F2P Cast: Isn't Black Prophecy Closing? (Ep.39)

totaly akaneiro because .. marvel will suck totaly :D

Hey as always thanks for the show it was fun and amazing and her i come i love black prophesy but i was always iritated about the small ships and i could not play it but now that nexuis is up they got bigger ships but here the grafichs are so bad so to tell the thrue i thing i rather play with small ships than playing a game with that kind off graphicks.

hiya Guys great show only issue was some tech difficulties with the video

weekly bombs A bomb for Aeria games for still not launching even a CBT for lime odyssey, I can certainly understand that they are scared but it's just too much waiting as such it might just end up like waren story even if they are trying to update the graphics and font.

for the weekly question i have got to say I don't know about wether blade & soul ( i was actually the first or if not the first amongst the first to even point this game out after finding it via Hyung-Tae Ki's site ) will be f2p or p2p as right now its up in the air to be honest looking at the success of their f2p regardless of possibilities of alienating Korean players it could go f2p at launch but then as what magickman had said their track record of launching p2p or b2p first then going f2p so in my opinion it could go either way.

I played the originl Black prophoecy and i loved it. I loved how the you were in controle of your ship and you were kind of an outlaw. I also got a beta key for BPNT. I hated it. I was going in thinking "oh wow it new BP i must get to fly some new ships and have new stuff." But no, it was like a oh i can't remeber waht it's called.... anyway, i wanted to fly a ship that i could call my own. but it seemd that you control a whole armada and that's not what players of the original BP expected. this to me is not a very good buisnes tactic. The only thing that i didn't like about the origianl BP is it seemed almost empty.

In regards to your comments concerning Black Prophecy and it's "sequel"...

I somewhat have to applaud Gamigo about their sequel, simply because to me, it doesn't appear that money is driving their motivation. For you to call it "foolish" to publish a game for the game's sake, makes me feel like you don't "appreciate" the value of quality gaming (whether it makes money or not). It's the exact opposite of the Call of Duty garbage (i will say that COD:4 was exceptional in it's time, but you get the idea) The numbers don't lie, but take for example the TV series 'Firefly' was LOVED by it's fans, but the numbers shut it down. Thank heavens for "Serenity"...

When hear blades and souls coming na what u know what did i screamed like little girl got 105 dolls she like on her birthday so the bomb, the bomb for blades and soul and when i hear otherlands is going na i though one more proxy game i dont know y they dont make english server why is there not any asian english server for many good games come on pls for god sake some make server like this in asia .

I def think blade and soul will be P2P, at least for about 6 months before they run out of subscribers and turn it into F2P like most eastern MMO's that jump over the seas. Sadly as good as the combat might be, it will inevitably become a grindfest, that's just their culture preferences. I thought Atlantica Online was different, lots of quests indeed, but eventually I ran out of them around lvl 100 and it became yet another "grind festivale" in order to level up and reach the next tier of quests. Also I want to give an "A bomb" to it's cash shop, for selling "CHANCE". In order to get mounts or decorations you have to buy expensive boxes that "might" give you that particular item, so you have a chance of let's say 1/17 of getting the "good item", almost every other item in the box is rubbish... to me that's BS. Just lemme buy the freaking mount without those shenanigans...



Awesome show guys, keep up the good work :)
"Saludos" from Mexico!! (And yes we have access to the interwebz around here LOL )

For the question of the week, I'd have to go with B&S having a sub on launch in NA/EU and possibly going f2p within a year and a half. This is based mostly on my experience with NCSoft being slow to respond to markets outside Korea. While L2 and Aion both have good f2p models it took them(well at least in L2's case) a bit too long to implement. From the non-trailer gameplay footage I've seen I am not impressed at all with the game as it looking ironically like a poor man's C9 in terms of actual combat flow. A far cry from the trailers which are still really just cinematics rendered using the ingame engine instead of traditional CG animation.

Gonna have to give both a Da Bomb and an A Bomb to Runic Games(boy this hurts). Torchlight 2 is released and it fricken rocks...unless you want to play multiplayer over the internet without using a workaround(setting up a VPN to play via LAN). Thankfully it seems things have smoothed out as it still took less than 24 hours from launch to actually get my Steam account synced with my Runic account to play normally. Guess they really didn't realize how many people would be clamoring to them with all the fallout from Diablo 3's less than stellar performance. The really great upside however is that singleplayer characters can be played online so I could still play the game as soon as it launched with no Error 37 and Lag demons ripping my kneecaps off. So I might just have to reduce the A Bomb down to maybe something smaller like an A Grenade(for the bad things that actually get fixed and really aren't a big a deal as we make them out to be).

if blade & soul is trying to make Koreans hate the west, for being the "special one" of getting f2p. by all means do it... lol. otherwise nope, not gonna happen. it's only logical for p2p.

Akaneiro or Marvel Heroes? I'm familiar with the IP of Marvel, but it's not enough to pull me in. I think I'd rather try Akaneiro, the IP is unknown to me, and I do like trying new stuff from time to time.

Selfius giving an A Bomb to GW2 regarding semi-botters? Although I wouldn't go so far as to giving an A Bomb since ANet is actually doing something such as perma-banning (although game hacking being mixed with account hacking makes it a much more complex problem than it already is), I do agree that it really needs to be fixed. I remember seeing it happen in Genderran Fields in the Centaur area. Feel sorry for Damina losing her account to hackers, hopefully she'll be able to get it back.

Blade & Soul launching f2p? Nah...given the fact you said that the sub fee in Korea will drop from 20 to 15 when it hits the West, I don't see it being f2p...not even a hybrid model or a b2p...just don't see it happening.

great show guys as always, first i would play marvel heroes cause im a comic geek at heart, and second i think Blade n Soul will be sub at first, but at least ncsoft has a great model to follow with Aion when Blade n Soul goes ftp at some point.Also Aion is my go to game when in bored with new stuff.

Hellooooooooooo, Free-To-Play Cast! lightkor here. In case any part of my comment gets read in next week's show, I'll save you trouble of saying the awkward "he or she": I am a "he".

Concerning the debate on the whole old and new Black Prophecy situation, I don't know much about either version or the differences between them. I may be completely wrong on what I'm about to say, but here goes...

The new Black Prophecy likely started as a major expansion without having any knowledge that the old Black Prophecy would be shut down so soon. While this expansion was being developed, they realized the level of revenue being generated was not as high as what they needed to sustain the game. They already put so much resources into the development of this expansion that they need to recuperate their development costs. So before the expansion was completed, they took the opportunity to re-evaluate their plans (kind of like how ArenaNet suddenly stopped making standalone expansions for GW and prepared for GW2). They tweaked the current game, integrated the expansion into it, threw in a few other ideas that they've been waiting to implement (developers are creative people after all), and designed all of this into a "new" game rather a game + expansion.

The benefit about making this into a "new" game is that now they can use that as an excuse to launch it (again). From experience, a launch is just a combination of hype+advertising to get an instant burst of players to try it out. With a few exceptions *cough*TSW*cough*, this is mostly true.

They also redesigned their overall service model so that maintenance and content updates/development could be done by a smaller team, which means they are only putting in just the right amount of resources (people) into this "new" game that the current level of revenue could sustain.

Which leads into why they shut down the old game before opening the new: they are allocating so few people into this project that they can't even keep the old game maintained without sacrificing the quality of the new. I know this is a long shot, but if their finances are that bad, this makes sense.

In short, if they are only making $30,000 per month as an example (hopefully they're making a lot more), all they have to do is redesign the game in such a way that it can be maintained and updated with expenses totaling less than $30,000/month. And that game now has the word "Tactics" added to it. I thought the "Tactics" bandwagon ended a decade or two ago though... I guess I was wrong.



Question of the week: Will Blade & Soul be P2P or F2P?

In my opinion, all gaming companies would like to make a P2P game that charges $100/month or more to play. Of course, very few players would accept that, so the developers have to settle for a lot less. I believe NCsoft knows it will have to be F2P in the long run (actually, all games will need to be -- this is just my opnion). However, they will launch it as subscription-based first to get that instant boost of revenue at the beginning to recuperate development/advertising/launch costs as much as possible. As less and less people are willing to pay $15/month to play (or any amount NCsoft decides), they'll transition into F2P. NCsoft is already experienced with transitioning games into F2P, so I'm willing to bet they already planned that out so they can implement it into Blade & Soul whenever they please.

My counterpoint is that "launch" is like gambling: how much risk is NCsoft willing to take? There's a chance that a P2P launch may not gain the number of players they expected, which means they would have squandered a major opportunity to gain the playerbase that's crucial to the beginning phases of an MMO. Essentially, it's a balance of revenue vs number of players. Revenue focuses more on the short term whereas number of players focuses on long term. Also, regardless of how beautiful is the artwork, how fun is the game, and how jiggly are the breast physics, this is still an Asian-themed game. This style may appeal enough to the East to succeed as subscription-based, but is this also true for the West? 2 out of 3 of the hosts of this episode have stated they would not pay a subscription for this game, but they are willing to play it if it were F2P.

It's still in the realm of possibility that it'll be F2P in the West, but P2P in the East. It would then be similar to how EA is making the new COD free in China but not free in other places.

To be clear, my answer is that NCsoft is probably planning to launch it as P2P and then transition to F2P later, but my recommendation is that they launch it as F2P to be safe, gain the largest number of players possible, and perhaps even take over the world!



I'd like to give a Da-Bomb to you guys and MMObomb overall. You discuss your opinions about each MMO regardless of whether they are praises or fears. When you find out later that certain assumptions were untrue, you were willing to make the necessary corrections so the viewers would not carry on with the wrong ideas. I believe most gamers appreciate that very much and so does the game industry as a whole: they get what they deserve.

I've been watching all your episodes, but this would be my first message to you guys. Hopefully, this won't be my last.

Since I don't know when I'll write another comment again, I'd like to mention I appreciate Havek's A-Bombs throughout the lifetime of this show (yes, I know he wasn't in this episode). They are always entertaining and funny even though they are rarely (if ever) related to gaming. I do have a request for Havek. Just for fun, perhaps we can have him twist his non-game-related A-Bombs in future episodes into something game-related. As an example, I remember his commenting on how some people thought it was the zombie apocalypse when there was a series of cannibalism and violence happening back-to-back: if he threw in the words "like in Resident Evil", that would've made it "game-related". See? It's not that hard!

I think that's more than enough for now. Keep it up! I'm looking forward to the next episode.


Thanks for all your hard work and honest opinions.

lightkor

I found Black Prophecy highly repetative... I played it around the time it first launched and although the early hours of the game were great, and the gameplay was different for me (in a good way, it was a change to the fantasy genera that I usually play), later on I just felt loss, just continualy doing the same attacks over and over again... I don't know if that changed in its latter years, but that was just my opinion when I first played and what ultimatly pushed me away...

Man, you guys are hatin on Marvel Heroes a lil bit. Its gonna be a real good game. It'll be the Diablo 3 we never got with all of out favorite Super Heroes. I mean come on, its gonna be awesome!

P.S. Can I please have a Planetside 2 Beat key?? :)

Another Fine Show !

About Black Prophecy & Tactic's

They must have made a decent profit with Black Prophecy,Before deciding to shut it down.
Atleast they took some of the money and dumped it into designing Tactic's.Maybe at one
time they thought of it as being an expansion,But if it had no end game content,Would you go back to dump money on an expansion then?

Nope, You bail on the sinking ship and use Tactics as a life raft.With so many AAA game's going free to play,Spend some money marketing it as a new game And Tactic's will pay thier employee's morgage for the next year.
( That's what i would do )

Question of the week !

Blade and Soul will be P2P :
Reason:
I had been following this since about 2007-08 or so.But figured it would never come here,Back than it was rare that we seen any of the oriental game's hit North America, But in the past 2 years, They are swarming in number's now.

But unless it bring's something that we lack in our P2P game's now..Being Great Game Content!
I'd give it a year before going F2P here.And i bet those EasternPlayers, if they stay at above 200k
Will be paying monthly even if it went F2P here !

Peace

Inflictious

So, question of the week:
Iam 99% sure that Blade and Soul will be P2P, my only hope is that a giant gorilla named Jack picks a alien brainwash machine and use it with the NCSoft Team...That would be AWESOME =D

Great show, and i see you guys in The Secret World servers VERY soon...And TERA too!

PS:Screw SOE and their Cash Shop, they killed DC Universe for me ='(

...

And i hate you Funcom.

If B&S starts without fee, hell is gonna freeze, there is no way that game of such caliber starts as f2p in the West...Graphical quality and details of every aspect combined with time/money invested in it makes it impossible to start as we wish for it.... Our only hope is that gameplay is as grindy as it gets in other Korean games, that way player base will drop fast and we will have another Aion...

It was never open to begin with, it was a very sad attempt, the devs just didn't know what they were doing.

Free to play Blade & Soul? I'd say that it is not very likely. Not at the launch and not in the West. They might try to at least release it as a subscription based game. Although now that I think about it... Just look at the MMO market. There are only three kinds of MMO games now: f2p games, dying/dead p2p games and WoW. I bet NCSoft is evaluating the risks right now. Besides they already have positive experience with f2p model. I'd say they MAY make it f2p right from the launch if things will get worse for p2p games.

I think Blade and soul will be p2p at first to get some pre-purchase bucks, to get all hyped people the moneys out of their pockets, then it'll go free to play, like ncsoft did with aion.

I think the Black Prophecy Tactics looks really good but i may try it but likely wont play it, im not into strategy games anymore except for tower defense now just cuz its more casual fun. I dont see why closing the original one down matters, the tactics one is completely different than Black Prophecy. Should Gamigo stop putting out new games because one of them closed down?

Its really sad about Black Prophecy cuz its a beautiful fun awesome game. They should have put it on Steam, i bet anything they'd see a slow consistent rise in players and possibly money i dunno.

I love all the F2P companies so far but i only play my favorites. Nexon is a name ill know forever now, Perfect World Entertainment and Gamigo. hm Even ijji. lol

Ace Combat Online is great! I keep forgetting to play that again. =) I like Moonbreakers but i havent played too much.

lol @ "Star Wars is different than sci-fi."

I love the anime style of Akaneiro. I've only played Madness Returns which is so incredible. Always wanted to play the first one.

I would totally pick Marvel Heroes over Akaneiro but i dont plan on choosing just one. =p

You guys should check out Forge.

I love Ubisoft.

"Too many companies have producers and not players." That was a good one.

Games ive played that dont feel "pay to win" to me: Vindictus, DC Universe Online (played it when it was sub) hm damn i could name a lot more but im tired now. lol

I dont have a "fallback game" anymore, i just keep playing a ton of single player games now or campaigns in a multiplayer one. =p It was WoW for a bit but that didnt last long since i had played it for six years. lol

lmao @ complete silence when "server mergers dont always mean the games dying."
DCUO is still alive and rockin man and its a great game.
Tera's a beautiful fun game, being subscription based is why its not populated. Its an F2P world pretty much now ya know. Or they can just keep it subscription based and keep adding content, give it some time. If the content keeps rolling in then people will likely keep comin. That is exactly why WoW has lasted as long as it has.

I like Funcom. I pretty much like everything to do with gaming. lol

200,000 is a bad number? If i made a game and 200,000 people were playin it lol thats a dream!
Its not impressive compared to others but thats not my point. =p


Blade & Soul: I think it will probably start like Tera and start with a subscription fee. However they have already talked about it and said that its likely to start out as F2P, i dont remember where i read or saw that lol wish i did.
From what i've seen of Blade & Soul i would definitely pay a sub for it just to try it out.

The beginning of this video was pretty cool cuz it was showing the different games you were talking about but then im not sure which game this ends with but i think it was SevenCore? anyways it lasted far too long, boring! change the games more often. lol

Nice closing music.

so... it will close or what?