NP - most news on the game is filtering through the EE Forever Fansite (linked in my OP). 

~Ripper

Thanks for the replies, Derek.  Please note, I wasn't insinuating that you were lying. I was merely expressing surprise at the numbers.  I also have a good understanding of ARPU vs., ARPPU. In fact, I've posted Raph's link before!  My primary concern is that "active" means different things to different people, which is why I asked some of the questions I did. Sorry if I'm being persnickety, but my entire career is based on helping companies store, format and extract data in order to present it in a meaningful manner.  Part of my "rl" job is to ask these types of questions of my clients. To be honest, you were much more forthcoming and detailed in your reply than I expected, which was refreshing.

~Ripper

IKIMONOGATARI

Sankando is the Japanese publisher for Earth Eternal and is ramping up marketing and exposure for the game in the Asia Pacific market.  Turnout Ventures appears to be the actual developer of the game.  Per former Earth Eternal Community Manager (Sparkplay Media), now Lead Designer (TurnOut Ventures) Andrew "PIggypops" Sipotz :

Earth Eternal only has one DEVELOPER working on the game. Sankando is a publisher. Earth Eternal will be the same game across all versions, minus the obvious language translations.

The new company has been awesome to us and has been very supportive to the team with all the resources we need to make Earth Eternal the game we want it to be. Don't take the lack of communication as a sign that the company doesn't care about the product, think of it more along the line of us getting our plans in order before any announcements are made.

Sankando has done some awesome stuff marketing the Japanese version of EE. I'm excited to work with those guys and deliver a great game for everyone.

~Ripper

Dual-classing in RoM is one of it's best features and works well.  Yes, not every build is ideal, but--as a whole--the system works great and is a lot of fun.

~Ripper

The comments regarding ARPPU seem perfectly reasonable to me. After all, people that are willing to spend money on the game will probably spend a decent amount.  I, too, did a double-take on the 100k numbers.  It's so contradictory  to what I've experienced in game (I last played in October), that it seems unbelievable.  I'm really curious as to what specific metrics define an active player for the sake of calculating ARPU.  Is it simply that a character on an account has been played at some point during the month?  Is there a time limit on how much time must have been played for a player account to be considered active?  Is my account, unplayed since October, considered "active"., etc...

Regardless, none of it really matters as long as those who pay the bills are satisfied with the state of the game and it's direction as it relates to return of their initial investment and hopefully future profitability. 

As I said in my initial post, regardless of what I or others think about "Derek Smart", the "game" is generally moving in a positive direction.  The team is fixing bugs, adding content, advertising the game, etc... That's all good.

~Ripper

If a player is selling or wittingly facilitating the sale of gold for real money then that player should be permanently banned.

~Ripper

So far, that's my only real complaint about the game - potential for carpal tunnel/repetitive motion injuries.  I got an achievement for 100 hits in a row.  That's 100 rapid clicks.  My wrist, fingers and mouse are going to get worn out quickly!

~Ripper

FYI - I'm running it on a 4 Year old Dell  Inspiron E1705 Laptop with NVidia GeForce GO 7900 GS 256 MB and 2GB Ram - the performance is perfectly acceptable, IMO. Better than I thought it would be, actually.

~Ripper

According to the Best Buy pre-order page, the requirements are:

• The team is cranking out patches and adding new PvP content
• QO is removing chat restrictions for free players - critical, IMO.  That negates one of my concerns with the revenue model and is, frankly, the one that's most obvious so new players.
• Derek's starting to market the game through interviews and advertising
• The community, albeit small is nice and seems dedicated

On November 29th, 2010, Sankando (former Sparkplay Media Partner who was supposed to bring Earth Eternal to an international market) announced development efforts/transfers related to Earth Eternal.  The translation from Japanese to English is very rough, however, so it's difficult to read. Here's the translated link:

Sankando announcement regarding Earth Eternal

The announcement appears to state that TurnOut Ventures, a subsidiary of Turner Entertainment Holdings Asia Pacific Limited (Time Warner)  and OutBlaze Limited  will develop the game.  This ties directly to the previous information:

• Rumor that Time Warner buying the game, due to domain registration
• Jac Ky - the new facebook group administrator - an Asia Pac individual who likes Earth Eternal and Cartoon Network properties
• Piggypops announced he was working for the new company - his linkedin profile now states he works for TurnOut Ventures..

Originally posted by charlespayne

Ok since you never played it dont assume you know everything about it,

and the game is still early beta and alot is still being added, the world you see in vids is green becouse you start in a

place you are saved and tech no longer exsist and in rl if the post apocalyptic happens dousent mean everything is dead,

The world is still full of places that is green and untouched.

Combat is really good actully becouse in normal mode you craft and do other stuff to survive but if you press C button you go into FPS mode where you move mouse to aim and left and right mouse button to attack. And it may seem lame to you but the game is actully quite good and alot who play it will tell you tonnes of positive stuff about it.

 

I was like you at 1st kept thinking is it any good and 39.99 is it really worth buying so i desided to take the risk and buy it and besides you only live once and some people can spend 3 times that on booz, But i never regretted buying it so is it worth the 39.99? id say yest plus you also get 2 months free play and get into release mode 2 weeks early, plus you get a free weapon of your choice.

Also one last thing is the 39.99 is in dollers so in pounds that is about 26 pound.

" the game is still in early beta"?  The game was originally supposed to launch in March , 2010.  It's obviously in beta now, but was also obviously never ready for release back then and still doesn't seem to be now.  Early beta?  No.  Extended beta?  Yes.  Beta you need to pay for in order to be able to play?  Definitely.  Pay for the privilege of testing the game.  If you're cool with that, go ahead.

As for it being post-apocalyptic, read the main website.  It explains, in broad strokes, why people are left in the wilderness as opposed to in huge, decrepit abandoned cities.. That being said is any of the mythology in the lore represented in game yet?

 "Creatures of mutation and mythology now populate the land. The ways of swords and sorcery have replaced the path of science and progress."

and

"Though the rift in reality has called forth many benevolent gods and creatures, this truly is the time of the Apocalypse. The seven seals are about to be broken. The Four Horsemen loom over the land awaiting their chance to spread destruction and chaos. Devils and angels vie for control of their earthly battlefield."

That sounds pretty cool. Does any of it actually exist in game?

~Ripper

On a side note, this is why there needs to be definition of what truly constitutes F2P - there's too much gray area, too many semantic arguments and too much reliance on the game's marketing materials.  In my mind, a true F2P is as follows:

1. The client must be free - if there's a cost barrier to enter the game, then the "game" isn't "free" (Guild Wars, for example).
2. The "game" must be free. What's the "game"? All basic "content", which includes levels, zones and quests. If one has to pay to unlock content the the entire "game" isn't free (unless there's an alternate method for unlocking content in-game - LoTRO is a good example of a game where you can unlock content through in-game play. Alganon is an example of a game where your ability to progress and access additional content is capped at some point)
3. No "pay to win" sales - If the game offers PvP, then either the credit shop should not allow the sale of any items that give a paying player any competitive advantage over a non-paying or lesser-paying player or said items should be disabled during competition (this last part mostly applies to primarily PvE games with optional PvP).

I think Wizard101 is a fantastic game. I've played on-and-off since beta and I've paid for a subscription for my son since the very beginning.  That being said, I do not consider Wizard101 a true F2P.  While there is free content and you can technically play free, it's a matter of semantics, since you're cut off from most of the Wizard101 world.  Free players are essentially stuck on "newbie island" forever.  Wizard101 is a "freemium" game, not a "free" game.

~Ripper

Updated Holiday Message from Piggypops

To answer some questions:

 

-I'm not a part of the marketing/community team, so no I can't give you any official information.
-A few other Sparkplay employees are with me.
-Chances are you are not going to hear much before the new year.
-I'm playing Earth Eternal, right now, at this very second, on my computer at home. It's awesome.
-Tik Tok is the anthem of my generation.

~Ripper

Originally posted by Benthon

Originally posted by rhinok

Originally posted by Toferio

Originally posted by Slapshot1188

Originally posted by LuckyR

So my question is, if this was suppose to be some EPIC Boss kill were the 11 people that were there the whole server?

Looks like it will still be a long time before I use my free month from that nice pre-order cd sitting on the shelf!

 Actually you can't.   They automatically used your "free month" at release of the game. 

As much as I do dislike SV, you can't deny every game does it. Free month starts as soon you purchase it and activate account.

True, but what I think Slapshot is saying is that the free month started when the game launched with an implicit activation as opposed to an explicit activation.  So, if you pre-ordered the game way back when, but haven't bothered activating your account and starting to play yet, the free month may not be available anymore.  Can anybody confirm that?  Then again, how may people fall into the "I pre-ordered it, but haven't every installed and played it" category?

~Ripper

 The free month was used whether your account was activated or not.

That's what I thought he was saying. Wow - that's lame :(

~Ripper

Originally posted by Toferio

Originally posted by Slapshot1188

Originally posted by LuckyR

So my question is, if this was suppose to be some EPIC Boss kill were the 11 people that were there the whole server?

Looks like it will still be a long time before I use my free month from that nice pre-order cd sitting on the shelf!

 Actually you can't.   They automatically used your "free month" at release of the game. 

As much as I do dislike SV, you can't deny every game does it. Free month starts as soon you purchase it and activate account.

True, but what I think Slapshot is saying is that the free month started when the game launched with an implicit activation as opposed to an explicit activation.  So, if you pre-ordered the game way back when, but haven't bothered activating your account and starting to play yet, the free month may not be available anymore.  Can anybody confirm that?  Then again, how may people still fall into the "I pre-ordered it, but haven't every installed and played it" category?

~Ripper

On a side note, I wonder where the missing board members are? According to SV's official website, the board is listed as:

• Per Hökfelt – Chairman of the board
• Henrik Nyström – Board member/CEO
• Robert Uhlmann – Board member
• Ulf Nyström – Deputy board member

Originally posted by EmperorBeld

Incite arguement with me how?  All I am is asking for is the legend for the chart that is all.  Yet no one has posted one.  Since, No one has post a legend to indicate what the chart means, then the chart is useless.  Just because, people say what they want it to mean, but hey it is the internet you can make up what ever you want. 

Here's the 1 Month chart with a legend:

Here's the 1 Year chart (a much more telling figure - prices spiked at launch, started to decrease significantly thereafter, spiked again with the Epic patch and have since plummeted):

FYI - both charts are directly hyperlinked to their respective source pages. The reason the previous charts didn't have legends is because the legend isn't part of the graphical image of the chart on the source page (it's a header, instead). I've grabbed a screen print that includes the legend for each chart and have linked to the source page for validation.  All of this information has been available through the link on the first page since the OP. 

The bottom line is SV isn't doing well financially and their stock prices have crashed since launch.

~Ripper

Originally posted by Urpo

What I heard Darkfall is only 2 mill and Age of Conan was under 30 mill. Guild Wars 2 is around 50 mill I think.

Darkfall cost at least 10 million, per Tasos. On top of that, Aventurine secured a 20 mil Euro convertible bond (worth $27 mil USD at the time) to raise money. In other words, it cost a lot more than 2 million.

~Ripper