Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Pirate 101: Avast! Our E3 2012 Preview
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Not long ago KingsIsle announced that Pirate101 is the latest game to come out of the studio largely known for Wizard101. During E3 we had a chance to check out Pirate101 so keep reading, me hearties!
In an age not too long ago, tall ships sailed the endless skies and braved the Stormgates of the Spiral. Streams of energy between the realms were mapped by a generation of explorers led by the great Marco Pollo. It was the great age of exploration and the nations of Marleybone, Valencia, Monquista, and Polaris established colonies and forged trade routes that made them wealthy and powerful while Grizzleheim and many other realms simply enjoyed the fruits of their labor.
Read more of Carolyn Koh's Pirate101: Avast! Our E3 2012 Preview.
)
Comments
If the pricing is anything like Wizard101, be wary.
This is what you are in for if it is...the game will be somewhat fun and well put together for children, but KingsIsle has one of the worst, if not the worst microtransaction scheme in any game I've played. It's ironic it's geared towards children, but has the most dangling carrots, or more appropriately, dangling pieces of candy I have ever seen. Especially when it comes to opening up new areas while it claims being free to play. Only a very small area of the game will actually be free to play. They will also microtranaction you to death when it comes to pets (to train them faster), or items to buy in the various shops.
Also, if this same pricing scheme holds true for Pirates101, when I did happen to pay the monthly fee in order to play in the higher areas, it was a ghost town, which was unfortunate. The lower level/free areas were packed with people, and it was fun grouping while I ran around doing things. The higher areas for me essentially became a solo game experience because there was almost no one around.
Just a warning for parents looking to have their kids try out a seemingly safe MMO. Keep close watch over what they purchase in game.
Oh Bullshit.
Sorry, but that's rubbish.
True - it's not the best sub/microtransaction models around now but it is worth remembering that when the game was released - it was.
KingsIsle deserve some credit here - they were the pioneers of the "F2P+Subscription" model.
Remember this was 2008... and RMT games were the Devil as far as gamers were concerned. Wizard 101 offered a 'demo' and you could either subscribe or buy as you went..
Turbine didn't introduce their model until later. Looking back now - with the benefit of being able to look at what companies like Turbine have done - sure the Wizard 101 model is no longer the best thing on the market. But at the time it was something new and it wasn't a "Pay 2 Win" model which players had come to expect from any game offering MicroTransactions.
Wizard 101's model still offers some unique features too - "Family" accounts? And IIRC the Mircotransaction model in Wizard 101 does not allow kids to just go nuts with the Credit Card? IIRC there are safeguards built in? Perhaps someone more up to date with the current model can confirm that?
So, be fair. Sorry to sound all Fanboi-ish / Shill-ish but to call it "one of the worst, if not the worst microtransaction scheme in any game..." is pretty unfair.
EDIT: And to get back on topic:
It will be interesting to see if KingsIsle can repeat earlier success?
A game that is simple to learn, plays well and difficult to master. This one will definately be worth keeping an eye on - even if it is aimed at kids.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
You're pretty spot on, actually. I play with my grandson and we have a family account where I control all the microtrans. I purchase ~$10 worth of crowns every so often and assign it to my grandson's account, and he can go wild with what I give him. It's all very controlled. For 2 accounts I pay $13/month (under the family plan), and we have full run of all the areas and content. It's safe, a good value, and loads of fun for us. I'm looking forward to sailing the high seas (or space, it looks like from the pic) when pirates 101 comes out.
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.
I think KingsIsle's microtransaction scheme is one of the best. They offer cheap subcription that gives access to everything, and don't offer things like teleport/recurrect/item needed for item upgrade/bag space/bank space/character slots/etc. It's very easy game to play without ever spending anything in cash shop compared to most of the cash shop games.
I admit that KingsIsle is greedy and they have a lot of both fluff and stat items, but they've made their game convenient to play also if you never want to pay more than the 5-10$ month subcription (price depends on payment plan). It's far from the worst system out there.
I'll be playing Pirate 101 when it's released.
Thank you all for proving my point. You all seem to be watching very closely over what your kids can purchase, which remains to be very neccessary in this game.
Again, I stick by my opinion that they have one of the worst microtransactions schemes of the "f2p" games I have seen, and the parental control/family plan options where an adult controls the spending are very much needed.
In my opinion Wizard 101 was never F2P, but I don´t wanna derail the thread.
On Topic: good news, since I like turn based strategy like Wiz101 or Atlantica. Because it is slower paced, it is also playable by the older crowd.
Alright, I'm older than I'd care to admit and Wizards 101 was really fun for me. I like TCGs in general, MMOs well enough, and I'll follow the dev team from Shadowbane just about anywhere.
Seeing this as more of a tactics game; great. My family and I will enjoy it.
As for the "value" of Wizards 101.. 4 of us play and I can say over the last 2 or 3 years it's a whole lot less spent on content as if we were paying 14.99 a month x 4 and just sitting at end game. I think Kings Isle has one of the better merchant set-ups out of the F2P games.
a yo ho ho
I play Wizard101 with my 2 kids and I love it. We have a family membership and it is quite reasonable. You control the main membership and can keep the kids from purchasing anything. It's really not hard to do.
WIzard 101 is currently the only MMO I play. I got bored with the rest of the MMOs out there. It's a lot of fun and I think they did a great job. I look forward to Pirate101.
this is one of the three games i totally loathe because they claim that the game is free to play yet like its 2 predecessors it doesn't live up to its claim. the first was pirates of the caribbean online. the second was wizard101 and now we have this one. all 3 claim to be free to play yet to be able to play the game with unlimited game content you have to pay a monthly subscription fee. that to me is just plain wrong. if a game is going to be free to play then it should be free to play for all in game content not just limited or restricted game content and requiring players to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to be able to access all in game content.
There are way too many issues and post regarding wizard 101 with this issue not to be true. I had a credit card dispute with KI and my credit card Company, one of the larger ones, told me they have had several complaints about them. The issues got so bad with KI and the complaining, wizard 101 central, a non KI owned fan site, now approves all messages. Many former users of the site have complained about their posts and threads not being posted.
Pirates 101 seems like much more of the same thing. If you like Wizard 101 and play it great and more power to you, but don't call this post rubbish when so many people have echoed the exact comments regarding this game. I can't tell you how many horror stories I have heard regarding wizard 101. As a teacher and large district supervisor, I work with parents and children all the time and I hear the complaints regularly as well. What shocked me is when I found my way to wizard 101 central a few years ago and saw a large numbr of threads with the same comments, complaints and issues.
So this game is targeted at 8-13 year olds? I want a real good pirate game online, nothing like POTBS but more like Tropico mixed with Sid Meier's Pirates. If they can do that I am sold!
I think Wizard 101 has quite a fair subscription plan. You can't expect a game to be totally free and giving people the option to either pay a (fair) monthly fee or buy content per region seems like a good option. And even if you don't pay money you can have lots of fun with all the different schools to try out. In comparisen, when I was young I had a shareware version of Jazz Jackrabbit with only 4 or so levels and my parents didn't want to buy the rest of the game. Still I played the same 4 levels over and over again.
Teaching to children to keep track of their money and how to spend it is their parents responsibility. And Wizard has a lot of options to regulate what your kids are spending and for example give them a ceertain amount of crowns each month.
BTW one thing I should add, PVP IS really expensive when you don't want to pay per month, but then again, if you want to be competitive in that you should get a subscription anyway.
Going to have to agree with some of the other more reliable posters here who've actually played the game.
You had a bad experience and that's obvious. I think most others who are capable of keeping an eye on their expenses have had great experiences with Kings Isle.
I only buy their prepaid cards and only do so upon requests from my little gamers and I make sure they know it's a reward for something and not a neccessity. It's worked out well and again I've had great value out of the game in contrast to many other popular MMOs out there.
So your post claiming it's all bad is rubbish. Hyperbole is easy to come by when one person had one bad experience.
a yo ho ho
Do you really expect a company to undertake the task of creating a video game, which takes a team of people years to do, and then offer it in it's entirety to everyone at no cost? In real life, people expect to be paid for their hard work. Making a game isn't easy by any means. All entertainment products cost money. Movies, books, songs, card games, board games, etc.
Exactly, no game should be outright free. I think a good portion of it should be, and that defines Wizard101. The game does not make you buy anything other than the content to play, and that is fairly cheap. Currently, using deals, $80 gets you the entire set of worlds. This, is cheap. Consider that it has been out since 2008, and you can count on this $80 being everything that you had to pay over the last 4 years. And if you wanted a bit more, then even so, you are looking at no more than $100 for everything.
Games like this are very cheap, and I would expect Pirates101 to follow in Wizard101's footsteps.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
Dunno how I feel about the game, but that artwork is absolutely gorgeous.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Wizard 101 is pretty fun when you play it with others, but a lot of places are so empty (the higher leveled ones I mean).
Smile
Wow, they actually disproved what you were saying, but okay, feel free to have to be right when you're clearly in the wrong. Wizard 101 has a fantastic pricing plan and your comment about parents having to watch what their kids buy? Total bogus. Obviously that is needed. You make it sound like that's a bad thing when it's a very good thing that KingsIsle put that into place. Otherwise kids would be running up their parent's credit card bills and causing them to go bankrupt. Their subscription fee is actually one of the cheaper ones on the market, so I'd like to ask, how is it "one of the worst microtransactions schemes of the 'f2p' games" that you have seen?
Smile
I play Wizard101 and I have to admin KI does a WONDERFUL job with the option of subscription services. I love that you do not have to pay for content releases like SO many MMOs. I paid only dollars per month to be able to go anywhere I wanted in the spiral with 3 expansions over the last 2 years (Celestia, Wintertusk and now Avalon). Any other mmo this would be 15 per month plus whatever fee for the expansion they tack on so say 30$ per? A TON of the items in te Wizard101 crowns shop is dropped in game so alot of items you want you can even farm for. In fact the first year of our playing the game we spent 0 dollars outside of the subscription.
Between my son and myself we have not paid even close to 60$ worth of crowns the entire time playing and considering how much we have saved between the family plan and the not having to pay for expansions it has been MORE than fair.
I can think of so many other games with microtransactions that are so much more money grubbing. Things like the gpotato that actually requires you to buy upgrade protection because all their upgrade items are chance only. Come on talk about a money grab I can name so many others that do things just like this. Runes of Magic Purified Fusion Stones and so on.
If you have kids and they love this type of game then check out what the provide for free and if you like it subscribe to it. That simple. Just remember F2P is really just a small preview of the total game and so it isn't 100% F2P unless you want to level up in a small area. I do hate the F2P verbage because I really consider it a free preview after which you will want to subscribe (or pay by zone) to continue on.
Unfortunately there are so many F2P gamees that indeed have this distinction. Lotro, WoW only to 20, DDO, Everquest 2 requires bought expansions and the list goes on. They all advertise "free to play" but there is something about it that isn't free. As I indicated I too hate they advertise it but that first starter area is indeed free to play. I wish they had some naming convention that could not be used unless all of the gaming world is indeed 100% free to explore and you are not level capped. I am just saying that while not entirely free its well worth the cost if you can afford it.
I should note, that with the money that you paid on that subscription, you could have used to buy crowns to buy the entire game's worth of content. Then you would not even need the subscription.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.
Be careful of the Crown Playerroute as Mr. Lincoln who is one of the higher ups at Kings Isle made it very clear a few years ago that Kings Isle considers Clown players to be no better than Free players whenit comes to their bottom line. It cause quite a scandle within the Wizard 101 community and Kings Isle never did change their view about it. As one of the original Wizard 101 founding players I was quite put out when Mr. Lincoln told those of us that chose to go the Crown Player route that we weren't valued by Wizard 101 becaue we chose wo buy crowns instead of a monthly sub. We actually pay almost 2x as much to Kings Isle as Subs do just to play the game long term.