All of those "play for free" games you see advertised use the GPotato model. You get minimal functionality for free, but if you want damn near anything to compete with other people you have to pay for it with real money.
I'm not sure how they could do that to CoX however. If they made any of the existing game's enhancement methods pay-only, it would cost them users. So they must be either planning something else down the pipe, or maybe its more generic.
[Edit]: Just had a look at an announcement on IGN, and it looks like the NCCoin model does follow the Gold Potato model very closely. Basically they nickel and dime clients instead of monthly user fees. To use the "play for free" model as an example, you'd buy Gold Potatoes (GP) for money. To use NCSoft's stated values, 100GP would be $1.00. Then when you went into the "special items" store in-game, you could only buy items you found in there with GP.
The catch is that as time goes on, after a very early ramp-up with generic items in the "regular store", everything costs GP. So although you can play online for free, you wind up paying vast amounts of money over time ramping your character up with better equipment.
I still don't see how they could apply that to CoX though. The existing model doesn't allow for it. They'd have to introduce some new level of market, that offers some new advantage that people would want. Frankly, the optional character packs work well for that purpose, so I don't see why they'd change the business model. But who knows? I"m still just guessing here.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
I'm not sure how they could do that to CoX however. If they made any of the existing game's enhancement methods pay-only, it would cost them users. So they must be either planning something else down the pipe, or maybe its more generic.
[Edit]: Just had a look at an announcement on IGN, and it looks like the NCCoin model does follow the Gold Potato model very closely. Basically they nickel and dime clients instead of monthly user fees. To use the "play for free" model as an example, you'd buy Gold Potatoes (GP) for money. To use NCSoft's stated values, 100GP would be $1.00. Then when you went into the "special items" store in-game, you could only buy items you found in there with GP.
The catch is that as time goes on, after a very early ramp-up with generic items in the "regular store", everything costs GP. So although you can play online for free, you wind up paying vast amounts of money over time ramping your character up with better equipment.
I still don't see how they could apply that to CoX though. The existing model doesn't allow for it. They'd have to introduce some new level of market, that offers some new advantage that people would want. Frankly, the optional character packs work well for that purpose, so I don't see why they'd change the business model. But who knows? I"m still just guessing here.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.