Originally Posted by
MechDeus
Unless they go out of their way to be different, not really. Vindictus is powered almost entirely on the sales of haircuts and cosmetic undergarments. Dragon Nest does it primarily through outfits (which do have stats) and things like jellies that protect items from being destroyed while upgrading. It's honestly really simple things that allow these games to do better than almost all subscription games.
The beauty of it is that there's no introductory fee for the players, so anyone can pick up a copy and start playing. It's a shotgun approach that allows for mass market introduction, and combined with what's generally a much slower update schedule their overhead is much less than something like WoW. There's a good reason why almost every subscription MMO has gone f2p in the last few years, it's a way to boost their market integration with a product that would otherwise not sell and offer cheap items to all the people that log on for the fuck of it. D&DO, DCUO, Champions Online, Aion, LOTRO, Star Trek Online, Lineage II, Vanguard, and Earthrise among others all ditched their subs and all make up their costs in very different types of items that they sell. It ranges from cosmetic stuff, to extra classes, character slots, specific dungeons, certain abilities, and so on. Silly as it might sound, as long as the game is fairly competent they all seem to do well regardless of what the pay material is.
The only real problem are freemium and pay-to-win games, which don't offer an experience that can be supplemented by payment but are instead more like an extended demo that constantly demands cash to succeed at or even play. As long as Sega avoids that trap which creates player ill will very quickly it should do fine for itself.
I'll bet there's some form of a Mag shop. It's almost too easy.
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