Kakao announced today that Elyon was going to go free to play as well having a near month delay. While the game going free to play isn’t shocking, what is unexpected is the timing, as many assumed it would be out for a few months before that transition might occur. In this video, we discussed their announcement, the reason for the change as well as the implications of what “free to play” means to their cash shop.
They have a small blurb on their official twitter account, but their website has the full text. Here’s a link for that
What’s most interesting here, is they basically admit that their delay is due to other MMO’s launching at a competitive time, saying, “It’s clear that 2021 has been the year of the MMO, with an incredible lineup of titles in the genre set for release in the coming weeks and months, with some fantastic entries being released. Whilst we feel that Elyon can hold a unique and competitive place amongst them all, we also understand that the time investment required for any MMORPG is not necessarily compatible with an abundance of choice.”
Given Amazon’s New World scheduled launch one day before Elyon’s previous release date, this must be specifically what they mean. Elyon was afraid New World would steal all of their thunder… and, while I don’t think it’s the same audience, exactly, New World certainly has more hype.
Another odd takeaway here, is given the next line of their introduction, “Thus, after thoughtful consideration, our dedicated team has decided to make what we feel are necessary changes to our business model. One such change is transitioning Elyon to a Free-to-Play model.”
Two things… they were so afraid of New World and other MMO’s that they had to go free to play because they assumed even with the delay that not enough people would even bother to buy the game if they had other MMO’s to buy? But… what are the other changes to their business model? They don’t mention them now, so we can only speculate.
This leads to what was already a concern for many and is only now getting worse… is Elyon going more pay to win? When addressing if they will change their cash shop they say that it’s not their intent. They don’t say… no. Elyon already has a moderate pay to win score of 3.14 on our scaling. How much worse might that get if the game is free to play? Hopefully they don’t add too many pay for power items, but it’s near certain that the cash shop will be expanded in some way as they attempt to recoup the loss of potential sales moving away from a buy to play business model.
So what are they going to add and will the player base be okay with that change? Is Elyon better or worse as a free to play game? In my opinion, buy to play tends to lead to better game development than those that exclusively rely on microtransaction for their profits. In our article “Is Pay to Win Bad“, we discuss that while pay to win (or microtransactions in general) aren’t necessarily the end all evil that some think, it tends to lead towards counter-intuitive game design. Personally, this change makes things easier here as now New World can be the focus when it launches and Elyon when it does, but I’m not sure that saving $30 is worth the quality that we might lose if the cash shop gets out of control.
What do you think, though? Is this free to play change good for the game? Is it good for you? Or is the game dead in the water now after essentially admitting that the other games are better and more deserving of your time and money.