I'll list answered questions here - but mostly the interesting ones. Repeat questions and filler questions will be skipped for now. (some questions are paraphrased)
Q: What does a "producer" do in video game development? Knox: "We make sure that everyone has what they need to get stuff done and do our best to hit the dates that we schedule out."
Q: F2P? Knox: "Tough one to start out? The game started development in 2007 when subscription based games were going strong. If we had to go back and do it over again I think we would have tried to find a way to be more 'free to play' than subscription. One baby step we have taken is opening up 7 days trials to get people to try TERA out without an upfront cost.
The complete switch from sub to F2P is something we have been looking at for a while but it takes a good amount of development time to make this change and right now we are focused on getting fun content out."Follow up/clarification by Brian Knox: ""We have a free trial right now but no current plans for free to play."
Q: 700,000 subs accurate? Knox: "We are not near 700,000 that number was inaccurate. Maybe one day. :)"
Q: ETA on Chronoscrolls? Knox: "You will find out more on Chronoscrolls on Monday!
The chance of bad guy abuse is huge with Chronoscrolls so we needed some security measures in place."
Q: What do you have in store for the June/July Update for Tera? Knox: "We are adding the GvG challenge to the political system before the next election cycle and plan on adding warriors as a tank in the IM as well."
Q: crafting slows and crafting quests were cut - plans? Knox: "The quests helped but they were also really lame. I believe our next patch helps crafting skill up a bit quicker to make up for the lack of quests."
Q: When will time cards be readily available in brick and mortar stores? Knox: "I know it isn't the answer you want, but it is being worked on and has become a hotter topic this past week around the office."
Q: Are Elin and Popori getting Separate Racials? Or even Battle Racials? Knox: "Not at this time but we plan on keeping TERA around for a while so expanding on our racials may happen eventually."
Q: Any word on a token shop for Balder’s and Fane in the future? ...
Any word on bringing back the boxes and eggs? Putting the boxes in a shop vendor rather than the loot tables would be a nice way to work them back into the game. Knox: "We have kicked around the token idea but no plans for it right now.
No boxes or eggs quite yet, but we have an event coming up that should put some of the rare crystals back in the world which is the biggest missing piece from removing those two items."
Q: Are there any plans to fix the Archers? Are these issues known and if so when can we expect a fix? Knox: "Archers need some love we are looking at it. I will say that class balance will be ongoing forever and each class is going to have it's ups and downs."
Q: Windows 8 support when? Knox: "I just saw an email about a new Win 8 build that went to testing. Not sure if its just for testing or release but its on our radar."
Q: I'm really enjoying the game and think of it as "the best game no one's playing." All throughout the months before lunch, I tried to create a buzz amongst my friends but none of them had heard of it prior to me telling them directly. The game itself is great, but where was the marketing?! All the E3 accolades are great for those of us who follow such things closely, but there was virtually no buzz among the gaming stores, I didn't see much (any?) in the way of magazine advertising. I love the game and want it to succeed, what plans do you have to increase the playerbase? Knox: "We have spent a good amount on marketing, done all the big shows hit all the big sites in terms of hype rankings and even have a pretty decent Metacritic rating.
But the reality is we face an uphill battle against crappy Korean MMO predecessors and huge competition with our release being near Diablo. We are a small company of around 70 people at En Masse compared to thousands at other publishers. We are very proud of our efforts so far and are going to continue pushing to get gamers to try out TERA.
Our goal right now is trial, you see it on our homepage where we offer two types: instant streaming through Gaikai and the traditional 7 day. We hope to keep improving the game and our current fans so they help spread the good word."
Q: Are you guys (or Bluehole, I suppose) doing anything to address the CPU bottleneck issue caused by the UI overlay? It's been proven that it causes issues with frame rates and game play. Knox: "This keeps coming up in meetings actually. We are looking at it; no timeline for a fix."
Q: Will there be further censoring at all to try and appeal to a larger market? Is altering textures a bannable offense? Any time frame for when transferring from PVP to PVE will be enabled? Knox: "We didn't look at it as censoring but instead making the game more appealing to the west. We wanted to make sure that one screenshot didn't turn off a potential customer.
You aren't supposed to alter the client cause it can mess tons of things up and cause issues with support. I will leave it at that...
No timeline on PvP to PvE at this time."
Q: Are there going to be any changes in the near future to the low drop rates for certain gear in the endgame instances? Also will there be any changes to enchanting and its costs? Knox: "Next patch actually.
Enchanting is always being looked at because it is a huge part of our economy. No big plans on it yet."
Q: How much control do you have over new content creation? Knox: "As much as any producer has control. We have split off development resources just for our market. You see these updates every 2 weeks. We also have the big future team working on updates for all territories (like the QoA2 update) and they sync with us all the time on what we are looking for and to run ideas past us."
Q: Nexus events are lagfests Knox: "Yes the nexus has moved to the top in terms of priorities to look at. Specifically the lag and zerg of the event. It needs to be fixed we just need to do it right."
Q: When will QoA patch 2 be out? Knox: "We hope to have this out later this summer."
Q: Pet category is still listed on brokers - any update on the status of pets? Knox: "That is probably a bug because as Avellar says we don't have pets anymore. That said we are looking at bringing a different type of pets back in the future."
Q: When will battlegrounds/warzones be released? Knox: "Battlegrounds should be out later this summer."
Q: One of the major problems that I experienced when running a guild has been summarized in this post. If you haven't seen that post, it mostly expresses the major concerns that most guild leaders have regarding the lack of permissions, settings, and general frustrations that Guild Masters have. For me personally, it really bothers a lot of members (and leaders) that the only option for guild banking restrictions are, "Take it all" or "no access what so ever." Especially since in World of Warcraft hackers take over accounts and then just wipe the bank clean.
With such an emphasis on guilds in TERA, are we going to be receiving any of these changes soon? Knox: "We have a bunch of guild needs, some taken from your post, on the board to get worked on.
The first one up is assigning a true #2 that can do the same things a guild master can. It should be in the next patch if it passes testing.
Q: The guild quests for normal mobs in the reputation zones Val Tirkai, Val Kaeli and Veritas District have a limit of 10. Other guild quests before this lvl could be repeated an unlimited # of times will this be changed? Also will yellow repeatable give rewards other than xp, at 60 these quests are useless since lucky eggs were taken away. Knox; "You are right they are useless we are in process of de-uselessing them."
Q: First of all awesome job stepping into the line of fire on this one. Love the combat in Tera, but to me it has been a ruff start. Sure the game is running, but it feels very incomplete with very little feedback from the development team other then what we glimpse from the K-Terra patch notes. The interaction with the development team and how they involve the player base really needs an overhaul.
This is the first game in a long time where there is no public development test server. Why is that? Knox: "We are iterating on patches every 2 weeks - adding another environment would just slow us down.
We want to be ok with a couple mistakes along the way and be more focused on continually providing content and bug fixes."
When you say "Late this summer" about QoA2 coming, around what part of what month are you talking about? (ie; second half of august?) Also is there any plan for giving a reward other than exp for cap level repeat quests, so that there is actually a point to doing them for a cap level player? Knox: "We are looking at repeatable max level quests we know they are pointless.
August/September. Sorry for the broad range but it really depends on testing and stability to lock it down much more than that.
In the mean time we did decide to take the warrior queuing as a tank in the instance matcher and add it to the next patch. The warrior won't have the skills from QoA2 but it should be a big lift for queue times and warriors. Don't let us down warriors - show that skill!"
What do you think you can do to get people motivated to reroll? I, for one, choose an archer which is very weak endgame and regretted it A LOT! But just to think about leveling another class from 0 again made me quit (same thing happened to SWTOR). Knox: "We have kicked an idea around about allowing for some sort of 'skip ahead' for max level players. It isn't in development yet but we know it would be quite helpful for those not wanting to go from 1 to 60 again."
Q: There is a chunk of achievements not being obtainable at 60, mainly the repeatable quest ones, is there going to be a fix to this at some point?(I am sure this is super low on the priority list, but still a curiosity) Knox: "Achievements need work it is on our radar.
Yes we are looking at it.
We are increasing the chances of a skill level up. I would wait if you are a min/maxer and don't have anything pressing."
Q: if/whenever battlegrounds are implemented, will you be able to gain EXP from them (for both wins and loses) and will it be enough to conceivably level a character to level cap? Knox: "The first implementation of battlegrounds will be for max level players. We may expand it to lower level tiers later. So there will not be experience gained..."
Q: What are you guy going to do to open up those avenues of communication if anything? Knox: "We are going to start having a weekly post from Minea, our community manager, detailing all the little things coming up over the next couple months. Internally we use a website called trello to track features and game builds so this will be her way of telling you whats coming up next.
We have been too heads down fixing and not communicating so hopefully this helps."
Q: Is anything going to be done about the LFG chat? As it stands even with the 1 minute per post especially during the weekends the entire chat is just filled with nonsense and trolling and people trying to troll trolls people trying to troll people trolling trolls.... Knox: "Both of those issues are being looked at hopefully we can address them in July."
Q: 1) Are you planning anything to make leveling for alt-a-holics any more enticing?
2) Any news on upcoming raids/other endgame activities for more longevity?
3) What is your goal with long-term content patches? In a Western MMO industry with content patches like Rift and WoW, the typical Korean method of delivering new major content at a snail's pace just doesn't work. Even now K-TERA's still only on Queen of Argon, the only new update in over a year's time. Will you be combating this in the long run? Knox: "1) We are looking at ways to make alting faster but outside of that nothing planned quite yet.
2) Our end of summer update will feature our first implementation of raids.
3) Whenever a major territory launches Bluehole has to give it attention and stop the update pace. I think the content will start coming fast and furious with launch behind us."
Q: One thing I think TERA DESPERATELY need is some sort of objective based open world PVP. Like a tower or something to fight over in a province. Perhaps it gives out a buff to guild members who own it that are in the province. Are there any plans to incorporate some sort of open world pvp? Knox: "I think so too. We are looking at this type of system for our long term community focused updates over the next year."
Q: Will there ever be some sort of siege system? Knox: "These are the types of systems we are looking at for the long term community improvements we plan on making over the next year. Great idea."
Q: 1) Do you think Battlegrounds will fully solve the various problems of not enough pvp?
2) Guild Wars 2 is coming out later this summer. Is there anything you can talk to us about about what you guys are going to do to keep a possibly large amount of subscribers from jumping on their F2P model? From my experience during the last Beta event, they had a lot more pvp worked out a lot better than you guys currently do. I like the actual game of Tera so much more, but do you guys believe in the end you can make your PvP will stand the test of time against other strong MMO's?
3) Something that always bugged me...will there ever be a patch that allows you to collide with people when dueling in a city? As a slayer, I lost every duel in a town because I would jump right through whoever I was fighting and it sucked! :( Knox: "1) No, we can always add more and do better. In particular around rewards for OWPVP and GvG, but it will be a step towards a different type of PVP for folks to enjoy.
2) Our combat is quite unique from any other MMO out there. We think TERA is strong enough to maintain a healthy population of players.
3) Interesting point. I will bring it up."
Q: Any plans for adding a character customization option to an already existing character in the game, such as the barber shop that WoW has? Thank you Knox: "I like the idea but no plans right now. We do offer appearance changes on our website."
Q: Will we ever be able to ride Noruks? Knox: "Hah that would be good. I have seen some of the new mount concepts for the next few months - some cool ones in the works."
Q: Is there any chance of you guys making it so that any armor (that your respective class can use) can be used as a template? Knox: "This has been requested a few times. We plan on bringing it up with the dev team to see the scope of making this happen."
Q: Are there any plans to allow people with alts to join a guild without taking up one of the oh so precious slots? Also are there any plans to beef up the guild controls? Knox: "We are investigating account based guild membership as opposed to characters. No promises yet but that is what we are looking into.
Better guild controls are in the works you will see bits and pieces updated over the coming months. First up is allowing more delegation by the guild master to a second in command.
Q: LFG Chat channel. Obviously the players want a channel to troll in. Why not just make a Global channel called "Global". Area will be for the province. LFG would actually be used for LFG. Trade channel for trading. Etc... Knox: "This is on our maybe board. It isn't difficult we just want to make sure we are providing the best experience."
Q: Any thoughts to share on the crystal economy? Is it where you guys would like it? Any talks about allowing players to do something with the perceived useless crystals besides vendoring them? Knox: "Rare crystals are rare.
Seriously though they are and we plan on addressing it."
Q: I remember Aion had their assassin class and i'm curious to if its in the future for Tera to have a new class that can stealth or something equal to that effect. Knox: "I always play a rogue or thief or assassin. I want to see one in TERA too. Maybe in a big update down the road!"
Q: Have you considered making your MMO available on the STEAM platform? Knox: "Yes we are trying, but they know how popular they are and they have a lot more muscle than we do. :("
Q: Possibility of wielding different class weapons? You know like a warrior using a slayers weapon, changing class or something. Knox: "I like the idea of different types of weapons our skins have proven very popular so I don't doubt you will see more of this type of idea."
Q: Is there any serious thought being given to allowing player characters the ability to walk? Yes, I'm a roleplayer. :P Knox: "Animation in TERA is quite difficult due to our combat system relaying so heavily on it.
We are looking at an easy way of doing it but the answer right now is - no time soon :("
Q: Are you planning on doing World Events? Everquest, I do believe, was the first to introduce this concept. I found it very fun and it brought their subscription base up exponentially. I know you guys have... "World Bosses" so to speak, but what about Event Bosses? Like, once a month, bring a rare, once-in-a-lifetime BAM to an area where everybody that gets a hit off of it gains experience and anyone that's still alive when it dies, gains rare loot?
Edit: Is TERA ever going to implement letting the archer shoot from farther distances. It could work where, the farther you are from the creature, the more percentage of missing increases. (X + y)2 = z. X being distance. Y being attack roll, z being chance of hit or miss? I'm sure there's better algorithm. Knox: "I like the idea of rare event bosses but getting them right is hard. No current plans for it though.
We would prefer not to add rolls to combat but maybe increasing the distance for less damage could be an idea for the future."
Q: 1:) FPS METER!? 2:) LATENCY METER!? Knox: "1) Should be in the next patch. 2) Should be in a future patch."
Q: Are there any plans to add proper CrossFire/SLI support to Tera?
Are there any plans to take further advantage of the UE3's capabilites, for example DirectX 10/11, or say running on more than 2 cores? Knox: "We are investigating the issues around crossfire actually.
Nothing planned right now for more than 2 cores but I wouldn't say never."
Q: The current vanarch role shows great promise and potential but seems like more of a chore to please the masses through keeping up simple necessities. Are there any future plans to increase the powers or management of a vanarch such as having a vice-vanarch or using the tax system for more province benefits like zone buffs or different NPCs? Knox: "Yes we want the system to add more benefits to the vanarch and guild they are part of. We have a ton of cool ideas and are working more on prioritizing them based on development time and impact."Related Answer: "We are working on some more ways to visually distinguish vanarchs as a start.
The political system is our base and we plan on building up from what we have. We hope to keep adding to it in the coming months."
Q: Does En Masse regret selling its database to a ZAM for teratome.com? The management of your database is very poor.... Will you ever release the database to fans of the game that want to make an accessible site that actually works.... Knox: "Very trolly but I will still answer the question.
Our database info is available any site that shows an effort at updating and maintaining a good source of TERA information. There is no cost. We provide it to a few different sites right now all the same data."
Q: Are there any plans on making it so you can requeue again with people in your LFD group? Also being able to inspect people from cross servers as well and being able to see their gear. Knox: "I am unaware of plans for re-queue but I will bring it up because it makes sense. If the groove is good than keep going.
Inspecting cross server does have some negatives associated with it but lets put it as a maybe."
Q: Are you planning on turning collision off in raid instances? And what will be the max number of players in a raid? Knox: "I don't know off hand what the final decision was. I know collision has been in careful consideration because of some of the nexus issues.
It does add strategy but can also offer frustration, a fine balance."
Q: What's the next game En Masse is going to bring over to the states? ArcheAge? TERA can't be the only thing on the books if EME is going to stay solvent and not fire half the staff. :L Knox: "We are talking to quite a few developers western and eastern but nothing we can announce yet.
I am personally quite excited for ArcheAge as I know a number of the developers that are working on it."
Q: You have Instance Matching, why not add a BAM matching component to it? Knox: "For BAM's we encourage the use of the LFG tool accessed by hitting Y."
Q: One of the things that has been bothering me is the lack of end game armors that are available as templates. This thread touches on the issue I am having: http://tera-forums.enmasse.com/forums/general-discussion/topics/How-do-I-obtain-this-armor
To steal a post from the thread, "I read weeks ago somewhere that "all items under 58 can be template" in a 'soon' coming patch." Is this being worked on still? When can we expect to see more templates and access to the missing armor models? Knox: "I will have to check on this. I think Minea is talking to the devs about it.
Because we run a different build than Korea not everything comes here that fast nor does everything we do there happen real fast."
Q: I've read that k-tera has implemented a hotfix that allows berserkers to charge their abilities 20 percent faster due to their low dps. Will we ever see this on the NA servers? Knox: "Going to cut and past an answer here but it applies just the same.
I will have to check on this. I think Minea is talking to the devs about it. Because we run a different build than Korea not everything comes here that fast nor does everything we do there happen real fast."
Q: Any plans to make the forums subscriber-only? Knox: "Yes but our focus has been on fixing some of the billing issues we had. We have started taking a tougher stance in the forums in the meantime to help."
Q: Just curious, how do you ultimately plan to carryout this localization of Tera? Do you wish to stay as true as possible to Korea's version or are you not afraid to significantly deviate from it? Knox: "At this point it is more in your hands. We worked with the developers to create what we felt would be successful in this market as a starting point for TERA. Now the goal is to listen to you guys and keep iterating on it bit by bit. We will have our own ideas here and there but the decisions are really up to you."
Q: So I tried TERA in the beta and while I enjoyed the combat immensely I found the questing to be bland and generic. What is your take on this and has there been/will there be any improvements? Knox: "I'd love to argue and say our quests are super varied and unique but the fact is they aren't. It is a weakness for us.
I will say that our end game daily quests are much better and we are working at getting more variety into the game earlier but it takes time."
Q: The only issue keeping me from recommending Tera wholeheartedly to everyone I know is the RNG progress through the enchanting system. I think having BoP tokens that drop from endgame dungeon bosses that can be redeemed (in sufficient quantity) for guaranteed enchants or something along those lines would go a long way toward making players feel like the power to progress is in their hands instead of the RNG.
Is this up for consideration? Thanks. :) Knox: "Our first step was getting rid of the negative chance but because this system is tied so thoroughly into our economy we need to look at the numbers and keep evaluating."
Q: Is EME ever going to branch out to the EU? Knox: "That is our plan, when it happens is still TBD. Our focus is making sure TERA is as good as can be."
Q: Is there any new changes on Berserkers you can comment on? Knox: "Berserkers need some love and are on the list for some changes. Right now our focus is around getting the warriors in as tanks but after that we can shift some attention elsewhere."
Q: This may be an inappropriate question for the Tera sub-reddit but will En Masse be handling the localization of any other Korean MMOs (such as Blade & Soul) in the near future? (next year or two) Thanks. || REPLY BY A REDDITOR: enmasse is bluehole studio's subsidiary... they are not likely to be porting any mmos that are not made by bluehole. Knox: "Actually we are owned by Bluehole but not for the purpose of just TERA. They created us to be a western publisher of all types of online games beyond just what Bluehole makes.
Too add more context think of Bluehole as incorporating both En Masse and a dev studio that they are equally investing in."
Q: Do you have any plans on fixing LFG loot tables to prevent players from disbanding or changing the loot rules while in combat? Knox: "Yes this sucks we are aiming for July."
Q: I'd personally love to see the disband group option gone and a vote-to-kick option available for all players. Knox: "This too for July we hope."
Q: 1) Roughly how many people work at EME? I ask because many people demand content and other fixes/features "immediately" when they don't realize it depends a lot on team size, the development methodology, a list of priorities, etc. It would be great to shed some insight into the process behind the scenes to make any patch or content release possible.
2) Are there plans to further improve the subscription service and make it more flexible? Currently it's still a bit clunky... for example, supporting subscription changes without charging again, etc.
3) Small peeve: there are some quest items from old/abandoned quests that I can't ever discard from my bags. Every time I encounter one of these I have to submit a support ticket. Are there plans to fix this? Knox: "1) EME is a publisher and we have around 70 people. Bluehole, the developer of TERA, has around 200. Bluehole dedicates a team to our patches every 2 weeks, as they do for Japan and Korea. Bluehole also has the main body of the team that works on the big updates everyone gets.
2) Yes this has been a huge frustration for us and something we need to be better at.
3) Ya this is a hot topic in customer support we are trying to address the items one at a time."
Q: I'm wishing for a toggle that allows me to use the hair I want with the armor I want. Knox: "I can bring it up but there isn't anything currently planned."
Q: Well we eventually see sub-classes that branch off the main ones to help increase the replay factor for each of the current classes?
Are we going to see Player Housing soon? I want a beach home on the outskirts of Velika :) Knox: "Cool idea that would be a fun way of further differentiating the classes.
We are looking at housing but right now our focus is more around guild housing than personal."
Q: Has the game sold as well as you guys were hoping? And are enough people keeping their subscriptions after the first month? Knox: "I think you always want a game to do better but we are doing close to our expectations. With TERA it is easy to be skeptical so we are trying as many ways as possible to let you try the game, through 7 day trial and our Gaikai streaming demo."
Q: Any plans on letting us log our combat logs? For outside parsing programs such as ACT Knox: "We have that on the list (I personally want to see it) but it got pushed for now. I hope to bring it up again."
Q: Will we ever have an official global chat separate from LFG? Knox: "We can do that - it has been asked about a lot just in this AMA alone. I will work on it."
Q: Is EME going to look at making the 50-60 less of a grind? Is EME looking at improving Lancers to still be THE best tank option since their damage is so poor? Knox: "We never want there to be a grind but some classes are going to solo a bit different than others. Lancers have the instant-queue advantage for running dungeons which is quite nice.
Lancers are getting a few updates as well when the warrior gets theirs. Exacts will be detailed out in the next month or so."
Q: There are some big rumbles going around about the very unbalanced advanced glyphs, some classes get very useful ones (like the slayer) and other classes just get the same glyphs that cost less points (like the berserker). Any plans to balance this in the future? Knox: "We are always playing the balance game and looking at the data behind the complaints. I can't say on your specific example but this is always going to be happening."
Q: The one thing I would LOVE to see, is underwater environments. Clearly, swimming is pretty dull in this game, and we can't even explore under the water. Is there anything on the table about possibly taking Tera "unda da sea?". Knox: "Our combat underwater would be quite fun. I was a huge fan of Kedge Keep in EQ despite the difficulty and bugginess of it :)
Q: Will the Tera Launcher ever have a 'remember me' option so we don't have to keep typing in our e-mail every time, and possibly password too? Knox: "Hmm I heard rumblings of this before I want it as well, dude in charge of these priorities isn't at his desk to ask right now."
Q: Reflect in PvP is regarded by most of the community, including myself, to be pretty broken. It makes priests realistically unkillable in 1v1, and the discrepancy between someone wearing it and not wearing it is pretty crazy. Are there any plans to alter / nerf / remove reflect enchants on chests? Knox: "I have seen it brought up a couple times today we will look into it a bit more."
Q: My question to you is, are you planning on adding any sort of in-game voice chat (that can be limited to current party members)? Knox: "I think TERA needs voice chat. We have an idea we are pursuing right now but it will be a bit before we could implement. Maybe around end of summer or fall?"
Q: I've noticed the quest progression is either too densely packed together or gives too much exp for the recommended level. Are there any plans to tweak or fix this? Knox: "We would rather have too much content than too little. Hopefully it allows for a little different play through with an alt."
Q: Will EME ever develop content specifically for the western markets? Or how much influence does the west have over content development at Blue Hole. Obviously eastern / western gamers value different things in an MMO so developing the same content for both seems tricky. Knox: "We had very specific content for the west including new quests, new leveling paths, the prologue, different enchant system. We are also adding in the GvG for the political system as well which is not in the Korean game.
So yes..."
Q: Issues/Improvements 1) The ability for GL's to game the system by constantly switching GL's to an alt toon camped in a safe zone somewhere so the opposing guild can't get a GL kill.
2) 24 hour GvG's are silly. They really should be made longer, maybe 7 days or 2000 points, whichever happens first.
3) Safe zones. For GvG, they're absurd. Hugging a safe zone and taking three steps back allows you to break combat.
4) Real, tangible rewards for winning a war.
5) There needs to be some sort of tangible, real consequence for being a ganker. Knox: "We are looking at each of the things you mention already, some are coming soon others are still being thought out. GvG has been pretty popular and we want to keep improving it based on your feedback."
Question: I noticed in the Trade Broker, that there is a "Pets" category. Any clues you can give us as to whether we will be getting pets anytime soon? If so, are they just for looks, or will they have some sort of a utility?
Knoxxer: That is probably a bug because as Avellar says we don't have pets anymore. That said we are looking at bringing a different type of pets back in the future.
^ Collectible pets maybe??? Obsessive collectors rejoice...or scream if they turn out to be garbage, class-based pets like Mystic's...
Tera going f2p will make me very sad. ;_; All the new new costumes they release will be cash shop only, whoever pays the most will have the masterwork +12 items and no one else will, weapons will only look cool if you use a weaponskin from cash shop, etc.
Pay to enjoy/pay to win games are just miserable. At least in Tera now, everyone is on equal footing, you can do anything if you work hard enough for it. That'll all change with f2p and it'll make me very sad to see the game I actually love turn into just another cash shop ran crap fest. ;_;
Aww, c'mon, it's like being sad about how e-mail is going to phase (already has) out snail mail. For the last 6 months there has been an air of inevitability about all MMOs adopting some form of F2P formula. The recent interview with EAs COO put the final nail of that coffin. Just learn to accept every MMO within the next three years, probably sooner, will be F2P.
That is good news for the companies : they make bank. People go F2P because that's where the money is. It's bad for us players as consumers. But this is one of those things you have to leave to the wisdom of the capitalist market forces to ultimately adjust.
Aww, c'mon, it's like being sad about how e-mail is going to phase (already has) out snail mail. For the last 6 months there has been an air of inevitability about all MMOs adopting some form of F2P formula. The recent interview with EAs COO put the final nail of that coffin. Just learn to accept every MMO within the next three years, probably sooner, will be F2P.
That is good news for the companies : they make bank. People go F2P because that's where the money is. It's bad for us players as consumers. But this is one of those things you have to leave to the wisdom of the capitalist market forces to ultimately adjust.
The majority of people still use snail mail to pay their bills if nothing else. For that one reason alone, email will never completely kill snail mail (or rather, until email and personal access to your own bank account/online checks are seamlessly integrated without needing an on-call demand, with new security enhancements).
And leaving things to the 'wisdom' of the capitalist market forces is why a one hour surgery can run you 15,000 for the room alone. Not that I'm completely anti-capitalist or anything, but blind trust will always be rewarded with blind treachery. Now, I don't mind on it's own merits that Tera could go f2p. Hearing that they were discussing it as an actual option while selling year-long subscriptions is...flaky, at best, though.
Also: Battlegrounds for max level only? I was a bit surprised by that, although I admit I know nothing about how KTERA's bg's work so that may be just how it is. I vaguely remember someone during CBT2 saying how we had passed minimum bg level.