Home » Games News » The Old Micro transaction Fallout
I read gaming blogs quite regularly and noticed quite a backlash against the possibility of Bioware's upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, potentially going with MIR2 gold a micro transaction-based model.
While the whole kerfuffle was temporarily cleared up as a misunderstanding (as reported over at Broken Toys), Keen over at here had a post last week fundamentally denouncing the entire model and refusing to play the game if it ended up going that way.
It's really nothing new, at least in the world-wide marketplace. But I also feel a little bit of a common bond with Keen in that I don't want to see what could potentially be an awesome next-gen MMO turn to shit because of money-related "business" issues.
But we have to remember an important fact here: all MMOs are still businesses and not charities, and if they lose money and close their doors like so many have in recent years (Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa being the latest notable fatality), it not only hurts the industry, but the consumer - including you and I - in the end.
Less competition out there for games like WoW mean less innovation and less of a drive to be the best, and less innovation means that we have to wait another year, or two, or five, before we see something that'll knock it out of that top MMO slot.