There are a few people that are saying that as the trial has been successful, we should launch a full version of F2P. When we have launched the F2P trial we saw an immediate reduction of 30% in accounts becoming members who could take advantage of the trial. The amount of accounts we were risking was relatively small as we were only risking new accounts to the game. Fortunately during the trial, the extra traffic caused us to have a net gain. The data we collected throughout the trial suggests that the length of the trial is about right as the F2P -> P2Pconversion is high and most of those who converted to members did so in the first week.
The key points to take away here are that we were only looking at new to game accounts, most who subbed did so in the first week and the potential amount of the player base who change their behaviour based on membership changes is 30%.
When we look at a full F2P option there are some conclusions we can make; firstly the full option is unlikely to bring any more accounts to game than the two week trial. We know this because of the high conversion rate and the distribution of when these people converted during the trial. Secondly, we are giving every member of the player base to play a F2P option, if the percentages stay the same we risk losing 60k members.
So as things stand, the data tells us that a full F2P option risks 60k members and is unlikely to bring in any more accounts than a two week trial. Now, neither you or us want to lose 60k members in a short period of time as the impact on the team and game is catastrophic.
Of course, the data may well be misleading so we want to check it, this is why we are opening the trial to even more people (90 day lapsed members). We can look at the data we get from that and see if that confirms or contradicts what we are seeing.
It's a journey guys and we are trying to be as open with you about it as possible, even if what we are saying isn't something you want to hear. The worse thing we can do is to keep you in the dark because the news isn't something you would like. That's not how we roll.
24-Jul-2014 09:55:21
