Wallets Out For WildStar's Payment Model
And then some of you can put them away, again. It's funny, given everything we've seen of Carbine's handsome MMO Wildstar, which includes ten thousand videos and that one time I had a dream about playing it, everyone has been tempering their excitement with because Carbine wouldn't say how they'll be charging for it. This is what PC gaming is, now: even "free" comes at a cost, so these questions have to be answered. It turns out the reason Carbine had been keeping silent was because they were knocking together an interactive infographic to explain a system that uses a subscription or in-game money to pay for access.
It is like Eve's Plex. You can simply buy a subscription, or you use your in-game gold to buy access with a currency called "C.R.E.D.D.". C.R.E.D.D. in their own words: 'This is an item that can be purchased online at the WildStar website, and can then be bought and sold with other players in-game. This trading happens via the Commodities Exchange – basically a stock market that lets you trade C.R.E.D.D. to other players for earned in-game gold.
'So for those of you who don't want to pay a subscription fee: you can use your first month of gameplay to earn gold while playing WildStar. When the next month comes around, instead of paying the monthly subscription fee, you can use gold earned in-game to purchase C.R.E.D.D. from other players on the CX. Boom, you cash in a C.R.E.D.D. for a month of game time. You can continue this cycle over & over again, enabling you to “play to pay” for WildStar.'
It works in the other direction, too. Say you have your eye on an in-game item, but don't have the time to grind it. You can buy C.R.E.D.D. and trade it the Exchange for gold, enabling you to buy what you want while paying another player. Keeping it in-game will deter gold-farmers. Here's what you'll be paying/not paying for.
Monthly subs are $15/€13€/£9, and one C.R.E.D.D costs $20/€17/£12. That's not even close! And we don't know how much gold farming it will take to be able to afford the C.R.E.D.D. required. We'll find out Spring of 2014.