Since Champions Online's relaunch as a free-to-play title a little less than a month ago, any player who has logged into the game has undoubtedly noticed the sheer number of folks running around Millennium City and environs. There are spandex-clad super-people everywhere you look, and groups are significantly easier to get. These are all good things for MMO players! Today we're also treated to the first official word on the success of the relaunch from Cryptic Studios and Atari, which both declare that the move to free-to-play has been -- as we suspected -- a huge success. To celebrate, they're offering all players, both subscribed and free-to-play, a thank-you gift for helping to make the game's reboot so great!
The present offered is a free experience-boosting item that can be picked up from the Champions Online C-Store for at least the next little while. While the companies have not released any specific subscriber or traffic numbers, they have noted that unique logins, concurrent users, and revenue totals have increased by "over 1,000 percent" since Champions Online went free-to-play. As John Needham, CEO of Cryptic Studios, stated in the release: "We're extremely proud of what the Champions team has accomplished with the Free for All launch. It's a pleasure to thank our fans and welcome new ones with this gift." As for how long the gift will be around and whether it is one per account or one per character is currently anyone's guess as the item does not appear to be in the C-Store as of this writing. The gift appears to be a one-hour, 20% experience boost that you can acquire once per account. They also appear to be tradable!
[Update: We've updated this post as the gift is now available in the C-Store, and we've also added the most recent trailer behind the cut. Enjoy! And guys... remember to keep the comments clean and on track with our CoC!]
This is great to hear. While I haven't played Champions since Beta, financial health for one super-hero MMO helps the others (CoX, DCUO) by pushing all games to create better content.
It's still a damn good game, it just has virtually no endgame (and, for me at least, not reason to level to the cap.)
But: is this really surprising? I don't think anyone really expected "Champions Online has seen a dramatic drop in the number of players since F2P was announced."
One of the probems with MMO's today is the large number of players who belive the whole point of the game is to race to max level and do the endgame. MMORPG on the back half of the acronym stands for Role Playing Game. Generaly refering to the story of the game. Racing to endgame is the equivalent of taking a book and jumping to the last page. Champions Online is a good game with a decient storyline. The fact that it doesnt have end game raiding doesnt meen it doesnt have a good endgame. So far the story in Vibora Bay makes for a good endgame for me. To top it off the Open PVE, high level lairs, and Adventure packs give even High level play some good opertunities for challenging play. If all you want to do for an endgame is get a large group together and sit in the back or stand in the fire while everyone else does the work, then WOW must been the game for you. 5 man play is more challenging then raiding any day because you cant afford to be a man down. The 5 man endgame is perfect if you ask me, and if you really want the raid experiance in champions, get a bunch of people together and go kill kigatilik or do open pve. CO is a good game and glad to see they are getting a good revenue boost out of the free to play. Keep the story going and the gameplay solid.
Most players spend a LOT more time at level-cap than getting there.
It's smart for a developer to create lots of interesting things to do at cap.
Not just raiding.
Whether it's PvP territory control, Raids, Scenarios, In-World events, etc. I am surprised that more developers don't spend more time on creating new content for level caps.
Eh, my problem came from the archetypes system. Oh boy, I shouted. I can play the game completely nerfed, with less skills and less growth than paying players, and I can always get looked over for end-game content because I don't want to Pay To Win monthly.
If they gave out one token for a free permanent Freeform character, I'd do it. Hell, I'd probably support the company more and buy a character slot. Unfortunately though, it just felt like an overglorified trial. I made it to 20, saw how awesome all the paying Level 40s looked... aaaand got completely turned off and left. Just another cash grab, only this time I get to pay monthly for it if I want to keep it! Yay! I'm renting awesomeness from my overlords at Cryptic!
Archetype characters aren't looked over for endgame lairs. That proves that you are coming to a definite conclusion off of baseless assumptions. CO is nowhere close to "pay-to-win", even as the most bare bones Silver member.
They call their game "Free To Play". At the basic level of the word, it is. However, the Archetypes are clearly nerfed, AND they're charging $12 for each Archetype they release. They're just screwing the userbase, Archetypes are just basic power sets in the game premade, so technically they're not adding in any content at all, they're just repackaging existing content (like half of the costume items they took out of the base game) and putting a price tag on it, and you people are eating it up like it's sweet delicious candy.
Forgive me then for not being stupid enough to be swayed by them. A poo sandwich is still a poo sandwich, even if it's sitting on a silver plate.
@cliff2121 IDK about your definition of RPG. A role playing game is really just anything where you play a character that isn't you, and then you have stats and equipment to move around.
For example, Halo. Halo is an RPG. It may be RPG Light, but it's an RPG.
Playing the end of an MMO or the leveling ("journey") of an MMO, both of them are equally an RPG experience. The leveling has... leveling up, so maybe that makes it a slightly heavier RPG than the end game where you don't "level" anymore? But I mean, I don't think leveling is a necessary definition of RPG.
Great to hear and I'm happy for them. It wasn't my cup of tea in beta and maybe I'll try it later down the road. I really am becoming a fan of this hybrid model for games that didn't meet expectations before. I'm glad they're finding success!
Cryptic sets the new standard for how to get a conversion into a F2P game almost exactly right. That bar is a lot higher now. Freebies are good too! Although being at the level cap, an increased XP-gaining gift doesn't do a whole lot.
Guess I'll use that 2nd free hero slot, maybe try out a void...
I think this is great. I have tried DCUO and it was not my cup of tea, mostly because of the lack of variety in the power sets. That being said I actually went back with the intention for f2p and found that i enjoyed p2p better.
The problem with looking at f2p conversion success is that it will always spike up in the short run. People will buy a bunch of items from the store and a bunch of people who were always curious will finally log in and try it.
The real measure will be over a year from now. That will be when people who buy things from the store will have bought most of the items which means sales are down. People who had always thought about trying it will have tried it and those who weren't interested will be gone again.
That is the point where they will see if their model works and what they have to do with their store to keep it going. I think all of the f2p conversions will end up putting more and more items in the store that actually boost the character in game to keep sales up. That will be the same time that people start seeing how that ruins the experience for them and that paying becomes a necessity just to try and be competitive.
I want to see all of the recent conversions report back how 1-2 months after the conversion compares to 1 year after the conversion.
@SnarlingWolf So far the only comparable games that went from P2P to F2P are Turbine's DDO and LOTRO.
It will ultimately boil down to how the company decides to develop. They can either milk the game, by adding no content and milking customers with cash shop items. This is what most korean F2P games do.
They can also become competitive and release new content which they charge you for, ala Turbine. Turbine released an expansion in November, a whole new region 7.50$. A new one is coming, with 4 instances and 1 raid, will probably cost between 7.50$ and 10$. Will probably be released around the end of February or beginning of March.
So it's really more about how the company will make the numbers, not how many it has made.
@Caerus I believe he's talking about Enedwaith, which is currently 695TP and was added in November as a level 65 quest pack.
@ice according to the beta threads, there will not be a new quest pack for this update, its going to be added to existing zones. 20 more quests in the level 30 range for evendim, and the level 65 instances/raid are going to be added to enedwaith, which makes a lot of sense considering it's high price, and the lack of content compared to other packs(like angmar for example)
Good to hear. Glad they're jumping in while the water is still warm. However... if we start to see too many entrants into the F2P marketplace, one of them is bound not to succeed.
