APB Reloaded MMO. A look at Pay to Play Games as F2P Games

This news is a tad bit old now – but GamersFirst announced last month that they would be re-launching APB as a free to play game called “APB Reloaded”. Firstly, It’s cool to see a dead MMO like APB, which cost some $50 million to develop relaunching as a free to play title. Secondly, It’s awesome that GamersFirst is bringing back a dead game. The fact is, Real Time Worlds, the bankrupt studio behind APB, launched an incomplete game that was doomed to failure. Instead of their work being “wasted”, the game is revived as free to play. I suspect in the future, less and less pay to play MMORPGs will actually “shut down”. Instead, they’ll re-launch as free to play games just to see if the game will catch on. Dungeons and Dragons Online and The Lord of the Rings Online from Turbine were smashing hits as free to play games. In fact, both of these games made MUCH more revenues as free to play games than as pay to play ones. I would have loved to see NCSoft relaunchTabula Rasa as a free to play MMO instead of shutting the game down outright. I’d of course like to see games like Final Fantasy 11 and Age of Conan to eventually become free to play too – but seeing games become free to play instead of shutting down will prove to game publishers and developers that free to play really works.

Unfortunately, even with the success that Turbine has had with their free to play games, most game developers aren’t convinced that free to play is a viable business model for triple-A high budget titles. In reality, it is. Just look at the success Nexon has been having in North America. MapleStory, Dungeon Fighter Online and Vindictus have proven to be super popular (and profitable) for Nexon. Vindictus is easily a triple A action MMORPG with graphics that rival that of any “pay to play” game. Sony Online Entertainment is experimenting with free to play as well. They recently made Pirates of the Burning Sea free to play, and since doing so, the playerbase in the game has increased significantly. Back when the game had a free trial, I logged in to check it out and each of the game’s three servers had “ight” population. They now have “heavy” and “very heavy” population. It’s too early to say whether Pirates of the Burning Sea will do well or not as an F2P title, as the game became free to play a few days ago on November 29. I don’t think Sony Online Entertainment saw the success they expected when they made EverQuest 2 free to play 2-3 months ago. I think the reasonEverQuest 2 didn’t do that “great” as a free to play game is because it’s way too restrictive. Free to play users have shown that they dislike Mmos that are too “cash dependent”. MMORPG Cash Shops are a delicate thing and can’t be too overpowered. Gpotato learned the hard way with Allods Online that trying to milk their playerbase for every last dime they have is not a good way to keep their playerbase happy. Luckily, Pirates of the Burning Sea is much more “free” than EverQuest 2 – as there are only a handful of restrictions for free to play users. Those who end up subscribing at $15 a month receive some nice benefits, but nothing game-breaking.

I remember back when Electronic Arts released Need for Speed World, the game had some absurd level 10 cap for free to play users, and had the balls to call itself a free to play racing game. How can a game with such a level cap call itself free? It’s more like a free trial than anything else. Several months after release, EA removed the level 10 cap for free members due to player outrage. So I think any pay to play game that went free to play will eventually become more and more “free” as companies realize that they can make more money pleasing their users than angering them. Hopefully the new Battlefield MMOFPS game isn’t too restrictive, the same way Need for Speed World was when it launched. I think EA has a decent grasp on the whole F2P concept though, as they already have numerous F2P games including Battleforge, FIFA Online, Lord of Ultima and a bunch of other games.

ZOMG More New MMORPGs

November has been a pretty exciting month for free to play MMORPGs so far. Iris Online (finally) launched into Open beta on Nov 23 and Legend of Martial Arts began its closed beta testing on Nov 24. Iris Online is a game that I’ve been extremely fascinated with ever since gPotato launched the closed beta in October. The game looks and feels like a very modern MMORPG, and I say that because the gameplay is very fluid and the graphics are sharp and easy on the eyes. Even though Fly For Fun and Rappelz remain some of the most popular free MMORPGs gPotato publishes, I think Iris Online has the potential to become their most successful title. Legend of Martial Arts also finally began a more public closed beta testing phase. The game is by Perfect World Entertainment and used to be known as Kung Foo a while ago. The name changed and the game was apparently re-developed into Legend of Martial Arts.

In Other news – War of Angels began its OPEN beta testing on November 24. I first played the game onGamigo months ago, but after learning about the North American IP block, I quickly became frustrated. Right after that IP block was announced, Neowiz – the Korean MMO developer behind S4 League announced that they themselves would release War of Angels globally through their own website. Those in Europe would still have to play on the Gamigo version though. Everyone else gets to play on one global service. I’m surprised that War of Angels was EU only on Gamigo, as Gamigo has several games available in both EU and North America including King of Kings 3 as well as their browser based title Cultures Online. They also have Martial Empires and Fiesta Online for Europe only. Luckily Fiesta Online is available in the U.S. Too, but Martial Empires isn’t. I’m wondering when CR-Space will get around to releasing a U.S. Version of Martial Empires…..

Another game that I should mention is Myth Angels Online from UserJoy. The game looks and plays like Angels Online from IGG, but apparently this version is supposed to be bigger and better. Those who disliked Angels Online shouldn’t even give this new Myth Angels Online a try though, as the graphics and gameplay are nearly identical. In FPS news, Mission Against Terror added several new game modes and Genesis A.D launched into open beta. Dynasty Warriors Online and Zentia also launched into full release – exiting their open beta phases, which means both games also received a bunch of updates.

November so far is looking great, but what I’m really looking forward to is the new games Webzen unveiled – Continent of the Ninth, Battery Online and R2: Reign of Revolution.

FreeStyle Street Basketball MMO Rocks

Why is it that the few very awesome free to play MMOs out there don’t get the attention they deserve? Everytime I log onto FreeStyle Street Basketball on GameKiss, I’m upset to see so few people online. I’ve played a lot of sports MMOs from FIFA Online to Pangya. I’ve even played tons of racing MMOs like Need for Speed World and Heat Online, but none of these games are nearly as fun as FreeStyle Street Basketball. Why on Earth am I praising this game so much? Well, because it’s both simple and fun. I think the best MMORPGs out there aren’t the most graphically advanced or complicated. The most fun titles are DEFINITELY the easiest to pick up and play. Games like WonderKing and Runes of Magic for example are successful because they’re so easy to pick up and play. Other titles like NEO Online from PlayOMG and World of Tanks for example are a bit more difficult to learn. I never managed to “get into” Eve Online because it’s such a hard game to learn. I tried playing the MMO Free Trial FOUR times, and not once could I stick with the game. Black Prophecy from Gamigo does look fascinating though and aims to be more “fun” than Eve Online. While Eve is more tactical and strategy oriented, Black Prophecy aims to be more hands on actiony – something Eve Online severely lacks.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit distracted. FreeStyle is fun, because you can hop on, play one or two matches (5 minutes each) and be done with it. No large time commitment nothing. I guess one of the reasons I like most MMOFPS games is because of this same reason – small time commitment. The thing about FreeStyle is that I don’t even like Basketball. I never watch it on TV or know anything about it, but I can still launch the game and have a ton of fun. I do wish the game offered more variety in terms of gameplay modes, because as is there aren’t many ways to vary up the game. Unlike Zone4: Fight District or Lost Saga from OGPlanet, FreeStyle has like 3 game modes and that’s it. Either way, you can still play the game for fun here and there. The game’s story isn’t exactly updated often, but it’s still good enough for me.

What sucks is that the game has a low playerbase. And as we all know – games with low playerbases eventually end up in the MMO Graveyard. I think games like Runes of Magic and Perfect World will likely be around for a long while. As will other successful MMORPGs like The Lord of the Rings Online and Fiesta Online, but FreeStyle is a game that I suspect won’t last another full year, as the game never had a big playerbase, and the community isn’t growing either. Plus GameKiss announced that they would shut down Valkyrie Sky last week. When a company shuts one game down, it means the company is having financial problems. That could eventually spill over into GhostX (Another game by the same company. A scifi MMORPG) and eventually into FreeStyle Street Basketball. Time will tell though.

APB Free to Play

Oh Man. All Points Bulletin, commonly called APB for short, is re-releasing as a free to play MMO shooter and will be publisher by GamersFirst. The game will relaunch as APB Reloaded The F2P game publisher bought up the APB assets from the now defunkt developer real-time worlds for a paltry sum. The game took some $50 million to develop, but GamersFirst bought up the rights to the game for less than $2.5 million. GamersFirst is best known for a handful of successful free to play games – their two most popular games are War Rock andKnight Online. Both games are fairly old now, but they still remain popular. APB isn’t the first “dead” game that GamersFirst bought up. They actually bought the license for 9Dragons once Acclaim Games shut down. The entire Acclaim Games story is quite funny – as they were bought by Playdom, but Playdom shut their entire website down within a month of buying the company. Needless to say, they got burnt.

According to the new APB Reloaded website – the game will be officially launching sometime in the first half of 2010. I think the entire APB concept was really neat. The idea of combing open world Grand Theft Auto environments with persistent world MMO / RPG elements sounds incredibly fun. APB is a game I never got a chance to play, as it was one of the few MMOs that didn’t have free trials. Nowadays, I play mostly free to play games, so I never actually bought APB. Even if I wanted to buy it, I had a small window to do it, as the game shut down within 2 months of launching. I think it’s one of the biggest flops in history. APB won’t be the first failed pay to play game going free to play though, Archlord used to be pay to play for its first year of release, but eventually became free to play

through Webzen and still remains F2P to date. RF Online went through the same release schedule. It launched as a pay to play game, but failed to attract a sizeable audience, so it went F2P. Even though both games aren’t huge successes, they are both still around today – they survived for years. So the whole F2P business model actually works. I think when The Lord of the Rings Online and EverQuest 2 announced that they will be going free to play, I knew F2P was for sure here to stay. Before that, I was merely speculating. Maybe Final Fantasy 14 will go Free to Play soon too.

Those who also like the APB concept, but don’t want to wait until APB releases could try that new browser based GTA style MMO – PoisonVille. The whole “Ville” bit reminds of FarmVille, PetVille, FrontierVille and all those other social games. I should mention – PoisonVille is by BigPoint and it most certainly is not a silly facebook game. The graphics are decent for a browser based game and it has some neat open world gameplay. In terms of content though, it’s quite disappointing. I’d actually hold off until APB relaunches as an F2P title, as PoisonVille has been a big disappointment. If you really want to try it though, I think you can use your SeaFight and Deepolis accounts to access it, as it’s by the same company – BigPoint.

Anyway – I’m waiting until APB releases. Anyone else pumped?

Where are all the Turn Based MMORPGs?

Turn based RPGs on the Playstation 2 were big business. Single player RPGs like Tales of Vesperia and Final Fantasy 13 on the Xbox 360 were fairly big games too. As an avid MMORPG gamer, I’m a bit disappointed that there are so few turn based MMORPGs available. I’ve looked for quite a while and I’ve only found a handful of decent ones. I think Atlantica Online from Ndoors is probably the best one. The game has great 3D visuals and a ton of playable characters. Like Sword 2 from GamersFirst, you can also control 3+ characters at once, which gives the game some unique dynamics. The only other remotely popular turn based MMORPG is Wonderland Online from IGG. It’s a 2D MMORPG with awful graphics. I actually like the 2D graphics in WonderKing and Grand Chase, but the visuals in Wonderland Online are bleh at best. Graphics are important, but its not a deal breaker for me. After all, one of the best MMORPGs if you ask me is Ragnarok Online from Gravity Interactive, and it doesn’t have very good graphics, especially compared to newer games like Iris Online from gPotato.

If you’ve never played either Atlantica Online or Wonderland Online do yourself a favor and play Atlantica Online. Of if you want to lower your exceptions before playing either, try Myth War 2 Online or Zodiac Online. Those are both pretty low tier turn based MMORPGs. WeMade Entertainment has Digimon Battle – which is also a pretty bad game. The only reason Digimon Battle is bad is its a really old MMORPG. The game is like 6+ years old. But if you were to only play ONE turn based MMORPG definitely make it Atlantica Online. I think Ndoors did a phenomenal job with it the game. It has some 10+ playable classes, top notch 3D graphics and a huge game world. I can’t imagine why there aren’t more games like it. Ndoors has proven that turn based MMORPGs can be successful – so why are so many game developers still releasing very generic 3D anime MMORPGs? Iris Online for example from gPotato is a really sleek game, but it brings nothing new to the table. The same thing applies to Zentia from ChangYou. It’s a fairly solid title, but it brings nothing new to the table either. I had a chance to play Loong: The Power of the Dragon from Gamigo the other day and I was really surprised by the game’s visuals. Too bad even though the gameplay is fluid, there aren’t really any special gameplay mechanics which would make the game unique.

One thing I can’t quite figure out is why game developers keep churning out MMOFPS games. Ijji just released Genesis A.D last week on Nov 8 and plans on releasing their World War 2 themed Karma: Operation Barbarossa later in the year. I think aside from fantasy MMORPGs the second most popular genre is MMOFPS games. Sci-fi MMORPGs are probably less popular than turn based MMORPGs, as the only sci-fi MMORPGs I can think of are RF Online and Megaten. That’s it.

Anyway guys, I know I got super side tracked with this one, but I’d like to see more turn based MMOs out there. More specifically, more games like Atlantica.

Best MMO Cash Shops

Cash shops in MMORPGs should be focused on one thing and one thing only – convenience. With the growth of free to play MMOs and MMORPGs and dozens of new games launching every year, I feel I should write something dedicated to cash shops and how they should be run. MMO publishers aren’t in the business of charity. They’re looking to turn a profit, so they want to sell things in their cash shops that people find useful and will want to buy. But if the cash shop items are too imbalanced or required to play, gamers will get angry and leave the game. So game publishers need to find a perfect balance. I think Allods Online from gPotato is a good example of a game that failed because of its cash shop woes. The game was incredibly fun, albeit a WoW clone. In fact, It was easily on par with Runes of Magic from Frogster, which was one of the highest rated free to play games ever. I remember the first day of the open beta for Allods. The game was mind-blowingly packed. The starting city was enormous, but it was FILLED with players. Every quest NPC was surrounded by players eagerly talking to and handing in quests. Some time later, gPotato added “Fear of death” to the game, which added a harsh death penalty, which could only be removed by either waiting 2 hours for it to go away on its own or through a cash shop item called “perfume”. One thing led to another and the cash shop because worse and worse. The game became too cash shop dependent. I think gPotato made a good deal of money early on, but in the long run, gPotato angered their players, and many of them quit.

The trick is to create a cash shop which doesn’t break the game. A cash shop should offer players convenience, without making it mandatory. Changyou for example promised that their new MMORPG Zentia could be played to max level without ever buying anything from the cash shop. Most MMORPGs today can be enjoyed without having to spend money in the cash shop, but some games can’t. Those games, unfortunately, are shooting themselves in the foot. Games like Shaiya from Aeria Games and browser games like Caesary and Lord of Ultima are incredibly cash shop dependent. Practically every browser based strategy game from Grepolis to Travian are absurdly cash shop dependent. So much so, that if you DON’T spend money in the cash shop, you have no chance of doing well. I think MapleStory from Nexon has one of the best cash shops ever. Why? Because the only items for sale are experience enhancement items and clothing for your avatar. Nothing is game-breaking and it’s all largely used for convenience. I think it’s easier for MapleStory to have a balanced cash shop over games like War of Angels and King of Kings 3, as MapleStory doesn’t have PvP while these other games do. Any PvP MMORPG has to make sure items sold in the cash shop aren’t imbalanced. EverQuest 2 for example, from Sony Online Entertainment, sells armor and weapons in its cash shop. Luckily, the items for sale are only mediocre – the best gear in the game can ONLY be obtained by actually playing the game and earning the gear.

So the ideal MMO cash shop should only sell things like clothing and convenience items. Convenience items being increased XP scrolls and teleportation scrolls. When a game like Grand Chase from Ntreev or Legend of Edda from GamesCampus sells items to its players that increase their XP rate, it doesn’t affect anyone in a negative way. I mean, who cares if some random player is gaining XP at a faster than than I am? The only time a cash shop can really annoy players is when players are REQUIRED to use it in order to get ahead, or if it sells an item that can imbalance PvP. Most MMOs these days, including the new Genesis A.D and League of Legends don’t sell anything in their stores which would imbalance the game.

So which game do you think has the most unfair cash shop? Which has the best? Let me know in the comments!

Side Scrolling MMORPGs 4TW

Why is it that just about every side scrolling MMORPG has been very successful? For a long while MapleStory from Nexon was the only side scrolling MMORPG on the block – at least until Ndoors decided to embrace the sub genre with their WonderKing game. Ndoors is probably best known for the turn based MMORPG Atlantica Online, and that’s it. I think a few months after Ndoors released WonderKing, Nexon actually bought the entire company. I think it’s because Nexon saw WonderKing as a thread to MapleStory’s dominance. It’s safe to say that after Runescape from Jagex, MapleStory is the most profitable and most popular free to play MMORPG on the market. WonderKing isn’t nearly as big of a success as MapleStory has been, but the game definitely carved out its own slice of the 2D MMORPG market.

WonderKing isn’t the only new side scrolling MMORPG to release chasing after MapleStory’s success. Fists of Fu from OutSpark is a 2D action MMORPG that’s trying to mix MapleStory and Dragon Saga style gameplay. Whether it’ll be successful or not remains unknown – as the game launched into open beta recently. I doubt it’ll be as successful as Outspark’s flagship anime MMORPG Fiesta Online. For those that didn’t know Fiesta Online is by far the most successful game OutSpark has. I think Secret of the Solstice (The Ragnarok Online clone they have) is their second most popular, but Fiesta is leaps and bounds ahead of Secret of the Solstice. They pretty much abandoned their other MMORPGs – Project Powder and Wind Slayer. They for sure abandoned Dance Groove Online and Blackshot. Hopefully these two games launch through another publisher.

Aside from the growth of side scrolling MMORPGs, games like Forsaken World from Perfect World Entertainment and War of Angels from Neowiz have attracted quite a bit of attention. Many Perfect World, Battle of the Immortals and Jade Dynasty fans have been flocking to try Forsaken World. Too bad the game is still in phase 1 closed beta, with full release being severla years in the future. Suba Games has been pushing Mission Against Terror quite hard lately. I just wish they’d get around to releasing Priston Tale 2 sometime soon, as that game has been on hiatus forever. The worst thing about it is that it’s already released in Europe through Gamerkraft, who also publishes FreeJack. I’m also waiting for Netmarble to release Koongya Adventure in the U.S. Instead of releasing it, they recently launched Uncharted Waters Online instead. It’s not a terrible game, but it’s too much like Voyage Century for my taste. On the positive side, Uncharted Waters Online is one of the only Japanese MMORPGs out there. Yeah, it’s developed in Japan. I think Lucent Heart (Beanfun) and Dynasty Warriors Online (Aeria Games) are some of the only other Japanese MMORPGs.

Anyway, I’m getting side tracked here. I think it’s clear that side scrolling MMORPGs are incredibly popular. I suspect that both WonderKing and Fists of Fu will prove to be a success in the near future.