I’ve heard rumors being kicked around which indicated that, once Ace of Spades hits version 1.0, it will no longer be freeware.
I’m putting this in the moderator forum as to cause as little disturbance as possible (for now).
Key points:
Is this even true? If so, show me the evidence!
How much are we going to be expected to pay? Also, is it a 1-time thing (like Minecraft) or a recurring thing (such as WoW membership).
If Version 1.0 becomes Pay 2 Play, would aloha.pk continue to operate with, say a 0.9 server so we can play free?
This thread is mainly addressed at people who seem to know the inner workings of the system; such as izzy, PXYC, mikuli, Stack, and Tank.
I don’t know who told you that, but Ben has said a number of times that he wants it to remain free, but of course I doubt it will. If it ever does become a game that you need to pay for it would be just a one time thing.
The whole pay to play system would hopefully be similar to how Minecraft does things, where you buy an account and you can login with that account from wherever. I’m not sure if there is any evidence, but I’ve talked to bcoolface about it in PM, and he said that at some point, it will be a pay to play game. The price will most likely be in the $10 area, and it’ll be a one time fee. I’m pretty sure that this is going to lower the total amount of players, because the majority of the playerbase is young and cannot get any money for themselves. This will be a good thing in a way, and it’ll also have some pretty bad effects.
On the good side, it’ll make the people that play the game a bit more on the mature side, so there will be a noticeably smaller number of griefers and hackers on the servers. Someone that gets caught hacking would probably have their account banned, so they would be losing money. If I was a hacker, I wouldn’t risk $10 dollars just to play with some stupid hacks. With the game being paid, however, the number of players on servers will be dramatically lower than it is now. If the system is similar to Minecraft’s, players will still be able to host a server for free, but they will not be able to join it without buying the game.
Yes, Ace of Spades is eventually going to be come a paid game, but by the time this happens, hopefully, the game will be worth some money. In it’s current state, with all of the bugs and glitches, I wouldn’t buy it. Once some improvements and other features become available (OpenGL client), the game will become a little more valuable and worth $10, and more people will buy it. On a side note, when Ben starts getting some money coming in, that will hopefully give us an advertising budget, and we can use ads to attract more people to play the game.
