The official word arrived yesterday; EVE Online will be adding microtransactions. However, this shouldn’t come as a shock, as CCP has been dropping more than obvious hints at the mechanism for quite some time.
In early October, in a EuroGamer interview, EVE’s creative director Torfi Frans Olafsson stated that CCP would “evolve just like everyone else,” and would, “not become a dinosaur.”
The first of these microtransaction services proposals has already been hashed, and rehashed by the EVE community surrounded a paid character respec. Needless to say, this option went over like a led balloon, and CCP has since scrapped the option. Moving forward, EVE has stated that future microtransactions will arrive via decorative goods, thus not affecting gameplay, and slanted towards those that are willing to outspend their counterparts. Or…the ye old ‘Pay to Pwn’ argument.
In a devblog post, CCP has put players fears to bed. Author CCP Zulu states that the game will not sell goods that impact the games’ “merit economy.” The plan now is to roll out Incarna items such as clothing, furniture, etc., and will later at “in-space” items such as logos for spaceships.
What was not made clear in the blog entry is whether CCP will offer purchases via it’s in-game currency, PLEX, or directly with real money. Perhaps caving to the pressures around them, CCP admits that adding virtual goods to the game isn’t just a random, “arbitrary decision,” but one that reflects the interest from players of competing MMORPGs.
From CCP Zulu, ““Diversifying the business model allows us to offer our players the services and features they desire in ways that are conducive to how they wish to spend their entertainment dollars. The result is that we provide a wider range of options to our subscribers which, in turn, leaves us better positioned to react to future seismic shifts in the market.”
And now that EVE Online is adding a dash of microtransactions via in-game clothing and decoration, I can only think of one sole non-in-game-microtransaction MMORPG, and that’s the daddy of them all, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. With that said, even the mighty toward of subscriptions, aka Blizzard, has offered out-of-game microtransactions, specifically via in-game pets. Clearly, CCP has taken the temperature of the surrounding waters and realized that in-game, decorative microtransactions carry favor with players. The question is – how long can Blizzard hold out?
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