Free To Play. Turbine reports results since their decision to go F2P with LOTRO

[Babble]

Same as it sells now and more.
UO already has an itemshop, actually had an itemshop since the advanced char tokens were introduced. They are the same as experience potions in levelgames.

 

[Zosimus]

This may be my last post for a week since Im leaving tomorrow. Going to Ireland, Scotland, and the UK. I had a tour I was going to go to but it was cancled. Already had reservations and the trip paid for so going to hit some clubs and enjoy the trip.

Anyway they could add new items they create on the UO site. New arties, new potions, new mounts, new tamables, armor, new clothing for RP's, weps, rare holiday items, boosters, deco, ect ect ect. With what the game already gives and players already can compete but you always have ones that want those elite items or cool deco .

It be no different then buying them from other sites that farm current items in UO and sell them. This would give EA/Mythic Bioware the edge by controlling the selling themselves and earning profit. They can create items that imbuing couldnt even compare to.

 

[Skrag]

1) Go free-to-play
2) Open classic shard
3) Watch freeshards curl up and die

 

[Babble]

*wonders how EA would catch that Brazilian shards/gamers or the turkish ones or the russion one which allows EC client acces with SA*

 

[RD Gumbie]

Shall we do some math?

Assume that UO has 60k subscriptions (comfortably above where the mmorpg chart people predict it would be based on the rate of decline. Note: this is not secret Draconi data, I'm just pointing out a public source for subs).

At $12.99 a month, that leads to $779,400 in revenue a month. Something around $9.35 million in revenue a year.

Why the hell would you mess with a 13 yr old game bringing in 9-10 mil a year? And thats for just subscriptions, add in all the expansion stuff, tokens, acct transfers and other crap (which werent included in the math done) and you most likely get that HOPEFULL # Draconi posted.

 

[canary]

Well, that depends on how large of a team you want supporting UO, and how visible you want UO to be to EA, which translates directly to marketing support.

I've seen UO go from more than 40 active developers to 6, then back up some. When you look at the credits, you have to remember that 80% of them are unrelated to the daily development of the product, and most are support, executive, or international resources spread throughout the studio.

I think the amount of individual devs posting as well the the recent town hall show that we currently have a pretty 'bare bones, skeleton crew' team, if you exclude the EM program. Not that I'm a free shard expect (I'm not), but I'd reckon that some of them probably have more people working on them than the actual EA employed UO.

 

[Dakkon Blackblade]

I actually agree with Draconi about the viability of the free to play model, but mostly because I think UO has been at a crossroads for a long time. That is to either bring the game into the modern age with a great new client, Or accept that the game is not going to move forward in terms of being competitive in the pay to play model and adopt the free to play system.

The game cannot move forward using the same classic client it's been on forever, and the enhanced client is just not the answer, sure it makes the game easier to play with a better interface but graphically speaking it's a downgrade from KR which itself needed more polish but was a good start.

If you want to stay competitive in the current market you have to take graphical quality into consideration. I personally don't think it's more important than the gameplay but there are many other younger and newer gamers who feel that the aesthetic is needed.

In any event I'm sure more than a few will disagree with me but just my opinion on the matter. I'm stuck in the position of wanting to give EA my money but I cannot bring myself to do it with the current client and dated feel of the game.

I played UO on Atlantic since launch, I've had a ton of great experiences and genuinely loved it like many of us have. But with ten years of ultima online behind me I would personally love to see the next chapter, a fresh start whatever you want to call it.