I find it funny that prior to the whole F2P craze, P2P did just fine and no one ever second-guessed it. People bought the boxes, paid the subs, and played.... this lasted just fine for about a decade. And, in a number of cases, it's still working just fine.
Yet, you have people who like to think in absolutes out there now arguing that "P2P doesn't work anymore and F2P is the only viable way to go". Of course P2P still works. It still *is* working. The trick is to create a game that enough people find *worth the subscription fee* to pay for. Several developers over the past 5 or 6 years have failed to pull that off.
Their failure - at least in part, in my own opinion - is that instead of trying to forge their own identity and providing a unique experience (like the old school MMOs were), they were trying to ride WoW's coat-tails by trying to capture Blizzard's lightning. One after another, they failed, and players became more and more disenchanted, and more and more cynical.
And of course there's that word "free". People are drawn in by the word. All their "standards" and "demands" and "expectations" fly out the window the moment they realize there isn't a price attached to something. *Especially* if it's a AAA title making the switch. Look at DDO for example... That game was failing, absolutely, as a P2P MMO. It simply wasn't retaining enough subs to remain healthy. Turbine made the switch to their Hybrid model and, holy crap, you'd think the heavens parted and released a gift to the F2P crowd. People were so enamoured by the fact that a "AAA Quality" MMO had gone F2P that they completely overlooked the fact that it was a steadily sinking ship as P2P.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... when a MMO that was on its way down the tubes as P2P becomes the Darling of the F2P market... that's painting a pretty sad picture of F2P overall. And yet, some F2P advocates, such as Richard Aioshi here on MMORPG.com, can't understand why many people will only play P2P titles and won't touch F2P games, citing inferior quality as a common reason.
I just wanted to point out, very, very, good post! I 100% agree with what you had to say. Personally it is a sad market and I know this sounds horridly twisted of me, but I look down on F2P games. The 'cool' kids in the MMO world are the P2P games. They're so good that they can actually get people to pay to play them. F2P games are in some ways failures, and lack any real quality hence no one wants to pay for them untill they play them and get hooked. The fact that LoTRO is going F2P shows me that that game is going down the tubes, but I've felt that way for a year or so now.
I agree developers need to start making up new visions of MMOs. These days every MMO plays so much like the other that I don't even bother opening the books that come with them I just pop it in, load it up, and play away as if I'd been playing it for months. I remember going from UO to EQ1 and then to AC back in the day took a while to get used to them. Now MMOs are literally cookie-cutter copies of eachother.
I find it funny that prior to the whole F2P craze, P2P did just fine and no one ever second-guessed it. People bought the boxes, paid the subs, and played.... this lasted just fine for about a decade. And, in a number of cases, it's still working just fine.
Yet, you have people who like to think in absolutes out there now arguing that "P2P doesn't work anymore and F2P is the only viable way to go". Of course P2P still works. It still *is* working. The trick is to create a game that enough people find *worth the subscription fee* to pay for. Several developers over the past 5 or 6 years have failed to pull that off.
Their failure - at least in part, in my own opinion - is that instead of trying to forge their own identity and providing a unique experience (like the old school MMOs were), they were trying to ride WoW's coat-tails by trying to capture Blizzard's lightning. One after another, they failed, and players became more and more disenchanted, and more and more cynical.
And of course there's that word "free". People are drawn in by the word. All their "standards" and "demands" and "expectations" fly out the window the moment they realize there isn't a price attached to something. *Especially* if it's a AAA title making the switch. Look at DDO for example... That game was failing, absolutely, as a P2P MMO. It simply wasn't retaining enough subs to remain healthy. Turbine made the switch to their Hybrid model and, holy crap, you'd think the heavens parted and released a gift to the F2P crowd. People were so enamoured by the fact that a "AAA Quality" MMO had gone F2P that they completely overlooked the fact that it was a steadily sinking ship as P2P.
I've said it before and I'll say it again... when a MMO that was on its way down the tubes as P2P becomes the Darling of the F2P market... that's painting a pretty sad picture of F2P overall. And yet, some F2P advocates, such as Richard Aioshi here on MMORPG.com, can't understand why many people will only play P2P titles and won't touch F2P games, citing inferior quality as a common reason.
I just wanted to point out, very, very, good post! I 100% agree with what you had to say. Personally it is a sad market and I know this sounds horridly twisted of me, but I look down on F2P games. The 'cool' kids in the MMO world are the P2P games. They're so good that they can actually get people to pay to play them. F2P games are in some ways failures, and lack any real quality hence no one wants to pay for them untill they play them and get hooked. The fact that LoTRO is going F2P shows me that that game is going down the tubes, but I've felt that way for a year or so now.
I agree developers need to start making up new visions of MMOs. These days every MMO plays so much like the other that I don't even bother opening the books that come with them I just pop it in, load it up, and play away as if I'd been playing it for months. I remember going from UO to EQ1 and then to AC back in the day took a while to get used to them. Now MMOs are literally cookie-cutter copies of eachother.
Well a few issues with the whole thing. First is the fact that for the longest time MMO pricing per month has stayed the same for atleast the last 6 years, yet the cost to employee people has increased and our quality of standards as players has also increased. While a room of 6 - 12 people back in the day could pump out an acceptable MMO with first gen 3d graphics. Today it takes a team of 100+ people and several years of solid work to pump out an acceptable 3d MMO. As the market player base increases so does the cost of development generally on a 10 fold basis.
If you factored in inflation, cost of development, cost of operating, cost of support, ect. and based it off the original starting point of $12 / month 8-9 years ago. Then we should be paying upwards of $30-$40 / a month for our gaming MMO pleasure. But that is not the case.
We continue to demand more and more from MMO's in both the graphics department and the innovation department, yet we are unwilling to pay more for that?
There have been dozens of original, inovative attempts at new things with MMO's, yet we as MMO players have been short at trying / playing said games. A good portion of them end up closing down and others just stumble along (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Eve Online, Wurm Online, A Tale in the Desert, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Need for Speed World, Motor City Online, Eart and Beyond, All Points Bulletins, Asherons Call 2, ect) They where all games that attempted something different yet look where most of them stand today? So answer me this.. Why would a developer attempt something different when a good portion of the games that do break the mold end up dieing off or barely making it by? You just do not drop $100 million of your own dollars onto something that you have a proven track record of not working within the industry.
^^^I think you might want to look at EVE Online again Thomas2006. There numbers have actually been steadily growing and not declining. While CCP may be a small "indie" they certainly know what they are doing and have a pretty good product (especially compared to those other you listed).
^^^I think you might want to look at EVE Online again Thomas2006. There numbers have actually been steadily growing and not declining. While CCP may be a small "indie" they certainly know what they are doing and have a pretty good product (especially compared to those other you listed).
I didn't say any of them was declining or even dieing for that matter. I am saying that compared to other MMO's anything that has been different has done piss poor compared to the games that have been similar / alike World of Warcraft / the standard in MMO's.
And 40k-100k subscriptions is not exactly a screaming success in todays market. Eve Online has a leg up in that its cost of operation is very small do to its operations location.
Out of your list, I would say the game that has the best shot at being successful would be Warhammer. The structure of the game fits a DDO-esque P2P model perfectly.
As for Lineage II, I believe the game is already F2P in some countries, but at this point in the game's lifespan, it's doubtful that a F2P option would bring in very many new fans. It never was tremendously successful in the US anyway.
^^^I think you might want to look at EVE Online again Thomas2006. There numbers have actually been steadily growing and not declining. While CCP may be a small "indie" they certainly know what they are doing and have a pretty good product (especially compared to those other you listed).
I didn't say any of them was declining or even dieing for that matter. I am saying that compared to other MMO's anything that has been different has done piss poor compared to the games that have been similar / alike World of Warcraft / the standard in MMO's.
And 40k-100k subscriptions is not exactly a screaming success in todays market. Eve Online has a leg up in that its cost of operation is very small do to its operations location.
Sorry, if a game only has 10,000 people subbed, but it's pulling in a nice profit and salaries for its devs while entertaining the players payng for it, then it is a "screaming success". Not everyone is so narrowminded that they think you need a lillion players or more to be a "success".
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Out of your list, I would say the game that has the best shot at being successful would be Warhammer. The structure of the game fits a DDO-esque P2P model perfectly.
As for Lineage II, I believe the game is already F2P in some countries, but at this point in the game's lifespan, it's doubtful that a F2P option would bring in very many new fans. It never was tremendously successful in the US anyway.
F2P is not a good combination with a PvP game. Pay to win is what players have commented in other games with less PvP than WAR, bad idea. F2P works best in PvE games. I don't think it would help WAR.
Vanguard is probably the game that has most to win by it, but it seems like SOE either isn't interested or plan to eveluate EQ2X first. Maybe they don't want a competitor like that for EQ Next.
But it all depends on how fine LOTRO and EQ2X actually are doing in the long run. LOTRO did get a lot of new players but we don't know if they will stay or buy stuff yet. We can't be sure that it was a good idea in the long run yet, if it was more games will mostly follow.
And then we have GW2s B2P method, if GW2 becomes a huge success that might start to compete with F2P games. B2P is a good way to get in money too but so far have we only seen CORPGs using it, if a big regular MMO uses it then we will see more of that too.
F2P is not a good combination with a PvP game. Pay to win is what players have commented in other games with less PvP than WAR, bad idea. F2P works best in PvE games. I don't think it would help WAR.
But it all depends on how fine LOTRO and EQ2X actually are doing in the long run. LOTRO did get a lot of new players but we don't know if they will stay or buy stuff yet. We can't be sure that it was a good idea in the long run yet, if it was more games will mostly follow.
And then we have GW2s B2P method, if GW2 becomes a huge success that might start to compete with F2P games. B2P is a good way to get in money too but so far have we only seen CORPGs using it, if a big regular MMO uses it then we will see more of that too.
I agree with that. Look at Allods, a supposedly F2P game. But if you look close at the itemshop you see that the game is actually a P2W game. Such a shame, since I would enjoy the game a lot more without itemshop and with subscription...
Don't keep your hopes up for EQ2X. I think that project of Pay-as-you-Go will fail bigtime. Okay, it's a nice idea ot giving away trials, but in the long run, regular EQ2 is way cheaper than EQ2X...
About LotRo... I think their way will be a huge success, since "subscription" unlocks the whole game. And if you're real casual, you can just use the Pay-as-you-Go option.
Personally, I think in the long run, the DDO/LotRo system would benefit for most MMO's out there that are lacking a huge (250K+) player base. Though I still wonder why LotRo went this way, the game was doing pretty well in the EU (dunno about US though). I still think LotRo was converted to Pay-as-you-Go to fund the development of the game...
And yeah... GW2 (and others) B2P games... This would work fine with games as well, but that would somewhat force the developer to add content (expansions) on a very regular basis, where the expansions can be set loose of the main game. Too bad, most B2P games use a common meeting place and most of the game is instanced...
I've only browsed quickly some comments but would like to add a few of my own:
I doubt that SoE will open up too many more of its games to F2A because otherwise the StationPass becomes obsolete. That might not be great business sense for a company that, despite the EQ2X server and Free Realms, is holding onto the subscription idea. The way EQ2X has been set up, SoE really does expect people to end up being at least a gold membership, which is equivalent for all intents and purposes to a normal subscription. I would be sort of surprised to see VG, SWG, etc. end up on the list of F2A games unless SoE decides to scrap its StationPass.
I wouldn't exactly call EQ2 one of the games that has joined the F2A bandwagon. It sort of has, but for the most part hasn't. It is only an extended trial. You can't do the same thing as you can do with LotRO and DDO where a person truly can buy everything in the cash shop a la carte. No matter how much money a bronze or silver players spends in the cash shop, they will still have restrictions that gold and Live players don't have. And then there's the fact that F2A is actually only on one server whereas the rest are all normal subscription servers.
I could see WAR becoming F2A actually and just extend its current trial. I think the highly instanced nature of WAR would make it a good game for a Turbine style of hybrid payment model as long as it didn't put equipment for sale in a cash shop. Then it would be failure since PvP and cash shops shouldn't mix.
For other MMOs that people think would be good F2A conversions, I wouldn't want to speculate because of course the danger is losing immersive play in the world and also ending up actually having to pay way more for games in the future. I don't really want to see those trends in my choice of hobby.
Don't keep your hopes up for EQ2X. I think that project of Pay-as-you-Go will fail bigtime. Okay, it's a nice idea ot giving away trials, but in the long run, regular EQ2 is way cheaper than EQ2X...
Well, there is one thing that EQ2X definitely has going for it over the Live servers. If you drop out of your gold or platinum membership, you can still play, just with the restrictions of bronze, or silver if you unlocked silver at some point. Of course if you end a Live subscription, you can't access your characters unless you've copied one of them over to the Extended server.
Don't keep your hopes up for EQ2X. I think that project of Pay-as-you-Go will fail bigtime. Okay, it's a nice idea ot giving away trials, but in the long run, regular EQ2 is way cheaper than EQ2X...
Well, there is one thing that EQ2X definitely has going for it over the Live servers. If you drop out of your gold or platinum membership, you can still play, just with the restrictions of bronze, or silver if you unlocked silver at some point. Of course if you end a Live subscription, you can't access your characters unless you've copied one of them over to the Extended server.
Yeah, that much is true... But looking at the EQ2X "subscriptions" and compare them with EQ2 subscriptions, the choice is clear...
Copying a char from EQ2 to EQ2X would be a nice option, but it should be worth it. I mean $35 for a token to copy it and almost stripped of everything is no option IMO. Not to mention, the FAQ clearly states that as long as you have a subscription running for EQ2, your char in EQ2X will have gold status, but when you cancel the subscription, the copied char is back to bronze/silver status *WTF???*
I dont understand this F2P fetish that a lot of people have now a days. $10-$14 a month is really not that big of an issue. I heard of F2P games that cost way more then that in the long run. F2P really isnt F2P
$14 is a big issue if you don't just want one MMO to choose from. But f2p means you can dip in and out of games when you like. That appeals to me.
edit: oh and my money is on vanguard next
Whats the point in playing a MMO one month and another the next ? Since i've been playing MMOs, my goal was to get to the endgame and kill players (some prefer mobs). Why playing the game one day, then switch back to another the next day/weeks/month ?
And... if its because you're playing 2+ MMO, i got the same question, why ? Ok maybe because you like playing a very good old MMo while you enjoy playing with friends on a new one, i can understand...well... i think.
I dont wanna see every new MMO to be F2P, i dont want to see WAR going F2P as i might come back if one day they fix the damn game. Just started playing Fallen Earth and i dont want it to be F2P. F2P games bring lots of shit, a community of kids/adults that just cant undertsand that its a damn game and at the same time, they dont give a fuck about others.
I'd rather play with kids than self-righteous twats like you. You don't like f2p don't play them, stop telling other people what they should and shouldn't like. I play an MMO for a few weeks, I get bored. I go back to it later. Subbing to one MMO full time doesn't do it for me. I'm not telling you what to do. Stop telling me.
I tend to agree with a lot of the comments here Guild Wars in my opinion is the best model although I think the chances are we are more likly to see more hybrid models simply because a lot of developers will prefer to take the chance on a subscription based game then when that isn't successful they will change the model . What really needs to happen is they need to be realistic as to which model whould suit thier game best and for the most part mmo really are not worth the current subscription fee . Of the new batch of releases in the coming 18 months only Star Wars seams to stand out as one that might be .
As for the next games that might swtich to free to play I think its pretty obvious .... anything apart from EVE online and Warcraft . I noticed Pirates of the Burning Sea announced free to play this week as well .Another one to try . This is great news for mmo players . Inspite of all the bitching about it being bad nearly everyone I know that plays mmos supports it . Especially the hybrid and buy to play models .
It will be hilarious if SWG ever goes F2P and then still loses players. NGE = Not Good Enough
I'm wondering if SOE are waiting for 12 months to see how SWTOR turns out. If TOR doesn't do too well, then that maybe the right time to launch the announcement of SWG going F2P in order to grab those players.
Besides, coming back to the OP, with what SOE's been doing it wouldn't surprise me in the least if SOE announced that Vanguard and SWG were going F2P.
As for AOC, hmmm that's a tough one. There isn't enough in the expansion to warrant allowing the "core" of the game to go F2P (like AO did). I think Funcom perhaps are going to squeeze a bit more money out of it before it goes F2P. Maybe in 12 months time.
To be truthful, I'm surprised that Blizzard haven't made the "vanilla" part of WoW (levels 1 - 60 for the original races and their areas) F2P and kept subscriptions for those who purchased the expansions. After all, that's were players are: in the expansion areas.
To be truthful, I'm surprised that Blizzard haven't made the "vanilla" part of WoW (levels 1 - 60 for the original races and their areas) F2P and kept subscriptions for those who purchased the expansions. After all, that's were players are: in the expansion areas.
With Cataclysm changing the landscape of the original wow I don't think that's going to happen.
(already 9 pages of comments, I cannot read all so I may repeat things alaready said, sorry for duplicates)
Age Of Conan? Maybe, but IMHO PVP focused games are not easily convertible to F2P. PVP should be enjoyed fully, without limitations or gates. It's true that now AoC is much more PVE focused and that would be a problem, those ~1M people that bought it in the beginning were also interested in its PVP component. I doubt they could be interested in the F2P/PVE conversion. Hope I am wrong, though.
Lineage II: don't know the game, can't comment on it.
Star Trek Online: can't comment either. I'm not even interested in the game.
Champions Online: I'd love an F2P version with the same model as DDO. It is a game that can be easily converted in that direction. It need a bit more content though...
Vanguard: Hope EQ2X experiment will convince SOE to move also this title that way. Still hadn't tried it, as the trial+subscription doesn't cope my current gaming possibilities, but I'll surely play an F2P version.
Warhammer: I think that although its a PVP focused game, it can be converted to F2P more than AOC can, as its tiers and pairs can be easily translated into separate purchases.
Comments
I just wanted to point out, very, very, good post! I 100% agree with what you had to say. Personally it is a sad market and I know this sounds horridly twisted of me, but I look down on F2P games. The 'cool' kids in the MMO world are the P2P games. They're so good that they can actually get people to pay to play them. F2P games are in some ways failures, and lack any real quality hence no one wants to pay for them untill they play them and get hooked. The fact that LoTRO is going F2P shows me that that game is going down the tubes, but I've felt that way for a year or so now.
I agree developers need to start making up new visions of MMOs. These days every MMO plays so much like the other that I don't even bother opening the books that come with them I just pop it in, load it up, and play away as if I'd been playing it for months. I remember going from UO to EQ1 and then to AC back in the day took a while to get used to them. Now MMOs are literally cookie-cutter copies of eachother.
Well a few issues with the whole thing. First is the fact that for the longest time MMO pricing per month has stayed the same for atleast the last 6 years, yet the cost to employee people has increased and our quality of standards as players has also increased. While a room of 6 - 12 people back in the day could pump out an acceptable MMO with first gen 3d graphics. Today it takes a team of 100+ people and several years of solid work to pump out an acceptable 3d MMO. As the market player base increases so does the cost of development generally on a 10 fold basis.
If you factored in inflation, cost of development, cost of operating, cost of support, ect. and based it off the original starting point of $12 / month 8-9 years ago. Then we should be paying upwards of $30-$40 / a month for our gaming MMO pleasure. But that is not the case.
We continue to demand more and more from MMO's in both the graphics department and the innovation department, yet we are unwilling to pay more for that?
There have been dozens of original, inovative attempts at new things with MMO's, yet we as MMO players have been short at trying / playing said games. A good portion of them end up closing down and others just stumble along (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, Eve Online, Wurm Online, A Tale in the Desert, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Need for Speed World, Motor City Online, Eart and Beyond, All Points Bulletins, Asherons Call 2, ect) They where all games that attempted something different yet look where most of them stand today? So answer me this.. Why would a developer attempt something different when a good portion of the games that do break the mold end up dieing off or barely making it by? You just do not drop $100 million of your own dollars onto something that you have a proven track record of not working within the industry.
^^^I think you might want to look at EVE Online again Thomas2006. There numbers have actually been steadily growing and not declining. While CCP may be a small "indie" they certainly know what they are doing and have a pretty good product (especially compared to those other you listed).
Let's party like it is 1863!
I didn't say any of them was declining or even dieing for that matter. I am saying that compared to other MMO's anything that has been different has done piss poor compared to the games that have been similar / alike World of Warcraft / the standard in MMO's.
And 40k-100k subscriptions is not exactly a screaming success in todays market. Eve Online has a leg up in that its cost of operation is very small do to its operations location.
Out of your list, I would say the game that has the best shot at being successful would be Warhammer. The structure of the game fits a DDO-esque P2P model perfectly.
As for Lineage II, I believe the game is already F2P in some countries, but at this point in the game's lifespan, it's doubtful that a F2P option would bring in very many new fans. It never was tremendously successful in the US anyway.
Sorry, if a game only has 10,000 people subbed, but it's pulling in a nice profit and salaries for its devs while entertaining the players payng for it, then it is a "screaming success". Not everyone is so narrowminded that they think you need a lillion players or more to be a "success".
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
F2P is not a good combination with a PvP game. Pay to win is what players have commented in other games with less PvP than WAR, bad idea. F2P works best in PvE games. I don't think it would help WAR.
Vanguard is probably the game that has most to win by it, but it seems like SOE either isn't interested or plan to eveluate EQ2X first. Maybe they don't want a competitor like that for EQ Next.
But it all depends on how fine LOTRO and EQ2X actually are doing in the long run. LOTRO did get a lot of new players but we don't know if they will stay or buy stuff yet. We can't be sure that it was a good idea in the long run yet, if it was more games will mostly follow.
And then we have GW2s B2P method, if GW2 becomes a huge success that might start to compete with F2P games. B2P is a good way to get in money too but so far have we only seen CORPGs using it, if a big regular MMO uses it then we will see more of that too.
I bet the next game to go F2P is AoC but after that these games are all posibilites:
Lineage II
WAR
AION
APB (reborn as F2P)
I agree with that. Look at Allods, a supposedly F2P game. But if you look close at the itemshop you see that the game is actually a P2W game. Such a shame, since I would enjoy the game a lot more without itemshop and with subscription...
Don't keep your hopes up for EQ2X. I think that project of Pay-as-you-Go will fail bigtime. Okay, it's a nice idea ot giving away trials, but in the long run, regular EQ2 is way cheaper than EQ2X...
About LotRo... I think their way will be a huge success, since "subscription" unlocks the whole game. And if you're real casual, you can just use the Pay-as-you-Go option.
Personally, I think in the long run, the DDO/LotRo system would benefit for most MMO's out there that are lacking a huge (250K+) player base. Though I still wonder why LotRo went this way, the game was doing pretty well in the EU (dunno about US though). I still think LotRo was converted to Pay-as-you-Go to fund the development of the game...
And yeah... GW2 (and others) B2P games... This would work fine with games as well, but that would somewhat force the developer to add content (expansions) on a very regular basis, where the expansions can be set loose of the main game. Too bad, most B2P games use a common meeting place and most of the game is instanced...
I've only browsed quickly some comments but would like to add a few of my own:
I doubt that SoE will open up too many more of its games to F2A because otherwise the StationPass becomes obsolete. That might not be great business sense for a company that, despite the EQ2X server and Free Realms, is holding onto the subscription idea. The way EQ2X has been set up, SoE really does expect people to end up being at least a gold membership, which is equivalent for all intents and purposes to a normal subscription. I would be sort of surprised to see VG, SWG, etc. end up on the list of F2A games unless SoE decides to scrap its StationPass.
I wouldn't exactly call EQ2 one of the games that has joined the F2A bandwagon. It sort of has, but for the most part hasn't. It is only an extended trial. You can't do the same thing as you can do with LotRO and DDO where a person truly can buy everything in the cash shop a la carte. No matter how much money a bronze or silver players spends in the cash shop, they will still have restrictions that gold and Live players don't have. And then there's the fact that F2A is actually only on one server whereas the rest are all normal subscription servers.
I could see WAR becoming F2A actually and just extend its current trial. I think the highly instanced nature of WAR would make it a good game for a Turbine style of hybrid payment model as long as it didn't put equipment for sale in a cash shop. Then it would be failure since PvP and cash shops shouldn't mix.
For other MMOs that people think would be good F2A conversions, I wouldn't want to speculate because of course the danger is losing immersive play in the world and also ending up actually having to pay way more for games in the future. I don't really want to see those trends in my choice of hobby.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Well, there is one thing that EQ2X definitely has going for it over the Live servers. If you drop out of your gold or platinum membership, you can still play, just with the restrictions of bronze, or silver if you unlocked silver at some point. Of course if you end a Live subscription, you can't access your characters unless you've copied one of them over to the Extended server.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Yeah, that much is true... But looking at the EQ2X "subscriptions" and compare them with EQ2 subscriptions, the choice is clear...
Copying a char from EQ2 to EQ2X would be a nice option, but it should be worth it. I mean $35 for a token to copy it and almost stripped of everything is no option IMO. Not to mention, the FAQ clearly states that as long as you have a subscription running for EQ2, your char in EQ2X will have gold status, but when you cancel the subscription, the copied char is back to bronze/silver status *WTF???*
I'd rather play with kids than self-righteous twats like you. You don't like f2p don't play them, stop telling other people what they should and shouldn't like. I play an MMO for a few weeks, I get bored. I go back to it later. Subbing to one MMO full time doesn't do it for me. I'm not telling you what to do. Stop telling me.
It will be hilarious if SWG ever goes F2P and then still loses players. NGE = Not Good Enough
I tend to agree with a lot of the comments here Guild Wars in my opinion is the best model although I think the chances are we are more likly to see more hybrid models simply because a lot of developers will prefer to take the chance on a subscription based game then when that isn't successful they will change the model . What really needs to happen is they need to be realistic as to which model whould suit thier game best and for the most part mmo really are not worth the current subscription fee . Of the new batch of releases in the coming 18 months only Star Wars seams to stand out as one that might be .
As for the next games that might swtich to free to play I think its pretty obvious .... anything apart from EVE online and Warcraft . I noticed Pirates of the Burning Sea announced free to play this week as well .Another one to try . This is great news for mmo players . Inspite of all the bitching about it being bad nearly everyone I know that plays mmos supports it . Especially the hybrid and buy to play models .
in WAR i hated fact u cant play as skaven my favourite race
I'm wondering if SOE are waiting for 12 months to see how SWTOR turns out. If TOR doesn't do too well, then that maybe the right time to launch the announcement of SWG going F2P in order to grab those players.
Besides, coming back to the OP, with what SOE's been doing it wouldn't surprise me in the least if SOE announced that Vanguard and SWG were going F2P.
As for AOC, hmmm that's a tough one. There isn't enough in the expansion to warrant allowing the "core" of the game to go F2P (like AO did). I think Funcom perhaps are going to squeeze a bit more money out of it before it goes F2P. Maybe in 12 months time.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
make WoW F2P
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
To be truthful, I'm surprised that Blizzard haven't made the "vanilla" part of WoW (levels 1 - 60 for the original races and their areas) F2P and kept subscriptions for those who purchased the expansions. After all, that's were players are: in the expansion areas.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
With Cataclysm changing the landscape of the original wow I don't think that's going to happen.
+1.
Better to be crazy, provided you know what sane is...
(already 9 pages of comments, I cannot read all so I may repeat things alaready said, sorry for duplicates)
Age Of Conan? Maybe, but IMHO PVP focused games are not easily convertible to F2P. PVP should be enjoyed fully, without limitations or gates. It's true that now AoC is much more PVE focused and that would be a problem, those ~1M people that bought it in the beginning were also interested in its PVP component. I doubt they could be interested in the F2P/PVE conversion. Hope I am wrong, though.
Lineage II: don't know the game, can't comment on it.
Star Trek Online: can't comment either. I'm not even interested in the game.
Champions Online: I'd love an F2P version with the same model as DDO. It is a game that can be easily converted in that direction. It need a bit more content though...
Vanguard: Hope EQ2X experiment will convince SOE to move also this title that way. Still hadn't tried it, as the trial+subscription doesn't cope my current gaming possibilities, but I'll surely play an F2P version.
Warhammer: I think that although its a PVP focused game, it can be converted to F2P more than AOC can, as its tiers and pairs can be easily translated into separate purchases.
I'm going to need to say PLANETSIDE deserves a spot on this list...
Gaming community: IRONFIST
New World: Lilith - US East
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Burning Legion> Alliance(We transferred to Illidan)
WoW Guild: IRONFIST <Illidan> Horde
SWOTR: IRONFIST <Satele Shan> Empire/Republic
One thing you neglected to consider about Vanguard, SOE has no development staff supporting that game left to make it f2p.
I also agree SWG would probably be more appropriate to convert than Vanguard.