DC Universe Online Gains a Million New Players

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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Sony Online Entertainment had an epiphany of sorts and dropped its monthly subscription to DC Universe Online. They are betting that free-to-play environment will attract new players and eventually higher tier subscribers. So far the bet is paying off with new membership soaring with one million new players signing up within the last week.

“Our business model philosophy of Free to Play Your Way makes DCUO accessible to every type of player so they can choose to play the game in a way that suits them best
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Game is pretty fucking awesome.... but it's still too buggy and awkward at times. I only wish it had the same customization as APB, with making your own symbols.
 
They are betting? Hell this business model has already been shown to work, offer something for free.. then let people pay for "premium" content, and wallets will unfold
 
i find free to play the way to go really.

that way when i cash shop..IF i cash shop, i feel i am actually getting something "tangible" for my investment.

I mean i have been on MMO's since meridian 59, I am not squeamish about the sub fee for server maintenance and GM's, but with software purchase + sub for service that has actually gotten worse instead of better... I'd rather do the free to play and just buy as i feel i want something.

that said it depends on how its done, having to pay to have the entire game i'm not a fan of. paying for decorative things or even to get a leg up on progressing i think it a better way to go.

now if only vanguard would go free to play...such a great game but not big enough coomunity to justify a monthly fee.
 
sfsuphysics said:
They are betting? Hell this business model has already been shown to work, offer something for free.. then let people pay for "premium" content, and wallets will unfold
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It's SOE, they've proven time and time again that they can screw up anything
 
-Dragon- said:
It's SOE, they've proven time and time again that they can screw up anything
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Yes, so so true.

Many, many MMORPGs they have totally screwed up, nerfed, or chopped up into garbage heaps.

SWG comes to mind... what a good game that was... they screw it all up from the beginning (it was SO good) and now they lose all that money because BioWare is making the new SW Mmo :D Coming out next month!
 
Greene420 said:
SWG comes to mind... what a good game that was... they screw it all up from the beginning (it was SO good) and now they lose all that money because BioWare is making the new SW Mmo :D Coming out next month!
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SWG was always a terrible game. Old Republic is a clone with a WoW interface.
 
I'm hit and miss on the Free to Play's. The first one I plaid was Maplestory and the pressure wasn't too overbearing. I think I bought some little stuff here and there just to see what it was like.

But then Lord of Rings Online went to the "free to play" and they literally nickel and dime you for everything. Luckily I was a subscriber at the time they shifted over so they gave me a bunch of points for the new system. But man you have to buy the expansions if you want to even get in the new zones. You have to buy the quest packs if you want to quest in the zones. I believe you have to buy access to dungeons and raids. Bank space, bag space, mounts, all pay to play.

Then there is the rediculous claim by Blizzard that World of Warcraft is free to play now. Not even a gold farmer would find it useable.

The only free to play I have to be enjoyable is Final Fantasy 14. Its still a terrible game, but at least you dont have to pay for anything and there is no mechanism to buy anything.

I have no problem paying $10 a month. WoW was a little excessive I thought. $60 for each expansion and then a steep $15 a month. Where as Rift is $10 a month and they have been pushing stuff out monthly...I have that more acceptable. I never really understood what Blizzard was doing with all that money. Also WoW is the only MMO I have played that had a weekly downtime for hours (Tuesday Maintanance).
 
Also WoW just said they lost a million members in the last quarter....so maybe thats where they came from :)
 
westrock2000 said:
The only free to play I have to be enjoyable is Final Fantasy 14. Its still a terrible game, but at least you dont have to pay for anything and there is no mechanism to buy anything.
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FF14 is F2Play? I have looked, and I don't see anything about it other than $19.99 for the game, etc..
 
I don't know why more MMO's don't take this approach. Most fail due to lack of content or poor game decisions, if you don't ask them to pay (other then the initial cost of the game) and only pay for later content people wouldn't be so reluctant to switch their play time with something else.
 
I think everyone and their brother signed up last weekend. Just because they have signups doesn't mean people will stay on. I signed up, hated it, wont return. I'm sure sony counts me as one of 1 million.
 
westrock2000 said:
Also WoW just said they lost a million members in the last quarter....so maybe thats where they came from :)
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Its gotta be way more than 1 million. My server is dead. Like gone from 4000 to 500. I'm sure this is due to many factors, like tons of new games coming out AND the fact that WoW has been completely stagnant for about 6 months now. Everyone will likely come back in 4.3, which will probably be released to coincide with star wars. If Blizzard is shrewd (and it is), it will do this. I mean even I, given the choice between killing deathwing or starting a level 1 pew pew mmo, would go back to wow if the dates lined up exactly.
 
westrock2000 said:
The only free to play I have to be enjoyable is Final Fantasy 14. Its still a terrible game, but at least you dont have to pay for anything and there is no mechanism to buy anything.
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FF14 isn't supposed to be F2P. It's just under "holy shit we messed up big and we're losing everyone" status. They will be charging monthly subs again in December.
 
westrock2000 said:
But then Lord of Rings Online went to the "free to play" and they literally nickel and dime you for everything. Luckily I was a subscriber at the time they shifted over so they gave me a bunch of points for the new system. But man you have to buy the expansions if you want to even get in the new zones. You have to buy the quest packs if you want to quest in the zones. I believe you have to buy access to dungeons and raids. Bank space, bag space, mounts, all pay to play.
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You get bank space and bag space as a free player. You get more if you pay for it. You get quests and zones and more if you pay for them. You can complete the main story quest line without paying anything. You can obtain whatever you want without spending a penny since you get spendable points for completing things in game. You can obtain everything quicker and with less of a headache if you pay though.How much more do you want for free?

I have tried many f2p games and by a wide margin Lotro is the best. It's not pay to win and it's a excellent game with a mostly mature player base. If one is into hardcore raiding, this is not likely the game for them.

I will have to try out DC Universe, I saw it on steam I think but skipped over it.
 
Vathral said:
FF14 isn't supposed to be F2P. It's just under "holy shit we messed up big and we're losing everyone" status. They will be charging monthly subs again in December.
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Ya, thats why I said it was great, because its built like a traditional pay MMO :) But yes on the "holy shit we messed up big"

I have tried many f2p games and by a wide margin Lotro is the best. It's not pay to win and it's a excellent game with a mostly mature player base. If one is into hardcore raiding, this is not likely the game for them.
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I agree, there are many elements from LOTRO that I enjoyed over other MMO's. Actually working for your "talents" instead of just getting points each level. Being able to level a weapon so that it remains usefull. I wish other games would let you level up weapons and armor. Be kinda cool where if you put in enough time you could have a legendary starter weapon. But that would probably add alot of storage space when taking into account all the players.
 
wow I've been to deep into the whole BF3 thing to even notice another MMO went f2p. I love putting these on my older machine and letting my daughter play them. I'll install anything to get her off my good machine and ME2, lord.
 
Doubt their figures will last. They basically launched their MMO to people who don't want monthly subs. Like any MMO it's going to bleed players overtime, and I don't see how they can draw more in that same period by offering the game in a crippled state that wasn't good enough to keep people subscribing before.

Plus they broke a fast cycle development promise on this game within 2 months of it's launch, and before it launched removed powersets content to return it to them 4-5(?) months later.

SOE needs a new CEO, they have pretty much fallen off the MMO radar due to blundering and not giving people what they want. EQ2 was just a totally change from EQ1, drove off a lot of people. Told people what they wanted to hear about Vanguard, never fixed it. Let Planetside 1 dwindle to nothingness with lack of content/support. Waited ages to even announce a new Planetside and they've been hyping it before it's even close to beta phase. SWG, we all know about NGE but they had SWG so screwed up on launch they couldn't leave it alone to let people decide if they liked it....it would have thrived without the Star Wars IP attached to it. MXO they bought it to kill it, not sure why.

What's really bad about SOE, they were one of the first big MMO publishers with EQ1. But every MMO since EQ1 has suffered a lot of the same problems EQ1 had. Overly buggy launches, nerf cycles right before launch and following launch, and just generally bizarre decisions that don't seem to be based on player input in anyway. Lots of mouth service, little delivery on their words.

Was a big fan of EQ1, and moderately of Planetside despite SOE...they ruin their own games.
 
westrock2000 said:
Ya, thats why I said it was great, because its built like a traditional pay MMO :) But yes on the "holy shit we messed up big"
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SOE's about to make all of EQ2 F2P too. It was 'built like a traditional pay MMO', because that's what it was for years now. They saw the number of new members for DCUO and have basically decided to change everything over to F2P because of that. They basically took EQ2, and took some features away like certain races (mostly cosmetic) and then said 'You can play for free, but if you want that exact race/class you have to buy the race'. They'll still have the monthly sub though that includes everything it used to.

Bad thing is at the same time they're closing down Livegamer, which was one of MMO's only buying/selling of coin/items/characters where the publisher sanctioned it, and took a cut for themselves. People can just go use 3rd party sites like playerauctions.com, but it sure was nice there while it lasted to not have to worry about anything and to be able to openly talk about RMT on the 2 servers it was on. (they limited it to 2 servers so everybody on those servers were ok with RMT, when everybody agrees to the same ruleset - it's just better)
 
To me, gaining a million new players is nice, not impressive. Many people probably knee-jerk reacted to to conversion to F2P and wanted to simply sign up, whether they were going to honestly play or not. I have done that before for some games, to make sure I got my character name picked, etc.

Look at the number of these new signups *still* playing actively in a few months, then I might color myself impressed!
 
Signed up last week with my 3 boys. We are all enjoying it, & its helping me forget that I can't really afford to go buy Skyrim right now, as much as I am dying to. However, anyone know why it refuses to remember login info? Even after checking the "Remember me on this Computer."
 
PinchedNerve said:
Signed up last week with my 3 boys. We are all enjoying it, & its helping me forget that I can't really afford to go buy Skyrim right now, as much as I am dying to. However, anyone know why it refuses to remember login info? Even after checking the "Remember me on this Computer."
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Might be related to how you log out. Some of the MMOs dont keep info if the game crashes or if you alt F4 out of it.
 
veterator said:
Doubt their figures will last. They basically launched their MMO to people who don't want monthly subs. Like any MMO it's going to bleed players overtime, and I don't see how they can draw more in that same period by offering the game in a crippled state that wasn't good enough to keep people subscribing before.

Plus they broke a fast cycle development promise on this game within 2 months of it's launch, and before it launched removed powersets content to return it to them 4-5(?) months later.

SOE needs a new CEO, they have pretty much fallen off the MMO radar due to blundering and not giving people what they want. EQ2 was just a totally change from EQ1, drove off a lot of people. Told people what they wanted to hear about Vanguard, never fixed it. Let Planetside 1 dwindle to nothingness with lack of content/support. Waited ages to even announce a new Planetside and they've been hyping it before it's even close to beta phase. SWG, we all know about NGE but they had SWG so screwed up on launch they couldn't leave it alone to let people decide if they liked it....it would have thrived without the Star Wars IP attached to it. MXO they bought it to kill it, not sure why.

What's really bad about SOE, they were one of the first big MMO publishers with EQ1. But every MMO since EQ1 has suffered a lot of the same problems EQ1 had. Overly buggy launches, nerf cycles right before launch and following launch, and just generally bizarre decisions that don't seem to be based on player input in anyway. Lots of mouth service, little delivery on their words.

Was a big fan of EQ1, and moderately of Planetside despite SOE...they ruin their own games.
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Thats because EQ1 didn't start off as a SOE game, SOE just supplied the servers. When SOE took over they broke just about every "vision" verant put into the game. Ruined possibly the best expantion that should of ever hit EQ "luclin" and turned it into a pile of cow poop.

EQ2 was completely SOE, it was horrible, it was a kiddy MMO with an adult MMO skin on it. Borrowed tons of Lore from EQ1 but made it muddy and non existant. Borrowed tons of art styles from other games/movies and never improved on the bugs.

Vanguard is a funny thing too, because that was never supposed to be touched by Sony. Originaly they didn't want the super all star team heading the development, but MS wanted it built to be like EQ1. So it was built like EQ1, with all the bugs too. MS didn't like the timeline for the release so they stopped supporting it so Sony picked it up. Lo-behold Sony told them to release it even when they said it would flop in its current state. It flopped.

Great design concept, great artistic style, good story (needed work), cool characters and unbelievable world in Vanguard. Just most of it didn't work and horrible performance because it was so damn buggy.

So yes, anything Sony touches they virtually ruin, if not right away its really soon.
 
Trimlock said:
Thats because EQ1 didn't start off as a SOE game, SOE just supplied the servers. When SOE took over they broke just about every "vision" verant put into the game. Ruined possibly the best expantion that should of ever hit EQ "luclin" and turned it into a pile of cow poop.

EQ2 was completely SOE, it was horrible, it was a kiddy MMO with an adult MMO skin on it. Borrowed tons of Lore from EQ1 but made it muddy and non existant. Borrowed tons of art styles from other games/movies and never improved on the bugs.

Vanguard is a funny thing too, because that was never supposed to be touched by Sony. Originaly they didn't want the super all star team heading the development, but MS wanted it built to be like EQ1. So it was built like EQ1, with all the bugs too. MS didn't like the timeline for the release so they stopped supporting it so Sony picked it up. Lo-behold Sony told them to release it even when they said it would flop in its current state. It flopped.

Great design concept, great artistic style, good story (needed work), cool characters and unbelievable world in Vanguard. Just most of it didn't work and horrible performance because it was so damn buggy.

So yes, anything Sony touches they virtually ruin, if not right away its really soon.
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Verant launched EQ1 yeah. SOE purchased Verant about a year after launch. I remember most of it if not exact dates. I also remember every expansion that was released for EQ1 was released with encounters being too easy and having massive loot drop issues for a few weeks or up to a months when first launched. Stuff meant to drop less than 1% of the time would drop something like 10-20%. Also items would drop on low difficulty NPCs instead of bosses. I thought it was a fluke at first, but it kept happening for 3-4 expansions. I quit for awhile at times so didn't keep up with each expansion release beyond the first 2-3 and was done with the game by the fifth. Can't even guess what happened with the other 10 they've probably released.

EQ2......might have been OK if it didn't have the EQ name. It wasn't like EQ1 in much but race and class offerings and even those didn't look or play the same.

Vanguard was made by Sigil. Brad McQuaid being the big name. My blame on SOE is that they promised to fix the game and never did. But before that I suspect McQuaid was trying to get a pay day like he did with EQ and Verant acquisition. McQuaid just flat out lied about Vanguard, and there are tons of stories about him being absent for long periods of time and being pretty hands off and then coming in to demand changes be made at the drop of a hat. So I don't blame SOE for screwing up Vanguard, I put that on McQuaid's hands. And I hope he keeps his hands off MMOs from now on.

SOE just generally doesn't deliver what they say they will. I don't know if that's because their definition is different than the rest of the English speaking world or if they purposefully deceive. I lean towards purposeful deception more each time they do it, and I think it derives from John Smedley since he puts for most of the communications that I've seen.


Not saying you're wrong in your assessments by any of this, just clarifying my take on them.
 
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