City of Heroes Moving To Hybrid Payment Model 62
KingSkippus writes "The superhero-themed MMORPG City of Heroes announced this morning that it is rebranding the game as City of Heroes Freedom ('freedom to pay and play as you choose'), and moving to a hybrid payment model including a free-to-play option. 'VIP' players who still pay a monthly subscription will have most features of the game unlocked and will be given credit towards purchase of others. City of Heroes Freedom is due to land later this year with the next major game update."
The trend toward free-to-play continues. Meanwhile, a recent update that brought microtransactions to EVE Online has (at least temporarily) resulted in digital clothing items becoming more expensive than real-world counterparts.
Re:Unbalancing (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hard to define how you "win" in a MMOG anyway, but if you mean reaching maximum level or getting the best loot, in the vast majority of games skill has always counted for far, far less than time invested (and sheer dumb luck, in some cases). Fighting other players in PvP then skill (and teamwork) is more of an issue, but if it's a DIKU-style level-and-gear-based game then time invested is still a significant factor.
For an achievement-centric player then the ability to buy the Sword of a Thousand Truths for cash rather than having to kill hundreds of Orcs and hope one happens to drop it might devalue the entire game, but if you're playing because you enjoy exploring the world, or getting together with friends to go on an adventure it's much less of a problem, and "pay to win" is as much of a nonsense as the idea of "winning" in the first place.
City of Heroes is particularly notable as it's much less about the "phat lewt" in the first place, in keeping with the superhero setting. For years there was barely anything resembling an economy, and though later patches have developed that side of things I don't think it's the defining factor of the game. PvP was always something of a sideshow (again, not present at all at launch), it's been a while since I played but the players seemed to prefer Heroes and Villains grouping up together to face common foes rather than fighting each other.
"Free to play" isn't inherently good, it's quite possible to end up with something resembling an arcade game where you have to keep shoving in 10p coins to continue (probably £1 coins these days, been a while since I was in an arcade), but it offers a flexibility that's missing from the subscription model if you'd like to play a couple of games once or twice a week.