Whistler wrote.

"These are steps that begin to make it worth the price - today."

I am not saying the steps they have been taking they are not vast improvements. The new interface most certainly helped with retention.

What I am saying is that everyone has a different standard of what is worth it. For many it was worth it without the interface change, for others it will be when crafting starts up, or more missions are added, or whatever.

The point of this was to give old players something new to do, and people who don't quite think it is worth it now, a reason for staying around while the game moves toward "worth the price" for them.

My guess however is it would not be implemented in that way, if ever. That said if it could be done quickly, and kept around people who would eventually pay, then it could only help. If it took a great deal of dev time, it would not be worth it. There are much better things to be worked on, rather that appeasing those that do not, nor ever will pay.

If it was implemented however, and guild noticed that a particular upgrade inspired many of these players to start paying, it could be a good indicator that the game was ready for more advertising.

Well, this all kind of leads back into what's the best marketing medium for the game. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the Windows market is ovesaturated with gaming and Guild SW should focus their initial efforts in courting the Mac and Linux people. They'll be happy to have an FPS/MMORPG that runs on their system, and they'll have much more "loyalty" than Windows users, due to the lack of competing titles. (Intel Macs & Boot Camp kind of diminishes this, but I still think it applies.)

Then we can get the majority of gamers online from the Windows platform.

Oh, and lostsoul, thanks. I think you're the exception. My theory is that most of the people who post on the forums asking for a longer trial or a free version of the game are essentially under-18 y.o.'s who can't or won't ask for a parental unit's credit card, or who do not have a paypal or checking account. Therefore, they aren't ever going to be paying customers, so why bother? It's like campaigning for a political office and spending a lot of time campaigning to convicted felons who can't vote.

I think that expending even 5 minutes of resources trying to make those people happy is a complete and utter waste of time and money for the developers. Assuming they're still in this to make money... :)

Now, if they don't subscribe because they don't like the game, or because it's not worth $10 a month to them, fine. At least capture the reasons WHY they didn't subscribe, and use that feedback (negative or positive, both are good) to improve.

Of course, if their main reason for not subscribing is "There's not enough people", well, there's not much you can do about that, since it's apparent that the developers don't think it's "Done" enough yet to release out into the wider world. They don't WANT 10,000 subscribers. Yet. But I hope they "want" the subscribers soon™.

Maybe this does not belong in the Free Version Post...

I have just ran out of time on the trial, another Gentoo friend turned me onto it and ya - I really enjoyed the game. 8 hours didn't give me enough time to understand a lot of the game, but it did make me want to play more. Now the guy that turned me onto it, is retired and also working, he has not used all of his time up yet but he tells me he is liking it also.

Now the wife got a little jealous about time spent playing the game. In fact she actually gave it a try and she hates games, thus I would say the game is attractive to women. Not bad considering that she did not grow up with TV or electricity - that's right! no fridge or any thing.

My point I wanted to make after reading the other posts in this area is, extending the 8 hour mark is not needed. As for is it worth $10 a month? Yes and no. I really like the game and I do want to play but, I am not American and so paying $10 is more for me. Not only that - you must think that when I go out and pay good money for say Quake4 or Doom3, I expect to play it for many years.

Do not get me wrong, but I think that some people might think like me and decided right away that the game is worth say $80/2 years to be fair. I know that's half of what the bulk price is ($3.33), but if that was the case, I suspect sales would go up.
I don't want to sound like a troll off /. or anything but, I feel if people payed for it at that price, then it would be likely that people would stay for years and thus you get your full pay plus more. The more is time, and word of mouth - as the game is social oriented, people will want there friends to work with them and this kind of thing. And at a lower price it's hard to say no, even for a married guy that would not get as much time playing as I would like. But that's just common sense for those that know it takes time to keep a marriage.

Also if I pull together friends to play with me online, we are all working people, and would have a hard time all getting a day booked within a 2 week time frame, just to actually work together for a few hours. All in all my point is about time! It's only partially about money, if the money is right. Then one does not worry about loosing it time wise or just not logging on at all.
So point being I have little time, but if the price drops, I am in, even if it's just for a few hours a month. I want to see where this game goes - oh, and thanks for the GNU Linux version!
;) - Happy Gentoo Astronaut that can not fly a ship with out gcc guns...

TwinGears, you have to understand that the USD 10 (or less) per month go directly towards improving/maintaining the game and paying the wages of the developers (and I don't think they skim too much of it). If we don't pay, the game dies. We don't want this game to die, so we pay the fairly small amount (I am not in the US, either, and I don't spend half as much time on VO as I'd like) to keep it afloat. It's sort of like a club activity, you pay membership fees and get to use the stuff that lies around.

Don't get me wrong, I fully understand your point of view. I do think, though, that you misinterpreted the circumstances this game's company is in. I do not claim to know them inside-out, either, I just reiterate what we've been told.

Okay trick question, can the VO server even support 10 000 people?

I remember having serious lag with as little as 10 people fighting simultaneously (and I have a dual 2.16 Ghz MacBookPro and 256 megs of video ram), so how many people can the VO server take on right now?

Toshiro - Paying to keep some thing alive does not wash, if it is not a GPLed game and they want to pull it - then we are all S.O.L. After all that's what the licensing game is all about...
I do understand how some of this works, I have some friends that are OSS developers. I do not have any problems with supporting the good people programming Vendetta...
I do find the next post a rather a good question, just how many people can their *nix server support? After all the number of people online at one time vs band width, might make a good argument to lower bulk prices - if lots of user space is available. After all this doesn't look like a GPLed game to me, so this money I spend never comes back into the community.

you have to consider the time and resources it takes to put this game out there,i have nothing but admiration for any dev who does it,as they never get rich until theres massive investment.
it comes down to money,i`m betting every dev could go get a job at a major software house and earn 10 times the money they get from this game.
so it must be something of a labour of love.

what gets my goat is people like bill gates,he could fund this game and make it a free-to-play.
compared with the 8 hour gameplay of some micrsoft games this one shines like beacon,kind of reminds me of the early days of computer gaming,the little guys producing better work than the huge people.

now and again we should all remember the old days,just to put games like this in perspective.

ok...thats my arse kissing over with ;))

Zed, I think the architecture is scalable to cater for 10k people, but it's not (physically) able to handle this much right now.

TwinGears: How does paying to keep VO alive until it can go 'live' not work for you? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.