That is indeed the downside with F2P to keep the game running they do need funds, and money isn't coming by magic. So allowing people to buy weapon and armors will disrupt the balance since the ones who cannot afford to spend money on having the best gear will be behind the rest. Also having stuff for sale that doesn't benefit the players buying it will only lead to no people bothering to get it.
it's a thing that isn't easy solved balance wise
How do you think you can watch TV for free? Magic? No. It's called advertising. Look it up.
Many people on this forum seem to completely lack vision. They only talk about what kind of MMO business models we have today and think that those business models will stay until the end of time. World is changing. And so is the world of MMO's. F2P have been mostly crap but once we start seeing F2P MMOs' that are as good as the P2P ones, we might see a revolution in MMO business.
I think at the moment Guild Wars has the best system. You only pay for the game itself and expansions, there are no monthly fees.
Keep in mind one thing and we do agree on this matter, Advertising is both good and bad. EA tried it with BF2142 and they got a massive protest against it. EA found out that it isn't popular amongst gamers to see advertising. But they need to get the money from some where, Guild wars model does work, never played it myself so not sure how often they update the game with more content bug fixes etc.
It could quite possibly work for AoC too, but it depends what tyoe of server s are needed and what are the maintenance costs compared to say AoC and GW. CS:S is F2P simply because the servers are being hosted by companies or other players so Valve has no expenses on them. Different games might require different technology to run and that can be the one thing that defines if it can be f2p or not.
Guild Wars has the best patching I've ever seen in an MMO.
I remember one time when someone found a game breaking bug which everyone started to exploit like crazy, the patch came within HOURS. And it was late weekend.
Right now Guild Wars is so polished there really isn't any bugs. It's all about skill balance which is almost perfect as it is. They just keep changing the skills a bit on purpose so it will make metagame change and keep things interesting.
Funcom really needs to go and look how Arenanet does things. With AoC you may have to wait for MONTHS before they fix something. Remember gems?
Everyone relax, I'm not trying to troll or anything. I think this is a legimate question. Right now Age of Conan has about 100k subscriptions which is much less than what anyone expected. Even though trials have improved the population, there hasn't been any kind of "population boom" that AoC so desperately needs. If "win-back-program" also fails, AoC might be in big big trouble. My easy solution is: make AoC Free-To-Play. You can already buy AoC Collector's Edition for less than 10 bucks, maybe even cheaper. So why not make it free? Sure you will lose monthly subscription fees but Funcom could get money by some other way. Now I don't want to see any advertising billboards all around Khessatta, but maybe they could sell some ad space in loading screen? I wouldn't mind that. Also a cash shop could work. I don't personally use them but some people do. I think this monthly subscription system MMO's have today is really dumb. Funcom is in a good position to do something revolutionary - A free AAA MMO. This would attract tons of new players and could possibly get AoC back to top-10. What are your thoughts?
Free AAA MMORPGS dont exist and even AoC is better then any f2p shit mmorpg could be ever.
100,000 Subscriber it's actually quite good.SUre it's not like WoW . But WoW subs is inflated by the 6 millions chinese paying 2 cent an hours and the thousand of *farm* business playing.Kinda like how daoc sub was inflated by buffbot account. Plus getting to level 20 take basicly 6 hours if you don't read every quest.PPl who want to play for free are simply Hypocrite that love the game but are to cheao to pay a monthly fee.Stay outside,we don't need you.
That's not a really good comparison is it now, how many subscribers will WoW have if we don't count in the chinese?
I'll agree with you that a 100.000 subscribers is an alright number though.
Everyone relax, I'm not trying to troll or anything. I think this is a legimate question. Right now Age of Conan has about 100k subscriptions which is much less than what anyone expected. Even though trials have improved the population, there hasn't been any kind of "population boom" that AoC so desperately needs. If "win-back-program" also fails, AoC might be in big big trouble. My easy solution is: make AoC Free-To-Play.
What are your thoughts?
Well, even though i have some major issues with A0C after playing the trial, i think making it free to play would be a big mistake, simply because it will lower the quality of the game and it's community.
I have played a couple of free to play games, most recently ArchLord, these games do make money but their main avenue of making cash is by introducing some sever inbalances in the game, which will puch the gamers to buy items for Real Money from game shops to be able to compete, item like potions which will make u godlike, exp modifiers, resis enhancers, Uber healing potions etc.
this is disastoures for a PvP game, in archlord, a lot of times the deciding factor in a PvP fight is who has more money to buy the better health potion, resist capes, defence potions, offence potions, speed potions, etc. This will appeal to certain people, but most people won't want this and won't want to play in a game that caters for such people.
Another factor is ofcourse all the 12 year old kids which will flood into the game, specialy as this game advertises mature content( something which i realy don't get, some blood on the screen and resizable boobs is mature content??? but that is another discussion)
This will in fact greatly effect the maturity of the gamer community in this game, from my experince, it's not always a good thing (not that 20-30 years old are mature, considering how many people choose female chars with big boobs in AoC i have serious doubts about peoples maturity, LOL), but anyways, not a good road to go , IMO
rofl.. wth does the fact of playing female character with big boobs has to do with beeing or not beeing mature. oO
Your so mature that you bought a game that designed female chars with big boobs, even the smaller boobs are huge..whatever
Have you might think the fact that this is a RPG wich means role playing wich means ppl might enjoy get out of the reality and maybe play something diferent, like for example.. a female character?
I got a BS male and a TOS female, but i guess that if me or any other pass by you ingame with my female char,, some moron like yourself, sudenly make a psicologic exam to the person and get the conclusion that must be a kid playing. LOL
Your a troll....
common pseudo mature, useless brainless trolls that like to judge others via internetz
"wow is for 12 years odl kiddos"
"you play female char your a kiddo"
"your a shemale"
"you dont like pvp you suck noob"
"etc etc etc"
wtb old school mmo players that only care if the game is good or bad and enjoy it the way they want without beeing steped over by morons like you.
I remember when no one give a shit about who is what or what he does, but they cared about paying their (even if useless 15euros) game for exchange of a quality game. And AoC aint the fkg case.
Grab a trial.. go pvp server and find out in 5 minutes that this game is shit. And dont come tell me that "reroll on PVE server NOOB"... NO I DONT CAUSE THIS MORONS SPENT YEARS SAYING THIS WAS A PVP GAME AND ITS COMPLETLY SHIT
Well Funcoms previous game, Anarchy Online is Free-To-Play, right? I don't know the details but I'm pretty sure AO doesn't have monthly subscription fee and it has some kind of cash shop. Correct me if I'm wrong.
If they did it with AO, why is it so unthinkable that they would do the same thing with AoC? It would be a good thing because it would solve the server population problem once and for all.
Anarchy Online free version is level capped (does not include the expansions that raised level cap), you won't get anywhere near the end-game.
It's actually more expensive than AOC. AO is 14.95€ +VAT / month and AOC is 12.99€ + VAT / month.. so no i don't think AOC will ever be f2p.
Comments
That is indeed the downside with F2P to keep the game running they do need funds, and money isn't coming by magic. So allowing people to buy weapon and armors will disrupt the balance since the ones who cannot afford to spend money on having the best gear will be behind the rest. Also having stuff for sale that doesn't benefit the players buying it will only lead to no people bothering to get it.
it's a thing that isn't easy solved balance wise
How do you think you can watch TV for free? Magic? No. It's called advertising. Look it up.
Many people on this forum seem to completely lack vision. They only talk about what kind of MMO business models we have today and think that those business models will stay until the end of time. World is changing. And so is the world of MMO's. F2P have been mostly crap but once we start seeing F2P MMOs' that are as good as the P2P ones, we might see a revolution in MMO business.
I think at the moment Guild Wars has the best system. You only pay for the game itself and expansions, there are no monthly fees.
Keep in mind one thing and we do agree on this matter, Advertising is both good and bad. EA tried it with BF2142 and they got a massive protest against it. EA found out that it isn't popular amongst gamers to see advertising. But they need to get the money from some where, Guild wars model does work, never played it myself so not sure how often they update the game with more content bug fixes etc.
It could quite possibly work for AoC too, but it depends what tyoe of server s are needed and what are the maintenance costs compared to say AoC and GW. CS:S is F2P simply because the servers are being hosted by companies or other players so Valve has no expenses on them. Different games might require different technology to run and that can be the one thing that defines if it can be f2p or not.
Guild Wars has the best patching I've ever seen in an MMO.
I remember one time when someone found a game breaking bug which everyone started to exploit like crazy, the patch came within HOURS. And it was late weekend.
Right now Guild Wars is so polished there really isn't any bugs. It's all about skill balance which is almost perfect as it is. They just keep changing the skills a bit on purpose so it will make metagame change and keep things interesting.
Funcom really needs to go and look how Arenanet does things. With AoC you may have to wait for MONTHS before they fix something. Remember gems?
Free AAA MMORPGS dont exist and even AoC is better then any f2p shit mmorpg could be ever.
That's not a really good comparison is it now, how many subscribers will WoW have if we don't count in the chinese?
I'll agree with you that a 100.000 subscribers is an alright number though.
Well, even though i have some major issues with A0C after playing the trial, i think making it free to play would be a big mistake, simply because it will lower the quality of the game and it's community.
I have played a couple of free to play games, most recently ArchLord, these games do make money but their main avenue of making cash is by introducing some sever inbalances in the game, which will puch the gamers to buy items for Real Money from game shops to be able to compete, item like potions which will make u godlike, exp modifiers, resis enhancers, Uber healing potions etc.
this is disastoures for a PvP game, in archlord, a lot of times the deciding factor in a PvP fight is who has more money to buy the better health potion, resist capes, defence potions, offence potions, speed potions, etc. This will appeal to certain people, but most people won't want this and won't want to play in a game that caters for such people.
Another factor is ofcourse all the 12 year old kids which will flood into the game, specialy as this game advertises mature content( something which i realy don't get, some blood on the screen and resizable boobs is mature content??? but that is another discussion)
This will in fact greatly effect the maturity of the gamer community in this game, from my experince, it's not always a good thing (not that 20-30 years old are mature, considering how many people choose female chars with big boobs in AoC i have serious doubts about peoples maturity, LOL), but anyways, not a good road to go , IMO
rofl.. wth does the fact of playing female character with big boobs has to do with beeing or not beeing mature. oO
Your so mature that you bought a game that designed female chars with big boobs, even the smaller boobs are huge..whatever
Have you might think the fact that this is a RPG wich means role playing wich means ppl might enjoy get out of the reality and maybe play something diferent, like for example.. a female character?
I got a BS male and a TOS female, but i guess that if me or any other pass by you ingame with my female char,, some moron like yourself, sudenly make a psicologic exam to the person and get the conclusion that must be a kid playing. LOL
Your a troll....
common pseudo mature, useless brainless trolls that like to judge others via internetz
"wow is for 12 years odl kiddos"
"you play female char your a kiddo"
"your a shemale"
"you dont like pvp you suck noob"
"etc etc etc"
wtb old school mmo players that only care if the game is good or bad and enjoy it the way they want without beeing steped over by morons like you.
I remember when no one give a shit about who is what or what he does, but they cared about paying their (even if useless 15euros) game for exchange of a quality game. And AoC aint the fkg case.
Grab a trial.. go pvp server and find out in 5 minutes that this game is shit. And dont come tell me that "reroll on PVE server NOOB"... NO I DONT CAUSE THIS MORONS SPENT YEARS SAYING THIS WAS A PVP GAME AND ITS COMPLETLY SHIT
thanks
Well Funcoms previous game, Anarchy Online is Free-To-Play, right? I don't know the details but I'm pretty sure AO doesn't have monthly subscription fee and it has some kind of cash shop. Correct me if I'm wrong.
If they did it with AO, why is it so unthinkable that they would do the same thing with AoC? It would be a good thing because it would solve the server population problem once and for all.
Anarchy Online free version is level capped (does not include the expansions that raised level cap), you won't get anywhere near the end-game.
It's actually more expensive than AOC. AO is 14.95€ +VAT / month and AOC is 12.99€ + VAT / month.. so no i don't think AOC will ever be f2p.