The Easiest Way to improve overall Player Experience!
Hi everyone!
As any game grows older, they tend to lose a certain portion of their audience/attention simply due to age. However, each of them have brought out ways to get players back on, such as giving certain items away/sales on memberships, etc. (you name it!). Wizard101 is no exception, and as an MMO game, it can be difficult to grab the attention of players who already left.
Here I have for you all to comment (and construct) a list of ideas that could reignite the fiery passion this game had at its peak during it's starting years. Admins on the board: You are free to bring your opinions to what I have to offer (you are the creators, after all!)
- Make Wizard City through Dragonspyre Free to Play, and call it the "base game".
One of the most prominent ways to bring players back is by giving more scale to what you have to offer. If you let new players experience the first arc for free, they are more inclined and eager to see what else you have in store for them.
-Reduce Crown Shop Prices on select items, but leave the prices to buy crowns the same
Not everything has to be reduced, but items like mounts, pets, emotes, or even gear can definitely be reduced. A 2-passenger treant mount is 15000 crowns, which equals to about $30. Sales in the crown shop are also nice, but they aren't permanent-standing, which gives reason to avoid the purchase
-Merge Membership status for Pirate101 and Wizard101
Simply put, if Crowns are already like this, then why not the membership? I'm sure there are reasons behind this.
-Increase drop rates across the spiral
This is where it gets messy. Some players have told me that the reason why they stopped farming something was because they 'accepted the fact that they will probably never get it'. This is not what anyone would want to hear. I'm not asking for a big increase, just enough where players won't feel like they've been farming months for one piece of gear.
-Advertise the game on television again!!
A part of the success lies from this!!
If anyone has any more ideas they'd like to add, or want to change one of mines up, you are free to do so!
Re: The Easiest Way to improve overall Player Experience!
I feel like your Base Game suggestion should not be implemented yet. This is still a HUGE part of the game (almost half) and as such rakes in a LOT of money for them.
I think it does have a time to be implemented, and that is when the level cap reaches AT LEAST 150. At that point it is only a third of the game, or even level 200. This gives LOTS of time to get player buy in before locking off the game. I also think as a caveat that Grizzleheim should NOT be included in the "Base Game" and neither should Wysteria. You don't need to go either place for the main story line or for school spell quests given by professors until after Dragonspyre anyway, so no sense including these, rather they should be some of the first incentives to buy membership.
I worry that crowns players will feel insulted by this move, however, as it takes money they spent unlocking areas and makes it essentially go to waste. There needs to be a compensation plan in place that is reasonable for KI financially. Potentially this means slowly rolling areas into "freeness" and giving the cost of those areas to players slowly over time so as not to create huge liabilities. This would be a process that takes YEARS to accomplish, so don't hold your breath for ANYTHING.
With regard to the membership merge, I don't think that's all that important. Doing so would be a benefit to very few players, if any at all, and honestly Pirate101 needs all the funding it can get.
It would be nice to have increased drop rates all across the spiral, especially if it was part of an event, like spiral showcase, or a member benefit. This would encourage farming certain bosses at certain times as it's a limited time event. Maybe double the droprate of widely USED gear? Or gear in high demand?
