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Why pay to play anymore?
Wicoa
Member UncommonPosts: 1,637
I sit here having closed my world of warcraft account to give me the choice to resubscribe later if I chose to. With the announcement of City of Heroes going Free to play, I will have access to that, a premium account with lotro and later this year Age of Conan. Also GW2 coming up.
I will also be purchasing Dust 514 for my PS3. The question I ask you is this why pay the monthly fee anymore if you can find a similar experience elsewhere either for free or for a small pack purchase.
NERDGASM < ME
Comments
You know, some time ago I would have flamed you, but with the way devs are doing things now-a-days you make a good point. A sub is worth it to me if content and updates flow month to month, thats about it really. Also, I guess a sub is worth it if you dont have a problem paying for it and it keeps you happy i.e. Vanguard gets a sub fee which is crazy, but the people there are so mature and nice that it is worth it not to put up with kids and naysayers.
AT the end of the day you get what you pay for, CoH is not worth playing anymore. But yeah Dust will be brilliant if it all goes to plan. Some games a worth a monthly fee but to many companys are jumping on the wagen to try and get a bit more dosh. Games like ABP are never worth a monthely fee.
CoX as a F2P is a good compliment to a P2P game, or other F2P games. Either way the momentum has shifted towards gamers, but I have to concede I am not naive enough to believe that the F2P doesn't have its pitfalls.
I completely agree in principal. I swore I would never pay for another sub again outside of WoW which I continue to play with family. But then Rift came along and I liked it better than pretty much any game out there so I'm ponying up the sub fee while still hoping the current p2p model will give way to the Turbine model of pay for content.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
I dunno man I just finished up my sub to cox a small while a go the content being put in is pretty good the incarnate system and its still the best super hero game with the very exception that its only down to SOE not being bothered post launch with DCUO which I wanted to like so much.
Also blizzard seem very slow with content updates.
QFT
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true
My point is you could have a bit of everything not have all your eggs in one basket and have fun and new experiences in a good few current triple A mmorpgs. Why give one all your cash.
With so many FTP options these days I find myself asking the same question some times when it comes to certain games. I'm currently subbed to Rift, which i'm really loving at the moment, but I know if a game like SWG was FTP and had more meaningful content updates I would still be playing it on the side.
I don't mind paying a monthly sub to play RIFT because I know it's a newer game and i'm receiving significant content updates, but I can't say the same thing about SWG.
Why pay for cable when you can watch you tube videos for free?
Well, you get what you pay for, well, most of the time anyways. Sure you may get a similar experience, but typically you're not getting as quality of an experience as you would from P2P options. Even with CoH having a F2P option, I guarantee that a lot of features will be locked out to non-paying players.
Even so, the F2P shift has proven itself to be an end of life cycle move for many MMOs. When the bulk of the subscriber base has been burnt out on the game and starts to leave, the shift over to a F2P option is a last ditch effort to try to stimulate the playerbase and potentially rake in a little extra cash before the game flickers out.
Don't expect new AAA MMOs to be F2P though, at least not for several years after release. The F2P model simply doesn't cover the initial high cost of development, where as the traditional box sale + subscription does. Like other MMOs are doing currently, after a few years (or months in the case of certain MMOs) when the game populations has long since peaks and is slowly decaying, expect a shift into F2P.
While there are games coming out that I'm interested in enough to pay to play I do now prefer the freemium model . I think at present only WoW ,Rift and EVE are the only games worth the standard subscription fee . Although WoW is not a game I enjoy any more because of Blizzard push to make it ever more easy and child friendly still it is worth it if you fall in the younger.casual or novice gamer demographic , Rift for me is worth playing on an intermitant basis but I think I would get bored with it month after month .EvE has a lot of depth to it which I like in a game. Out of what remains of the current p2play titles I cant think of one other thats worth it ,can you ?
Cable will probably move to a F2P model as well as most Cable Exec admit that their business is staying afloat despite the economic situation. But they also concede most consumers prefer to pay for content they like (eg Netflix).
Okay? That's a bit of a tangent that has noting to do with the discussion.
Replace cable with Netflix, then compare it to Youtube. Better?
No.
TV used to be "free" because of ads, which is no surprise youtube remains free because... of.. *drumroll* ads.
Hybrid free/pay systems is the direction all of the entertainment industry is heading not just MMO's.
I understand your post (and essentially agree) but it should be noted that LotRO gives you a fair amount of points each month for a subscriber. So those store items are easily acquired, and really as a sub what else are you going to spend them on after you get some basic adds?
A premium account with Lotro is not free and should not be included in your list of examples. In addition, all games that already have or are in the process of transitioning are so heavily restricted that it doesn't make much sense to play in "free mode" unless you are using it as a trial to possibly subscribe to it the old fashioned way. The only exception being GW2 of course.
Not including a premium account is kinda iffy to me, while technically its not free. For someone like me, who purchased the moria expansion then a month later decided that while I liked lotro i was to involved in other games to justify paying the montly expansion. When they made it free to play I get the content I had already purchase and now can play the game without having to pay to use the server and I play it so casually that content will last me a long time, and when I'm finally ready for more content how long would I have axcess to there servers for months that I'll basicly be buying back time. To keep the same axcess to servers on a p2p I would have been paying regardless of how often I played it.