West Karana

Judgement Robes and Ninja Pigs in the world of Moo Shu

Well, I was intrigued enough by the chance to test out Wizard101’s item shop that I snuck back into game today to have a look at what Prospector Zeke was selling.

There’s a Prospector Zeke in every world; he usually gives out the collection quest they have in each world, where you have to find very small things in every zone of a world. Dwarven Smiths in Wizard City, Scarab Beetles in Krokotopia and so on. For this last bit of beta, he also sells items of great power. The Zeke in the Olde Town district of Wizard City even sells a pet dragon.

The Zeke in Moo Shu, and friend

You buy these special items — which are well above the power of the usual items you’d find — with KingsIsle Crowns, which apparently you will be able to either buy, get as part of a subscription, or both.

This interview over at Yahoo says:

Jonric: Since you’ll have a cash shop, how will items sold there differ from the ones we can obtain through play?

Todd Coleman: We intend to offer a pretty big array of items in our catalogue, but we have to be careful that we don’t undermine the balance of the game, shortcut the advancement curve too much, or make it unfair to other players. We haven’t announced specific details yet, but those should be coming soon.

A game that charges a subscription fee AND has an item shop? Isn’t that — double dipping?

They do have interesting things planned for after release… like… pet olympics? From an interview with MMOSite:

MMOsite: What else can the players do aside from monster killing and pvp? How important a role do crafting and player economy play?

Todd Coleman: Most of our focus so far has been on adventuring and advancement. We do intend to add a host of secondary activities post launch, like Off-Campus Housing, Crafting and Pet Olympics… but to get us started, we spent all of our development effort really polishing the core game: exploration, adventuring, questing and dueling.

Anyway, I have not been able to really pin down their plans. I don’t think they have actually *announced* anything publicly — definitely not on their website, and the interviews don’t seem to cover payment plans.

Best guess still is a free to play portion, an item shop, and an optional subscription plan. Basically, every business model, all at once. Is that weird?

Judgment, one of the creatures item shop garb can get you. 125 damage per pip.

Anyway, we’ll probably hear more very soon. But for the sake of their target ‘tween’ audience, they’d better include some sort of free-to-play option, and it looks like they will.

Much anticipated Asian/European WoW-like Runes of Magic starts its closed beta August 28th. Even though no North American publisher is yet announced, they vow to have English servers for those who prefer that language, and they don’t care where you’re from. It’s all free, after all. They’ll also have French and German servers for the Gallicly and Teutonically inclined.

They will also be showing the game at the annual Games Convention in Leipzig, along with lots of other games we may never see here. Leipzig is pronounced “LIPE-zig”. I checked, this time.

Seriously? I’ll give Runes of Magic a try. Why not? Always on the lookout for good free-to-plays.

As I was working through DOMO-like* Florensia last night (expect a separate article about it tonight), I was thinking, and this goes back to my MMO DNA project, wouldn’t it be nice to take one of those F2P imports and really play the heck out of it, and blog about it, every day for a month? I think it woulld take that long to really get a thorough sense for a game. EVERY MMO is pretty similar at the start — pick up quests, go kill quick-spawning beasties, level up, etc. You can’t review a game based purely on the new player experience, as important a part as that might be.

So anyway, last night I was painfully entering quest text from Florensia into Babelfish, as the game is still largely in German (side benefit: players in the Florensia beta will be getting a good reading knowledge of German until they get the English localization patch done). And I was thinking, this game has twin talent trees for abilities in land and sea; the sea game itself runs in parallel and has its own grouping dynamic; there’s no way I am going to get a sense for this game in a couple of nights. All I could really tell was that this game shared a similar style with *Dream of Mirror Online. I’d just barely built my first ship.

So I’m thinking that, possibly starting September, I will be playing a different free-to-play every month, and try to really understand the game enough to know why they were popular enough to import in the first place. I’m thinking my first one will be Pi Story or Dream of Mirror Online, both games I have some experience with. If Florensia localizes before then, maybe Florensia.

More details as the time comes closer, but I think it would be fun to do this kind of thing with other people who are interested in checking out new games that don’t get the press of a WoW or a AOC or a WAR.

* note — if you want to be inundated with info about F2P games, sign up with Aeria Games, Outspark and Frogster — those are the majors (Frogster is EC/Asia only though they are running the Florensia beta for now).