In Soviet Russia, item shop pwns you.
…and yes, I’ve read reports that the prices for Russians are an order of magnitude cheaper. Funny, that. One for the home team, I guess.
Guys, this is not how you monetize a microtransaction game. I know capitalism is hard, just like math, but this… is an order of magnitude beyond ill-advised. I thought it was an honest if spectacularly embarrassing mistake, but as it turns out, it’s more like a faceplant.
Ah, well. I hear WoW is still a good game, for a subscription game. (Imagine the italics there dripping with disdain.) All those who have been whining about AO either in-game or on blogs will surely find Blizzard waiting with open arms.
In the meantime, I maintain that the art direction of Allods Online is solid, the core game is fun (if nothing revolutionary in the DIKU mainstream), and the ships and their mechanics look awesome. The game is good, even great in places. The business plan… not so much. (Curiously, my precise reaction to WoW, come to think of it…)
Oh, and I can get a six-man (actually seven-man) ship in Puzzle Pirates for $5, and I can solo it. Guess who gets my money?
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Postscript: I’m not trying to be snarky about those who, like BBB, tried Allods Online and found their interest waning. It really just won’t scratch the same itch as WoW, especially for someone who is used to the endgame and doesn’t want to drag a character up through the leveling grind again. That’s more a function of the age of games and how we get used to things, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My ire here is mostly with the businesswonks of Allods Online, with a small slice reserved by those who are cheering for the game’s failure, including those who are blindly prejudiced against the business model. This is a failure of execution, not concept. DDO, W101 and Puzzle Pirates do it right.
The actual game devs have crafted some great work, for which I applaud them.
What a let down. My friend’s and I are patching up WoW right now. It will be that and STO for MMOs until Allods shapes up, or until the next big thing. It seems that anyone with any type of experience playing MMOs even with cash shops in them won’t stand for these prices. I don’t even make enough money a year to be able to sustain a character in this game. Lol.
To be clear, you can play the game for quite a while without spending a dime. I’m certainly going to push it as far as I can without spending money. It’s just that the item shop prices are way out of impulse purchase territory and into “what were they thinking” territory. That’s not a good business plan.
But the game itself, well, you can still play it totally free for a good long while if you want to.
Actually, my interest was waning simply because I spent a lot of time finding out how much of the game I would enjoy toncontinue on with.
I don’t enjoy the gibberling race, so that’s one of 3 Rebel Scum races I won’t play. I really don’t care for the elves. So, hums, which rock, are the race I will try.
On the Empire side, I like the design of all three races… and the area design, the industrial revolution stuff… left me kinda repulsed at the idea of continued playing there.
Loved the orc I made, I think the undead are actually fascinating, much as ou said, and the humans, while tending to default in graphic style to “Adolf light”, are not bad.
I like a lot of the classes. Wardens really are cool, being a hunter/boomkin without the fur. Lots of fun.
My feelings were based on how a deeper playing of the game felt to me, and hile Cassie and I have laughed about the shocking state of the store… neither of us were people that would have been spending $20 a month or more in their store, anyway.
I believe Cassie said it best… “$20 for 6 more bag slots? Never in a million years. And if that’s how they price something like that, then nothing they offer will be worth what they ask, for the playing I do.”
Oog, I hear you on the elves. Blech. I do have an Orc and an Arisen, and I’m looking forward to playing them.
What do you mean by “deeper playing”, BBB?
Oh, and yes, Cassie’s spot on. Sheesh.
Tut tut…this is getting into the somewhat self forfilling prophesy, where what would actually eventuate doesn’t matter nearly as much as what people think will eventuate.
If it’s stupid and it works, it’s not stupid.
To qualify that, if they make their expenses and a nice profit past that, yeah maybe they could make an even fatter profit by doing things differently. But if they make a nice profit anyway, they don’t need to make even more profit.
Capitalism or cultural emperialism? Where everyone must do things X way?
And even if it doesn’t work out, doesn’t mean they have to do things X way. They just need to survive plus make some profit or atleast break perfectly even.
I too really like Allods, and am appalled by the poor pricing policy here. It’s retarded. I hope they’ll adjust soon, but the damage to the game’s reputation is already pretty serious, which in itself could be disastrous to their profit.
The new prices must be a mistake. Must be. I saw over on Keen’s blog that one item costs just under $7k? Huh? That’s not real. Can’t be.
This is the ultimate massive flaw with F2P models. On paper it’s a fine idea but in real life, greed and exploitation take over.
Hmm… their pricing sounds… extremely similar to Jade Dynasty. No, seriously.
I did (on the strength of Tesh’s posts), DL Allods, and play it a wee bit (probably level 5), but I’m just not finding anything that really appeals to me other than (omg it looks like Disney and I can kill the critters!!!!111!!).
Probably lucky for me it’s not my sort of thing. JD got me to spend money on it (even if it was only US$30), because I am mad about the genre it’s based on (Wuxia).
…maybe they just haven’t been *evil* enough with how they price, and the pricetags aren’t the only problem?
…some people in JD forums have spent thousands of real (US) dollars on a pet… and haven’t gotten the pet to the state they want it to be in. O.o
Great post Tesh. I too am so disappointed. I was waiting to give them money for two things. Firstly, I don’t find it entertaining to walk back to vendors to sell trash. It’s a BIG place and we walk VERY SLOW. I destroy items when I have to pick up quest items, which by the way, are usually 1/3 of my bag space. If they’d given us bags the size of ROM which is about 3x in your bag and 2x in you bank, then no problem.
Difficulty is that you need that vendor trash cash to purchase your talent rubies. Anywho – I was waiting to support them by purchasing a couple of large sized bags and start my crafting while I’m in the zone leveling. But $20 US to get 6 more spaces in my existing bag??? They can bite me. I didn’t even bother looking at anything else they had to offer in the CS after that price. And I won’t be looking until the get a grip.
Perhaps they’ll make enough money for this to be worth it. Maybe they are going for quality (high priced items) over quantity. I’d have spent $20 day one for something “worth” the value. Hell, I’ve been so excited I would have spent 30 or 40. Instead I’ve spent nothing.
Oh, deeper playing just meant “how far can I go long term”, and as I said, with only the rebel scum side enjoyable in area design, and only the humans on that side fun for me, personally, to play, there isn’t a hole lot of replay value there.
On the bright side… there is a TON of single time through value. Probably either on my scout or warden. It is a beutiful game to find that one race/class combination youenjoy and rock the whole thing.
I’ve gotten used to a gaming system where you can have your main, but all main and no alt makes Bear a bored child.
Without copious alts, there is no deeper playing for me.
Now, as far as the store.
I want to be clear here… if you let me buy pretty armor sets for cash, or mounts, or pets, or glowie sowrds, then I’m there. I’ll find a reason why $10 for a neat mount is a must have.
I guess I just want items in a store to be things I would desire to have, and not things that the game system is designed to make me want to have to get a reasonable play experience out of, like buying flasks to remove rez sickness in a short time if I want to raid and wipe a few times in one night.
Flaming sword of looking awesome +2? Yeah, I’d be all over that.
Oh, and my fancy saitek Eclipse II keyboard is failing fast. Never had a keyboard just stop registering keystrokes or mixing key press results before. damn, I can’t afford a new keyboard right now. Grrr.
Hey, I wonder how much fun raiding with a screwed up random keyboard would be?
I don’t get this big reaction from everyone – they could ask one thousand dollars for a six slot bag and…and…and what? No ones been knifed in the gut – no ones been harmed in real life. It’s just another product on the market that you don’t want to buy.
Callan, two things for me. One, this is simple commercial incompetence. That always bugs me, and I want to see more devs get the microtransaction model right.
Two, I’ll echo Saylah; I like the game, and I want to give the devs a bit of cash on top of my written praise. I will not support a screwed up system, though. That sends the wrong messages to the moneywonks. Notably, that’s why I have spent money on Puzzle Pirates, Guild Wars and Wizard 101… but not WoW. I still think Blizzard has done some great work, but I will not spend money on a subscription that I don’t get fair value out of. I *am* voting with my wallet, but it runs contrary to my appreciation of the art and game design.
That’s why I keep stressing that there really needs to be a critical divorce between the game design and the business model. Either can fail or succeed independently as well as collectively. I like WoW despite some of its flaws and its business model. I like Allods despite some of its flaws and its business model. They function well enough as *games* that I appreciate them.
Maybe I just send the devs a nice Christmas card… because that’s really who I’m praising. Maybe I’m just oversensitive since I’m a dev myself, and I happen to like the game. I have a history of distrust and even mildly adversarial relationships with game publishers and moneygrubbers, both as a player and a dev. But the guys and gals who put their livelihood on the line by making games, well, I want to support them, in part because I’m asking for the same sort of support.
BBB, I hear you. That’s what I was thinking you were thinking, but I wanted to be sure. The microtransaction system really does work just fine with optional and content purchases (DDO & PP being great examples). And I’m definitely an alt fan. I wound up setting up another account just to tinker with other classes. I almost love breadth over depth in these games. (Perhaps that’s because the depth is wallpapered with heavy grind and takes sooooo long to tease out.)
I think it’s a good sign that Allods is making mistakes with the pricing. >.>
Because at least so far it’s a ‘hard’ price. You pay this, you are *guaranteed* to get that.
One of the things that makes JD’s model so, so very evil… is lotteries. JD has a *LOT* of lotteries. And they put their oh-so-shiny-flaming-cool-sceptre-swords … and other such cool things in there.
As well as some things that are only available in lotteries, that you don’t NEED… but are oh-so-nice. Such as things that are the ONLY way to help you evolve your pets. (And hence why I mentioned the couple of thousand dollar pets.) Lotteries in JD are ‘only’ US$0.50 each (if I recall correctly), but oh boy, do they add up.
I managed to mostly stay away from them… but then again – that’s why I stopped playing Jade Dynasty. I had to spend *so* much time resisting their very, very well done blood-sucker of an item-shop system that I decided to quit instead.
…so in a weird kind of way, it’s a good thing that Allods is making such mistakes – because it shows they have not yet evolved to the evil level that is Perfect World Entertainment. XD
Take heart!
Big Bear has the right idea on what should be in the cash store. I just hope eventually one of these companies eventually figures it out.
I don’t like the prices in Allods currently BUT I think the game holds a lot of potential. It really is solid and nobody is forcing you to buy the cash shop items. For me it’s a game on the side and I enjoy it for what it is.
I’ve been reading alot of these comments, very interesting indeed. Though interesting, I can’t help to feel that this game is being judged solely on it’s inability to provide fair cash shop prices. We have to remember, its a F2P medium and NOTHING about these types of games are perfect. Allods is still going through major updates and fixes, so I’m sure the devs will fix this problem. Its a solid game, of course minus the lag,…..infact, that seems to be my only gripe with the game, the lag.
I do think that a lot of people are judging Allods too harshly. I’ve tried to point out that I like the core game design, and the visuals are great. The game really does have a lot to offer. It’s not perfect; the item shop is dumb, Fear of Death is very uncool, rep grinds are bizarre in a nonsub game, PvP design isn’t mainstream, and I wish they would do different things with the Astral Ships, but all in all, it’s a good game to play with for a while.