Free2Play: Yay Warframe, FU Neverwinter!

Update 14 for Warframe went live recently, so I had a look at all the new content - and possibly a final look at the game before it gets fucked up by a possible acquisition through Perfect World Entertainment. I'll give you an example of how their greed ruins "Free2Play" games in this very entry, but let's get back to update 14 first.

The first thing I noticed upon logging in is how the bland, sterile main menu where you tweak and modify your gear, change equipment and all that sort of thing has been replaced by a little space ship, which now serves as players' base of operations. It also uses J.J. Abrams levels of lens-flares and shit.

"MY FUCKING RETINAS! Why would you do this?"

The ship offers the exact same stuff you'd normally do in the main menu, but it's a bit more immersive when you move your character around to access gear, weapon modifications and so forth. I was pretty pleased with it.

Though I am absolutely disgusted at how shit you are at Warframe when you compete against me.

I've edited a little video where you get a glimpse at the little ship. You can also see my character as he gently pets a puppy before heading for a wrecked carrier ship, which is infested by pants-shittingly scary space zombies. If you're somewhat familiar with Warframe, the puppy is part of the new Kubrow companion breeding feature and the latter is a pretty impressive update to the Infested, with new sounds, abilities, music, tilesets and what have you. BEHOLD!

What's not so great upon closer inspection is how the new Kubrow companions work. If you haven't watched the video above, here's what a Kubrow looks like:

They come in all shapes, sizes and fur tones, resembling dogs, foxes, hyenas and other fun, furry sidekicks. They're incredibly well-animated battle pets, which fight by your side, chomp down on tons of bad guys and, depending on their breed, dig up items for you or cloak or shield you in battle and so on. And they're immediately more likable than the old sentinel pets. Think about it - would you rather have a loyal canine companion, which looks and behaves a lot like a real animal or some floating machine named "Dethcube", because it's literally a floating cube that makes things go dead?

Not a joke, but an actual pet.

When it comes to aesthetics and general awwwness, the Kubrow wins hands down. Unfortunately, they're also the shittest battle pets in any game ever, if you have anything that remotely resembles a real life.

Let's start with the fact that finding a Kubrow egg in order to hatch one of these fuckers requires several hours of grinding. You're also going to need 150,000 credits to build an incubator to hatch the damn thing. And 150,000 credits is about as much as it sounds. You can, of course, skip the entire process by throwing an adequate amount of real money at the screen.

Then you wait 24+ RL hours for the damn thing to hatch. Again, if you don't want to wait, you can always skip the hatching process using cold, hard cash. And that's when you'll find out whether your new pet is a boy or a girl and which of the four different species of Kubrow it belongs to. Some kubrows dig up items like ammunition during battle (i.e. they're worthless), others support a sneaky playstyle and provide stealth buffs - you get the idea. Depending on your personal setup and preferences, the Kubrow you hatch might just not be a very good choice. So if you don't like what you have, you're gonna have to start hunting for a new egg (or spend more money in the cash shop) and repeat every step it took to get here.

Oh yeah, you're also gonna have to put the unwanted pet into Stasis, because you can't just sell/release/euthanise unwanted Kubrows. The first stasis chamber is free, the next one costs real money.

I have spent around 20 Euros worth of cash shop money (which I got for free, because my job is awesome) on Kubrow eggs, stasis chambers and other shit until I finally hatched one that works with my aggressive play style. After hatching the fucker you get to wait for up to 48 RL hours until they mature and show off their final form. Remember how I said a Kubrow can look like a fox, hyena and so forth?

These...

...guys.

Well, they can also be creme-coloured and incredibly skinny, have pointed rabbit-ears and poofy, oversized feet. Like fucking mutated poodles. Which happens to be exactly how Claire's Kubrow turned out, which is okay, since she's female, her pet is female, she has a high tolerance level for stupid shit like that.

My Kubrow puppy looks exactly the way her Kubrow looked like when it was a puppy. When that damn thing reaches maturity tonight and looks like a fucking poodle, I'm gonna eject it into space (except, I can't, so I'll have to put it into stasis for RL cash) and then I'll have to spend another 20something Euros or countless hours on more Kubrow eggs until one of the right breed comes out which doesn't look absolutely shit. I could also purchase one from another player, which, again, would cost me real money.

Or I could stop caring about aesthetics altogether, but then I may as well just stick with the goddamn Dethcube. Apparently, there was an option to change the appearance of an ugly Kubrow for a few pennies, but the community wanted it removed. You stupid fucks.

Also, Kubrows come with a whopping two abilities equipped and all the rest needs to be found. All of their abilities and skills can be dropped by feral Kubrows, which only spawn in a handful of low-level missions, which you'll be grinding, farming and repeating for days if you want to unlock all the stuff for your new pet. Have fun!

Another fun new thing is the new dark sector pvp mode, where a bunch of players attempt to hack a few terminals in order to break into a base and nuke its core, whilst the defending side has to stop them. Think Strand of the Ancients or some of the SWTOR battlegrounds. I tried one for the first time today and kicked ass, so that made me happy. I had the overall highest damage, but was only 2nd for kills, because I nuked the core while some other guys kept killing the enemy team. Which makes me a bit sad, but that's how we won, so I cannot really complain. Anyhow, if you wanna see how that looks, there's a video. If it looks like I'm a confused noob, it's because I'm a confused noob. It was the first time I tried this.

Now, why is Perfect World Entertainment such an awful bunch of greedy fucks, who exist only to make fun Free2Play games shit? Because they can. What I've linked there is the exclusive right to play the new Dragonborn race in Neverwinter, a playable race, which fans have been begging for since the game's early beta stages. The only way to play this race is by spending 95 Euros or your reguinal equivalent on this stupid item pack, which contains a whole lot of completely useless, overpriced crap. To be fair, the pack is currently on offer and will only cost 71 Euros until August. Fuck you, Perfect World and fuck you hard.

I'm aware that games like Everquest 2 tried to get away with exclusive playable races when they went Free2Play and people hated the idea so much that all the races on there are now free. SWTOR has exclusive races, but you can unlock them through an optional subscription or an amount of money, which is MUCH more reasonable than 95 fucking Euros.

I am also aware that The Elder Scrolls Online forces people to get the ridiculously expensive Imperial Edition in order to play the Imperial race. A dick move for which they've been criticized a lot - and rightfully so. And just because TESO did it doesn't make it okay to put up a 95 Euro paywall for a fucking playable race in Neverwinter.

The saddest part is how they're fully aware of how much people will hate them for it, how people will complain about it on the forums, how people like me will complain about that shit when reviewing their next content expansion, but the amount of complete and utter idiots, who are happy and willing to shell out real money for this shit far outweighs all of this. Perfect World knows that their reputation is shit, they know lots of people hate them and they don't give a fuck, because they're too busy rolling around in the money of stupid people. Thank you. Thank you, Perfect World, for being greedy bastards and a big thank you to all the morons who are willing to shell out their money on such stupid, evil shit.

To be fair, if you turn awesome source-material like this...

into shit like that, it becomes pretty difficult to feel left out for not buying them.

Awful monetization aside, I actually like Neverwinter. A huge fanbase of loyal players likes Neverwinter, keeps it alive with custom quests and tons of incredible stories and content. And this is how Perfect World Entertainment treats them. This is how they rip them off. This isn't cool. This isn't fan-service. It's insulting and disgusting. 

Of course there's always the chance that they'll make the Dragonborn playable for free at a later date like they did with the Drow. But come on. 95 fucking Euros. And that very same company is currently trying to buy Warframe? I just can't fucking wait for that to happen!

-Cat