I have no idea what the average is, but it must be a significant percentage of members continue to pay but, even with the best of intentions, stop going to the gym regularly or at all. Call it guilt, call it taking a wee break, call it preserving your access should you want to play, it’s still recurring income.

Blizz may get there, but I don’t think they’ve lost enough people to justify going F2P yet.

For other games that, in Tobold’s words, don’t justify a subscription when compared to many players’ level of interest or commitment, F2P is just the ticket. DDO, LotRO and now STO are three that have come back on my radar specifically because they went free to play. Being able to match my spend with my level of enthusiasm and or time commitment is a boon to me.

Even with a traditional sub though, in theory I could maximize my return on the sub by consuming as much content as my time budget would permit. If I were only interested in the leveling game in SWTOR, and played obsessively since launch, I might have consumed all the storylines for all the classes/factions by now. I could see SWTOR going free to play at some point following the path others have taken– pay for fluff, utility items, progress enhances and or access to content areas/modules for progression.

Eve however remains the anomaly. One can legally buy characters, and effectively in game currency as well, but one cannot buy progression. Eve progression is skill based and skill training is time based. The only way to continue to progress is to continue to subscribe.

So why doesn’t Eve just sell time?

If I really want to spend the next year working through a skill training plan (not an unheard of amount of time) why not let me buy the time now, apply it to those skills I want to train and be done with it? If I’m going to spend $180 to learn to fly a Titan, why spend it over twelve months?

One of Eve’s major barriers for new comers is never being able to catch up skillpoint wise to friends who have played much longer. Granted that progression can go in any number of directions, but to switch from a hardcore miner industrialist to a 0.0 capital ship pilot would take a very long time.

Seems like a natural progression for Eve. Eliminate subscriptions, sell a time equivalent for skill training, or just skill points out right to be applied to skills of a players choice, make that freely tradeable like PLEX and you would have the most flexible model in the universe. Players could truly exchange time for money in whatever proportion they wish.

Earn isk by playing, purchase training and it’s truly free to play. Buy isk or training and your time budget is preserved. Of course the one element that likely prevents this from upsetting the games balance is that to survive in Eve, you still need to learn how to be a good pilot. Something that you just can’t buy.

Deep Space 7, Now safe from Devidians and Comets

Eve Offline

Over the holidays, I resubbed my Eve accounts having been sucked in by the exploits of Wilhelm and Gaff.  The intent was to play it “casually” with an alt that I had rolled up for solo piracy.  Rolling an alt in Eve is a bit of a challenge since you can only have one character training skills at a time, so although I have two accounts, I would have to forego progress on one of the “main” characters on that account to learn skills on the alt.

Also, I didn’t want to screw up the standings of our regular high sec PvE corp, so I put the alt in a separate corp.  In a fit of foggy memory, I managed to resub the wrong account, so I ended up resubbing both of my accounts.

I knew my horizon for the game wouldn’t likely extend beyond a month or so, so there was really no point in going through the rigamarole to go join Gaff and Wilhelm in 0.0.  After reading about the logistics and timing challenges, not the least of which is time zone based, I decided that was probably a wise decision for me.

Of course, that left pretty much either “dueling” pvp, high sec social engineering piracy (e.g., can flipping) or attempts at low sec piracy.  I loath all dueling and as an explorer/industrialist at heart, I really couldn’t take to can flipping unless I was going to go heavy RP.

So that’s left low sec piracy and/or ratting.  Diving into low sec, and learning the skills to survive there, has been pretty interesting.  One really never knows what could happen, so there is some excitement even when there are only a few people in a system.  You have to get used to looking over your shoulder quite a bit.

Of course, the hardest part of solo piracy is finding a mark.  Something that I’ve not been terribly good at, and given the challenges of low sec (i.e., the conventional wisdom that its “broken”) and the time required to do a good roam, I’m losing interest.

On the other hand, with my other account, I took the opportunity to check out Planetary Interaction which was introduced just as I was concluding my last visit to New Eden.  Its been reworked some, but I’ve been producing some goods off high sec worlds to get the hang of it.  So far, its a decent if minor source of passive income.  High sec worlds don’t have the density of rarer materials on them, so overall output is lower.

Nonetheless, in the course of looking for the best place to sell my PI manufactured goods, I discovered a few arbitrage opportunities which I’ve been exploiting fairly regularly.  At the moment, I have just enough isk lying around to acquire enough of a particular commodity to fill my fully rigged Iteron V industrial and make a run to Jita where it typically sells within an hour.  I’ve typically been able to make 15-30 million ISK per run which isn’t bad for sitting on the couch with a crappy laptop while watching the Daily Show/Colbert Report.

Fun in its own way, but I’m not drawn into the way other goals in Eve have caught my attention.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Having done the beta, I’m sure that our little group would find it amusing enough.  From my own experience and what I’ve been reading, Bioware is slowly addressing some of the bugs and issues that were present in the beta.  I’ve no doubt the game will be a better experience after the first few weeks and months.  One of the main reasons we aren’t playing this as a group right now, is simply the fact that there are five of us and small group content is made for 4 people.

Even with companions, that makes for some difficult math and even more difficult shared experiences.  We could conceivably do a group of 3 with one companion and a group of two with two companions, but that kind of flies in the face of the whole group play thing.

So while I’m still very interested in SWTOR, I’d like to figure out a way (or wait for Bioware to come up with a way) for all of us to have a shared experience.  I suspect we’ll have similar problems with Diablo III.

Star Trek Online

I did the beta, I even bought the collector’s edition, but in the end, I couldn’t justify a subscription beyond the initial 30-days.  Not that there wasn’t fun to be had there, there definitely was, but there were issues that I wasn’t willing to pay for while waiting to solve.

But, STO is going free to play Tuesday, so I thought I’d at least get patched and see what has transcribed since launch.  One thing that intrigues me is the user generated content creator.  STO, like SWTOR, was always so story driven, I think I may enjoy exploring both what has been added by way of the periodic season/episode content which was added after I left as well as user generated missions.

Heck, its been quite some time since I played with a UGC module in a game– probably not since map editors for shooter games– so I may experiment and see whether that dimension is satisfying.

Like LotRO, I suspect that STO will benefit greatly from going F2P.  Its certainly a game that I would have been looking at over the last year had it not required a sub to check out.

Finally a happy accident, it turns out that former subscribers can log in this weekend.  I expected to download and patch, but not be able to log in.  Much to my surprise, there was Lieutenant Commander Skronk aboard the U.S.S. Frinault drifting in Sector Space.

As is typical with re-entering a game world, there is an almost paralyzing amount of information to reassimilate.  Even more so when the game has been patched and tweaked for more than a year AND has gone F2P.  Fortunately, I spotted the Transwarp to Earth Spacedock button (I can’t remember whether that was there before) and beamed down to Starfleet Academy (which I don’t remember existing before either, let alone being in Marin County).

Either Starfleet moved to Marin, or Marin finally went "Pro Growth"...

So, with a three-day weekend, it will be a convenient time to explore STO again and see what’s new.  Stay tuned.

2011.12.25 08:21:00

Victim: Charles Paisley
Corp: The Other Operation
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Rifter
System: EC-P8R
Security: -0.4
Damage Taken: 1703

Involved parties:

Name: BecBop (laid the final blow)
Security: -0.10
Corp: Taste the Future in Your Mouth
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Ship: Taranis
Weapon: Light Neutron Blaster II
Damage Done: 1703

Destroyed items:

EMP S, Qty: 3856 (Cargo)
Stasis Webifier I
Small Armor Repairer I
Small Nosferatu I
EMP S, Qty: 160
1MN Afterburner I
150mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I
Damage Control I

Dropped items:

200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Warp Scrambler I
EMP S, Qty: 80
150mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I, Qty: 2

Taranis.  When you care enough to send the very best.  But wait, there was a little something extra for me in my stocking.

2011.12.25 08:22:00

Victim: Charles Paisley
Corp: The Other Operation
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Capsule
System: EC-P8R
Security: -0.4
Damage Taken: 287

Involved parties:

Name: BecBop (laid the final blow)
Security: -0.10
Corp: Taste the Future in Your Mouth
Alliance: None
Faction: None
Ship: Taranis
Weapon: Light Neutron Blaster II
Damage Done: 287

Fortunately, my clone was only 25 jumps away back in Empire.

Balmorra from the Sobrik Spaceport