Canada Day Resolutions for 2014

Despite not being Canadian, Canada Day Resolutions used to be a thing here on PVD, since I often found myself reviewing my progress on my New Year's resolutions on a day that coincided with the Canadian national holiday.  Last year I didn't cover Canada day due to being on summer vacation, and this year I was in the middle of an international move and didn't feel postured to write New Year's resolutions in January, but no need to let these details stand in the way of tradition.

Pursue 2580 Total Hero Levels In Marvel Heroes

Through a combination of purchases, promotions, and in-game awards, I'm rapidly closing on unlocking every hero in the game. Thirteen sit at max level and another five have hit at least level 50 for their second tier synergies.   Without specifically trying, this puts me over halfway to the game's current total level cap (2100 for the 35 current heroes at 60), and just shy of halfway when you include the eight announced characters (six remaining Advance Pack characters, Nova, and X-23 for a total of 2580). 

I'm hesitant to commit to this kind of goal for fear that I will get tired of it, and perhaps that's a fair concern, but clearly chain-leveling characters in Marvel Heroes has managed to hold my interest.  Meanwhile, later characters are definitely getting easier due to steadily increasing amounts of bonuses as the game keeps adding new systems.  We'll see how far I can get.

My current roster: I can immediately purchase four of the seven greyed out portraits, as I currently have 1400 splinters.  I will need 1000 more for the other three, plus 600 for Nova and X-23.

Neverwinter - To 60 But Actually Playing?
Level 30 in Neverwinter was enough of a headstart to get working on the several out-of-game minigames, similar to Star Trek Online's duty officer system.  These are good fun, and it seems highly likely that I will hit the game's level cap through experience gained from these mini-games alone.   A better, and unanswered, question is whether I will ever get back to playing the actual game, or just stick to the minigames as I did in STO.  Not sure if that's good or bad feedback for Cryptic, but there you have it. 

Clear out the PS3 line-up
I passed on the PS4 last year, in part because of looming move and in part because there wasn't much on the release calendar for the holidays that I couldn't just get for my existing PS3 instead.  A year later, the math is flipped - many of the older PS3 games I had yet to beat are now available in re-mastered editions on the PS4, so it's only a few last hold-outs between me and retiring my PS3, possibly for the shiny white bundle with Destiny.  The titles in question are the last few chapters of Uncharted 3 along with all of Infamous 2 (both of which I already own) and Batman: Arkham Origins (which I technically could purchase on the PC if push came to shove).

I have a new set of multi-platform gaming headphones, so I'm feeling good about my odds.

Other MMO's?
And then things are open ended. 

• I own some prepaid time for SWTOR that I won't use until the next mini-expansion that has adventuring content (apologies to those who are eagerly awaiting the housing mini-expansion).  
• Honestly, I'm more likely to jump on the Blizzard MOBA than the next WoW expansion, but I'll keep my eyes out for steep Black Friday discounts.  
• I won't look at either TESO or Wildstar until they offer a free trial, and honestly neither is likely to make the cut with me as a subscription title. 
• EQ2, Rift, TSW and the Turbine games also seem to be out by default.  EQ2 has the best shot at a come-back, but since they went digital only their expansions are no longer available at a discount, and I'd need to buy an expansion to continue playing my character.  
• FFXIV is a possible contender.  I left that game with generally favorable impressions, but also feeling that I was starting to need more structured group content to advance.  This would be a deal-killer with my schedule these days.  Maybe in a patch or two, as I hear they are going to have ninjas. 

Could actually be a year where I do almost nothing in traditional MMO's?  We'll see.

Happy Canada Day, and/or best mid-year wishes as appropriate!  

Online Gaming Expenditures 2013

I've been tracking my MMO expenditures for a few years, and the top line makes this year look similar to last year - last year I spent $275 on MMO's and another $60 on Diablo III and this year I spent roughly $321 for online products including MMO's, MOBA's, TCG's, and ARPG's.  That said, the way in which I spent that money was a bit different.

• I was subscribed to a MMO for most of the year, but these expenses were significantly reduced due to various discounts from retailers.
• I was generally much more willing to experiment with things that cost $20-30, rather than try to tough out the business model without paying for anything.  

The latter definitely increased my bottom line spending, and some of the purchases are going down in the books as disappointments.  Then again, sometimes a comparatively small purchase made life significantly more fun.  As I have less and less time to spend on games, I'm guessing this trend will continue.

Subscription MMO's
I had a subscription to a traditional MMO for most of the year.  These games were typically, though not always, the go-to place I would go when I had time for an extended play session.  

World of Warcraft - $65 (Pandaria, 60 days timecard, 2x 30 days)
I did very well snagging discounts from retail stores.  This "should" have cost me $100.

FFXIV - $70 (PC + PS3 boxes)
The PC box cost $30 for the license plus a month of game time.  The PS3 box cost $40 for a second month of game time (the two stack) plus the license for the Playstation Network (reportedly to include the PS4 version, when it arrives next year).  I guess I should have taken the time to try the PS3 version in beta - playing on the PS3 was a cool novelty, but I had problems with targeting and would need to purchase a keyboard and mouse to make this work. 

SWTOR - $51 (two 60 day timecards at various discounts from retailers, $10 expansion)
Again, discounted time cards for the win here, "should" have paid $70. 

The Newcomers
In general, these are titles I play as a go-to for shorter play sessions. 

Marvel Heroes - $70 (starter pack, Cyclops, X-Force Bundle Black Friday Sale)
I hesitated until the very last minute on whether to pre-purchase a founder's pack, and I'm glad I pulled the trigger.  I like this game way more than Diablo III because it features characters from Marvel's comics.  It was worth the money to play the game with the character I most wanted to play rather than one of the less interesting starter characters.  I decided to throw them another $50 on Black Friday for an additional bundle of characters and some convenience perks.

Note that I'm counting the $130 Advance pack purchase against next year's budget, as is my longstanding practice for long-term subscriptions and content unlocks that won't be used (or in this case won't be available) until the year after I decided to shell out for them.   We'll see whether they've delivered all of the heroes by the time I publish next year's ledger, and how I feel about that purchase.

Hex - $20 (kickstarter)
Technically, this game isn't out yet, but I'm in the alpha as a backer, so I'm prepared to put this one on 2013's balance sheet.  I have concerns about the business model and was not impressed by a very brief visit to the very early alpha.  Even so, my assessment was that the time it's going to take to see whether or not I am going to like this game will be more fun starting with a minimal base of cards versus nothing. 

Guild Wars 2 - $30
I picked this up when the price finally dipped down to my new $30 impulse buy threshold.  I've logged in twice, so it could be argued this was a fail, but at least now I can play GW2 if I want to. 

League of Legends - $15 (gift cards)
I had some Best Buy reward certificates to burn, so I turned them into the $5 starter Champion pack and a $10 RP code to finally try League.  The purchases probably weren't necessary with my current playstyle - I'm currently enjoying trying whatever new champions are available each week.  Then again, the cost was comparatively low, since it's often hard to find things at Best Buy that aren't $15 overpriced to begin with.   

Played, not paid
TSW - I picked this up for $15 very late in 2012 and was still coasting on the month of included subscription time for most of January.

LOTRO and DDO - played a small amount of each using previously paid content, did not purchase either game's expansion (a first for LOTRO, despite a just-unveiled 50% off sale on their month-old expansion).

Hearthstone - Have not spent any money on the closed beta.

Not Played
Rift - Has an expansion that I got without paying courtesy of a promo and can now access freely due to the game's business model relaunch.  I logged in once or twice to preserve my character names, but I never really played.

EQ2 - SOE went the entire year without discounting the expansion from the fall of 2012, and now there's another full priced expansion box on the digital shelf.  The good news is that the new expansion purchase includes the one I skipped, and there aren't really any charges anymore for playing the content if/when I pay to unlock it, so maybe I will get around to this in 2014.

Grand Total
Total - $321

Things I Missed In Game

The downside to being away from MMO's for a month is that stuff happens when you're not around.  A few things I observed from afar:

• Another round of double exp weekends in SWTOR.  A bit disappointed to have sat this one out, the exp rate would have gotten my third character through their class story and made a decent dent in a fourth.  
• FFXIV's third closed beta phase (received invite).  Indifferent to having missed this, as characters were wiped at the end of beta 3, and supposedly characters will NOT be wiped at the end of the open beta/phase 4.  Not sure how they're going to have both a non-reset open beta and a pre-purchase headstart program, guess we'll know in a month or so. 
• Growing pains in Marvel Heroes.  The game's launch was a bit of a mess.  The patcher kept re-downloading the entire game client to the point where technical support was recommending that you install the game through Steam.  There were a variety of bugs and quality of life issues associated with quest rewards.  Perhaps most interesting, the studio has announced plans to move away from the completely random drop system for earning heroes in game and instead use a token unlock system.  Given that playing real characters from the IP is a central selling point of the title, I don't know if it's more puzzling that they refused to give ground on this point for so long, or that they reversed so suddenly.  Either way, the game looks like it's in much better shape than it was a month ago.  
• Other things I'm not tracking so closely include Rift's business model shift (came down just before I left, haven't really heard much discussion since) and TSW quietly putting out DLC at a decent clip after the game's relaunch and the relocation of its studios.  

It could have been worse, seems to have been a relatively quiet chunk of summer.  I also learned today that WoW's patch 5.3 world event is apparently going away in the next patch, but I'm hoping there's still time to catch that.  What else has been going on in game this summer? 

Character Transfer Diservice

I picked a server a bit over a year ago, after consulting with three bloggers who I knew were playing the game.  All recommended the same server and even the same bloggers' guild.  The third party stats sites guesstimated that the server was the number three RP server in the region.  Unfortunately, the guild didn't really work out - all the members seem to have gone off to other games, and I haven't even been able to find people to get guild invites for my new alts, leaving me on a server where I don't know anyone.  I can name at least three other servers where I would rather be playing today, but for the not-so-minor issue of all the time and even money I have invested on the server with my six current characters.

If you really follow my games and guilds closely, you might have guessed that the unnamed game experience described above is in SWTOR.  Most of you were probably scratching your heads, because a highly similar scenario exists in many MMO's. 

SWTOR's transfers
After promising for the better part of a year that character transfers were finally coming - a year which saw 90% of the game's servers closed, including the seemingly healthy one I picked several months post launch - Bioware has announced its paid character transfer service.  Transfers will cost $14-18 per character (depending on how you purchase your cartel coins), and it looks to me like they will NOT be available for resale in the in-game auction house. 

Bear in mind that this is a game that specifically promoted making all of your alts on the same server though the game's legacy system.  My six characters cover all the crewskill professions and each has probably a million credits worth of in-game currency investment in terms of character-specific legacy perks, collection items, companion affection purchased with gifts, etc.  More importantly, these characters share a large array of server specific legacy unlocks, a few of which I even purchased in the cash shop using my subscriber point stipends. 

Despite all of these reasons why I opted to make this many characters in the first place and all the claims that the transfer service would be "legacy friendly", there is no discount for transferring multiple characters off of the same server.  I would either need to leave behind characters - and not get any credit for their future efforts towards my legacy on the new server - or else be prepared to fork over $80.  Even if I did move to a server that's better today (the Harbinger server, home to the Ootinicast crew, would otherwise be a top contender), I'd have no guarantees that I won't be in the same boat in a few months if the new server also goes belly up.

An industry-wide standard
In a related story, Blizzard is running a one-week only sale on its paid transfer services - Azuriel points out that even at 50% off these prices are still higher than the SWTOR prices.  At the time Blizzard announced the service, the stated justification for such high prices was to recoup the development costs for the transfer feature and to deter frequent use of the service to enable antisocial behavior.  Apparently both of these arguments can be dispensed with if it encourages more transfer fees.   Tera also apparently had a window for open transfers that is coming to an end, with a new fee starting next week.

I get that locking players into static servers worked great for the industry in 2004, in part because that's what the technology of the era could support.  It's not 2004 anymore, and I don't think it's reasonable to punish customers for choosing "wrong" months or years ago by charging them to play with their friends in a genre that's struggling to find ways to keep customers engaged in the product.  It's not good for my enjoyment of the game as a customer, and therefore it's also not good for Bioware's revenue when my poor experience leads to less money spent on their product. 

It doesn't have to be this way.  Many modern games offer single-shard or cross realm functions in one way or another (Cryptic games, GW2), and we also have the example of Rift, which offers free transfers between its more traditional servers. Unfortunately, this feedback falls on deaf ears when developers can rake in nearly six months' worth of sub fees by selling a single customer in my position on paying to solve a problem that was not the customer's fault. 

January Round-up and February Outlook

With the first month of the year mostly out of the way, what have I been up to?  I previously tracked this sort of thing on Twitter, but it was somewhat cumbersome to review my notes that way, so I figured I'd try a post format instead.

The two biggest shares of my gaming time in January went to the two great financial disappointments of 2012 - SWTOR and TSW.  In TOR I've been leveling my Agent Operative alt with the benefit of numerous unlocks but without the benefits of the subscription - my initial impression is that the penalties to exp as a non-subscriber are steep and potentially problematic, but I'd really like to get to the upper-mid levels before I draw too much of a conclusion on that front.  In TSW, I've cleared out Kingsmouth and Savage Coast and moved on to the Blue Mountains, where I'm finding my build perhaps too effective - I'm almost looking forward to being forced to change to deal with other types of foes down the road. 

I also put some time into pet battles in WoW, which I considered oddly a prerequisite for entering the new expansion because I did not want to go to Pandaria and constantly walk past pets that I could not yet tame.  Actually journeying forth into the new content was something I set aside for when I could clear out some time to dedicate to the task, and that time is tentatively coming up next month.  Blizzard is not confirming or denying whether there are new five-mans in the future patch 5.3, which makes it sound like many of the current endgame activities could cease to be meaningful if I wait too much longer. 

Other things on my calendar for next month include Star Trek Online, which will launch a new featured episode that awards a special anniversary starship reward, and possible Dungeons and Dragons Online.  I've been ducking into DDO from time to time for an evening when I want a change of pace, and the next game update is scheduled to overhaul/improve loot in some of the mid-level content that is next on my list of things to do.  As always, this potentially leaves everything else I could be working on - including my games of choice from this month - sitting on the sidelines, but such is the era we live in.

What are you all looking forward to specifically in the month of February? 

Belated Predictions For 2013

Last year's predictions did not go so well.  I predicted that it would not be a great year for new subscription MMO's, but I also thought that SWTOR would skate by as a high churn subscription title, and that WoW could not afford to leave Cataclysm sitting on the shelf beyond early summer.  Even so, I've found that I have a fair number of predictions either scattered through my blog and other peoples' comment sections, so I figure there's no harm in collecting all of my comic inaccuracy in a single spot.

Anyway, here are my belated predictions - I don't know if this makes my job easier because I have a month of additional information (see first item, below) or harder because there is less time left for the predictions to come true.  In any case, if I have predicted bad things for your favorite MMO this year, rest assured that my lack of accuracy well have guaranteed your game's smashing success.  :)

Rift Goes Free To Play in 2013
First up, a minor cheat by exploiting information that only became available in late January.  Two days ago, I would have said that Executive Producers Scott Hartsman's position against turning the game free to play would be enough to keep it from happening in 2013 - even if Trion's views eventually changed, failing to work ahead on the conversion would keep it from launching this year.

Then came news that Hartsman has departed from Trion Studios.  In the last week, we also learned that Trion's MMOFPS Defiance plans to launch with a buy-to-play model featuring a $60 box and no recurring subscriptions.  We already knew that the online strategy game End of Nations - assuming it survives being in-sourced into Trion proper - was going to be Free to Play.  Going back to last year, Rift already has an in-game store, and then there were the layoffs at Trion and the former End of Nations developers.

Moving this particular game to free-to-play is debatable, but Trion has investors to answer to.  As long as things are going really well, Trion has the ammo it needs to justify why they are continuing to buck the overwhelming industry trend.  If things have started to go downhill - and the layoffs suggest that they have - then we can expect Rift to lose its subscription in 2013.

LOTRO: Helm's Deep Or Bust
As I've previous written, I think LOTRO is under a lot of pressure to increase revenue THIS year.  Turbine's 2008 press release indicated that they have the license through 2014, with options to extend the term out to 2017.  We don't know whether the terms of the option years are favorable, and presumably the studio's new owners at Warner Brothers are capable of re-negotiating a reasonable deal if this is worth their time. 

That makes 2013 the year in which Turbine has to prove the game's worth.  LOTRO will not fold in 2013, but if things go badly it could very well close when the license issue comes due in 2014.  To this end, I expect the following:

• Unlike last year's Great River update or the F2P relaunch's Enedwaith region, we will NOT see a new region added at the current level cap.  The price point on these new optional areas has generally been low, and that makes it a questionable investment that would be better saved for the next expansion.
• Speaking of which, I expect the new expansion to require a minimum purchase of $50, up from $40 last year and $30 the year before.  As with last year, Turbine will offer plenty of opportunity to pay full price early and then discount the thing by 50% for an end-of-year sale once the early adopters have paid up.
• The expansion will bump the level cap to 95.  LOTRO has lots of level-scaling content in past expansions that could be used to level to the new cap and skip buying the new content.  Making the cap higher makes that option less desirable because you would have more levels to grind out.
• The actual battle of Helm's Deep - which, as in recent years, may get delayed to a patch after the expansion launch - will be presented from multiple different perspectives so that solo, group, raid, and monster players can all participate in this iconic bit of the lore.  

I probably won't be bored enough to count come 2014, but we're almost certainly not done with Turbine pushing something aggressive and unpopular into the cash shop and then gauging whether to backpedal based on the customer feedback.  It seems like we can expect this sort of thing roughly every other month.

Asheron's Call 3 Announced
It's possible that Turbine dusted off AC2 just as a lark of a weekend project.  Then again, we know that they've been working on a mystery title for a while, and it would make a lot of sense for them to work in their own IP so that they are not at the mercy of some rightsholder.

Blizzard Updates
This is a Blizzcon year, which means we will probably get some announcements in addition to the oft-delayed Starcraft II expansion.  My guesses:

• WoW's next expansion announced, but will not be ready for beta in 2013.  After years of promising to try and get expansions out in a more timely fashion, Blizzard finally concedes that it's going to be 20+ months like the previous attempts. 
• Blizzard announces a console based non-subscription spinoff of one of its existing IP's.  A recent rumor suggested that this was the real nature of Titan, the long rumored online followup to WoW, but that was supposed to be an original IP.  We know they've been flirting with consoles for years now, and I'm guessing that this is a separate effort.  It will be interesting to see whether it runs on current generation console hardware, as Blizzard's development cycle is so long that next generation consoles will probably arrive before this game does.
• Titan will finally be announced, but will not be playable or in any way suggesting it will debut in 2014. Blizzard has had time to ponder how DIII went for them and see the way the wind is blowing, so this game will NOT have a subscription.  It will instead be designed from the ground up with something - content, characters, etc - that people can purchase to keep the revenue flowing.

Funcom goes out of business in 2013, probably taking its titles to the grave
I'm not going to belabor my analysis from last week - this studio was on shaky footing before TSW disappointed, and I'm not convinced that layoffs alone can balance the books, especially if they hurt the ability to deliver future updates.  I'm not sure what EA does on a day to day basis as the publisher for TSW - if they own the servers, billing system, etc, that would be a major impediment to any attempt to sell the title off. 

New Subscription MMO's
If an MMO studio asked me for advice, I'd say that attempting to launch a new MMO with a box price and a monthly fee is really poorly advised.  However, I don't think the industry is quite ready to let this approach die just yet.  Looking at two major upcoming releases that have yet to announce business models:

• Wildstar: Will definitely have a box price at launch.  I predict it will not charge a subscription by the end of 2013 - either they'll be smart and not try or they'll be forced to reconsider between launch and the end of the year.
• Elder Scrolls Online: With all the hype they're already firing up for this game's beta, this game shows all the signs of having a large budget, and they are declining to state their planned business model.  It's possible that they are going to go buy-to-play with frequent paid DLC and are saving this piece of news to build anticipation for the inevitable pre-purchase campaign. Still, GW2 aside, I will believe that a big budget MMO like this one is willing to voluntarily surrender the monthly fee when I see it.
  
  So I predict Elder Scrolls WILL launch with a monthly fee.  They will probably still have it through at least the end of 2013, but that may have more to do with launching late in the year than with the game's success.  (I do predict they will launch this year - even Blizzard doesn't start its beta process an entire year in advance of release.)   

Kickstarter Chaos
After proudly proclaiming 2012 the year of the Kickstarter-funded game - and cheerfully pocketing 5% of the proceeds with no obligation to help ensure that backers get what was promised - Kickstarter is due for a reckoning.  At least one video game product that received $1 million in backing will go bankrupt before delivering the promised game in 2013.

Kickstarter will make some token changes in response to the backlash, but will remain constrained by their business model - they make money when projects are successfully funded, not when they force creators to post information that dissuades people from backing risky and/or poorly thought out efforts.   Expect some minimal token effort before returning to business as usual, but the incident will cost the site some of its hip status within the blogosphere. 

No big winner, but perhaps balance?
Overall, I don't see a single MMO emerging as the big winner in 2013, the way that Guild Wars 2 arguably won the half of 2012 after its release.  When you look at Syp's list of new MMO's to watch in 2013, half either aren't traditional MMO's or else are unlikely to release in 2013.  As a result, we're likely to get at least 8-9 months into 2013 without a major event launch with the traditional cycle of hype - and all too often disappointment.  (We could go the entire year if I'm wrong and Elder Scrolls slips into 2014.)  Even the slate of major expansions is going to be relatively quiet since many of the big players released something in late 2012.   

This is a real opportunity for MMO's that are currently sitting in the middle of the pack.  Players will still wander from game to game, and now is the time where an existing product, with most of the rough edges from launch already smoothed out, can potentially make a big impression.  Even if all of the things I've suggested come to pass, 2013 could be a good year on the balance if we come out the other side with a solid pool of games that are quietly getting the job done.

Rethinking SWTOR, TSW Relaunches

I've been spending a fair chunk of my time on two of the more prominent MMO's that underperformed in 2012 - SWTOR and TSW - of late.  Both had to redo their business models within the first year of launch, and both revisions left me in some ways scratching my head.

Given more time, experience in the games after their relaunches, and the limited detail the respective games have released, I have new theories about both games... neither of which would be good news for me as a customer of both products.  I get the impression that SWTOR is heavily dependent on its cosmetic item gambling packs and that TSW appears to be running a fire sale to keep the lights on for a few more months before going under.

SWTOR - Funded by Gambling For Items?
As someone who prefers to pay for MMO's on a non-subscription basis, I've had a hard time wrapping my head around SWTOR's new approach.  Almost everything I would have been willing to pay for was either given away for free or else has not been offered for non-subscribers to purchase at all.  I get the desire to sell subscriptions, but how do you make more money by expanding the audience if you're seemingly so opposed to actually making money from the new non-subscription players?

I'm now increasingly thinking that the goal of Free to Play had remarkably little to do with expanding the player base.  Rather, it appears to have been about creating a justification for an aggressive cash shop aimed at the previous subscribers, with gambling for items as its centerpiece.

Bioware reps are currently on an offensive to defend the Cartel packs, telling both the TORWars fansite and the game's official forums that revenue from the packs is funding the rest of development.  They put their money where their mouths are, releasing a second random cartel pack with different random items within around a month after the F2P relaunch, with two more packs already finished and more in the pipeline.

We don't have the real numbers, but the claim makes some sense.  One of the last pieces of content before the incident at Darth Hater was a poll answered by 2,500 readers of the site - overwhelmingly subscribers - said that Cartel Packs and cosmetic armor were the two most popular purchases.  Players who read a third party news site are inherently going to be the most devoted players and not necessarily representative of the average player, but the numbers are intriguing.  From the survey, 24% claimed to have spent over $50 in real money on Cartel Coins, and 12% claimed to have bought 20+ Cartel Packs (which very likely cost over $50).

This is not a random sample, but it does show that there are at least hundreds of players willing to pay $50+ in a single month on top of their subscriptions, and half of this particular sample was spending that money on Cartel Packs.  There's certainly money to be made from the cosmetic stuff - which is priced aggressively - but the random packs have to be a bigger bang for Bioware's buck when it comes to revenue per item sold.  This is a model that would never be tolerated in a subscription game cash store, but F2P may be just the excuse Bioware needed to get both their subscription fees and the most aggressive monetization normally reserved for non-subscription titles.

(Aside: Curse has posted its side of the Darth Hater saga, stating that they took over the site with the new year, and that the entire founding staff departed voluntarily without saying goodbye.)

The Secret Fire Sale?
In the month since removing the TSW's subscription fee, Funcom has announced that they sold 70,000 copies of the game, representing a 30% increase.  They then held more layoffs.  When you look at the numbers in context, you can see why they celebrated the success in this fashion.

According to numbers Unsubject dug up, Funcom was counting on 280,000 longterm sustained subscribers.  Instead, they did not even sell that many boxes - if 70K was 30% of sales as of mid-December then their total sales base at the time was roughly 230K and their current total sits somewhere around 300K.  This would indicate only marginal progress since the 200K copies sold number Unsub found at the end of the launch quarter, when he noted that the financials said the studio had not been profitable since 2010.

The stated business model for TSW right now is that some people are going to continue with the optional subscription, and the rest will pay $5-10 for DLC content as it is released.  This model does not make any sense.  Out of that 300K copies sold:

• Some have left for good, subscription or not.  
• Another large portion - 70K new players and probably a fair number of less dedicated existing customers - are bumming around Kingsmouth and are months away from ever spending money on endgame DLC content.  
• Amongst the previous subscribers, some folks will not care about the optional perks on the now-optional subscription and will drop down to paying a smaller amount for DLC only when it is released instead of paying a subscription every single month.
• There is also the brave handful who opted for lifetime subscriptions - which Funcom appreciated at the time, but who aren't worth that much more income going forward.
• The only new revenue here are new players who pay for stuff and previous subscribers who continue to subscribe but also choose to pay extra for DLC, rather than using the point stipend included in their subscriptions.

With all of the layoffs, it is unclear how this studio is going to manage frequent content updates that people are willing to pay for - a crucial point because now they only get paid when they release new content.  Even assuming that they manage it, I'm just not seeing a source for an increase in sustained revenue.  This game already had a cash shop, and now may stand to make less money from its content depending on what current subscribers do when their time runs out.

Given the unfortunate financials, one conclusion jumps out from this data.  Funcom just sold 70,000 of what are effectively $30 lifetime subscriptions to the launch game because they need the money right now to keep the studio open.  If I'm right, they're mortgaging their future income because otherwise they have no future.

To be clear, I'm not writing this because I hate the game or want it to fail.  I'm actually enjoying myself.  And I'm putting my time where my analysis is by getting as much as I can out of the game right now, because I'm unfortunately not optimistic that this product will be around to play if I wait six months.

Power Escalation In TSW

I'm currently about halfway through the Savage Coast zone in TSW, and I've had a bit more time to play around with the game's skill system.  One of the things that I find very interesting is how the developers try to expand your skill options as you gain more ability points without blowing the power curve out of the water. 

A key part of this plan is that higher end abilities tend not to do more damage/healing/etc.  Rather, they offer different and often more advanced secondary effects which might eventually add up to better performance if combined appropriately.  For example, sword-based finishers: 

• Balanced Blade, the basic AOE attack that everyone gets to start with, does AOE damage around the player and then gives back some sword resources if any targets were impaired (a debuff that happens less frequently because it also blocks actions by the victim)
• Five Petal Lotus, a mid-range ability does the same damage, but can center the attack anywhere the target happens to be, rather than just on the player
• Clearing the Path (CTS), a few steps further down the tree, still does the same damage but also always counts as an armor-penetrating hit against targets that are afflicted with damage over time

CTS is more powerful in that you can combine it with one set of abilities that make all your enemies afflicted, and then use your passive skill slots to load up on benefits that trigger when you penetrate armor.  All the secondary effects do a lot for your survivability, and even some additional damage.  All of this is incidental to doing the same damage as your base entry level skill.

No Respecs - good or bad?
One other point that seems to annoy some players is the lack of a respec option.  There is no limit on how many ability points you can get (well, until you run out of abilities to buy), and there is no increase in the amount of exp required to get ability points.  (The high end abilities do cost more ability points, but higher difficulty content awards more exp.)  As a result, the claim is that there is no need to refund spent points, because you will always have that the abilities you unlocked available as future options (including passive abilities, some of which are beneficial even if you do not use the weapon you got them from). 

I was a player who would completely switch soul builds in Rift every few levels just to see what I could do with more soul points.  As such, this system does not bother me much - I'm more than halfway through unlocking all the basic "inner wheel" abilities for all of the weapons (even the ones I'm not using often), changing out my weapons as I go (I've stuck to blade and experimented with pistols, fist, blood, and now rifles).  Because of the relatively flat power curve, I don't think I'm suffering too badly from this - someone who power-burned straight to an optimal cookie cutter build may be objectively more powerful, and I do occasionally hit a wall (usually prompting a build swap) but in general I'm not having problems.

That said, I can also see how someone who picked a single pairing early and did not spend any points outside those two choices could end up frustrated at mid levels with no way to jump ship on a build that is no longer cutting it.  If you just straight up swap into two weapons you have never used before, you'd in principle have to go all the way back to newbie land to start repeating content - though it's probably faster to take a step down in difficulty and bank up enough points using your existing gear to get started with your new combo.  Then again, if you really dislike your current build that could get frustrating, especially if you are similarly disappointed with your second attempt.

Overall, I don't think it's a bad system because it offers an incentive - but not a requirement - to try different things (you can always buy abilities for weapons you never intend to use if you need a specific passive ability).  Increased options are a fun reward that is probably worth the price to me personally... but then I guess I like the system to begin with.  

Early Impressions of TSW Post-Buy-To-Play

With its business model out of the way, I've given the Secret World another look.  The game still has some rough edges - in particular a relatively steep learning curve.  Given a bit more time (and a lot more out-of-game research), I'm starting to see the game's strengths - a story experience and the skill-collection minigame that serves as the class system.  I'm also wondering that these strengths may not be well suited for longevity. 

Learning Curve
My initial impressions of TSW pre-launch were not overly positive.  Part of the issue is documentation.  The game offers embedded YouTube video tutorials, but these often feel more promotional than instructional.  Some of the challenges are due to ways in which TSW does things differently from other MMO's.  A few examples:

Nicholas "Brevane" Brevane - named for a continent in the Rift expansion I have yet to play, and Templar resident of the Arcadia (RP) server

• The text at character creation informs you that your first and last names are cosmetic and that your nickname is your unique character identifier.  I spent a while beating my head against the system trying to generate nicknames that sounded like actual names and were not taken, only to find that most players in-game seem to be using nicknames that sound more like social media handles. 
• Pressing the X button toggles a "sprint" ability that doubles as your mount-equivalent.  There was a brief tooltip on this, but it did little to explain how it worked.  It does not seem to be necessary to hold the button down to continue running - not sure how I got the idea that this was the case, but this happened - but the function does break when you enter combat.
• It's possible that I did not click on the correct Youtube link, but currently 100% of my understanding of the game's stat and gear systems comes from having read out of game guides.  Gear is statted for tanking, damage, or healing, but some characters (especially solo) will want to take a more hybrid approach to their gear.  On a related note, there was a tutorial on how to attach glyphs to gear, but I did not remember how to do this by the time I found non-tutorial gear I wanted to glyph.  
• There is a buyback function for accidentally vendoring items, but I had to google to find out where it is hidden.  (Answer: a nondescript button on the bottom of the "sell" panel of the vendor UI.)  

I'm starting to learn the ropes - again, overwhelmingly through out-of-game reading - but the game certainly does not do new players many favors.  

The Story and World
Through a combination of art, sound, and writing, TSW presents a very distinctive world experience.  You may or may not like their specific vision - in particular, I did not find the NPC's for two of the game's three factions in any way people that I wanted to be working for over any extended periods of time - but I definitely tip my hat to them for making the environment and feel of the game stand out. 

That said, one quirk to the game is that most (all?) missions are repeatable.  The quests are also non-linear, in that there are not enforced levels, or a specific order in which they must be completed.  There are definite advantages to this approach, as it leaves the door open for players to replay content (either alone or to help friends), especially if they find they need more character advancement before they can forge onwards.  The catch is that when you do quests in the "wrong" order and/or repeat too many quests just because they are conveniently located, you might try to pick up a piece of the story only to find that it is no longer challenging or rewarding due to your character's progression.

Collecting Skills

The skill system is another area with a major learning curve.  The tutorial gives you a weapon with some basic skills and enough skill points to purchase a few more skills.  This is a trap.  Instead of advancing down the offered vertical path, you are supposed to immediately pick up a second weapon.  Almost all DPS weapons generate free resources for both of your two skillsets, so you are really at a disadvantage in terms of character power and versatility if you fail to branch out. 

This hurdle aside, the system is a fun skill collection minigame.  I started with a sword - a somewhat tank-oriented weapon - and a pair of pistols.  An early passive ability on one of the pistol trees turns unused pistol resources on mobs you kill into free passive healing.  I'm experimenting with several other combinations, but at least I appear to have a better understanding of what you're aspiring towards in character builds.

As with other parts of the game, though,. one a caveat for the future: the problem with progression systems which allow you to pick which skill to get next is that you will (hopefully) get the skills you want first.  Once you have something that works, it's always fun to tinker, but there is a risk that future upgrades will be less rewarding if you don't really need them.

Outlook
Overall, I certainly don't regret my purchase - all $15 of it.  Thus far the game has been a fun and unique experience.  That said, I can also see how longevity might be limited as players complete their main storylines and skill decks.  This is by no means a unique challenge for TSW, but it might help explain part of the game's limited success under the old subscription model.