFT delivered somewhere (even if LOTRO and DDO lasted longer in that regard)

I'm not particularly a fan of Themeparks, but I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't enjoyed RIFT a little for what it had to offer, even if I never subbed to the game. If anything, RIFT might just be a game I could play on and off to kill some time, and if I end up enjoying it enough, then I wouldn't mind subbing or spending money on the Cash Shop.

Title says all.

http://www.riftgame.com/en/promo/freetoplay.php

And they've posted a few videos about F2P on their channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdLha0tAB0c

Edit: Seems I beated MMORPG.com by a minute. Muahahahahahah!