I decided to checkout the ArcheAge forums to see what sort of general opinions the community had regarding this upcoming addition to the games business model. While there are several threads in the player-to-player game play portion, I decided to read the topic in the official discussion section. While there is the expected range of (positive to negative) reactions, most posts have some very specific questions; a few caught my eye since they are valid to the skepticism that people are rightfully expressing (it should be clear from my other entries that I am incredibly skeptical). The ones that seem highly relevant are regarding the seasonal pass (costs plus what it includes) and multi-account alt-armies + multiboxing.
Alt accounts were used to get around the labor restrictions (labor pool is account wide) in order to gather, craft, and perform whatever else activities to essentially increase ones silver per labor ratio. Some players would also multi-box/macro all of this so that they could trade run their mules, wintrade arena PvP, or AFK alts in other content for rewards.
The other main concern some are having is what sort of restrictions if any will be put in place to prevent multiple account purchases from monopolizing (cybersquatting) large plots of lands (since land will be available to all). ArcheAge has not been a stranger to whales in the existing game so I did mention in my prior posting that these same folks won’t even balk at the package price for this game (especially if it’s at the $22 entry point). I will say it is a serious addiction problem (with this particular game) if someone feels the need to purchase several thousand dollars worth of the game in order to snap up land (which they’ll have to maintain taxes on).
A company representative (iArches) posted a response in their Discord that it is something they’ll be looking into. Notice “methods” and “limit the impact”.
IMHO, Gamigo is not going to expend effort on staffing (costs them money) to root out multi-boxers. Likewise, the core game is going to remain exactly the same as the existing free to play version which means there isn’t going to be a foundational change (i.e. specific lower level changes made to account for the changes at the higher level with the business model that provides a larger labor pool and land/housing available to all players). Without an actual built-in solution (which XLGAMES would need to design and code thus costing Gamigo extra money and is thus a no go), I don’t see any long term effective means of them dealing with this (except the above sort of replies which Trion also engaged in, but often times failed to provide actual solid action on).
Again, I wouldn’t look at a buy-in price for the game to be a major barrier because ArcheAge has a relatively decent amount of whales who have willingly supported it over the years (and to perpetuate the kind of decisions that Trion made for the game in the areas they controlled like the items in the cash shop). Gamigo executives (the ones who originally had no ties to Trion) saw the revenues this particular game was generating (it would not surprise me if it absolutely dwarfs everything else in their pre-acquisition library) so all they care about is milking this cash cow (and they have a captive audience who will oblige).
Trion’s own fresh starts for ArcheAge were always effective at milking the cow because the same players would stuff the coffers (purchasing new starter packs, Patron, APEX, credits) on those new accounts and then spend more money as the more questionable cash shop items were once again re-introduced. Then the inevitable server merge would happen (giving those same players extra alt-accounts) before the next fresh start would take place again.
This doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it is borne out by actual metrics which these companies use to make their decisions (which is why I feel the game industry needs to eventually get whacked with regulations since they have shown they are unable to self-regulate); metrics which Gamigo executives are now privy to and likely salivating over with this newest twist (fresh start with a buy in price but no merge with the old legacy servers). Two sets of credits need to be purchased (credits bought for the existing free-to-play servers cannot be transferred to the buy-to-play servers and vice versa).
I still want concrete details however like the ArchePass (how long each season is, how much it will cost, what specifically is included), what different tiers of packages they will offer and their pricing (and if they will do some sort of marketing with pre-orders with them where it also includes some type of head start), and more importantly, how they will deal with alternate accounts — before I determine what level of a cash grab this actually is.
