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[Dev Journal] Neverwinter: Get Everything You Want By Playing
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Cryptic Studios is bringing our readers an exclusive look at how the studio plans to monetize Neverwinter. Penned by none other than CEO Jack Emmert, it's the world's first look at a groundbreaking new system of "free to play". Read on and then leave your thoughts in the comments.
Though we've done several MMORPG's in the past, Neverwinter is distinctly different than all the others we've made. Yes, it's fantasy and we've never done that before, but that isn't what I mean. Neverwinter is 100% from launch a free-to-play MMORPG. No box. No subscription. No mandatory purchase. Nothing. It's just a great game you can download and play as you like.
Read more of Jack Emmert's Neverwinter: Get Everything You Want By Playing.
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Comments
You might have missed this...
"And please note that last sentence -- you can get everything you want by playing. Everything. This includes mounts, costumes, etc. Why? How? Because you can put your Astral Diamonds up on an auction house and sell them for micro-transactable points. Then you can purchase anything you'd like in our micro-transaction store. "
It looks like we might be able to purchase the Drow using that method. Assuming the Drow will be in the store eventually. I hope so.
It's a similar system to Guild Wars 2 - you can choose to invest immediately or farm your way up to get what you want by 'trading' currency.
As long as they don't go nuts and have the best endgame gear purchaseable with diamonds, it'll be fine.
I've seen systems like this before and sometimes what happens is you can choose to farm 200 hours and hope you get the best gear or invest 5 dollars for it.. sure, you can achieve it without paying real money but the system is engineered in such a way to make that task so daunting you'd sooner get your wallet out.
Drow are available for free at launch. You are thinking of the 'Menzoberranzan Renegade’ which is a Drow backstory with a unique tattoo and racial skill.
I doubt you will be able to get the unique items from the founder packs in the store, everything else though seems to be fair game.
Fair enough.
I think its fine, they have their internal closed beta on going on to pof that. The public beta this daysa re notthing more than advertisement.
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the REAL closed beta has been going on for more than a few months already ;]
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# A MASKED CRY ADORING
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It's nothing new, both STO and CO working this way - except the 'no subscription available' part, which is more like 'no monthly stipend to you for free'
and it also means no gold benefits and no veteran rewards either.
It could be a successful system, working fine in the other two games as well, in the sense that you won't need to even touch the in-game store during the way to level cap. But for playing beyond that for free... well, that would take a serious amount of grind. Khm, I mean playtime.
Since they can easily control the amount and the demand of the "time currency", they can honing perfectly their income from Zen sales to their liking.
For the reference, in STO the dilithium / Zen exchange rate in the last year danced in the range of 85 - 290 dilly for 1 Zen. Luckily in some cases it's easy to predict what will happen, so it's safer than the regular real world exchange
for example it was obvious that the S7 dilithium changes will bring a massive dilly demand and shortage, that's why a lot of people bought truckload of dilithium for cheap before S7 (around 160 per Zen), and then sell it back during the winter event around 80, doubling their Zen balance for free. Or so I heard. I didn't do such thing. 
Anyways, it's a rare thing, usually players need to buy Zen from PWE every once in a while, I think that wil be the case in Neverwinter as well.
Same here. If they indeed follow the same setup as current f2p STO, then yeh I'll give the game a shot.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
Is it really necessary to sell advantages to get people to support a MMO?
You use the word advantage loosely...
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
I just wish they could sell cosmetic items only and that people would support such a game if they liked it. Apparently they feel the need to sell currency that can be used to buy ingame items, to me that is selling an advantage.
How else would you do it? people don't want to pay monthly sub either. How does one runs the business then?
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
Well I prefer a subscription but if you go F2P then I would prefer the way Path of Exile does it, sell cosmetic items, character slots, stash space. No MMO I know has done it though and I'm not sure it's viable either. I just think it's sad that the only way you get enough people to support a F2P game is by selling advantages. I wish people would support games that don't sell advantages.
They have that planned too for NW.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
This is the future of mmo's and its a great future.
its b2p or f2p for mmo's from now on. Except those that want to have p2p for the first months see that it fails and then go over to b2p or f2p