FakeStrake wrote on Jun 24
th, 2014 at 7:54pm:
The positive raving has piqued my interest, and I've started checking out their forum, articles about the game, etc. Basically, research mode, which is me exploring/thinking about getting into a new game.
however, the monthly sub model puts me off.
On the other hand, I read about CREDD, which is interesting. I don't mind the farming for in-game gold to pay for game access.
My aversion with monthly subs in MMOs is the compulsion it creates in me. Back when I played WoW, a monthly sub made me feel like I have to play every spare minute (besides the fun factor addiction). It's like being at a buffet, I have a compulsion to eat everything, since I've paid the all-you-can-eat fee. I avoid buffets, because I stuff myself beyond being full.
I'm totally with you on the monthly sub thing... ever since DDO went F2P (and they did it best, IMO, though I don't doubt they've found a way to fuck it up by now), I've been very leery of the monthly payment model. For one thing, I'm not really sure what that monthly fee is buying, especially when I paid for the game up front. Server access? Pfft... at the MMO scale, the per-person cost is miniscule and can be absorbed by the up front cost. As evidence, I point you towards battle.net and the many years I spent there playing Starcraft I and II.
So that leaves content. $15/month is 1/4 of the standard $60/game price. So I'd better be seeing a quarter of a game's worth of content, every month, to justify monthly fee...
...or, you had better provide a reasonable alternative.
I did not think CREDD would be a reasonable alternative, at least for me - I don't play games enough to keep up with inflation, so I figured I'd never be able to afford CREDD... but the game was enjoyable enough that I got over my monthly sub hangup.
Then something strange happened. This game is very different from other MMOs in that they appear to be fine with the idea that there are multiple ways to make in-game money. In Wildstar, you can make money the traditional ways - killing mobs, selling rare drops on the auction, cornering markets, etc. But you can also make money in a way that has traditionally been made impossible: by crafting.
There are many recipes in game that result in prices where the completed product is worth more (vendor price) than the combined prices of the ingredients. And since there is a vibrant mats market (the commodities exchange, CX for short), this enables one to take a small profit margin and scale it up to sizable earnings.
Then there's the open interface, which is simply mind boggling. This open interface allows for addons to do things that would be considered hacks in any other game. In relation to this discussion, one of my favorite addons is Hephestus (spelling probably wrong), which allows me to batch craft... and
parallel craft (10x faster).
As a result, I now have 4 CREDD to my name. The way I figure, another month of devoting 1/5th of my playtime to making money through crafting and CX market cornerning and I should have my full first year paid for.