Well it’s official, EA has lost their minds. Or they’re just realizing that free to play models are insanely profitable.
Command and Conquer will be free to play.
This is not to be confused with Command and Conquer Tiberian Alliances which of course is already free to play.
This is a game that was originally called Command and Conquer Generals 2. Bioware was set to make the next Command and Conquer as the first in their series of RTS games.
It was questioned whether or not Bioware could even do it. Bioware is basically EA’s RPG division and they do nothing but RPGs.
So after a few months of development the name changed from Command and Conquer Generals 2 to simply Command and Conquer. It was announced also that they would be releasing Generals 2 at a future date.
Well now they’ve decided that Generals 2 will be the main body of work for Command and Conquer. As well it will now be a free to play game. They will be working on new factions that are more Tiberium Sun and Red Alert themed later.
Yes, Red Alert themed. That one should be strikingly odd since the Red Alert factions were basically just modern day armies with crazy technology.
Their free to play model will involve purchasing a general and gaining abilities as you level up your general from playing. Each faction will have several generals that can be purchased.
This model resembles League of Legends in which you can purchase heroes to level them up. It can also be seen as similar to Age of Empires Online in which you had premium factions which could accomplish post level cap grinding.
What this means is that if this game fails it will be the final Command and Conquer ever.Age of Empires Online went through a similar process. Age of Empires was steadily pumping out RTS games and their final Age of Empires was oriental themed.
Age of Empires Online came out. The studio stated they would make whatever faction people wanted, and so they did. But as they started making factions the number of users just did not increase. They dropped the game and stopped making content.
The failure of this title was so massive the Age of Empires series was completely cancelled.
Command and Conquer will go through a similar process in which if the holy name of Command and Conquer is not strong enough to attract millions of users…. it will go belly up and fall.
