10 Days of WAR: Day One

I started my holiday-inspired return to Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning by logging into my level 40/ RR 35 Ironbreaker on Badlands. The first order of business was restoring my UI. WAR's default UI serves its purpose, but there are a few things my minimalist gamer brain needs: clean unit frames, consolidated info bars, and easily customized hotbars.

Rebuilding a lost UI can be aggravating, but for WAR, there is a great tool available from Curse for management and automatic updates/installs of most UI elements. I highly recommend the Curse Client.

For clean unit frames, I settled with Pure. Hotbars are managed via Vertigo. Info bars are kept organized with Warboard. The rest: Phantom, Squared, and MOTH.

 

After thirty minutes of  UI customization, I was ready to helicopter on out to the Tier 4 RvR lakes.

10 Days of WAR

I've run the gambit of thoughts on WAR, my final verdict after months of play was that WAR had pockets of greatness, but the overall design was poor. Also, some technical and stability issues arose directly related to poor design that really aggravated me. However, since quitting, I've wanted to go back. So, I've decided to take advantage of the re-enlistment campaign for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

With that will come the following list of nifty gifts:

I have no honest plans to resubscribe because I lack the time to make $14.95 a month a justifiable expense.  However, stranger things have happened.

Welcome to the new Heartlessgamer.com

Enjoy!

Update:  Lost some bottom padding under posts, but cant figure out how to fix it :P Ah well, nothing major. That tricksy padding was trumped by some margin-top with a new class :P

Team Fortress 2 - Crafting

The upcoming Team Fortress 2 update is getting more interesting by the day.  A new crafting webpage has appeared as part of the update, with a promising opening:

For years you have been able to create weapons with your bare hands, using raw steel, in real life. What if we were to tell you there’s now a way to SIMULATE that in-game?

Apparently this will run off of blueprints where various items can be combined to create the item you want. A screen shot of the crafting screen is below:

Valve never ceases to amaze me with the updates for TF2.

Update: Also found http://www.teamfortress.com/war/saxtonhale/poopyjoe.htm

The Economy of FREE

FREE, 29 holiday song downloads on Amazon. You clicked.  I know you did.  It's ok, I'll wait for you to get Silent Night playing in the background before you come back to read this post.  FREE is hard to resist, especially with no strings attached.  FREE is also worth money, because out of the hundreds of people that download a FREE song, some will end up buying one.

Gamasutra has some hard numbers: 58% Of PlaySpan Users Buy Goods From Free-To-Play Games

And not only did free-to-play games see the highest purchase penetration among users, they also generated the most money on a per-user basis. The average user's expenditure on publisher-sold free-to-play digital goods over the course of 12 months was $75, compared to $60 for MMOs, and $50 for social network games.

F2P games, with micro transactions, serve all levels of investment from players. There is no barrier to entry because its free to play, increasing the potential audience. Those willing to spend very little, can still access the game, earning money from a market segment that the subscription model misses. Those willing to pay more are allowed to do so and are not capped at their monthly subscription cost. Both end up supporting the ability for free riders to hitch on at no cost.  A free rider being just another sales opportunity.

World of Warcraft has forever cemented the subscription model as valid. F2P games are quickly validating micro-transactions.  This is not an argument that F2P is better than the subscription model. It shows that the F2P model is working and that those people screaming about $10 horses are falling behind the times. Also, it shows that advertising can be done with the product, not flashy Mr T commercials (as epic as they are).  That's a win for the customer as we get a free game to play, no strings attached.