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The prophecy of Jayrebb comes to pass.
hobo9766
Member UncommonPosts: 457
Look at the date of this post. http://www.fohguild.org/forums/977072-post1625.html and look at todays shocking announcement. http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=583660
Levels for cash.
Tokens for cash.
"The "Old" vendors currently in-game will remain in-game and will not be removed. You will still be able to buy previously released vehicles etc from the old shop on any subsequent characters you create with the points you have already transferred in. The points that will be used in the "new" store will come directly from your Account and will not need to be transferred into Anarchy Online to purchase items. This is in part due to us starting to share a new "Funcom Points" currency with the rest of the Funcom games and the intention is for or customers to be able to use their points in any current and future title we have. In getting into the new currency sometime during the next week all the points in your account will be multiplied by 1.2 to get in sync with the new "value" of the points...so don't be alarmed/surprised to see more points in your account."
Comments
Nothing shocking about it, we'd been asking for it and Means mentioned it earlier. Tokens and levels are easy to get now as is, the players just pay credit farming outfits for those, now some of that cash can go to Funcom. Nothing in there enables a person to be a better PvPer or OD me in in PvM situations. Battle station PvPers will now find themselves facing other PvP fanatics, not easy-kill gimp PvMers grinding VP for some OFAB.
~\_/~\_O
It's not shocking, nothing to be scared of and definitely the shop is not game-breaking.
And combined with rebalancing and with a new engine it might get some older folks to come back. And, more important, it may make new people stick around some more.
For everybody crying and whining, it's a pity there's no way to actualy get a statistics of how many people actually quit the game due to the grind and not being willing to go through the pains of getting another toon to 220.
What FunCom did was to open Pandora's Box.
Selling levels:
FunCom has time and time again said there is a lack of integration between new and old players, and there is a gap no doubt. Veterans will just powerlevel their alts and friends, and maybe from time to time a new player gets dragged along. The effect this had was keeping veterans separated from new players. So FunCom's idea on how to resolve this issue seams to be letting veterans simply skip the first 199 levels of the game. Who will entice the new players now? The people who knows the game will just bypass the natural leveling curve, letting n00bs fend for themselves.
Selling Victory Points (VP, from now on known as VISA Points)
Selling VISA Points allows people to ignore Battlestations, FC thinks it won't have an impact on the game. With so few people currently ingame, I doubt we will see an increase in BS activity. Likely effect is killing of the only steady PvP Anarchy Online has.
Further allowing people to use VISA Points to buy OFAB armor, and at the same time removing the NODROP tag associated with said armor. Allows people in effect to buy ingame creds for real creds. FunCom said they would only sell the lowest Tier of OFAB armor, stating it's not powerful armor due to being the lowest Tier. I don't think FC has checked the price on OFAB armor upgrades, but you could get all but the highest QL ones for free just by asking.
It's very hard to see where they got the ideas for all this from, Means has stated that Anarchy Online was easily economically viable in it's current form. So either he lied or FC just want to cater kids who's got a VISA card. Either way they just killed the game for a lot of people.
Ad astra per astrada
I think Means is forced in this situation by FC management.
WOW did a great job with death knight if ao followed that model (max level toon req,one per server) I would be fine with it but they want cash and its very easy to see this has been a long term plan that was set in motion many years ago. It will kill leveling and leave you with one option pay and pay again to just get to 200. We were warned and look at what is happening its being played out like a movie script. VP should never be sold for cash "funcom points" nor should tokens I don't care how easy people say they are to get these days. OFAB being yesdrop is a good idea but it stops at that and I have yet to see anything that says they will unlock other classes ofab vendor terminals so you can say buy ofab for an alt and mail it to them. Its going going to be setup up so its a cycle of credit farming and selling just under the disguise of a middleman action.
This is phase 2 of an ongoing plan phase 3 wil be boc for $19.99 in two years or so.
I think this is the main issue. Means gets caught between players and management and he actualy tries at least to get things that will help out people.
The idea behind a shop is not bad and not many people (that are actually playing) will use it on a daily basis. Considering the whines on the forums regarding payments and expensive subscription, my guess is that the average AO player is not that wealthy to whip out his CC and hit the shop in a frenzy.
Regarding the "free" levels, my guess is that they'll try and do it AOC style and not "ding 220 once and populate the rest of your account with lvl 200 toons". Probably something like being able to get 1-2 lvl 200 toons each year. Even if you could create a lvl 200 toon each 3 months, if you actually want that toon ASAP, you could have done it in a week - so no gamebreaking change there.
After getting 2 toons to 220 (including "almost" endgame setup - both toons are about 90% finished), I simply can't bring myself to getting other toons up there. I simply stop 210-218 on those (got about 6-7 toons in the 210-218 range) - the endgame grind (for someone with limited time) is somewhat annoying. This is why a lot of my friends or people I knew left - they ran out of patience.
Now with the recent changes, incoming re-balancing and engine, AO might regain on its playerbase (both old-timers and newcomers). This will make leveling a bit more fun and the amount of people buying their "free" levels will be quite low.
Peope that were doing that actually harmed the game more because they would make the newcomers think that outside-tanking and hecklers is all there is to AO.
People in a rush to get to a specific level will do so regardless of doing it in-game with OST and hecks or buying it from the shop, so it doesn't change much.
There are people like me who play the game for the sheer pleasure of playing it to develop their character and all the blah-blahs. So, it's not like everybody will rush to the shop and buy levels.
But then again, whiny sheeps are still sheeps that will complain just for the sake of finding faults.
Item mall patch is underway. In 6 hours if vp and tokens as well as other things are sold for cash I expcet many accounts will be closed. OFAB shops still retain their class lock fc doesn't want you to buy it for an alt they want to you to to follow their greedy formula.
CASH->Funcom Points->Visa points->Sell ofab for credits. Even though the market will be flooded with ofab from people that have excess vp this is still a sham.
AO is now dead. This should say it all a discovery of the day by angry players.
"[Clan shopping 11-50] xxxxx: wts Token Package: 1000 2xToken Package: 500 pst
the token are not nodrop
*facepalm*
I calculated the Tokens with ingame prices and 175m are around 1€."
People are buying stuff with cash and selling it for in game credits hello korean item mall.
If the game is dead, then there's really no one buying or selling anything so it's a non-issue.
If there's tons of people buying and selling this stuff, then it seems like not only is it an active community, but it's a community that seems to enjoy and want this content.
Your two arguments contradict each other.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I was speaking in the sense that the game is no longer what it was the ao we knew is gone. Its nothing but a korean game now.
Nothing in the shop makes it anything like a Korean game, IMO, and the gameplay is still unique.
~\_/~\_O
Any rich snob can buy armor weapons with cash for vp and their token board... The unique gameplay has nothing to do with the fact some one can cheat their way with money.
VP wasn't that easy before. But you could grind tokens very easily with money, just but creds from some chinese and then go and buy few backpacks of items which can be traded for tokens...
Any toon could have just "cheated" the PVP environment in BS by humping walls or other actions to just get his reward (and daily mission now) or follow some dude on a killing spree and looting the VP shtuff dropping.
They just shortened the "time sink" for a steep price.
As for cheating with their money - 3rd party websites to buy credits and then buying in-game lootrights and AI armor? Or simply ebaying characters?
Funcom is now the 3rd party cred seller. They sidestep their own EULA for extra income at the cost of the game stability itself. Big diffference between a lame shady chinese site and the game company itself changing the rules of a 9 year old game.