stellus wrote:Yes, FFXI and also any NCsoft game. Lineage 2 and City of Heroes has yet to take advantage of the awesome powers known as Free Trials.
I can't speak for Lineage 2, but I'm pretty sure City of Heroes doesn't need to give out free anything. Right now Jack Emmerit could prolly sweat into a cup and it would eBay for $500.00.
That games the darling of the MMORPG world right now (atleast until something even better comes along) and frankly it deserves it. Flashy graphics, simple interface, wide variety of character options, good missions, fast action, interesting story lines... and really cool character customization.
Although, it doesn't have the patented "Boob-Slider" that Ryzom does. I swear sometimes walking around Fair Haven is like watching an episode of Trykes Gone Wild, what with all those naked foragers running around...
Honestly I am leaning towards saying that giving away the keys right now is a bad idea. The game frankly isn't in any shape right now where it is likely to seriously impress anyone, especially with all the crashes. Infact, if they get *too much* exposure while the game is in this state, it could just solidify this game as a dog in the general group-think of the gaming community.
Also, I don't see why they are going to debit the buddy for the entire retail cost of the in-store game without actually sending them the media. That seems like a way for them to just extort extra money from a sale that they wouldn't otherwise see. For instance, it costs money to burn CD's, print manuals, package games, ship it to retail, etc. Doing it the buddy way Nevrax never pays any of that cost, yet the person who gets the buddy key is covering all of it anyway.
Seems very much like a poor deal to me. Especially since this game is about to be priced at 29.99 sometime before christmas.
Since Nevrax isn't paying any production and distribution costs I think a far better way for them to conduct business at this point is just to sell individual keys with a 6 month minimum subscription and offer the client free for download someplace on the internet (maybe even a free place like BitTorrent or a P2P network) The cost for sending a couple of gigs of data across the internet should be a few cents (or cheaper) if they sign up with a large provider like Akamai.
Essentially their cost to provide the game would be something like 2 to 10 cents to give the game to a consumer. I doubt you can beat that anywhere on the planet with any other type of media. I don't understand why small companies aren't taking advantage of this to cut their costs, especially when their revenue model is based on reoccuring subscription charges.
I mean yeah, sure, it would be great to get that 50 bucks for free Nevrax, but it'd be a hell of alot better in my estimation to get more subscriptions. If you want a model of how this works go and check out three rings softwares little game Puzzle Pirates (
http://www.puzzlepirates.com). It's got a free downloadable client, you can even play for a month free, then after that its pro-forma subscription. The way they make it work is that they don't allow you to access all the content with the free account. Ryzom could definately be the same way, for instance say you cannot progress past level 50 in any ability unless you subscribe.
I doubt anyone in charge of making these decisions ever reads these boards... which is a shame because I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't understand how much money they *could* be making if it came up and slapped them upside the head with a yubo.
Anyway, for the time being I am telling all my friends that are interested in this game to put it on hold until after christmas. By that time the crash bugs will either be worked out or they won't and in all likelyhood they will be able to pick up a physical copy of the game at Frys or Best Buy in the bargin bin for under 30 bucks.
If you could get a key for just subscribing, for say even 1 month (which given the cheapness of digital download is still a huge profit for Nevrax) I would tell them to try it themselves and see if they like it now...