What if PvP was free to play?

I never blogged before, so I went with what pissed me off more than anything else of late, and that was trying FFXI. Of course, being as verbose as I am, I can't just start there, I had to outline all I've tried before in order to explain just how much it sucked.

http://luerim.blogspot.com/

What I found myself wondering at part 4 in my autobiographical exposition was what if WoW allowed former players back in for free just to play in the PvP areas. I really, really enjoyed the tactical aspects of Arathi Basin. Suppose you didn't get the rewards unless you had an active paying account? I'd still play, I might get an encouragement to resubscribe down the line. It's the sort of thing I can do and not feel bad if things don't work out, and Blizzard would win out by having targets for the PvPers.

I'm curious if other people think this is a viable late-subscriber model for the developing "free to play" business dynamic, where you don't pay to play, but only to get perks other than normal leveling?

When PvP and rational conversation converge, I recognize there's a lot of people who don't get it. I hope this discussion will be an exception, please reflect the wishes of this poster.

Without support from the rest of the game, it'd be really difficult to get into PVP. Zero access to non-PVP sets would be pretty annoying to serious players.

The only issue is that Blizzard would have no incentive to do this. More targets for PvP isn't enough incentive. They aren't short on PvPers.

On the flip side, a good number of WoW players are there especially for the PvP. If this were done, they would have no need to continue to subscribe. They could simply cancel their subscription, and continue to do what it is they love best for free.

In some games, this may be a viable option. With WoW actually being heavily geared to encourage PvP, they are not one of them.

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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

On deeper thought on this topic I did think of something that may well work very well for WoW. Some sort of "PvP Viewer". A completely separate client which would allow you to look at the action on any of the PvP playfields. It could work either as a romaing viewpoint (like Observer mode in the CoX arena), fixed points of view that the viewer could switch between, or from the point of view of the players, with the viewer able to tab between the players.

This would promote the PvP aspects of the game to those outside the game, and tempt them to come in and play.

There is one SERIOUS issue with this, and it is an issue. They would need to come up with some way to ensure that someone could not be connected from both the game client and the PvP viewer--other than IP address--at the same time. Otherwise, people would use it for rampant cheating. In WSG and can't find the flag carrier, open up the PvP viewer and just tab to the flag carrier's point of view. "Oh! There she is! Quick guys, over here! She's by herself!"

For those that are wondering "Why not just use the IP address?", the answer is simple. In today's WiFi world, an application like this would be wasted if you couldn't get to it from your high end phone. There would be versions for the iPhone and any other phone they could manage one for. The phone would have a different IP address, so a simple IP address check wouldn't work.

Even simpler.... you're playing on your PC. You fire up your laptop and hook up to your NEIGHBOR'S wireless connection. Your neighbor has a different IP address than you. Once again, you're in.

Now, one way this could work is very simple indeed. The viewer is delayed 10 min. What you see happening in the viewer actually happened 10 minutes ago. This would make any information it had useless for the purposes of gaining any advantage on the battlefield.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

I'm sorry....what? Why are we talking about WoW?

If they can pull off a proper overhaul of the PvP zones (In CityOf) then things should be better. Fix up the actual PvP system, add in more rewards (not just sets, for the love of pete) and actually put some brainpower into it, and PvP could, as it should, be a great and populated part of the game.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

if pvp was free to play i think i'd cancel and just pvp with the toons i have. all i do when i login is either go to a zone or ask for a match in the arena channel anyway.

i think though in the long run it would only hurt the game because the money from pvper accounts(the ones who play like i do) is more valuable than some free advertising because they arent advertising at all anyway.

and actually they created pvp 2.0 in order to bring in new pvpers with no reguard for the old so it can be assumed they probably didnt want to keep the current batch of pvpers around anyway so chances are this would never ever happen.

I think making it possible to level 1-50 via PvP tasks and activities would be a good idea, so you could go 1-50 with PvE, PvP or a mix of the two.