The PLEX Idea Continues to Catch On as Darkfall Introduces DUEL





It will be interesting to hear how this works out.





PLEX stands for Pilot License EXtension


GRACE is GRid Access Credit Extension




4 thoughts on “The PLEX Idea Continues to Catch On as Darkfall Introduces DUEL

  1. seanxxp

    Much like you, I find myself wondering whether the kind of gameplay on offer in some of these games is ever going to my a PLEX like system anything other than a way to increase inflation to insane levels.

    I also wonder whether all these games can support a PLEX type feature without it having a severe pay to win type of effect. As you well know, Eve is a hard game to win by paying because of the nature of its PvP. With a game like Wildstar however, perhaps money buys you much larger advantages, but I’m not really acquainted with it well enough to do anymore than speculate.

    Another thing I can’t help but wonder is, do we need to be more cynical of money sinks in games which allow the use of these types of systems?


  2. guest

    It still seems odd to me when people call this a “PLEX-like feature”. The first time I saw this kind of system was in a browser game (that in fact I still play to this day) and predates PLEX by a few years if memory serves me right. Might as well be even older ones around.

    I think you aren’t framing it in the best possible way when you ask whether the games you listed above “have a strong enough economy to support something similar to PLEX”. It is not a matter of the whole economy, it’s only about how much use you can get from the soft currency.

    It would never work in traditional P2W games, where stuff bought with hard currency trumps everything that can be acquired by either soft currency or simply by playing. Nobody would bother spending real money just to sell a subs-worth item for in-game money.

    If otherwise a game offers any reason to spend humongous amounts of soft currency then the scheme will work despite (in fact, oftentimes in spite) of the rest of the economy. Take the browser game I mentioned, it has no form of crafting, meaning that the overall economy is far less mandatory than Eve’s, but since there are plenty of ways to put soft into good use there are plenty of people willing to put those items for sale (and naturally, there will always be plenty of people willing to buy them).


  3. SynCaine

    It stands for Do You Even Lift, because jokes.

    Dead on about the economy thing too; Darkfall’s is an absolute joke, where having a ‘full bank’ is trivial, making the loss of items via PvP a non-issue. As there is basically no other use for gold in DF, only the most lazy and horrible PvP-only players are going to be interested in converting real money into in-game gold to fund further PvP’ing.

    The fact that DF has 100% safe zones and these can’t be lost is tragically hilarious. Companies do understand that when a PLEX-like item is destroyed, it literally means that the company got paid money for something that has now gone poof and needs to be replaced via another real-money purchase, right?


  4. Wilhelm Arcturus Post author

    Do You Even Lift? That is actually kind of funny, and makes perfect sense to me in the context of everything I know about Darkfall, which isn’t very much at all.




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