Global Agenda Remains Free, Expands
In April, Global Agenda expanded its free-to-play model to encompass those who had bought the game digitally. It seems that this was a very good thing for Hi-Rez Studios because the game is due to receive its largest update yet and that too shall be free. To everyone, no matter how or when they joined the game. As well as adding plenty of tweaks and new stuff, a full list of which is below, the expansion will add an entire new open zone, the Recursive Colony. According to the press release this place is controlled by a “hive-mind faction of robots constructing robots”. That’s a lot of robots. Hi-Rez say this is the biggest update in the game’s history and it suggests free-to-play is working out, attracting enough new players to remain sustainable and turning a profit. It bodes well for other upcoming attractions that hope to thrive using a similar model, not least of which is the studio’s own Tribes: Ascend. Full details of the expansion, due this autumn, await.
- New Open Zone with several instanced missions, quest chains, mid-high level content, vendors, social spaces
- New enemy bots – encountered within Open Zone as well as instanced missions
- Daily Repeatable Quests – for solo agents and teams. Some quests take place in zones, while others send teams into Recursive Colony hive nodes and ruins. These quests include new 4-man defense Raid missions – now available to smaller groups (1-4) at lower levels (20+)
- New Dyes, Flair, and Trails – rewards for winning missions, completing daily quests, rare bot drops, others given via achievements
- New Pets – new pets available as rewards and crafted items.
- New Blueprints – for consumables and mods
- Easier crafting – components now within the zone, to help with leveling crafting skills
- New High/Max/UltraMax missions entering the Spec Ops queues
- New PvP Map – Push Dust will be entering the Merc queue from Beta
- New PvP Acquisition/CTR Map – Colony Caverns will be entering the Beta Queue
- Revamped Intro Missions – Tutorials now include class-specific elements to help train new players
- Some quests now affect the state of the world (example – Brownouts in Dome City…)
- Ability to transfer between different Open Zone instances (and VR Arena)
- Open Zone cross-instance chat channels
- Disconnect to Character Select Screen without re-login
- Improved Vendor Item Previewing
A healthy amount of content, no? According to my calculations, bang per buck is incalculable due to the lack of bucks. But the number of robots is quite simply massive.