It’s been a while in coming, but the news is finally out: WildStar is going with a hybrid subscription model. We’ll pay once for the box (with a free month thrown in), then pay every month for continued access to the game.
The hybrid part comes in through Certificates of Research, Exploration, Destruction and Development, or CREDD. There’s a neat little guide to how this works over on the WildStar official site, but essentially it’s very similar to the PLEX system in EVE Online. Players can buy a CREDD from Carbine for cash, and then sell it in-game on the Commodities Exchange for in-game gold.