In the world of MMOs there tends to exist two distinct business models: subscription and real money trade (cash shops/item malls). I’ve spoken on these two before, and I am not going to get into that at the moment. Right now I’ll talk about how Requiem: Bloodymare does business.
Requiem is actually a hybrid of the two models. It’s free to play and has an item mall, but it also has optional subscriptions. These subscriptions come in two flavors: basic and premium. They both give the same types of benefits but in varying degrees and for different costs. The premium subscription costs your typical 15 bucks a month, for it you get 50% bonus experience, increased loot drops, lesser death penalty, when purchasing points for the item mall you get bonus points and some other benefits. The basic subscription comes in at around 7ish bucks and has the same types of benefits but at about half their bonus. The benefits range across your account and all its characters.
The item mall is pretty typical, most of the items are convience types. You can get packages that are useful for whatever zone you’re playing in, mounts, costumes, crafting related items, consumables and bag/bank space.
Turan Costume
The costumes are one of the more popular items as they give some stats that can make a big difference at lower levels. Each costume comes with a male/female version and is based on race. Each costume also comes with 500 HP/MP and 30 HP/MP recovery. This can make a very big difference at lower levels, but the effect does become pretty small higher up. Costumes are priced at 150 points (roughy 1.50 USD) and last 30 days.
Kruxena Costume
The other item I’ve had the chance of trying is mounts. There’s two types in the item mall, Fast Rex at 200 points (7m/s, roughly 2.00 USD) and Rex Von Dutch at 250 points (8m/s, roughly 2.50 USD), both last 30 days. The mounts are used in a similar fashion to most MMO mounts — they reside in your bags as an item that is usable with a short cast time. To give a general idea of the speed increase the 250 point mount is a 60% movement speed increase.
Rex Von Dutch
Subscriptions and point purchasing can be done through PayPal, so it’s pretty safe. I think there’s also some game cards available. From the amount of recognizeable item mall items and region chat users (region chat is only available to subscribers) I’ve seen in game it also seems they’re doing pretty well.
