I would suspect that F2W is part of a backup plan to add more funding to the game. Just remeber that once a game gets its price reduced, you can't go back. In terms of finacing the game, the Devs probably want to stick with the B2P model for as long as they can, then reduce prices, then have Orks go F2W. The items and the store are not capable of supporting the transaction activity needed to support a F2P game. In short, there just aren't enough items that would make it appealing to shop for a F2P crowd. But even then here's likely the biggest reason why Orks did not go F2P yet. EC may have bugs and imbalances, but it is fun. Probably more fun than even LoL. And LoL has something like a million people playing daily, 30 million playing every month. Let's be super conservative and say even 1% of that population comes over here. Suddenly we have 10k Orks. We have about 1k players in game at peak hours. About 100 of them are already Orks. So that's 900 players, divided unevenly 3 ways against 10100 Orks. What it would likely lead to until a bigger chunk of the community returns to EC, would be a huge player imbalance that would lead to a lot of just sitting around waiting. With player capped territories coming some day, I feel as though the F2W Ork model could return. Having relatively large open regions where battles among 300 people would certainly need more people, and if F2W were to happen, Orks definitely need the ability to fight Ork v Ork deep inside their own territories to keep them busy instead of in que.
I still don't really think that free 2 waaagh! would increase EC's player base by that much. We're talking about such a small subset; video game players who're also interested in 40k, who're also interested in Orks, who're also willing to put up with f2p limitations to basically fill in as moving targets for the paying customers.
How about F2fortheemperor. Marines are the only faction that would have any real draw. And as an added bonus marines can have the incomplete gimp players with no options instead of the already worst faction. But nobody that likes F2waagh likes that idea, because it affects their enjoyment. But face it, if there ever WAS a trial option money says it would be marines or all factions. Orks would attract all of no one. Anyone remotely interested in playing orks already is.
I have no idea how most F2P games work but Smite seems to work well that way. If you buy the full version, you had acess first hand to all heroes, if you dont, you can buy them in time.
What? Are you really comparing EC to League? Theyre not even the same type of game first of all so youre not going to convert the playerbase like that. MOBA players love their genre, and its a highly specific one. Secondly, theres no way that EC is on par with LoL as far as quality of entertainment. This is largely a matter of opinion but lets be honest, theres a reason why its one of the leading MOBAs on the market. Trying to compare this half done Space Marine multiplayer DLC to League is like saying WoW is at least as fun as EC so if we just convert WoW players to EC players BAM money. The free to waaagh business model is the pipe dream of Miguel and the team from way back in the day when the game was going to be an MMORPG style of game. The game isnt and will never bee an MMORPG and so the idea of the cash shop and the premium items is a giant cash grab from BE because in a buy to play game these features come with the price tag. In an MMO it is now accepted that there may be premium items for sale ontop of subscriptions, but this isnt an MMO. Whats really happened is they took founder development dollars to make content that they then put behind a premium paygate instead of wrapping it into the very slim base launch content.
You know Free 2 Waaagh! sounds great in theory... But what about Ork players? I don't know about you, but I don't want a future campaign system/map system hinging on the actions of a bunch of snotlings.
