Their teaser page regarding a “coming soon” countdown was updated the other day with some replies from the company. The following were the 4 negative feedback (and updated with a response) that they had culled from their forums.
Looking at the responses, the elephant in the room is going to be on what changes (if any) are being made to the business model. “We understand that not everyone is able to spend money on a regular basis” seems to imply the game will remain free to play in some manner. Some of the long time players have been asking for a subscription only version of the game (with no cash shop). I honestly don’t see XLGAMES making that level of core changes that would be required to make the game sub-only.
Merv Lee Kwai (who formerly held the executive producer title for ArcheAge at Trion and is now the SVP in charge of development for Gamigo) did provide some visibility earlier in the year regarding changes they may be looking at (for all the Trion suite of games). The following is what he said in an interview earlier this year.
The monetization landscape for online games is constantly evolving and we need to remain relevant. We’ll do that by evaluating our business models and phasing out some of the older, aggressive micro-transactions along with reducing the reliance on lockboxes. Instead, we’ll focus on selling the service and optional objective rewards through modern, hybridized models.
I don’t see Gamigo going the route of running two different business models (like having the existing free to play service alongside a subscription only one with a lot of core changes made by XLGAMES to support that). Gamigo (having its roots as an asset flipper) has been primarily about taking non-AAA graveyard titles and running them on the cheap operationally (low cost infrastructure and bare minimal staffing).
ArcheAge is a slightly different beast. It’s not the biggest AAA game nor did it have the largest production budget but compared to the library of games Gamigo had prior to this Trion asset acquisition, it is by far larger (including its revenue generating capability). They were eventually forced to rehire some folks that were initially let go because this is one of those third party published titles that needs staffing to properly support. They probably thought it would be easy like with some of their games they acquired and run under the Aeria Games brand like Aura Kingdom or Twin Saga (both from the Taiwanese developer X-Legend Entertainment) as examples; both being light-weight anime focused MMORPG’s.
While they managed to come to terms with continuing to service the game (after the acquisition of Trion’s assets), XLGAMES could eventually choose to not re-negotiate (longer term) renewal of that publishing contract once that comes up (ArcheAge launched in 2014 so we’re 5 years into an undisclosed time line). I guess it will really depend on how the business relationship goes including if Gamigo can hit certain metrics including revenue targets.
My take/speculation (we’ll know in the next few days) is that it will remain free to play with some changes to Patron as well as how some systems work (Labor point tweaking being one of them). Land ownership and housing will likely open up to be free but with some constraints. Access to premium plots (and their size) will probably still be dependent on having/maintaining a subscription. However, there’s a lot of less than desirable/underutilized land (you know the ones that are far off the trade routes) which could be opened up for free to play players where there will be constraints on the size of that land (and as a result, what can be built on top of it). I know there have been more parts of the game that has gone instanced (like the newer raids); I doubt they will go with instanced housing since the fully open world aspect of that has been a key attraction.
As for how they plan to tone down the pay to (win, convenience, QoL, etc) aspect where it does not constrain their ability to monetize the game (Gamigo’s modus operandi has been about milking hardcore players of their acquired titles), I don’t see major changes (maybe a shift as to what items are earned as rewards in-game and including more of the stuff that could move by having land and housing more available for the free to play player where they may feel more open to spending a few bucks for customizing their house).
Would something like this (free housing with placement/size limitations) appeal to someone like me? Possibly but that is only because I still have close to 14K credits left from Devilian’s closure which would go towards storage chests and other housing items so long as the taxes to maintain that land/house aren’t outrageous (since this wouldn’t be something I would login and play daily). This of course is a big IF which we’ll find out in the next few days.
