What does it take to get veterans to return to the game?

[Boomthunder]

Good try. But if FC were to give you full access to Khitai as FTP, why would you ever sub? Afaik, the only content you'd be barred from would be House of Crom, Dragon Spine, and some Unchained modes. Hardly a reason to pay for a subscription if you can get 95% of the game for free.

That said, the FTP model is unduly restrictive in that it prevents FTPers from forming bonds with the existing community. FTPers should be able to access some content which the current player base does on a regular basis. A proper solution would be to open some, but not all, Khitai zones to FTP (e.g.: Northern Grasslands and the dungeons there). Same for T2 raids.

On another note, I once paid for WOW and then unsubbed, wonder why I can no longer play the game?

Nothing about a 'good try' here. Again the subject is what would it take to get me to come back/pay for things. That would be one of them - I bought Khatai, I bought Turan. F2P is a nice idea but restricting access to what I bought is not - that's my opinion based on other F2P games, there's not much chance of changing that. Provided I enjoy myself enough I would look at buying the other boosters and subscribing. Again, it sure worked in EQ.

With Khitai they could restrict access to hard mode dungeons, allow regular ones to be run IF you bought the expansion. Sub or pay for access to hard mode after that. There are things they can do - right now it's too closed off for me to be interested in logging in.

With the base game they should strongly consider opening up T1 or T1 wings 1 and 2. Vissy should be opened up also.

As for WoW, don't know, ask them. Likely they don't need to go F2P with existing accounts YET. Maybe down the road who knows. I sure get a lot of "come back and try for X days" offers.

If AoC or any FC game had a fraction of Blizzard's numbers we may not be having this discussion at all... but good try.

[Bladesaint]

May 20 2008 veteran (subscriber) here. Been mostly active off and on, lately on Rage and Fury. Very hard to get enough players in a Raid or enough to slay the WBs on Rage and for WBs you need a guild based team in a Raid. Much of my time is soloing and soloing driven now due to needing Raid teams to do anything that advances my character. I don't like the mini's, my gear is too low to PvP vs all the PvP level 10's which are the norm for Rage. What I would like is better solo ability to raise my character. Unchained Solo in Turan. Unchained Solo in the original Hyborian dungeons that reward some type of Relic or Token for completing.

Anyway, as time goes on I find I need to rely on Unchained Soloing more and more to advance my character. In July I got my character on Rage to level 80 after deleting many before level 50. In all that time since July I have been unable to find a Raid. I am in a Guild there, but never enough players to do a Raid easily. So yes more Unchained Solo dungeons would keep me playing more frequently and that would create enough populations to be available to Raid.

When I play I am always looking for a Raid to join on Global or Looking for Team channels and they just are not happening on Rage and rarely on Fury. Need some way to solo grind Unchained versions of some of it when I have nothing else to do. That Raid content is all locked away even though I subscribe to AoC and that keeps me from playing more. I will only play on the PvP servers. That is why I play AoC.

[slackjoint]

May i ask for your ingame name , bladesaint ?

[MashMash]

Must admit, I thought they would have opened up at least Northern Grasslands by now. Maybe block dungeon access. That way f2p could still do quests, but no dungeons. Maybe even open up just one dungeon as a taste - Warmonks I suppose. And the quests would end at being sent off to the next zone.

It couldn't hurt could it? Maybe technical limitations prevent this though. AoC seems like that - some things are just not technically possible.

Also, Gateway is just not that interesting, and many will hit it at 80 anyway, at which point it's a dud.

[CimmerianHoX]

I think there won't be any chance of changes for a while, sad as it may be.

T1 still isn't even fully opened to f2p. Even Grasslands looks like a long shot to be F2P with that. Turan is f2p though and I think they intended for that to be the bone to be thrown to players who want f2p expansion. Exept that there's hardly anything to that.

If they did open up Grasslands, I might start progressing again and be tempted to sub...

[LunaticAsylumLA]

Increasing overall difficulty by new or reverted changes and introducing more layers of complexity.

[Unutterable]

Increasing overall difficulty by new or reverted changes and introducing more layers of complexity.

Content walls? You think content walls will bring people back? Ask the devs of Wildstar how content walls played out for them.

[henryabccba]

Is it really so hard to create some new special sub offers???

[Naerri]

Increasing overall difficulty by new or reverted changes and introducing more layers of complexity.

What bothers me is the fact that the average Joe has very little chance to experience all the "new" - well its not new anymore - but... and cool content like Temple of Elric, Lurker raid etc. I wont even mention new T5 unchained and T6 raids which will be reserved to few elite hardcore raiding guilds...and that really sucks big time.

[Texan615]

Content walls? You think content walls will bring people back? Ask the devs of Wildstar how content walls played out for them.

Haha, that's a good point.

Carbine took what was actually a good gameplay experience and screwed it all by trying to be "hardcore" and lost almost all their playerbase as a result.