"Best" depends on the game.  You cannot apply a concept of "best revenue model" to every single game, because most of them were developed around a specific model already. 

Started playing again last week and started a new character.  Killed Lord Nightshade and found his chest.  Used it twice for a total of 150 crowns and saw how easy it is to spend a lot of crowns in a very short amount of time.  Still think it's the parents responsibility to manage and/or monitor crown usage.  After all, it's like giving a kid money in a candy store; the kid will go nuts and spend every dime if given the chance.

I did the same thing over a year ago.  With all the hype, the f2p re-release, negative word-of-mouth, etc..., I figured the only way to really find out about the game was to play it ,so I did.  What I found was a game I enjoyed, but also felt was flawed in a number of significant and obvious ways. I also had serious questions regaring the pay-to-win factor, but Mr. Smart and other staff members were good enough to listen to and respond to my questions. I honestly felt they took my issues seriously and I felt their response alleviated my concern.

Ultimately, irrespective of the various technical issues that bothered me about the game, what bothered me most was the lack of other players. There just never seemed to be enough other players online for me to play with, ever...  I soloed to 30 and barely saw other players or heard them in chat.  A huge part of playing a MMO is the social interaction; grouping and playing through content can be a great experience, much less simply being able to chat and socialize.  During my play time, that factor was pretty much non-existent.

Would I play Alganon again?  Sure.  Is there anything really pulling me back into it, especially over any other game that may interest me right now?  Not at all.  I could take it or leave it.

There was never any true closed or open "beta", unless you're referring to the "early access", which essentially amounted to an extended paid closed beta?

@ Archeminos - it didn't fail the first time.  The parent company went under.  The game wasn't ever fully finished and never left beta testing under Flagship.  The Frogster/Hanbitsoft version failed, although there's currently a version still running in Russia.

That being said, this is basically the Mythos EU version, I think.  That's disappointing to me, since I really liked the overworld map version of Flagship's Mythos, especially over their first version.

Also, I'm not super happy with how complicated it is to actually launch the game.  There are far too many steps and components involved.  It's overly and unnecessarily cumbersome.

I love grouping with my son!  We've been playing since beta and love Wizard101!  In my case, I typically travel once a month and it's great to be able to connect with him when I'm on the road just like we were in the same room together.  Wizard101 really is a game that's designed to be family friendly and fun for all ages!

The following message was posted on their Facebook page a few days ago:

Greetings fellow Earth Eternal fans, 

 

It's been a blast observing the Earth Eternal community participate in the Beta program and your feedback has been invaluable

 

Unfortunately, Earth Eternal will be saying goodbye on Thursday November 24th 2011 at 9:00 pm EST

 

We are still determining future plans for Earth Eternal but those have not been finalized and we hope to share them with you as soon as we can

 

We hope you had an awesome time because we certainly did

 

The Earth Eternal team

Originally posted by Scabbesr

Originally posted by roslyn89

My little sister and I have been sharing a wizard101 account for nearly a year now and have NEVER encountered any problems with being muted, suspended, or banned. Today, out of nowhere, my sister tried to log into the game, and a pop up appeared saying that OUR account (the main account) has been banned. I've questioned her numerous times whether or not she has compromised our password or any private information that you are NOT supposed to give out, and she hasn't. Now I'm starting to wonder if we have been falsley reported? Either way, KingsIsle has not sent me any sort of email as to why this all happened, I am just simply "banned". I've done my research and it seems that everyone has their own thoughts about why wizards are banned and if it is temporary. 

Despite the fact that it is my little sister who plays more often then I do, I am extremely upset about this. I have spent probably more than $300 on crowns for her and to see it all disappear in a cloud of dust is extremely unfair, especially because we just don't know why it happened. Numerous people have complained about KingsIsle's poor customer service and how they sometimes ignore your emails. This troubles me even more and I can't help but to wonder if my email will go unanswered as well.

I don't know whether or not this is a temporary ban, but I will be very disappointed if it is, with no warning at all, no prior email, no nothing. I almost feel like it is just all one misunderstanding. Whatever it is, I really do hope they contact me soon. I am not letting this go until I have some sort of answer. This is the first time I have ever been truly let down by this game, because it is something both my sister and I enjoy very much. And all those crowns (money) wasted! Gah, I don't even want to think about that. Please contact me soon KingsIsle so we can fix this.

-Sharon

 

 

I may be a bit late but here is what I think.  Being falsley reported won't get you a permanent ban unless there is a reason that is big enough for you to get banned (e.g Hacking.) Now, I don't think either of you are hacking. You can ask your sister if she has ever done anything that has been seen by an Admin to get your account banned, like spam chatting, or excuse use of cursing (if she has regular chat.) I suggest contacting the Adminstration through their website, and finding out why you were banned. 

 

~Scabbesr.

 

Sharing an account, in itself, is a bannable offense.  The login screen says "NEVER share your password - you will lose your wizard forever!" Accounts are free to set up, but the primary reason people share them is so they only have to pay once if they're a subscriber or if they've bought crowns. That's gaming the system and essentially steals money from the company, because it means more than one person is enjoying the benefits of purchased services even though only one person paid for it. 

Originally posted by ActionMMORPG

That was fast.  I admit the game was under my radar.  I don't play much so most of the games I see advertisements and forum posts, that's it.

 

It's a shame to see that much work go to waste.

Considering Mytheon is not beinb published by Gamigo, I don't think it's too far fetched to see Faxion being licensed to another publisher.

Personally, I love the game, although I recognize it definitely needs a lot more work.  Faxion was underfunded, underdeveloped (due to time constraints, not effort) and released to the public far too early, unfortunately. It has so much potential, but chances are won't last long enough to realize it.

Originally posted by Feverfew

Facebook is a fucking cheap way to advertise their game <.<

You can't login using your Facebook account without stuff about the game being posted on your wall.

Actually, that's not true.  The only thing they're using Facebook for is to authenticate  your game account.  They're not posting anything to anybody's wall, don't have access to anybody's personal information and,in the event they choose to take advantage of viral marketing via Facebook it'll be opt-in only.

Ouch - rough review.  Some of it is pure hyperbole wrapped in pretention (the entire Aesthetics section) and some of it is just plain wrong (the Value section), but there are definitely factual elements, too.

Regarding the Aesthetics:

1)  Cut the art snobbery

2) I think you're right in that players will either love or hate the character models. That being said, I think you're so far off the mark regarding overall world art direction that I question how long you even played the game or whether you traveled extensively within all zones (and there aren't that many zones)

Regarding Value:

Simply put, you're wrong. Faxion has probably the most fair and "free" revenue model of any F2P game I've seen in a long time. The entire game, including all zones, quests and content is free.  No velvet ropes.

Full suits of armor at level cap cost roughly 70-80 tokens and one can expect to spend a small sum gearing their character should they choose to

Even though you say "should they choose to", the implication in your statement is that high level players will need to pay to be fully geared. That is unequivically untrue.  There aren't any weapons or pieces of armor you can buy for tokens that are any better than what drops in game, and pretty commonly, too. The "best" gear  (Epic Armor) can only be found in game.

As for skill acceleration, you're also off the mark.  First, it only takes 490 hours to reach Rank 10 in 5 skills, 480 if you apply the 10 free tokens you get from questing.  20 hours difference may not seem like a lot until you factor in that skill ranking is done offline (and it's only one skill at a time, not two -  you simply queue one up behind another - they don't rank up simultaneously).  A player that logs in for a few minutes a day to queue up skills can reach 480 hours in less than three weeks.  Five max rank skills - the right five of which can make any player pretty competitve in PvP - in under three weeks. This is etremely friendly to the casual player. If, however, you're the type of player who needs to be max level and doing end-game PvP in a week then you have the option of accelerating your training with tokens.  That's pretty damn fair, as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, it comes down to time vs. money.  If you're hardcore and want to race to the end, you have the option of paying for it., otherwise you can play completely for free with a little time investment.  3 weeks to be reasonably competive in higher level PvP?  No tbad at all, IMO.

The rest:

All that being said, I can't help but agree with several aspects of your review.  I've been playing Faxion since Alpha day 1 and I definitely like the game and have fun playing it, but I'll be the first to tell you it has problems.  I'm etremely active on their boards and am not shy about providing constructive feedback.

It should be noted that  Faxion was built in just over a year against an engine (Hero Engine)  no other live game uses and it was done on a very small budget with a very small team.  The team has always been extremely dedicated and communicative with their player base.  That being said, I feel the title launched before it was ready.  It had far too many bugs and performance issues to launch when it did (and it still has significant performance issues for Radeon GPU users). Additionally, it has a lackluster new player experience (boring 1,2,3 stand-and-click PvE which doesn't accurately represent the core PvP experience at all) and had some major combat balance issues, too.  I can only assume there was pressure from upper management to launch when it did. Faxion's staff was proactive in letting players/potential players know that the game was launching with a limited feature-set and would be improved regularly (and that has generally proven to be the case), but it's very hard to recover from such poor first impressions.

I really like Faxion, I think the team works very hard and I appreciate how well they communicate with the players.  I also think today's game and performance (at least for Nvidia users) is better than it's ever been and definitely better than it was when beta opened up in March.  Unfortunately, the game still needs a lot of polish in order to reach it's very significant potential.

Originally posted by Pingmeister

The Open Beta is in progress.  Played for an hour or so today.  No idea about PVP though.

Kind of.  Yes, beta is open now (it wasn't when I posted above), but it hasn't really been publicized.  Per the Lead Designer, it's basically a soft launch for open beta:

Welcome all!

As you can see we've brought the game up for what were calling a "Soft Launch". During this time, we are testing fixes for server hardware issues and server performance issues. It helps us to have a small amount of players on and have them log on slowly rather than all at once, hence why we do not announce when the server will be up.

During this time, there WILL be performance issues, lag, rubber-banding, and we may even just take the server down for hours on end to address issues and run tests. Please keep this in mind as you play right now. If you are having issues connecting from the homepage, please see the other two stickied threads with information on how to remove previous installs of Earth Eternal and clear your browser cache. 

If all goes well during the next few days we'll announce to the world that Earth Eternal is in Open Beta!

FYI,  there will be a character wipe at the end of this beta.

Back on topic, though, at this point in beta there is no PVP.

Originally posted by drbaltazar

ok i decided to give a fair go at f2p money wise i mean!but i dont want to fall in the money sink trap.

could any write a guide,like wich item is recommended to progress at a wow pace wich to avoid etc

i know my post is vague but i bet not many player bothered with the item shop so it is hard to say how to go at it ,wich game does it better then other etc.i felt all f2p game are grindy past half way but maybe it is us gamer that dont know the full potential of everything?

Every game is different.  You'd need one guide, per game.

Originally posted by hail2dathief
Not sure I was on the website and it really tells u nothing about the game but its in open beta right now and all u need is a Facebook account to log in s o let me know if it's any good if you play it.

If you were on the website you'd see it's not in open beta yet.  It is coming soon, but it's not available for download yet.  Assuming the same basic feature set is available from when it shut down, one could assume the pvp arena might still be there.  As to whether there are more opportunities for PvP, I don't know.

Originally posted by DreigonIdrie

Still cheerleading this crapfest of a failure RippermcGee? Man you must be a saint or a glutton for punishment. Meanwhile have you looked inot TSW or ArchAge yet? possibly some better alternatives for the ten or twelve of you guys who still play crapxion.

No doubt the game launched before it was ready.  That being said, it's better than it's ever been, both in performance and features, and I'm having a blast PvPing.  I recognize it has faults,but I'm still having fun and that's all that really counts.

http://www.faxiononline.com/node/3975

Highlights included:

• Guild vs. Guild Inquisitions
• Territorial Contest Time reduction (from 180 minutes to 90)
• Revamped toolbar
• Map filters
• Performance enhancements
• Newbie zone player protection
• Various bug fixes

Originally posted by bepolite

yeah you posted that on the other thread too...glad youre rich ...but there are mortals here that have to work

for that money. And making EURO and $$  nearly 1:1 is redicule

Then don't buy the collector's edition - it's not for you. It's for people who can are are willng to pay for it.  Don't be angry because you can't afford it - it's not like you "need" it.  I want a Ferrari, but I can't afford it so I stick with my Kia. You don't see me bitching about the cost of Ferraris and how it's so unfair they're priced out of range of good, common working folk.

Originally posted by blackemperor

Originally posted by rhinok

Originally posted by Draccan

 

pure unadulterated greed on the part of EA

Greed?  Nobody's forcing you to buy it.  Those who do buy it obviously feel it's worth it.

Do you know what Greed means?

It's not greed.  They set a price the market will bear. It's basic capitalism. They are running a business, not a charity, not a non-profit, not a not-for-profit.  As a consumer, you have rights - you have the right to purchase it at the listed price, buy it later for a reduced price or not buy it at all.  This isn't a required staple like food.  It's a collector's item edition of a video game. That alone ensures a premium price.

Whether you received an email explanation or not, sharing an account is against the rules in most games an is a bannable offense.  In Wizard101 you're explicity warned in the launcher to NOT share your password, but if you're sharing an account then you're obviously doing just that.

If two people are playing, they need to play under separate accounts, have separate payments, etc.. If you don't abide by the rules then you can't complain about adverse action.