You know, it's really funny. Just when I was getting so pumped up about getting back to World of Warcraft, despite the slight hesitation that came with it, my attention shifted - thanks to a friend - towards another massively multiplayer online role playing game by the name of Aion. Sure, I have played it before and it has some horrible annoyances, but NCsoft has recently adopted a "Truly Free" model for the game and claims that it's different than the other "free to play" MMO games out there. You know how I feel about those supposedly FTP MMOs: they are never really free. The only game that has been proven to be truly free, and it's not an MMO, is League of Legends. But it looks like NCsoft is really trying to shake up the status quo and based on what I have read, they are just going to stick with selling level boosters and vanity items for the players and everything else in the game would be free to access. If this is true, then paying to play the game will be completely optional and since I do buy alternate champion skins in LoL, I really wouldn't mind buying vanity items for my character in Aion if I am really enjoying the game and if NCsoft is really making this completely free to play. Based on my initial impression, I would never pay a subscription fee to play this game so this change is a good one for Aion.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, NCsoft. Don't disappoint me.
Apparently, this "Truly Free" model has been implemented in their other game, Lineage II: Goddess of Destruction and now that I have been made aware of it, I want to test ride that MMO as well. It looks like I am going to put my WoW craze on hold for now because logically, it is not very smart to be on a pay to play subscription model when I can get, hopefully, the same MMO excitement potentially from these games. I will report on my "Truly Free' investigation of these games soon. I have been burned by the promise of "FTP" before, but let's see if NCsoft is going to be the first do it right in an MMO.
Update Note: 10:00am - Well, things are off to a horrible start. I had a problem launching Aion last night where it would crash soon after it was launched and after trying so many different things to it with no favorable results, including this official troubleshooting guide,I thought that it was probably just a corrupted file download. Thus, I started the download process again last night. Well, now that everything had been reinstalled and patched, the problem persists. I am about ready to give up on Aion. 2:00pm - It finally works! That was close.
2 comments:
You ARE on an MMO kick right now eh? I've looked at Aion before, but never given it a shot, though the 'truly free' approach is an interesting one for me. I have some friends who are huge supporters of Guild Wars and looking forward to the sequel. I had a hard time getting into that one though, when I won a free copy
Yeah, I have tried so many times to get deep into Guild Wars but it just isn't a real MMO. The sequel does look promising but the lack of class differentiation and/or interdependency may kill that one off so I am going to approach it with much caution.
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