14 DAY TRIAL // Jeremy Gaffney, a producer at Carbine Studios, says that the free-to-play business model is not a guarantee of success in the MMO genre and that’s why Wildstar will not use it in its entirety.
The game creator tells PCGamesN that, “As a publisher it’s a juggling act because most the games I’ve seen end up devolving to the point that one or 2% of the players are paying $100 or more a month and they’re actually funding most of the free players, which can be up to 70 – 80% playing completely for free.”
He offered City of Heroes as an example of how a smaller MMO with a subscription-based business model can create roughly as much revenue as the much bigger Guild Wars, which only charges for the boxed copy of the game.
Wildstar will be subscription based, but the team will offer some of the MMO for free in order to draw in potential customers.
The currency used will be called CREDD, short for Certificate of Research, Exploration, Destruction and Development.