As I’ve written to date (I really should start using tags here to make those posts easier to group together), it doesn’t (yet) have all the hallmarks based on what I normally look for but that doesn’t mean I’m ruling out that prospect.  I’m also hesitant to call this a scam just yet because I really am curious to see how PLAYWITH will try to further monetize those who are playing given their remarks about not making the game pay 2 win which means pulling out a lot of undesirable consumables from the cash shop.

They’ve given out over 1000 game keys by now via a variety of giveaways so that is just $12K (not much in the grand scheme of things) of potential revenue they have passed on.  So it is going to be crucial for them to maintain a decent number of those folks throughout the next few months.  That puts into better context the $24.99 DLC (since they were planning on giving the game away free to at least 1K folks at minimum in order to make the launch numbers look decent).  My question is how much actual sales they will get to boost those numbers to at least hit the 5K mark.  Steamcharts is going to be very useful once early access launches.

The marketing and advertising by the actual company is virtually non-existent since they are relying on their ambassadors and likely those who won a key to promote the game.  Even heading into the original early access launch date, very few MMO sites even covered the delayed launch date until the actual day.  And to date, only MassivelyOP (whom I tipped off) and MMOs.com have actually covered the closure of the Korean server (which further confirms what I wrote about before; that many of the larger sites that have broader reach are useless which is the main reason I didn’t tip off a site like MMORPG for example because if they had decent sources, sites like that should’ve picked it up awhile back).  The point is that discovery of this game will be an ongoing thing without better communication from PLAYWITH (and I already wrote a wall of text about that).

The editorial did bring up a very excellent point though:

The bigger question here is whether this will be an ongoing trend. Since Steam has abdicated all curation responsibilities, there is nothing preventing anyone from purchasing a defunct MMORPG, ‘remastering’ it, and slapping it on Steam with a $20 founders pack. The Bless debacle has shown that the Western audience is still hungry for a full fledged MMORPG, and there are hundreds of thousands of players that could fall for one of these cons.

It’s actually already been done.  Insel Games did this with Guardians of Ember (previously known as Embergarde).  Guardians of Ember was a buy 2 play title on Steam until it got booted due to a policy violation earlier this year where the CEO of the company asked his employees to submit user reviews for the game.

Insel Games CEO Patrick Streppel also set up a company back in 2006 called IME (Interactive Media & Entertainment) which is a European consulting firm that advises clients (potential publishers) how to enter the gaming industry, how to license and distribute (with a focus on titles no longer in circulation and making deals on the cheap), monetization, and how to perform all of the other business functions (marketing/PR, product management, community management).  Back in 2015, VentureBeat interviewed Streppel (that article gives more details where the focus was on licensing/publishing Chinese games).  Streppel has his hands in many places as he was also previously the head of Gamigo AG.

Basically, most of this is with Chinese based developers due to the large and highly competitive market there (so there’s a lot more such games that have been re-packaged on Steam).  It’s much harder to license defunct Korean titles on the cheap because there is often times valuable intellectual property associated with them.

What we’re seeing now with Bless Online and Warlords Awakening are the companies that own the IP, cutting out the middleman, and self-publishing (no revenue sharing agreement required).  This way, they can make changes to the game themselves in a timely matter so as to not run into the problem of having to wait for those changes, while their customer base is looking to move on (it gives the better appearance of being in control of their product).  It’s also clever how they’ve seized on utilizing the buy 2 play angle as a means to get rid of the pay 2 win elements.

And that right there says it all because they are indirectly admitting their titles original designs were around such mechanics and in-game systems to support the cash shop monetization scheme.  Often times, there’s a lot of convoluted processes involved where it touches on many different parts of the game such that undoing it, is often times not a trivial task.  I guess I should just outright say it; a lot of Korean MMO’s take game and system mechanics out from the actual game, and disguise them in various cash shop items.

Black Desert for example takes its to another level when it comes to end game mechanics that have been moved into the Pearl Shop.  Players who do not care about keeping up with end game can play BDO just fine enjoying its combat and environment.  Undoing all of that means putting all of of that back into the game.

That’s why when players ask for a subscription only version of ArcheAge, all I can say is good luck (because XLGames will have to undo a lot of those mechanics and systems while rebalancing the entire game with no guarantee that they will be seeing the same level of revenue like the current system (remember, third party publishing contracts have revenue sharing agreements which benefit both the publisher and the developer).

Digressing, Warlords Awakening will be in early access for 3 months (if they stick to their schedule).  I was previously more than willing (even knowing a lot of this info) to buy and play the game due to its low price.  However, unless I actually get a key from a giveaway, I won’t contribute to what could be the start of a trend with these Korean MMO developers (it’s not the money, it’s the broader signal telegraphing that people are willing to spend money on this trend).  So I’ll be watching to see how PLAYWITH deals with the broader community feedback during early access and seeing if they are able to live up to being a community friendly publisher that is serious about everything they have said (the ball is completely in their park).

Now active until November 5th at 6PM CET.

http://steamcommunity.com/games/463680/announcements/detail/1455087273310976232

UPDATE: I can now see why this game has had trouble gaining traction.  The graphics, animations, and movement are so-so, the gameplay lacks “oomph”,  and the combat is pretty lackluster.  I feel really bad about saying that too since the effort is there (especially when you look at the options for building your character).

But as I’ve noted so many times before throughout this blog, aesthetics, combat, and the actual gameplay also have to be appealing for me personally.  My first character was an arcanist (magical ranged aka mage).  Since they are allowing the ability to create and play all the classes, I am going to give them a shot to see if some of the combat works better.

UPDATE #2: Knight (melee, DPS tank) plays a bit better.  Combat still lacks that visceral punch though.

The live server was online for around an year before it was purposely taken offline once Guardians of Ember (GoE) launched on Steam Early Access (December 2016); Runewaker depreciated Embergarde in order to make Guardians of Ember the official version (the publisher is InselGames). The business model changed from “free to play” to “buy to play” due to changes made to the game for a western release (not just localization but also additional content).  There is also an additional monetization layer where they sell loot orbs (which can also be purchased using the in-game currency that can be earned from doing dailies) that have mostly cosmetic items and utility functionality like inventory expansion.

Some players experienced issues with the games combat where there was a delay between skill activation and the attack animation/action actually occurring.  Not everyone experienced this issue but those kind of things are a death knell for any action oriented combat system.

GoE was originally slated to launch on Steam EA in September 2016 but ended up being delayed several times until December.  In September 2017, it finally left early access.

After directly observing the effects of a game (Devilian) not having service in its home country, I didn’t have a good feeling about how this game would end up turning out (especially with making it buy 2 play in the MMO space, let alone a niche one when it comes to a 2.5D isometric camera view and ARPG style combat).

While many sites did cover this game just prior to and as it went into early access, the larger marketing hype for it never materialized.  Not even the usual “Diablo and Path of Exile-like” comparisons created a sizable interest with the ARPG demographic.  Unsurprisingly, the games population has remained low where its peak concurrency was a mere 1150 at early access launch.  They ran a sales campaign coming out of early access that hasn’t resulted in a population increase.

Looking at these CCU’s, I really couldn’t in good faith bring up this game while it remained in early access (it’s why I stay away from early access or Kickstarter style campaigns because often times, it is over promise and under deliver).  It’s why I made a conscious decision not to really discuss Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem (formerly known as Umbra) even though it has far more promise and potential based on what the developers have been able to achieve.