Before selling our product, we need to know our potential buyers.
Who will buy our product in the gems store?
1. Rich people. They are the whales of MMOs. Rich adult, rich kid, they love mmo and will do anything to be special in it.
Developer should love and respect the rich because they are the core suppoters of mmos.
The rich is the one who support game the most. They allowed developer to make game become free to play with cash shop. Without them, the only way to gain money is to introduce subscription based models.
Sub based mmo truly flawed, it kills the player populations and making mmo becoming less players. In the other hand, free to play mmorpg is like a social media platform, people hang out and chatting in map chat. This is how mmo become alive and strong.
What the rich want? they want beauty and power for exchange of money. They want more cosmetic items and legendary gear on the cash shop. They want to look bad kitten while pawning 1v10 pugs and upload it on their youtube channel to show the public how awesome they are.
GW2 SPVP was genius. Its combine MOBA esport element in an mmo, never such ideas exist before. From what i see, GW2 follow the idea of league of legend (lol), where you buy hero/skills/expansion in order to use them in the competitive scene.
While its not a bad idea, i am more interested on dota 2 idea. Its more balanced, where free player can play any hero he wanted to.
2. Normal adult. Normal adult who love mmorpg and treat it as their hobby will spent money on the game.
While the money they spend is not as much as the rich did, they still supporting the game.
Normal adult doesn’t want power, because they know, the rich will outplay them in that area. So normal adult just want cosmetic.
Things like cool looking armor, weapons, mounts, pets, character faces, hairstyles.
Now, while this Rich people and normal adult who supporting game the most, they are reason for them to do so.
1. The game not dead. Thanks to free players who populate the game, the rich and normal adult can have a ‘social media’ platform to show off and socialize.
Lets take a look on free players. why they don’t pay for the game?
1. They are student, no money, just some money for good pc and Internet.
2. they have economic crisis.
Making the game free to play with SPVP MOBA ESPORT things, give ‘fun’ to free players that will last forever in their memories.
When the free players who is student grow up and become the ‘normal adult’ they will continue to supporting the game, hence even buying the future ‘Guild War 3’
So what we should put in a Gems Store?
1. Cosmetics. Cool weapon and armor (Check Tera online for some awesome stylish armor)
2. Face pack, hair styles and body types. Why the heck everyone look the same right? More face and more hairstyle always good, make them exclusive in the gems store.
3. Mounts and pets. mount a tiger, heck even a flying dragon that can be use in pve and wvw.
4. Legendaries gear that give super power. This is for the rich, and can only be used in pve and wvw. Any form of pay to win can only be used in wvw and pve. Not SPVP (thats why i like dota 2 ideas). I dont care to be weak in wvw, its fun to watch a rich friend that can pawn 1v10 in wvw, they support the game anyway.
5. More races and classes. This can be included on an expansion pack. What makes world of warcraft so good because they have plenty of races to choose.
(edited by nerovergil.5408)