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Kingisle Suggestion F2P Dragonspyre

AuthorMessage
Survivor
Jun 29, 2009
7
Hi Kingsisle, this is just another suggestion to brainstorm about

I believe on both the player spectrum, and on a business spectrum, that opening up all worlds from Wizard City - Dragonspyre being made Free to Play is a great move.

This game is been a great game for a long time, and I think we can all agree that these worlds are a bit outdated. As we know with the recent revamp to Wizard City, and occurring revamp to Krokotopia.
I believe this change would in the long run be a great business move, by attracting the newer audience, as I've heard multiple friends who have started this game long ago, only to finish Wizard City, and give up before Krokotopia, after only a few weeks in. This would helm them learn more about the game and become more intrigued to continue to play the game longer. After all, I think an important tool in running a successful business is retaining an audience.
On the player spectrum, it is also a plus side, for the same obvious reason as stated before, getting a chance to play more of the game, and etc.
There is also still so much more content made in the game after Dragonspyre over the years, so it's still a small portion of the game that newer players are being able to see.

Just some food for though, or brainstorming ideas throwing this out there, I think it would be a great move for everyone.

Thank you for reading, Sincerely

Champion
Feb 06, 2010
418
JustValiant on May 4, 2020 wrote:
Hi Kingsisle, this is just another suggestion to brainstorm about

I believe on both the player spectrum, and on a business spectrum, that opening up all worlds from Wizard City - Dragonspyre being made Free to Play is a great move.

This game is been a great game for a long time, and I think we can all agree that these worlds are a bit outdated. As we know with the recent revamp to Wizard City, and occurring revamp to Krokotopia.
I believe this change would in the long run be a great business move, by attracting the newer audience, as I've heard multiple friends who have started this game long ago, only to finish Wizard City, and give up before Krokotopia, after only a few weeks in. This would helm them learn more about the game and become more intrigued to continue to play the game longer. After all, I think an important tool in running a successful business is retaining an audience.
On the player spectrum, it is also a plus side, for the same obvious reason as stated before, getting a chance to play more of the game, and etc.
There is also still so much more content made in the game after Dragonspyre over the years, so it's still a small portion of the game that newer players are being able to see.

Just some food for though, or brainstorming ideas throwing this out there, I think it would be a great move for everyone.

Thank you for reading, Sincerely
I believe this would not be such a good move, in terms of business. MMORP games need money to survive. Changing the worth of the first arc to nothing would be really bad.

Perhaps lowering the crown prices could be an option, since they are older areas - but if they all get revamped then there is more value there.

That would be like saying make all video games that came out in 2008 and later free! While that would be awesome, that’s highly unlikely. But for sure those retro games should not be the debut price of $60+

I think the farthest they should ever consider is wizard city, but anything beyond that is pushing it to the extreme limit. The game would loose a lot of worth.


Survivor
Sep 01, 2008
25
Blaze03554 on May 5, 2020 wrote:
I believe this would not be such a good move, in terms of business. MMORP games need money to survive. Changing the worth of the first arc to nothing would be really bad.

Perhaps lowering the crown prices could be an option, since they are older areas - but if they all get revamped then there is more value there.

That would be like saying make all video games that came out in 2008 and later free! While that would be awesome, that’s highly unlikely. But for sure those retro games should not be the debut price of $60+

I think the farthest they should ever consider is wizard city, but anything beyond that is pushing it to the extreme limit. The game would loose a lot of worth.

W101 has expanded so much since it's it came online many years ago, that expanding the F2P to all of Wizard City would be a welcome addition. Perhaps even a couple of tasks in Kroktopia to give new players a glimpse of what is beyond wouldn't be too much to ask for either

Delver
Jun 14, 2010
214
Blaze03554 on May 5, 2020 wrote:
I believe this would not be such a good move, in terms of business. MMORP games need money to survive. Changing the worth of the first arc to nothing would be really bad.

Perhaps lowering the crown prices could be an option, since they are older areas - but if they all get revamped then there is more value there.

That would be like saying make all video games that came out in 2008 and later free! While that would be awesome, that’s highly unlikely. But for sure those retro games should not be the debut price of $60+

I think the farthest they should ever consider is wizard city, but anything beyond that is pushing it to the extreme limit. The game would loose a lot of worth.

I agree with Blaze, devaluing the entire first arc would be a bad move from a business perspective. I do, however, advocate for an entirely free-to-play wizard city. As the game is right now I do not wholly agree with Wizard101 being advertised as a true "Free-to-Play" game, it's free to play for about 2 hours and by then you've seen everything you could hope to see.

I would say lifting the paywalls from Wizard City would encourage more people to stick around longer. As it stands, new players only get to see Triton Avenue, Golem Court, and Unicorn Way. Thus they're not as emotionally invested in the plot of the game and therefore a lot of people stop playing as shortly after they hit the first paywall.

With the revamp of Wizard City's story, and with new changes arriving in-game. I think now is the best time for KI to truly and fully, evaluate the idea of making Wizard City completely free to play. Especially with the quarantine going on there are more players online than ever before.

If they revamp the story of Wizard City through the encounter with Lord Nightshade and make Wizard City free-to-play those free-to-play players are going to be infinitely more invested in exploring more of the Spiral. I honestly believe putting a massive cliff hanger after the Lord Nightshade encounter to lead into the exploration of Krokotopia, would encourage more players to put some money into the game.

Likewise, I agree, given the first arc is so old, the older areas in the game shouldn't be so expensive to get access. I also think KI should consider looking at a world by world paywall system verses a zone by zone paywall system for crowns players. Displaying a reasonable lump sum price for complete access to an entire world might be more enticing than having your gameplay interrupted every hour by another paywall.

For as much as I would love to see Wizard101 take a different marketing approach, there's one massive problem people neglect to see. Wizard101's gameplay is built around the linear progression model, no matter what you do when you create a new character they're sucked into the same progression sequence as every other player in the game, which makes the paywall marketing strategy not only extremely easy to implement but also very effective, and thus very successful. So there's no easy way for KI to change it's marketing strategy without recoding and redesigning the entire game from the ground up.

I feel there's a distinct "us against them" separation between developers and the community, and much of the negativity comes from the community feeling like its voice isn't being heard enough. Only in the past few years have the developers started to listen more, PvP is finally getting a step by step overhaul, mini-game mastery is now a thing, the Hatchmaker kiosk is now a thing, the team up button is now a thing, majorly changing your character's appearance is now a thing, just recently KI released a patch for the new UI system, even the once-banned subject of Guilds coming to Wizard101 has been lifted. They are listening to us, it's just the changes the community is asking for aren't exactly easy and take time to implement.