Why? How is any of this relevant? Users are consumers. They are players. TO play game is not their job but activity which they spend money in and indulge in.
If you drive a car why do they need to know that when the car turns X factor causes turbulence. It is simple that they do not like it - that is all. How to solve the problem is not their concern.
And feedback regarding what players want is valuable. Placing barriers on information regarding what your consumers want is sheer stupidity for any producer/seller. It is the job of the producer to look for appropriate feedback through tons of data - not the other way around. Money travels through the other one way.
you complain often when you go to restaurants, don't you
No serious though, Shiaika said it better than I can. But theory of mind is probably the reason why most cannot fanthom that there is another perspective than their own. And lacking a complex cognition is limiting, anyone with knowledge about group-dynamics and such will understand this. We as potential players and forum-goers are not getting past the storming part of the "5 stages of group development". And thus we never get to the performing: generating insights and ideas that can help the game become better.
Understand this if you will. I am not getting payed, so I am not your teacher. Check it out if you want to broaden your cognitive functionality. Just a suggestion.
edit: anyhoo I am done with this thread. It leads nowhere, and will probably degenerate into "I have this opinion" fairly soon.
None of those games (save Allods online which I have no idea about) were f2p when they were released. They were developed and released on a different revenue model.
they became f2p because they were not producing income
please leave the psychologi mumbo jumbo out of this:) this is about capitalism :
wrong way
cryptic+PW (corporations) -> product (NWO) -> clients (us)
good way
cryptic+PW (corporations) <-> product (NWO) <-> clients (us)
they became f2p because they were not producing income
please leave the psychologi mumbo jumbo out of this:) this is about capitalism :
There is no psychological mumbo jumbo in my post. There is a difference, these games generated money from box sales and counted on that revenue to pay the initial investment which was higher than the initial investment in this game. What was being stated I believe is had they been free to play games from the get go they would have had less funds for development because there would be no revenue from box sales. Therefore most likely have worse graphics, less content (classes and . The initial intended revenue stream makes a difference in development, money is granted for development based off projected sales as well as monthly subscriptions. Games that are initially free to play have less content because all this. That is what elewyndyl was saying I believe.
Given this it makes a great difference that those games were not free to play to begin with.
However there is a HUGE amount of psychological mumbo jumbo in Capitalism, ask anyone with a marketing degree. Oh wait I have a marketing degree and a finance degree.
D&D is a game that has changed its mechanics multiple times in the decade's of its existence. The "basic" blue book of the late 70's treated Elves and Halflings as their own class. AD&D not only revised that it also added Monks, Bards and Psionics as optional supplements, as well as creating things like 18-percentile strength, new spell systems, new spell casters and definitive multi-classing rules.
Indeed, 4e is a vastly different game than 3e in terms of mechanical application...similarly 3e was a radical overhaul of 2e. Before 2e there were no feats and in base 2e no broad set of skills in which to assess points.
Even stylistically, D&D has evolved constantly. The cartoonish art of Erol Otus morphed into the gritty, textures of Todd Lockwood or the grim gothic style of Brom.
Even thematically D&D has changed, in its first incantation it was not much more than an extension of Chainmail, a way for fantasy miniature battles to transition the focus from a skirmish or battle, to a single person or small group of them.
D&D has embraced a wide variety of styles in its publications, gothic styles, camp, parody, grit, power-gaming hack and slash, puzzle solving and riddles.
D&D has also a long tradition of vociferous fans claiming new supplements, variations and rules "are not D&D". Indeed, I can remember a controversy in the very early 80's over the Anti-Paladin class that was offered in Dragon and the angry letters that claimed such a variant "was not D&D".
I can remember usenet discussions about similar topics in the early 90's. I distinctly remember a discussion about GMs who don't play with the alignment system "aren't playing D&D" and those GMs who abandoned the alignment system defending their stylistic choices.
EVERY major D&D rule book reminds you that all rules are guidelines and that all gaming tables are expected to house certain rules, or take every major rule construct "a-la carte" so that their campaign can be catered to their exact needs and wishes.
There is NO RIGHT WAY to play D&D, this is an edict that was professed by the likes of Arneson and Gygax decades ago and has been endorsed as gospel ever since. I've played campaigns with professionals who have designed the very products some here considered "sacrosanct" to what defines D&D today and I can tell you, they often fly very fast and loose with certain rules. Similarly, sit in a session with the guy who designed Eberron and experience a whole other style/variety of D&D.
The thing is, it's still D&D.
The "spirit of D&D" was never encapsulated in to what defines Charisma. Charisma's application within the game has mutated and changed throughout the years. Heck, even the way you generate the base abilities has changed and offered more and more variants.
The "spirit of D&D" has always been about character-based fantasy role play, with a collaborative effort among gamers and most specifically encouraged one of those gamers to act as the "steward" of the story and plot, otherwise known as the GM.
This game has all those features and unlike other MMOs like LOTRO or WOW, has clear and obvious links to D&D's past. Not just in its setting, but in its homage to some of the mechanics and abilities. They may not be implemented precisely to 4e specification, but then again 4e is going away soon anyway and 5e, is once again, going to modify the mechanics of the pen-and-paper system.
Most importantly this game has been endorsed by the very people who truly decide what D&D is and what D&D is not. They've branded this D&D and fully intend to have paper product to help support and synergize with this game. There is a great symbiosis and cooperation between Wizards and Cryptic, each are a fan of the other and each have helped the other produce a game, that both companies are proud to brand as "Dungeons and Dragons".
That's it, that's all there is to this debate. The game is very much in the "spirit of D&D", it clearly looks and feels like D&D and with its advent of the Foundry, follows the deepest and most important tradition in D&D in every iteration and version its had: the ability to tell custom fantasy stories with NPCs, tricks, traps, tunnels, caves and over-arching epic campaigns.
Not only has this game not been given enough love by "fans" here on this forum, it hasn't been given enough love by the MMO community as a whole (at least not yet). User-generated content is the future of the MMO and while the Foundry won't be perfect, it will be one more firm step in ensuring that MMOs truly do become ROLE PLAYING games and not just "race to level cap and then chase end-game gear".
That spirit, that evolution, makes it clear, this is very much Dungeons & Dragons.
SHADOW - A secret cabal for those who thirst for wealth and power. Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
D&D is a game that has changed its mechanics multiple times in the decade's of its existence. The "basic" blue book of the late 70's treated Elves and Halflings as their own class. AD&D not only revised that it also added Monks, Bards and Psionics as optional supplements, as well as creating things like 18-percentile strength, new spell systems, new spell casters and definitive multi-classing rules.
Indeed, 4e is a vastly different game than 3e in terms of mechanical application...similarly 3e was a radical overhaul of 2e. Before 2e there were no feats and in base 2e no broad set of skills in which to assess points.
Even stylistically, D&D has evolved constantly. The cartoonish art of Erol Otus morphed into the gritty, textures of Todd Lockwood or the grim gothic style of Brom.
Even thematically D&D has changed, in its first incantation it was not much more than an extension of Chainmail, a way for fantasy miniature battles to transition the focus from a skirmish or battle, to a single person or small group of them.
D&D has embraced a wide variety of styles in its publications, gothic styles, camp, parody, grit, power-gaming hack and slash, puzzle solving and riddles.
D&D has also a long tradition of vociferous fans claiming new supplements, variations and rules "are not D&D". Indeed, I can remember a controversy in the very early 80's over the Anti-Paladin class that was offered in Dragon and the angry letters that claimed such a variant "was not D&D".
I can remember usenet discussions about similar topics in the early 90's. I distinctly remember a discussion about GMs who don't play with the alignment system "aren't playing D&D" and those GMs who abandoned the alignment system defending their stylistic choices.
EVERY major D&D rule book reminds you that all rules are guidelines and that all gaming tables are expected to house certain rules, or take every major rule construct "a-la carte" so that their campaign can be catered to their exact needs and wishes.
There is NO RIGHT WAY to play D&D, this is an edict that was professed by the likes of Arneson and Gygax decades ago and has been endorsed as gospel ever since. I've played campaigns with professionals who have designed the very products some here considered "sacrosanct" to what defines D&D today and I can tell you, they often fly very fast and loose with certain rules. Similarly, sit in a session with the guy who designed Eberron and experience a whole other style/variety of D&D.
The thing is, it's still D&D.
The "spirit of D&D" was never encapsulated in to what defines Charisma. Charisma's application within the game has mutated and changed throughout the years. Heck, even the way you generate the base abilities has changed and offered more and more variants.
The "spirit of D&D" has always been about character-based fantasy role play, with a collaborative effort among gamers and most specifically encouraged one of those gamers to act as the "steward" of the story and plot, otherwise known as the GM.
This game has all those features and unlike other MMOs like LOTRO or WOW, has clear and obvious links to D&D's past. Not just in its setting, but in its homage to some of the mechanics and abilities. They may not be implemented precisely to 4e specification, but then again 4e is going away soon anyway and 5e, is once again, going to modify the mechanics of the pen-and-paper system.
Most importantly this game has been endorsed by the very people who truly decide what D&D is and what D&D is not. They've branded this D&D and fully intend to have paper product to help support and synergize with this game. There is a great symbiosis and cooperation between Wizards and Cryptic, each are a fan of the other and each have helped the other produce a game, that both companies are proud to brand as "Dungeons and Dragons".
That's it, that's all there is to this debate. The game is very much in the "spirit of D&D", it clearly looks and feels like D&D and with its advent of the Foundry, follows the deepest and most important tradition in D&D in every iteration and version its had: the ability to tell custom fantasy stories with NPCs, tricks, traps, tunnels, caves and over-arching epic campaigns.
Not only has this game not been given enough love by "fans" here on this forum, it hasn't been given enough love by the MMO community as a whole (at least not yet). User-generated content is the future of the MMO and while the Foundry won't be perfect, it will be one more firm step in ensuring that MMOs truly do become ROLE PLAYING games and not just "race to level cap and then chase end-game gear".
That spirit, that evolution, makes it clear, this is very much Dungeons & Dragons.
You're looking at the superficial aspect of things. D&D no matter the edition was about being confronted with an obstacle and using your wits and imagination to overcome it. The decisions you could make were limited only by what you could think up and what was physically possible in the game, when confronted with said obstacle. In NO, the only real choices we seem to get are "Fight the dudes" and "Don't fight the dudes" with a conversation here or there if you're lucky.
You're looking at the superficial aspect of things. D&D no matter the edition was about being confronted with an obstacle and using your wits and imagination to overcome it. The decisions you could make were limited only by what you could think up and what was physically possible in the game, when confronted with said obstacle. In NO, the only real choices we seem to get are "Fight the dudes" and "Don't fight the dudes" with a conversation here or there if you're lucky.
So you're saying that NWO is a soloist specific game, and that in the foundry, you can't create alternate options (like "pull a lever", "look around", or not place mobs even)? The difference here is that it's the foundry authors job to present to you the different alternatives you have to this obstacle. It's not a perfect translation of pnp, but admit that it's at least a start, a single step forward, to something rarely seen in gaming at the moment.
You're looking at the superficial aspect of things. D&D no matter the edition was about being confronted with an obstacle and using your wits and imagination to overcome it. The decisions you could make were limited only by what you could think up and what was physically possible in the game, when confronted with said obstacle. In NO, the only real choices we seem to get are "Fight the dudes" and "Don't fight the dudes" with a conversation here or there if you're lucky.
You're looking at it in a overly simplistic way. Unlike the early days of MMOs "Fight the dudes" was simple, not it is complex. How exactly are you going to fight the dudes? It's more difficult than you think.
D&D is a game that has changed its mechanics multiple times in the decade's of its existence. The "basic" blue book of the late 70's treated Elves and Halflings as their own class. AD&D not only revised that it also added Monks, Bards and Psionics as optional supplements, as well as creating things like 18-percentile strength, new spell systems, new spell casters and definitive multi-classing rules.
[...]
Indeed, 4e is a vastly different game than 3e in terms of mechanical application...similarly 3e was a radical overhaul of 2e. Before 2e there were no feats and in base 2e no broad set of skills in which to assess points.
[Snip - now the poster is talking about NO, not D&D]
Most importantly this game has been endorsed by the very people who truly decide what D&D is and what D&D is not. They've branded this D&D and fully intend to have paper product to help support and synergize with this game. There is a great symbiosis and cooperation between Wizards and Cryptic, each are a fan of the other and each have helped the other produce a game, that both companies are proud to brand as "Dungeons and Dragons".
It is good to find someone who appears to know about the history of D&D and D&D4, and even recognises the scale of the differences.
In that case you'll probably know that since 2009 Wizards of the Coast, who "truly decide what D&D is", have actually been licensing a version of D&D to Piazo Publishing and they have been publishing the Pathfinder System. Wizards seem to have accepted that D&D4 can only satisfy a small amount of the earlier, larger D&D market.
The Pathfinder System has been published in parallel to D&D4 in much the same way that the D&D series* was published in parallel to the AD&D series. *Note that this D&D series was distinct from the Blue Box D&D set compiled from the 3 Chainmail booklets, representing a body of work which is sometimes collectively called OD&D (or Old Dungeons & Dragons).
So essentially even Wizards of the Coast realises that D&D4 alone is not enough for D&D players or they wouldn't allow Piazo to profit from their neglected D&D player base.
These issues need to be separated from other NO issues for a reason.
This is reason is because, to fit the nature of D&D4, NO was implemented with a superhuman MMO base system.
Due to this you can't readily make a D&D game out of NO and instead people here should be focusing on helping Cryptic and Wizards make the best D&D4 game they can.
Superhero stories, done well, are about modern archetypes.
A Prootwaddle is one of the weirder player-character races in "The Fantasy Trip", Steve Jackson's first published role-playing game.
You're looking at it in a overly simplistic way. Unlike the early days of MMOs "Fight the dudes" was simple, not it is complex. How exactly are you going to fight the dudes? It's more difficult than you think.
So you're saying that NWO is a soloist specific game, and that in the foundry, you can't create alternate options (like "pull a lever", "look around", or not place mobs even)? The difference here is that it's the foundry authors job to present to you the different alternatives you have to this obstacle. It's not a perfect translation of pnp, but admit that it's at least a start, a single step forward, to something rarely seen in gaming at the moment.
Again, you're misunderstanding my meaning. Let me explain further:
In the pen and paper game if you came across a bridge where bandits set up camp and you wanted to cross the bridge, there's a number of different ways you can go about it.
-Fight the bandits head on
-Circumnavigate the bandits and traverse the river through alternate means (Swim, freeze a portion of the river over to allow passage, ect.)
-Convince the bandits to let you pass by bribing them.
-Use mind control on the bandit leader to force him to grant you safe passage.
-Go to the nearest town and convince the locals to fight the bandits with you or simply hire mercenaries if they are available.
-Try and sneak your way across in the dead of night
Does NWO offer this same degree of choice for clearing an obstacle? I highly doubt it. Now i'm not saying that NWO is a bad game, but it's not really something you can compare to a pen and paper RPG.
Given this it makes a great difference that those games were not free to play to begin with.
It's funny how you say you have a finance degree and then you say that. They become free2play because free2play makes more money then pay to play. So NWO benefits from f2p even before it's out there.
You're looking at it in a overly simplistic way. Unlike the early days of MMOs "Fight the dudes" was simple, not it is complex. How exactly are you going to fight the dudes? It's more difficult than you think.
Yeah very difficult click click click click. You must be a chess grandmaster...
...
In the pen and paper game if you came across a bridge where bandits set up camp and you wanted to cross the bridge, there's a number of different ways you can go about it.
-Fight the bandits head on
-Circumnavigate the bandits and traverse the river through alternate means (Swim, freeze a portion of the river over to allow passage, ect.)
-Convince the bandits to let you pass by bribing them.
-Use mind control on the bandit leader to force him to grant you safe passage.
-Go to the nearest town and convince the locals to fight the bandits with you or simply hire mercenaries if they are available.
-Try and sneak your way across in the dead of night
Does NWO offer this same degree of choice for clearing an obstacle? I highly doubt it. Now i'm not saying that NWO is a bad game, but it's not really something you can compare to a pen and paper RPG.
Yes, at least some of them. You can incorporate those in foundry pretty easily.
However the game is NOT based on D&D mechanics - in that I agree. They have developed their own game mechanics from grounds u more apt for MMO and then masked it as D&D mechanics. A rudimentary study of game's mechanics can easily show that. But any reasoning or discussion of mechanics here will meet unreasonable arguments of people who will argue about "people always QQ when edition changes" "there are always haters". So I have given up any reasonable discussion of game' mechanics here where often repeated incorrect statements like "4e is designed for games" etc are being made by people who don't understand 4e.
It's funny how you say you have a finance degree and then you say that. They become free2play because free2play makes more money then pay to play. So NWO benefits from f2p even before it's out there.
You are still not getting it. It doesn't matter what they became, because the content on initial release was on initial release and that is what is being talked about. You can't compare the graphics of a p2p game at release that has become f2p over time and compare it to a f2p from release games content, maybe in 5 or 6 more years you can but right now, no. The strength of f2p revenue model is just starting to be recognized in the Western world, money men are not throwing huge sums money at it yet like they did in the past with the p2p model. Don't believe this? Look at the cost to produce DCUO ($50 million), NWO was HALF that. The reason is because the f2p at release model is untested financially and that is the BIG difference.
Yes they became free to play NOW because THOSE GAMES make more money NOW than they did as a subscription game. However when they were being designed this was not known and WoW was making money hand over fist as a p2p game, MMO designers were designing games with that model in mind because the advantages of a f2p MMO financially was not known at that time.
Times have changed but that does not change the past, the games were still funded as p2p games in a time when p2p was believed to be the most profitable and were given HUGE development dollars for it. F2p games had not arrived on the scene as the revenue generating force that they are now and most games that were free to play had extremely little financial backing and therefor had very shitting graphics and content. Even now that it has been a few years that the f2p model has been shown to be a profitable one, extremely few games have been developed from the ground up and released as a f2p game because it takes YEARS to develop and release a game. So lets just use some fake numbers here to illustrate a point. Lets say 3 years ago it became "clear" ( what is clear to the gaming populous and game developers in not necessarily clear to the "Money Men") to the game producing businesses as a whole that the f2p model has had some success. Shortly after that lets say 2.9 years ago someone gets an idea for a high end MMO that they want to build from the ground up as a f2p game. They spend half a year pitching their game to the money people getting funds to start the project (this is actually a very short amount of time in a financial pitch on a new idea (f2p)) they spend 2.4 years making the game on a budget that is much smaller than the p2p games of the past because that was a "proven revenue generating model" and releasing a game straight as a f2p game is a bit of a gamble to the money men.
Now a first generation of higher funded f2p from launch games is being released still I would imagine with a lot of fear and uncertainty from the money men (because of the "loss" of all that up front income from the box sales). Now maybe in the next generation of f2p games in 3 or 4 years f2p at launch games will have proven themselves as a solid revenue model and yet even more money will be put into the development of the next generation of f2p games.
This whole thing started out that elewyndyl was talking about f2p at release games and you listed a bunch of p2p or b2p at release games that became f2p later which is a totally different thing. But you can just ignore that, you already have twice.
Now I know this has been a gigantic wall of text but I felt I would try to get through to you one last time.
Comments
you complain often when you go to restaurants, don't you
No serious though, Shiaika said it better than I can. But theory of mind is probably the reason why most cannot fanthom that there is another perspective than their own. And lacking a complex cognition is limiting, anyone with knowledge about group-dynamics and such will understand this. We as potential players and forum-goers are not getting past the storming part of the "5 stages of group development". And thus we never get to the performing: generating insights and ideas that can help the game become better.
Understand this if you will. I am not getting payed, so I am not your teacher. Check it out if you want to broaden your cognitive functionality. Just a suggestion.
edit: anyhoo I am done with this thread. It leads nowhere, and will probably degenerate into "I have this opinion" fairly soon.
they became f2p because they were not producing income
please leave the psychologi mumbo jumbo out of this:) this is about capitalism :
wrong way
cryptic+PW (corporations) -> product (NWO) -> clients (us)
good way
cryptic+PW (corporations) <-> product (NWO) <-> clients (us)
There is no psychological mumbo jumbo in my post. There is a difference, these games generated money from box sales and counted on that revenue to pay the initial investment which was higher than the initial investment in this game. What was being stated I believe is had they been free to play games from the get go they would have had less funds for development because there would be no revenue from box sales. Therefore most likely have worse graphics, less content (classes and . The initial intended revenue stream makes a difference in development, money is granted for development based off projected sales as well as monthly subscriptions. Games that are initially free to play have less content because all this. That is what elewyndyl was saying I believe.
Given this it makes a great difference that those games were not free to play to begin with.
However there is a HUGE amount of psychological mumbo jumbo in Capitalism, ask anyone with a marketing degree. Oh wait I have a marketing degree and a finance degree.
Indeed, 4e is a vastly different game than 3e in terms of mechanical application...similarly 3e was a radical overhaul of 2e. Before 2e there were no feats and in base 2e no broad set of skills in which to assess points.
Even stylistically, D&D has evolved constantly. The cartoonish art of Erol Otus morphed into the gritty, textures of Todd Lockwood or the grim gothic style of Brom.
Even thematically D&D has changed, in its first incantation it was not much more than an extension of Chainmail, a way for fantasy miniature battles to transition the focus from a skirmish or battle, to a single person or small group of them.
D&D has embraced a wide variety of styles in its publications, gothic styles, camp, parody, grit, power-gaming hack and slash, puzzle solving and riddles.
D&D has also a long tradition of vociferous fans claiming new supplements, variations and rules "are not D&D". Indeed, I can remember a controversy in the very early 80's over the Anti-Paladin class that was offered in Dragon and the angry letters that claimed such a variant "was not D&D".
I can remember usenet discussions about similar topics in the early 90's. I distinctly remember a discussion about GMs who don't play with the alignment system "aren't playing D&D" and those GMs who abandoned the alignment system defending their stylistic choices.
EVERY major D&D rule book reminds you that all rules are guidelines and that all gaming tables are expected to house certain rules, or take every major rule construct "a-la carte" so that their campaign can be catered to their exact needs and wishes.
There is NO RIGHT WAY to play D&D, this is an edict that was professed by the likes of Arneson and Gygax decades ago and has been endorsed as gospel ever since. I've played campaigns with professionals who have designed the very products some here considered "sacrosanct" to what defines D&D today and I can tell you, they often fly very fast and loose with certain rules. Similarly, sit in a session with the guy who designed Eberron and experience a whole other style/variety of D&D.
The thing is, it's still D&D.
The "spirit of D&D" was never encapsulated in to what defines Charisma. Charisma's application within the game has mutated and changed throughout the years. Heck, even the way you generate the base abilities has changed and offered more and more variants.
The "spirit of D&D" has always been about character-based fantasy role play, with a collaborative effort among gamers and most specifically encouraged one of those gamers to act as the "steward" of the story and plot, otherwise known as the GM.
This game has all those features and unlike other MMOs like LOTRO or WOW, has clear and obvious links to D&D's past. Not just in its setting, but in its homage to some of the mechanics and abilities. They may not be implemented precisely to 4e specification, but then again 4e is going away soon anyway and 5e, is once again, going to modify the mechanics of the pen-and-paper system.
Most importantly this game has been endorsed by the very people who truly decide what D&D is and what D&D is not. They've branded this D&D and fully intend to have paper product to help support and synergize with this game. There is a great symbiosis and cooperation between Wizards and Cryptic, each are a fan of the other and each have helped the other produce a game, that both companies are proud to brand as "Dungeons and Dragons".
That's it, that's all there is to this debate. The game is very much in the "spirit of D&D", it clearly looks and feels like D&D and with its advent of the Foundry, follows the deepest and most important tradition in D&D in every iteration and version its had: the ability to tell custom fantasy stories with NPCs, tricks, traps, tunnels, caves and over-arching epic campaigns.
Not only has this game not been given enough love by "fans" here on this forum, it hasn't been given enough love by the MMO community as a whole (at least not yet). User-generated content is the future of the MMO and while the Foundry won't be perfect, it will be one more firm step in ensuring that MMOs truly do become ROLE PLAYING games and not just "race to level cap and then chase end-game gear".
That spirit, that evolution, makes it clear, this is very much Dungeons & Dragons.
Check out SHADOW on YouTube!
You're looking at the superficial aspect of things. D&D no matter the edition was about being confronted with an obstacle and using your wits and imagination to overcome it. The decisions you could make were limited only by what you could think up and what was physically possible in the game, when confronted with said obstacle. In NO, the only real choices we seem to get are "Fight the dudes" and "Don't fight the dudes" with a conversation here or there if you're lucky.
So you're saying that NWO is a soloist specific game, and that in the foundry, you can't create alternate options (like "pull a lever", "look around", or not place mobs even)? The difference here is that it's the foundry authors job to present to you the different alternatives you have to this obstacle. It's not a perfect translation of pnp, but admit that it's at least a start, a single step forward, to something rarely seen in gaming at the moment.
It is good to find someone who appears to know about the history of D&D and D&D4, and even recognises the scale of the differences.
In that case you'll probably know that since 2009 Wizards of the Coast, who "truly decide what D&D is", have actually been licensing a version of D&D to Piazo Publishing and they have been publishing the Pathfinder System. Wizards seem to have accepted that D&D4 can only satisfy a small amount of the earlier, larger D&D market.
The Pathfinder System has been published in parallel to D&D4 in much the same way that the D&D series* was published in parallel to the AD&D series. *Note that this D&D series was distinct from the Blue Box D&D set compiled from the 3 Chainmail booklets, representing a body of work which is sometimes collectively called OD&D (or Old Dungeons & Dragons).
So essentially even Wizards of the Coast realises that D&D4 alone is not enough for D&D players or they wouldn't allow Piazo to profit from their neglected D&D player base.
These issues need to be separated from other NO issues for a reason.
This is reason is because, to fit the nature of D&D4, NO was implemented with a superhuman MMO base system.
Due to this you can't readily make a D&D game out of NO and instead people here should be focusing on helping Cryptic and Wizards make the best D&D4 game they can.
A Prootwaddle is one of the weirder player-character races in "The Fantasy Trip", Steve Jackson's first published role-playing game.
Again, you're misunderstanding my meaning. Let me explain further:
In the pen and paper game if you came across a bridge where bandits set up camp and you wanted to cross the bridge, there's a number of different ways you can go about it.
-Fight the bandits head on
-Circumnavigate the bandits and traverse the river through alternate means (Swim, freeze a portion of the river over to allow passage, ect.)
-Convince the bandits to let you pass by bribing them.
-Use mind control on the bandit leader to force him to grant you safe passage.
-Go to the nearest town and convince the locals to fight the bandits with you or simply hire mercenaries if they are available.
-Try and sneak your way across in the dead of night
Does NWO offer this same degree of choice for clearing an obstacle? I highly doubt it. Now i'm not saying that NWO is a bad game, but it's not really something you can compare to a pen and paper RPG.
It's funny how you say you have a finance degree and then you say that. They become free2play because free2play makes more money then pay to play. So NWO benefits from f2p even before it's out there.
Yeah very difficult click click click click. You must be a chess grandmaster...
Yes, at least some of them. You can incorporate those in foundry pretty easily.
However the game is NOT based on D&D mechanics - in that I agree. They have developed their own game mechanics from grounds u more apt for MMO and then masked it as D&D mechanics. A rudimentary study of game's mechanics can easily show that. But any reasoning or discussion of mechanics here will meet unreasonable arguments of people who will argue about "people always QQ when edition changes" "there are always haters". So I have given up any reasonable discussion of game' mechanics here where often repeated incorrect statements like "4e is designed for games" etc are being made by people who don't understand 4e.
You are still not getting it. It doesn't matter what they became, because the content on initial release was on initial release and that is what is being talked about. You can't compare the graphics of a p2p game at release that has become f2p over time and compare it to a f2p from release games content, maybe in 5 or 6 more years you can but right now, no. The strength of f2p revenue model is just starting to be recognized in the Western world, money men are not throwing huge sums money at it yet like they did in the past with the p2p model. Don't believe this? Look at the cost to produce DCUO ($50 million), NWO was HALF that. The reason is because the f2p at release model is untested financially and that is the BIG difference.
Yes they became free to play NOW because THOSE GAMES make more money NOW than they did as a subscription game. However when they were being designed this was not known and WoW was making money hand over fist as a p2p game, MMO designers were designing games with that model in mind because the advantages of a f2p MMO financially was not known at that time.
Times have changed but that does not change the past, the games were still funded as p2p games in a time when p2p was believed to be the most profitable and were given HUGE development dollars for it. F2p games had not arrived on the scene as the revenue generating force that they are now and most games that were free to play had extremely little financial backing and therefor had very shitting graphics and content. Even now that it has been a few years that the f2p model has been shown to be a profitable one, extremely few games have been developed from the ground up and released as a f2p game because it takes YEARS to develop and release a game. So lets just use some fake numbers here to illustrate a point. Lets say 3 years ago it became "clear" ( what is clear to the gaming populous and game developers in not necessarily clear to the "Money Men") to the game producing businesses as a whole that the f2p model has had some success. Shortly after that lets say 2.9 years ago someone gets an idea for a high end MMO that they want to build from the ground up as a f2p game. They spend half a year pitching their game to the money people getting funds to start the project (this is actually a very short amount of time in a financial pitch on a new idea (f2p)) they spend 2.4 years making the game on a budget that is much smaller than the p2p games of the past because that was a "proven revenue generating model" and releasing a game straight as a f2p game is a bit of a gamble to the money men.
Now a first generation of higher funded f2p from launch games is being released still I would imagine with a lot of fear and uncertainty from the money men (because of the "loss" of all that up front income from the box sales). Now maybe in the next generation of f2p games in 3 or 4 years f2p at launch games will have proven themselves as a solid revenue model and yet even more money will be put into the development of the next generation of f2p games.
This whole thing started out that elewyndyl was talking about f2p at release games and you listed a bunch of p2p or b2p at release games that became f2p later which is a totally different thing. But you can just ignore that, you already have twice.
Now I know this has been a gigantic wall of text but I felt I would try to get through to you one last time.