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Champions Online: Revelation Expansion to be Free
garrett
MMORPG.COM Staff UncommonPosts: 284
Vibora Bay Becomes Revelation
The expansion formerly known as Vibora Bay has a new, more descriptive name: Champions Online – Revelation! We’ll be talking quite a bit more about it in the coming weeks.
It’s Free!
We heard our community and we acted. Champions Online – Revelation will now be available to everyone at no extra charge. That is a free expansion pack for all Champions Online players.
A True Expansion
Champions Online – Revelation is a full-fledged expansion. It’s a brand new way for you and your friends to enjoy the game together.
March, 2010
Revelation will be available mid-March, 2010. Video, screens, interviews, previews ... . All will be coming very soon.
Check out the full story here.
[Thanks Christopher8 for the tip!]
Comments
Good job community, there is still hope after all (ok, I know it's not true, from the way this sounds this will be the only "expansion" free ever especially as people will be more used to the idea of paying the next time).
While some see this as a victory, I see it as a desperate, flailing attempt to satisfy whatever customers remain. If they make this expansion free and continue to do so with future ones, only charging if they offer a significant content update, a new gameplay feature, or something else that's worth a separate charge like other MMOs do, then I'll see it as a victory.
Yeah they saw the Nuclear Fallout of their idea and thought "maybe this wasn't such a good idea"
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, whether this will actually accomplish the damage control needed or if they're merely locking the barn after all the horses have escaped.
Ah cool
, good for the CO players ^^
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
As much as I dislike Cryptic's business practices, I have to give credit where it's due. Good move Cryptic. Good decision. I'm sure many of the champions players will be happy to hear this, and it will translate over to STO in level of confidence in developer dedication (which has plagued their forums for a while now).
I personally do not subscribe to any cryptic games, but im sure for all involved, this comes as a breath of fresh air from this company. Kudos.
As much as I'd like to look at this through rose-coloured spectacles and think this is a first step towards Cryptic doing the right thing by their subscribers from now on... I kind of doubt it. At least the CO players get what they deserve in this particular case though. It really makes me sad that the industry has become what it is...
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Seems to me like they caved to customer displeasure and decided to make it free. It has to make you worry about the future of MMORPGs when companies think its a good idea to charge a subscription fee and put out "expansions" every 6 months as a way to get more and more money. One of the reasons I've avoided EQ/EQ2 over the years is their constant release of expansions and "packs".
You may not like playing WoW or Blizzard as a whole but they put out a lot of new content for each of their "expansions". And companies like NCSoft have put out free expansions over the entire life of their games (Lineage, Lineage 2, Aion). Even Guild Wars which has been out for almost 5 years is averaging 1 expansion every 18 months and they don't even charge a subscription.
I would really hate to see a new trend in MMOs of companies putting their games out asap and charging for "expansions" for content that should have been in from the start and for content updates that until now is mostly considered part of what companies should be using the monthly fee for.
p.s. There is a difference between turning over a new leaf and doing just enough to prevent a riot. Its awfully early to think of this as the former.
Once you are on the defense, it is hard to regain momentum. I don't want to be in their place. If they take money its robbery, if they hand it out free, its desperation.
I for once will not judge what it is, but say that it is a good move.
Most of my guild now has moved to STO, so I have no idea how CO is. I really wish the game luck, tho I fear a company is quite overburdened with keeping two MMOs running and up to date at the same time. Making CO and STO at the same time was just an epic fail. Two so-so games instead of one good.
Still, even if both MMOs would close in a year after launch, with just 2 years in the making, a small number of devs with all the box sales and lifetimers Crptic prolly made their profit. If I were evil, I'd say they never aimed for more, but since I am nice I won't say it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Considering everytime i used Fly i moved like a Star Ship i figured i'd cut out the middle thing and just command real star ship.
Considering everytime i used Fly i moved like a Star Ship i figured i'd cut out the middle thing and just command real star ship.
It's true of course, we really are flying around like starships, but it is fixed on the public test server and in the SotG they apologize for dumping that code on us with insufficient testing, so maybe it was a one time thing and won't happen again.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Considering everytime i used Fly i moved like a Star Ship i figured i'd cut out the middle thing and just command real star ship.
It's true of course, we really are flying around like starships, but it is fixed on the public test server and in the SotG they apologize for dumping that code on us with insufficient testing, so maybe it was a one time thing and won't happen again.
you really belive that? Clearly STO is their new favorite child...atleast until their NEW mmo comes out.
We won this battle, but the war isnt over yet!
Good news for the CO players i guess. wtf were they thinking charging money for that bullshit "expansion"?
Currently Playing Path of Exile
"Players are stupid, let's get more money"
Amazing.
The phrase "damned if you do, damned if you don't" comes to mind.
Cryptic does something to please their customers, and something that pretty much every customer wanted, by making the expansion free and it still gets turned in to a negative.
After pulling bakc the carpent to reveal the pile of poo poaiting it gold doesnt change the underling poo
The point is, they're now giving you something for free what they were originally intending on charging you for.
You should be thanking them, or at the very least acknowledging that it's the right thing for them to do.
Regardless of what you want to believe their motives are, doing this is the right move for them. You can call it an underhanded scheme to try and milk their oblivious customers for all their worth, but give them credit where credit is due FFS. I think they've at least earned that, with all the bending over backward they've done to appease the gluttonous, ungrateful masses that play their games.
Changing your mind and doing something you should have done in the first place isn't a "positive". Especially when you were basically forced to do it by your playerbase who is already pissed off at everything you've been doing to this point.
If you blindly believe that this one decision means Cryptic has changed their design philosophy when it comes to money then I got some news for you...
Changing your mind and doing something you should have done in the first place isn't a "positive". Especially when you were basically forced to do it by your playerbase. If you blindly believe that this one change means Cryptic has changed their design philosophy when it comes to money then I got some news for you.
No, I don't. But I also don't believe it's as morally repugnant as you'd like us to believe. Whether it's what they should have done in the first place or not, it's something they didn't HAVE to do. They could have kept it as a paid expansion, but they didn't. They deserve credit for at least that. And yes, there are people out there who WOULD HAVE bought the expansion if they had decided to keep it a paid expansion.
People should be thanking them for doing what they should've done in the first place? I think not.
But, yeah, it looks like the expansion is similar to a Darkfall "expansion", i.e. very little content being called an expansion because it gets players much more excited. This is, at most, a patch. They have subsequently retconned it into an expansion to make it sound like they were selling an expansion pack, and not just a zone.
I hope their subs have dropped enough to teach them a lesson permanently, and I hope they stay that way if they plan on trying to pull another one of these.
If give all my money and worldly possessions away to charity is that a morally "good" action on my part? What if the only reason I gave them away was because someone had a gun to my head. Is it still a morally "good" action on my part?
I think it is good, for their players, that this expansion will be free but when you put this decision into context its not a "good" thing since no other MMO out there is charging money for "expansions" 6 months after release. At best their "good" action is "what every other MMO company has always done in the past" and that makes a difference.
If you or anyone else wants to support companies who have pricing schemes like Cryptic then that's your prerogative, but don't act surprised when other people start putting out "basic" MMOs and then charge you a subscription and 50 dollars twice a year for content expansions and 10 bucks for all the basic features you used to get standard with every other MMO on the market.
I agree. It is sad that people needed to rage on all public forums. Bad press articles. And tons of people /ragequiting.
That all this was needed, to make it clear to Cryptic that what they are doing is unethical, immoral. Just bad bussiness!
Seeing the state the game is in. How many people quit the first month already. Seeing what state STO is in right now.
Then they should have known from the start to release this update for free! As they can spin and hype it all they want. It's not an expansion!
It's just an update to fill a content gap in the level37-40 range, they created themselves with the XP nerf at launch.
Expansions are large update that actually expand the game. Add new features. That kind of stuff. A content gap filler doesn't qualify.
Just look at Age of Conan for example. They have been releasing large free update after the other, for nearly 2 years now. To fill all the gaps.
What I do hope tho. Is that Cryptic really has gotten a wake up call and know what needs to be done with Star Trek Online. For FREE!
Altho seeing first hand in how a sorry state STO is in. (It's even worse then CO) So much stuff unfinished still. They'll have a hard time salvaging that. If they even plan to.
Cheers
It sounds like you aren't aware of the history Cryptic has had with this game. The reason people aren't singing hosannas about the change from a paid content filler zone to a free expansion is because of the way the Champions Online developers have behaved over the past year. The Devs are the ones who've seemed ungrateful and gluttonous, violating their customers' good will over and over again.
CO tried to poach supergroup (guild) leaders from City of Heroes with offers of free closed beta access, then when they were caught the marketing guy basically said, "We didn't kill any babies, get over it." No apology for violating CoH's terms of agreement and EULA or behaving like a creep. Meanwhile, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the CO forums eager to get into beta, and many of them weren't too happy about being passed over for more "high value" players.
Then come launch day and all the lifetime subscriptions are no longer for sale and what do they do? Massive launch day nerf. Surprise! A ton of anger about that, because the game that went live was different from the game people had bought and played in the headstart. At first they stuck by their "no refunds" policy until the outcry grew to rage levels (sound familiar?) and then Cryptic started refunding lifetime subs.
There have been other, more minor, affronts to the players' good will, until the Vibora Bay (aka Vibora Pay and VBay) announcement blew up in their faces. When the CO community rep, Daeke, mentioned that it was going to be a paid expansion rather than a free update, players started getting mad all over again. Especially considering the fact that there was a content gap between 37 and 40 due to the launch day nerf... and Vibora Bay wasn't a true expansion but rather a single zone which covered levels 37 to 40.
CO loves to compare itself to City of Heroes, so the players tend to do so, also. When comparing the first year of both games, CO comes up lacking and the Devs really do so. In the first year, City of Heroes had released 3 game updates that were genuinely massive, adding nearly 1/3 more area to the game world and 10 more levels. By the time CoH had its first paid expansion 18 months after release, it was an entirely new stand-alone game: City of Villains. An entire game that was every bit as large as CoH, with new classes and 50 levels.
Charging even a nominal fee for Vibora Bay was just a bad idea. the fact that cryptic apparently fired Daeke as a token sacrifice just made them look all the meaner in their players' eyes.
Since this is a road Cryptic has been down frequently the past year, that's why you aren't seeing people greeting this news with anything more than guarded suspicion. Frankly, they are right to do so.
Well if they continued with handing small content updates for a fee they would lose everything, maybe a couple fanboys would stay around but nothing to make them any more profit. I am glad CO is getting the update for free and hopefully the STO community gets their fixes/updates for free as well.
Seeing as this really isn't an expansion, I am curious on what Cryptic will do in the future. Probably eat their words again but only time will tell.
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