How successful has the "Free" model been?

I came upon a thought this morning, kind of out-of-the-blue. I began wondering just how much extra money I've spent on this game ever since "Freedom" was launched. Now, I'd spent money before on the various packs, but I wasn't calculating that.

Anyway, over the last... year-ish or so, I think I've spent a good extra $100 or so above and beyond my VIP subscription. A little bit here-and-there sure did add up!

It occurred to me that a hundred bucks (over a year, at that!) isn't a lot for a game company (I think that $100 was what one of the Devs makes in a day or two!). But then I remembered that I'm one of only tens of thousands of players!

Some players, I assume, never spent an extra dime. Some may have even canceled their subs entirely, content with the content they already had unlocked. A few players may have spent only $5 or $15 just to unlock an extra token or two. Some may probably be "freemiums" who spend $5 a month on IO/AH licensees. And there may be some people who spend upwards of a whole extra sub or more per month to get all the points and tokens they desire!

So, what about the rest of you? Any ideas on roughly how much extra money you've given Paragon Studios ever since the game became "Free"?

Obviously I won't be able to use whatever responses I get to draw any realistic conclusions vis-a-vis P.S.s financial standing, as the sample size will be a statistically insignificant amount of players (unless everyone who uses the forum answers, in which case we'd have a solid 1-3% of the playerbase?), but I thought it would be fun to see, anyway =)

According to the devs and community reps, incredibly successful.

And considering that we've been getting new content and new powersets at a decent clip? I'd say it's doing very well overall.

Well,ever since I started in January, I went from being a free player to a tier 5 premie. I had to have those new toys (staff fighting, water blast, dual pistols, Time, and beam rifle) and some super packs (25 got me a full Elemental Order set and a nice collection of ATO's to sell) as well as some costume packs, the alignment system, an occasional Invention license, and some other random goodies that catch my eye.

That reminds me....*goes to make sure me has enough points to buy Nature Affinity*

The fact that free2play got some people back in-game to is another part of success. I came back after 2 years about a month ago and have already spent $15 in the store, but I dont think ill subscribe again. I like the fact that I can spend money when I want to on stuff I want.

More successful than anyone could have ever predicted.

I think most games are looking at similar models these days.

Consider:

*Paragon/NCSoft has apparently made a lot more money
*Players are getting a great deal more content (missions/costumes/new powers/etc) on an accelerated time table.
*People that complained about having to pay for extra costume bundles... can just save up points and get what they really want with their regular subscription.
*People who don't want to pay or can't afford to pay... don't have to, and can still play.
*In general people are much more willing to spend money when it's to buy something that they want. People can get very annoyed when they feel they're forced to pay $15.00 a month and some of that money goes to things they could not care less about... but give them a lot of options, and they find ways to spend more than they might have otherwise.


As for myself, I've bought nearly every new power set (save Beast Mastery -- not a fan of MMs generally) on at least one of my two main accounts, and usually on both of them. I've bought every new costume bundle on both. I have pretty much avoided all of the fancy travel powers (magic carpet, jet board, etc.) but I sprung for the team transporter because it's ridiculously useful to anyone who regularly runs TFs. I've avoided all of the vanity pets and toys like flying disc -- even if they're fun, I really can't buy EVERYTHING. I bought 24 of the super packs on each of my two main accounts, and that got me all the costume parts, so I was happy. Haven't bought 1 pack more after that, not even with reward tokens. I have had to spend a little extra money here and there in order to keep up with everything that I wanted, and I especially spent extra money on my second account so that I could claim the Celestial Armor set before it went away, so I've spent more money no question, but not an excessive amount more.

I have created multiple extra accounts for free or next-to-nothing (introductory VIP offers) and I've wound up spending a bit of money on some of them, too. ^_^

We are getting a lot of new content, costume parts, power sets, etc.

That infers that their are developers, artists, mission designers being paid to create all that stuff.

Since they don't work for free we can infer that someone is paying them and the money has to come from somebody. Since NCSoft tends to shut down games hard when they are no longer profitable, the money must be coming from us players.

And since it's more stuff than we usually got in the same time frame before the game went hybrid, we can infer that they are making more money since than before the transition.

I was having some financial difficulties around the same time Freedom launched, so I scraped up $50, bought some points, unlocked everything I "needed" and unsubscribed indefinitely - it turned out to be about 5 months. Since then, I've unsubscribed for a single month and used my $15 to buy points a couple times, and once dropped another $50. So I've really only spent about $25 more than I would have had I just remained subscribed - less "extra" over the course of a year than I would have spent had they kept up the 3-4 $10 boosters per year model they had previously.

However, now that things are more financially stable, I may well end up throwing an extra $5 at points on a fairly regular basis, maybe more than that on occasion.

I've spent less overall since Freedom's release. I continue to subscribe six months at a time, so get a bit of a discount off the monthly charge; I spent $15 one month for some more points. Prior to Freedom, I had bought almost all the costume packs and had occasionally bought things like respecs and ... something else that I can't now recall. I'm very, very glad there are people spending more than that though as I think the new content has been fantastic. So, please, go forth, my fellow gamers and spend!

I spend alot lets just say in some months I was seeing i can't purchase more points due to 30-day spending limit. But that came to a halt at april (more precisely when hybrid change in beta occured) after that I only purchased points once to get amplifiers and that is about all.

I spend much more than I used to simply cause there's more I want.

I maintain my sub because I like playing at all levels and having access to pretty much everything. I also like the 550 stipend each month. I've spent on the order of 200$ more than I probably would have just on bulk point purchases.

The first hundred was way back just after freedom launched cause I was a few months away from tier 9 and didn't know how soon celestial would be replaced (needless to say I had plenty of time and didn't realize it). But the extra tokens were well used and I've had a surplus since then so whenever a new tier 9 costume set is added I will always have the tokens to get them all on day one.

The second hundred was after all the new shinies, super packs, inventory expansions, etc had depleted my stockpile and I had to refuel. So I bought another 100, used several of the tokens for free super packs (and yay got my wolf!) and saved the rest of the tokens for new costume sets.

I'll be spending another hundred in the next few months since my stockpile is again running low and I'll have a ton of new stuff to buy like Sorcery, Nature Affinity, Bio Armor, more enhancement inventory, new super packs and who knows what else!

Sure I look back and am surprised at how much I've spent but when I really examine it I can't honestly say I am unhappy with my expenditure or haven't gotten my money's worth. I have all the ATO's from sp1 I could possibly want, reward merits galore for other needs, tons of costume and power set options and overall the value of my account feels enhanced by all the global unlocks I've got now. Even if I drop to premium I'll have access to virtually everything except incarnate content. (but I like my incarnate stuff and the solo incarnate content so I keep subbing!)

In my eyes Freedom has been a massive success for ME. I can't speak about how much money its made for Paragon Studios/NCSoft but for me I've gotten more out of City of Heroes since Freedom launched than I have in years! I can only hope that the same success I see for me is translating as success for Paragon's bottom line cause I don't want this train to stop any time soon!

Pebble: The only problem with those Quarterlies is that it reflects NCSoft's standings, not Paragon Studios. In fact, it appears as if CoH/V only makes up about... 2% of their revenue stream o_O This kind of concerns me. I mean, unless NCSoft is getting a relatively large return on their investment, 2% hardly seems like a worthwhile number. Hopefully that just means the other games are going GREAT, not that CoH is doing poorly.

Their big sellers are Aion, and L1 and L2. And I'm also concerned that right now, NCSoft isn't turning a profit at all, unless I read those graphs wrong. (Something about a bunch of one-off fees and severance payments gutting their raw profit)

Doesn't tell me much about CoH itself =/

One thing that's being overlooked is how much business they do in NA and Europe, which I believe most players here are from, compared to CoH sales. It was 28% of NA/Europe's revenue in the 1st quarter and 44% in Q2.

NA and Europe is only 4.5% of NCSoft's revenue Q2, so do you think they are looking to pull out of those markets since that part of their revenue stream is so small? Of course not.

I haven't spent any extra $$$ yet -- all my store purchases have been covered by my VIP stipend. About the only things I buy are costumes and powersets, and I tend to wait for those to go on sale.

I've probably spent around $100 extra since launch. However, I've spent nothing lately and likely will spend nothing more over the next few months since Bio Armor, Beast Mastery, Nature Affinity are all unattractive, as is the post-apocalyptic bundle.

If I can get something liek Sci-fi, Imperial Dynasty and so on...extremely intricate costumes, I'll spend again.

Since freedom I ave spent about £70 not sure what the conversion rate is but about$105 on top of my subs

First I was planning just to get by on my VIP points, but as time went by, those darn devs put out more stuff I wanted than those VIP points would get me ("just as planned" I'm sure). I think I've spent an extra hundred bucks or so.