Trion Worlds, the developer of Rift: The Planes of Telara, has officially announced that they game will be going free-to-play for levels 1-20. This is similar to when Blizzard opened up World of Warcraft for levels 1-10 (now -20) free as well, but with massive restrictions. Rift is far less restricted and makes a game certainly worth its merits. Interested? Then check out MMO Anthropology, they have the story.

With patch 1.1, Star Wars: the Old Republic discovered that faction imbalance can really wreck open-world PvP and by offering incentives for players to play open-world, but without a mechanism that permits regrouping really amplifies the problem. As a result, BioWare discovered with SWtOR culture that some things come with unintended consequences.

As a relatively new property, SWtOR is still growing up.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

In the newest MMO Anthropology the transition from subscription services to free-to-play for the video game Star Trek Online. Over the past three months Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment have been preparing their MMO property for this transition and there have been numerous changes to the game world. The most significant of which the addition of dilithium—a commodity/reward currency that overtook other reward currencies and melded them into one—and the addition of a pay-currency called Cryptic Points.

Other changes have been the addition of a virtual item shop and a tier system between Silver (free-to-play) and Gold (subscription) accounts with access to different bonuses and additional game enhancements such as more character slots, ship slots, inventory, and etc. for subscribers.

The introduction of a sudden rush of free-to-play users with the game opening up to non-subscribers has generated quite an influx of new users and this may have consequences for the culture within the game.

Link, via MMO Anthropology and YouTube.

If you’ve been playing Star Wars the Old Repulbic long, you’ve either found or heard of datacrons. World objects that give you stat boosts that are hidden across all the different maps. Some are easy to access and some are extremely difficult; all of them provide a worthwhile reward and some bragging rights.

Look no further than this walkthrough: here’s the datacrons available on the 10-16 level city-world of Coruscant.

Old Galactic Market – Shipping and Receiving Docks, +2 Presence Datacron

Not that difficult to locate, but it’s guarded by an elite (11) enemy and his pals. After entering the area, and picking up the first few missions, head immediately north through the firefight in the double-bridge. Turn west (do not use the elevator in front of you, it’s broken) after heading west for a bit, you’ll come to an area with crates and such, turning back north again you’ll notice a working elevator.

Take the elevator there up to the platform and the datacron and the elite enemy will be hard to miss.

Black Sun Territory – Black Sun Market / Graffiti Square, +2 Endurance Datacron

You’ll want to wind your way into the Black Sun territory and find a section called Graffiti Square, it’s a bit deep into Black Sun Territory, but with a little perseverance you can make it. You’ll find a giant clutch of boxes and equipment crammed into a corner to the north section of the map.

Start by leaping up onto the barrels, work your way up onto the equipment (looks like an open top hauling container), then from the equipment to the boxes nearby. Keep leaping up, and you’ll find it leads to some small pipes that lead to a balcony. Follow the balcony until you come to a broken section, use the pipe to go to another balcony across a corridor, then use the second pipe to get back to the original balcony.

Follow the balcony down to a dead end, there’s a sign that you can jump atop, follow that across and onto yet another balcony and there you’ll find the datacron.

Justicar Territory – Shipping Docks, +2 Cunning Datacron

At the Shipping Docks, before you get into the landing zone with the ships, there’s an area that forks around that leads out to the docks proper—in this area you’ll find a large stack of boxes that look like they’ve been designed as steps. Clamber up them and onto a lengthy pipe until you come to a series of pipes to jump along.

Just follow the pipe along the wall until you’re brought around to a platform and the datacron is visible atop a box.

The Works – Pipeline Passageway, Yellow Matrix Shard Datacron

To reach this one you’ll want to head down the path that you take when you first visit, after heading south through the northern works area, turn east, follow the path around the southern bend until you’re headed north again. Eventually you’ll walk down a corridor where there are cthons hanging out. You’ll see a wall with some debris and a diagonal pipe.

Run up that pipe and follow each pipe that arrives to meet it. You’ll traverse quite a distance, all running on pipes; this will take you through numerous areas of the Works. Be careful, it’s easy to fall off the pipe if your incautious about movement.

Eventually you will see the datacron shining in the dark along a ledge and you’ll just need to walk up to it and grab it.

Jedi Tempe Ruins – Mezzanine, +2 Strength Datacron

When you enter the Jedi Tempe Ruins via the first elevator you’re deposited in a circular map with lots of debris. Head north proper and then wind near-ish the wall on the eastern side until you clear a gigantic fallen column. Avoid the small group of enemies and run up the fallen pillar to the balcony above.

From there, simply follow the balcony around the wall counter-clockwise until it opens out into a broad platform. Move to the edge of the platform and look for the datacron. You’ll notice it set along an extended scaffold that you just have to drop down onto.

Link, via MMO Anthropology YouTube and MMO Anthropology

The Darkmoon Faire had some upgrades come World of Warcraft patch 4.3 and now it has its own island. With the advent of the Hour of Twilight patch, you can now visit the Faire out in their strange recesses–but you can’t fly there–and there’s a great deal of weird things going on.

Get tokens, get shot out of a cannon, have your fortune read.

A lot of things for any anthropologist to get up to.

The Star Wars: The Old Republic beta weekend has finally drawn to a close and now there’s a plethora of information spreading across the net about the game. By and large, it looks like the game is pressing the cut scenes and the storytelling very hard.

The game has been described as a “solo MMO” with powerfully excellent voice acting and a strong themepark element. In fact, much of the game feels like it pressures the player to remain solo except for the intermittent “HEROIC” quest.

Also: Lightsabers.

Here’s some of the highlights:

Rusty Hearts is a free-to-play game developed by Stairway Games for Perfect World Entertainment and it represents a different type of 3D brawler reminiscent of Castlevania and stand-up arcade games. Its Gothic-and-comedy feel give it a lot of character and the cell-shaded animé-eqse animation style produces a profoundly different effect than is delivered in any other game on the market.

It has some flaws, but they’re mostly negligible; it’s also a new game so what it lacks in current depth it makes up for in sheer gusto.

Pros:

• Marinated in personality and a Castlevania gothic atmosphere;
• Extremely easy to get into, nice level learning curve;
• In-game customization via crafting seems fairly extensive;
• Multiple game-modes and scripted quests makes replaying dungeons less tedious.

Cons:

• Extremely linear, repetitive gameplay—very much a theme park MMO;
• Only four classes (three available currently) gender locked;
• Very little initial customization available.

For the full thing, you’ll have to visit the site and leave a comment.

Link, via GameOgre.

This may be a wonderful milestone, but it’s still not as useful as the monthly user count. The reason is because Free Realms happens to be a free-to-play MMO, which means that users can fire-and-forget their accounts and it will build their registered user base. Subscription-based MMOs, such as World of Warcraft and RIFT both continue to charge participants whether they play the game or not (thus generating revenue even if players do not participate that month.) Free-to-play MMOs depend instead on users purchasing from their virtual item shops.

As a result, while 20 million registered users sounds extremely daunting, how many of those users are active during a month would probably be a better indicator.

Of course, we agree, when it comes to free-to-play games it’s the monthly active users that really shows the overall trend of how well the game is doing. Attracting new players is extremely important; but if there’s a gigantic amount of churn, and nobody sticking around to use the cash shop.

Well, that’s a slow boat to a quick death.

Link, via SiliconANGLE.