Hi SoH Team!
I came across this project while researching newer indie MMO's and I have to say, things are looking promising. I'm a Dutch system designer and love researching game systems, especially in MMO's. I've dabbled with a handfull of game engines and applications to quench my curiosity but am a long ways away from even attempting to start an MMO, so I commend you for the Herculean task that you and the team set out to do!
I read that the game will be free-to-play, and while scouring the forum I also read that you're not going the Play-to-earn route (Thank you for not falling for that grift). I was wondering, however, about how you'll be monetizing the eventual game. You've claimed free-to-play with no pay-to-win, and I read in your press kit that your monetization would be focussed solely on cosmetic microtransactions.
As servers are expensive, especially for MMO's because of the high amount of different connections, you'd need a steady continuous income. How will you be securing that if playing absolutely free would have no consequences?
The only thing I can imagine is gating content behind a subscription, like Runescape does with their "Membership".
Would you care to elaborate on the way you'll be monetizing your project after launch?
Hope to hear from you soon!
Kevin
You have some very nice questions there.
What we plan to do with the monetization is to have a shop, and in that shop to sell everything that is not impacting the gameplay.
Planned for now are Armor skins, weapon skins, changing the color of your spells (for example changing the fireball from yellow to red), changing the animations of skills, emote animations, and etc.
Quite possible is to have some sort of system, that for a low subscription will give you access to different tiers of skins while you are subscribed. Think of it like PlayStation Plus of some sort. ~ this is still to be discussed and may or may not end up in the game. For now it's just an idea that we have, to further support the sustainability of the project.
And also there are many examples of games that are earning massive amounts of money by selling cosmetics only, League of Legends, Fortnite, Call of Duty, etc.
At the moment we have absolutely amazing investors, that have given us 100% freedom in the development, for which we will be forever grateful. Of course we will seek new investors to further boost the production.
We have a couple of more ideas for the company in general, not only "Scars of Honor" which if executed correctly will further give us funds to continue.
Whatever we do, the no pay-to-win will be our main focus.