when will game be free?

I just got a couple that are friends of me and the missus to join and last night was their first night.

Needless to say they are in awe of what CoX offers and this couple was really big into WoW,they never suspected that this MMO was so great.

Hell the wife was in the character creator for 2 hours last night just workin out her first toon,she has since made several others(altisis claims another muahaha).

Hopefully the game never goes the free route I suspect there are alot of other people who know nothing about how great CoX is and those people are possible new customers.

Preach the word, spread the faith lol.

I doubt the OP is even still here, but you may notice a trend of subscription MMOs going free to play recently. Thing is though, those are recent MMOs- and almost universally, ones that suffered huge population losses after failing to live up to player expectations, or never attracting enough players to maintain a viable business model. They became free to stay afloat shortly after release.

This game is the last one I'd expect to adopt a free-to-play model, not least because the game is already too entrenched in its existing gameplay model. It's older than World of Warcraft and has attracted a very stable population, and greater player retention than most games in the genre. The steady stream of additional free content, not to mention expansions, help keep the game in the news and bring in new players, and it's very newbie-friendly to keep them.

And no, City of Heroes never had lifetime subscriptions. Remember, this game is older than WoW, before all these newfangled dealies caught on.

If the game became free to play, I'd start shopping for a new game. I wouldn't throw down my hat and stomp off mad. I may even end up staying... but it'd be enough to make me start shopping.

Mmm...

Folks leaving? I have not really noticed a mass exodus of players at Champions. There may a perception of emptiness, but its only an illusion and not a reality. We must consider we now have three entire zones to operate with, then we have the PvP zones as well and quite a great deal more of instanced missions. When you pull it all together, you get the feeling there are less players, when in fact, we possibly have more players than ever but they are spread out all over. Imagine taking the population of Massachussets and placing them in Alaska, if you were to go to tiny Massachussets you would go wow, this place is full, but then take the same numbers to Alaska and you would go, this place is dead, nobody is here type of effect.

Unlike many other MMO's CoX does introduce new material in an unusually frequent manner, that all by itselff goes a long way in preventing the game from becoming stale.

I applaud CoX not going the WoW way over increasing max levels, and making the effort so tedius the game quickly looses luster. CoX needs to be careful as they evolve the incarnate system that it does not become a gather 100 shards to make this component like WoW tends to do, for the game can quickly become tedius and lose its player base. WoW has increased its meda blitz because they are bleeding hard from their player population departures. I find the 4 shards makes anything refreshing and just right, the 8 shards plus a common component is probably ok, but at times it can approach tedium as the shard drops during a TF can at times become a bit too rare.

I don't foresee for several years that this game is going to fall out of favor, short of devs itnroducing some real dumb rules or changes, which is incredibly unlikely. I also doubt that another super type game can be made that can outclass CoX. Even Champions on line, while not really a bad game, lacks the so many utilities and maturity this game has. I tried Champions on liine to check it out, but soon I detemined the chat features were rudimentary at best, their character customization was ackward, and so on. Perhaps if CoH stops improving and Champions keeps working on their system they may catch up, yet I think CoH is to aggressively evolving for that to ever be a factor

I tend to agree with other posters that free often is not quite free, there are all these hidden charges that will hit you, kinda like what our banking industry is about to do to us.

Hugs

Stormy

TANSTAAFL.

I would like to see NCSOFT try a bit of programmed marketing, if I recall the phrase correctly. Various promos aimed at new players at various subscription levels to see if the player base would expand dramatically at some possibly lower monthly fee.

Example: If the player base would double at $10.00 per month the increased cash flow might be a very good thing. If such a thing happened the new fee structure could then be expanded to the all players, and everyone would be happy. Or not.

Jak

*pops back into thread*

Is CoH free-to-play yet?

*runs back out flailing like a muppet*