COMMUNITY - FORUMS - NEW PLAYER QUESTIONS
Will it be Free to play

I have been following this game for some time and i'd like to know if it will be free to play or will it be pay to win or will it be pay to play?


Join the Earldom of Thunormore today!

11/9/2016 3:54:20 PM #1

Pay to play.

You have to have a spark in order to 'live'. You purchase sparks from SBS.

11/9/2016 4:01:13 PM #2

It will be pay to play. You need to buy the game and it will come with at least 1 spark of life and 3 souls. A spark of life is needed to start a character with one of the souls. A character will live for 10-14 months on avarage until it reaches permadeath. After permadeath you can buy a new spark of life to be reborn with the same soul on a new character.

Business Model & Sparks of Life

At the moment you can buy pledges that include some ingame items and titles etc. but those are meant to get the game rolling in the beginning. After the launch there will be only Sparks of Life and souls available to buy in the store.


11/9/2016 4:11:42 PM #3

To give a more detailed explanation.

CoE is a game featuring a variety of Permadeath. On average, a character will live for about 1 IRL year.

When your character is 'killed' in-game, you lose about 2 RL days off your character's lifespan. You cannot suffer this penalty more than once every 2.5 RL hours (Unless you're a murderer).

Being 'killed' in an intentional act in this game. When your character reaches zero health, they will fall to the ground incapacitated. In order to actually kill you, the player who incapacitated you that has to intentionally perform a Coup de Grace in order to 'kill' your character. When this happens, you have to spirit walk (kind of like ghost-walking in WoW...but the environment you spirit walk in isn't the same as the environment you normally play in). In general, wild animals will not finish you off, they will leave you Incapacitated.

The closer your character is to the end of their lifespan, the harder it is going to be to successfully return to your body if you are killed.

When the day finally comes that you are killed and cannot make it back to your body....or your character dies of old age. That's it. That character is gone.

This is when you have to pay. It costs $30 to buy a Spark of Life to take a soul (which could be the same soul that was in your last character...which provides benefits to your next character) and have it occupy a new character for you to play as.

So....if you are a low-risk player who doesn't like to take the chance of death...odds are CoE will cost you about $30 per year. In other words.... about $2.50 a month.

If you are a high-risk player who plays 8 hours a day and incurs the death penalty as often as you possibly could every single day, all the time...your character will probably live for about 60 IRL days, or 2 months. In which case, CoE costs you about $15 a month...or, the exact same amount as a World of Warcraft subscription. And this assume you never, ever take a day off from getting yourself killed, and never, ever survive for 2 and a half hours without ending up Spirit Walking....which will basically never happen.

So, while this 'Pay per life' model seems pricey...you have to intentionally suck at this game in order for it to cost as much as a standard MMO subscription.

And, for clarity...once the game releases, Sparks of Life are the ONLY thing that SbS is going to be selling. During development, you can buy titles and land and equipment and animals. As soon as Exposition ends and the game goes live, all of that instantly goes away. So the current model is "Pay to get a head start," but everything you start with in CoE...you can lose.

EDIT (with Thanks to Ruthgar): Bear in mind, I'm speaking here about a typical experience for a typical player. Criminal Players, Nobility, and Players involved in wars will see different behavior. For details on that, see here.


Knowing what I can do isn’t the same thing as knowing what I can’t do.

11/9/2016 5:02:43 PM #4

Posted By guildsbounty at 09:11 AM - Wed Nov 09 2016

To give a more detailed explanation.

CoE is a game featuring a variety of Permadeath. On average, a character will live for about 1 IRL year.

When your character is 'killed' in-game, you lose about 2 RL days off your character's lifespan. You cannot suffer this penalty more than once every 2.5 RL hours (Unless you're a murderer).

Being 'killed' in an intentional act in this game. When your character reaches zero health, they will fall to the ground incapacitated. In order to actually kill you, the player who incapacitated you that has to intentionally perform a Coup de Grace in order to 'kill' your character. When this happens, you have to spirit walk (kind of like ghost-walking in WoW...but the environment you spirit walk in isn't the same as the environment you normally play in). In general, wild animals will not finish you off, they will leave you Incapacitated.

The closer your character is to the end of their lifespan, the harder it is going to be to successfully return to your body if you are killed.

When the day finally comes that you are killed and cannot make it back to your body....or your character dies of old age. That's it. That character is gone.

This is when you have to pay. It costs $30 to buy a Spark of Life to take a soul (which could be the same soul that was in your last character...which provides benefits to your next character) and have it occupy a new character for you to play as.

So....if you are a low-risk player who doesn't like to take the chance of death...odds are CoE will cost you about $30 per year. In other words.... about $2.50 a month.

If you are a high-risk player who plays 8 hours a day and incurs the death penalty as often as you possibly could every single day, all the time...your character will probably live for about 60 IRL days, or 2 months. In which case, CoE costs you about $15 a month...or, the exact same amount as a World of Warcraft subscription. And this assume you never, ever take a day off from getting yourself killed, and never, ever survive for 2 and a half hours without ending up Spirit Walking....which will basically never happen.

So, while this 'Pay per life' model seems pricey...you have to intentionally suck at this game in order for it to cost as much as a standard MMO subscription.

And, for clarity...once the game releases, Sparks of Life are the ONLY thing that SbS is going to be selling. During development, you can buy titles and land and equipment and animals. As soon as Exposition ends and the game goes live, all of that instantly goes away. So the current model is "Pay to get a head start," but everything you start with in CoE...you can lose.

One thing that you forgot to mention is that the more famous or higher in nobility a person is, the higher the death penalty is. An unranked commoner who suffers a death might only lose that 2 IRL days to their lifespan, but the king/queen that suffers the same type of death is facing a 2 to 3 month loss to their IRL lifespan.


Count Ruthgar Rugharin, County of Bragen Veld, Duchy - Conclave of Aritaur, Kingdom of Vornair.

11/9/2016 5:06:00 PM #5

Posted By Ruthgar at 12:02 PM - Wed Nov 09 2016

One thing that you forgot to mention is that the more famous or higher in nobility a person is, the higher the death penalty is. An unranked commoner who suffers a death might only lose that 2 IRL days to their lifespan, but the king/queen that suffers the same type of death is facing a 2 to 3 month loss to their IRL lifespan.

Very true, but nobility is also more likely to be avoidant of danger for that exact reason. And your average player won't be famous enough for that to matter.

I also didn't go into detail on how it is handled in war-time, or how criminal actions are handled. I was just trying to cover the high-level "This will be the typical gameplay experience for the typical player" side of things.

Thanks for the call-out though, I see I forgot to make that part clear in my original post.


Knowing what I can do isn’t the same thing as knowing what I can’t do.

11/9/2016 5:13:24 PM #6

I sincerely doubt the game being Free-To-Play at any time since it'll need to generate a lot of revenue for the devs who poured their heart and soul (and their own money) on this. If it was made by Blizzard or any Company swimming in cash it could easily be F2P at some point


11/9/2016 10:40:40 PM #7

For their tl;dr

You pay $35 for the initial game purchase and first character life.

Upon permadeath (estimated between 10-15 months on average--depending on amount of deaths and SP (story points)) you are then required to purchase a new spark of life ($25) to play as a new character of multiple selections.

So I'd say think of it as $25 per year, more or less.

Bare in mind, you must use a new spark of life for each character you make (so, alts too).


My ongoing biography, as written by the community:

Posted By annfrank at 04:15 AM - Tue Apr 11 2017

I'm woke AF

Posted By Apaukolypse at 05:31 AM - Fri Apr 21 2017

I like memes

¯_(ツ)_/¯

11/9/2016 11:26:00 PM #8

I'll take this pay to play model over f2p with a cash shop any day of the week.

Usually with a pay to play model you can expect fresh/new content fairly regularly. I'm ok with p2p (when the Dev team is active.) because people should be paid for their work.


11/10/2016 12:17:22 AM #9

Assuming you don't get killed all the time or commit crimes and get caught all the time, it'll be approximately $25 a year give or take a few months.


To rule is not to reign but to garner respect. To lead by example & not a show of force. It is the involvement in the affairs of others & not interfering in them. This will pave the way to honor & once you attain honor, you should never once let it go.

11/11/2016 6:18:34 AM #10

its subscription based pay to play.


11/11/2016 7:32:08 AM #11

Posted By Hill at 5:26 PM - Wed Nov 09 2016

I'll take this pay to play model over f2p with a cash shop any day of the week.

Usually with a pay to play model you can expect fresh/new content fairly regularly. I'm ok with p2p (when the Dev team is active.) because people should be paid for their work.

I'm with you there. I really like how the payment system directly integrates into the design philosophy of the game. As a player, you really don't want to die in the game because that could cost you real life money; whereas in most games you just lose experience or some time to run back to your corpse and respawn. There's an added level of immersion just from the fear of death.


“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

11/11/2016 7:32:13 AM #12

Posted By Sieraen at 11:40 PM - Wed Nov 09 2016

You pay $35 for the initial game purchase and first character life.

The price of the game is going to increse after ks tiers end (next week). Devs commented that on discord but didnt say how much, regarding FAQ inicially the gane price has setted around 25-45$ so I guess it will be 40-45$ (If I find the screen of that specific dev comment I will link it here this aftenoon).

11/11/2016 7:53:00 AM #13

I've read somewhere that you accumulate Story points throughout your character's life which can be used to buy sparks if you want an alternative to using money to buy sparks, although it would make you lose on the things you can do with the story points


11/11/2016 7:56:02 AM #14

Posted By Kurome at 02:53 AM - Fri Nov 11 2016

I've read somewhere that you accumulate Story points throughout your character's life which can be used to buy sparks if you want an alternative to using money to buy sparks, although it would make you lose on the things you can do with the story points

Yeah it's in the Bolstering / Earn to Play DJ.


I don't know anymore.

11/11/2016 9:17:04 AM #15

Posted By Wicked FlamezZ at 07:56 AM - Fri Nov 11 2016

Posted By Kurome at 02:53 AM - Fri Nov 11 2016

I've read somewhere that you accumulate Story points throughout your character's life which can be used to buy sparks if you want an alternative to using money to buy sparks, although it would make you lose on the things you can do with the story points

Yeah it's in the Bolstering / Earn to Play DJ.

Yes but this is very difficult indeed to achieve, and deliberately so. Bear in mind that the meager subscription charge is effectively their only source of income. There are development and support costs as well as server costs. They aren't likely to cut off their income supply willingly. It would effectively kill the game. They also don't want to shift to a "pay to win" model, which would spoil the game too, so this seems to be the best option available.

Perhaps in time they will consider limited edition vanity pets and novelties that aren't game changing but could also help to provide revenue streams.

Potentially they could look at major expansions too, for example an "Elyria: Oceans Rising" expansion which adds in small tropical islands, buried treasure, naval combat and piracy, swimming, sharks, undersea caves etc. Perhaps an "Elyria: The Underdark" expansion, unlocking underground plots, deep caverns, enhanced tunnelling. Bio luminescant fungi and moss, underground lakes, luminescant crystal formations etc.