As far as I can tell, most of the curently available MMO were designed with the subscription model in mind. Some have converted to F2P, some haven't. And the conversions have been highly indifferent. I don't think the gaming community will really know what the F2P model can offer until the majority of available MMOs have been designed with this model in mind.
Does anyone else remember the pay-per-minute billing model used in the early days of online networking? AOL (and others) took their billing model directly from the Long Distance Providers (telephone). I know someone who regularly ran up $350-400 bills a month with AOL gaming. It wasn't until EQ came out that anyone convinced him to leave AOL and go with an ISP. They never thanked me for that.
The point is, judging the success of the F2P model isn't really easy, as long as the older design mindset remains. Let's let the F2P model mature before we decide.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
P2P will probably never disappear, but may become cheaper in the future. It isn't possible to make a quality P2W game when the basic game design principles force a developer to choose monetization over fun.
A person gets to choose which game he wants to play based on the pay model he wants
You want P2P you get a certain group of games to choose from, F2P another group etc etc.
Obviously with the vast amount of differences of opinion on this it is a personal desicion to pay & play what you feel you are comfortable with...or not pay at all. whatever you choose. That is the beauty of the choices right now.
Except I'm not asking for opinions on what people prefer. I'm speculating about the possibility that F2P/B2P could potentially be the better way for MMOs to make money. Subscriptions worked a lot better when the market wasn't so saturated, and the average MMO had a much better retention rate.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Most of you folks bashing the subscription model are delusional. There is absolutely no way a free to play model will ever match the amount of content simply having a subscription entitles you. Cash shop stores require you purchase that extra content ( ontop of other things ) which almost always equates to a higher cost than if you had just paid a subscription to begin with.
Keep your free to play to yourself, those of us who enjoy subs will continue playing the AAA titles.
It depends i guess.
I havent played all freemium/p2p MMOs but i found the PvE part freemium to be more expensive and the pvp part to be less expensive. Rofl what MMO upgrades pvp anyway except gear? WoWs arenas havent got new maps for years, i really mean years. 5 or so.
(I usually spend 30 bucks to get everything in a freemium MMO to fully PvP, 90% gotta be leveling maps and the rest stash slots and to fully use AH/guilds/chat system.)
There is pay-to-win in P2P too, remember the huge amount of cash paid to gold farmers / levelers. F2P developers are more honest, making those advantages available from the game itself. Even the best MMORPG can become tedious, repetitive, after the 500,000th mob killed the same way, because combat in MMOs usually is not as fun as combat in other game genres.
Most of upcoming P2P games have to face changes in their payment model in order to survive in a market filled with MMOs of variable quality. The way EVE online managed it seems interesting and original to me, and a hit to the face of external RMT traders.
P2P is becoming obsolete and restricted to huge companies with lots of cash to spend, and ultimately, because of the unrivaled growth and popularity of WoW.
I'm pretty sure your speculation is relying on how well Guild Wars 2 does? Well, let's go over what ways Guild Wars 2 will make their money for their development costs, investors, and monthly upkeeps. Normally, studios will fire their development teams and keep a skeletal staff for small updates, patches, and minor bug fixes. Now Guild Wars 2 will have a one time purchase or buy to play. That will work good, as it will bring in some profit. The second way to bring in the money is a cosmetic cash shop. The final way to bring in money for Guild Wars 2 is expansions.
In Short below is this: Most of you are greedy, selfish 2 face people that blame their problems and "ignorant" mindset on others especially game developers and coporations.
Now let's go over some harsh reality for those cheapskates on here screaming "GIVE ME EVERYTHING FOR FREE, AND IN ADDITION PAY ME TO PLAY YOUR GAME." Let me stop laughing because right now your free loading wide bubble butt state of mind reflects your mentality. You think they owe you something just becuase you want to play their game? REALLY? They going to give you welfare to just play their game because you're too poor or too mmog burned out to try and play their game? You bring old crap to a clean slate and ruin the game.
Wipe your face, and let me school you on some hardcore facts. Buy To Play only works for big publisher titles with large followings. That's cool, they make back most of, if not all of their development costs spent on the project. 5 Years, $100M and a boat load of hours spent making the game. Congratulations, now comes the epic "lulz" from the cry babies. They don't want a subscription of any sort, because to them a game should be free and money should float down magically from the sky to the developers hands. Look at a game developer in the face, and in the face of his family and tell him that his sweat, blood and tears aren't worth your $15. Most of you would flinch or wouldn't even bother to do it.
You rage on these forums about games not deserving your money, but you know you paid to try the game out. You weren't forced, and you went and fell for their gimic. You then make up ramblings about how godly their powers of persuasion and advertising are. Ever stop to think that maybe "YOU" are at fault. I mean it's not like 15 big buff judo chopping guys came to your door, beat you down and forced you to buy the game right?
Now let's get back on track so I don't get flamed out. You as the gamer should feel honored to be entertained. This doesn't rule out that some games are turds, but this rules out that the fault rests only on the developers. You see anything that might help someone pay their bills, and you scream "THEY BE MILKING THE COWS!" The truth is, you think you are entitled to everything, but you are not. Sadly, the world needs to make money, else no one would be making mmorpg or any type of game for free. Flash games make money with cash shops or advertisements. Facebook games the same way.
If it is just Buy To Play and no real reason or motivation to cause someone to go into Cash Shop, then don't expect a mmog. Expect a RPG or FPS, but don't come crying because they try to pay their server bills. They met the public needs, they are getting paid to satisfy people's needs, even if the game is crappy and only holds your interest for a few hours.
So lets go into the home stretch. Any game that has fluff in the Cash Shop is fine because "YOUR" to cheap to buy into it. You want highly customizable games that don't link into a Cash Shop. You want it buy once and never need to pay again. Go play Dragon Age. Real Developer costs range from $30M ~ $100M and the upkeeps can be anywhere from IT Structure rentals at $500k USD ~ $10M USD Monthly. This will include bandwidth, operations and mangement of the hardware and software, and then the hardware itself.
Here's what I get from the Buy To Play Advocates. We want to Buy the game, we want them to basically put crap we don't want or ever will need in the Cash Shop, and we will think about buying expansions only if your game never makes us bored and we don't feel the need to buy the expansion. Hypocrits! You go to work for money, and you call these companies lazy? Most of you are the same. How many times at fast food, retail, or a electronics store do the retail employees aka "most of you" go to work and treat customers like crap? You don't like it dished back do you? And for the rest of you, I'm sure you see that when you go shopping if you are old enough to understand.
You now need to come to realization you are a greedy selfish 2 face. Greedy because nothing is worth the money you earn, you rather have the world for free. Selfish because you can care less about what others feel, and you can care less about how they are going to live. 2 face because you claim to want to be treated as gods, and yet you don't treat others like that yourself. GREED is simply at the root. You want the moon for free. You think coporations are greedy but here is the sad truth. They are providing a in demand service that people want, so what are you providing? Are you providing a product or service to meet people's needs? You claim they earn too much off of you, but sadly they aren't the ones who are refusing to create solutions for people. You sit and whine, yet you don't do anything. You wait for that perfect opportunity that never comes and you claim life is unfair for you.
Look at yourself, change yourself, and then come back and see if you think the same things. My arguements are true, 95% of you are full of greed. You want, want, want, and don't give back. You post radically ignorant things like "This game should be absolutely free because thats how my world works." Really? You wonder why you complain about subscriptions and corporations? Haha, look at that you can probably make more excuses about how I am wrong all the while inside it eats you alive that you are in fact exactly that. Greedy, selfish, 2 face. I can add ignorant but the saying you made up goes "ignorance is bliss."
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
F2P is a scam. The only true F2P MMO's i know is Guild Wars. I'm not playing an MMO where you success is based on how much you are willing to pay. Success in MMO should be based on dedication not how deep your wallet is.
^
If the sub model is on the way out then I'll be following it.
Look at the news LotRO just announced, a removal of the stat cap which in turns pushes that game another stealth step in the direction of pay to win via purchasable stat tomes that were added months back.
I have no intention on playing a game for fun in which equality is based not off of IG balance and personal competency but how much I'm willing to shell out to 'the man' and his big corporation.
Lotro is a pve focused game. if people want to buy stat tomes let them. I dont see a problem with it.
Now if the game had competitive pvp that actually mattered like GvG or territory control i would see an issue with it.
Good point.
Here's hoping they add a "GM mode" into their store. That way, since it's only a PvE game after all, people won't have the need to go anywhere or do anything, they can just command line it all in.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
F2P is a scam. The only true F2P MMO's i know is Guild Wars. I'm not playing an MMO where you success is based on how much you are willing to pay. Success in MMO should be based on dedication not how deep your wallet is.
^
If the sub model is on the way out then I'll be following it.
Look at the news LotRO just announced, a removal of the stat cap which in turns pushes that game another stealth step in the direction of pay to win via purchasable stat tomes that were added months back.
I have no intention on playing a game for fun in which equality is based not off of IG balance and personal competency but how much I'm willing to shell out to 'the man' and his big corporation.
Lotro is a pve focused game. if people want to buy stat tomes let them. I dont see a problem with it.
Now if the game had competitive pvp that actually mattered like GvG or territory control i would see an issue with it.
Remember people compete and compare themselfves in pve games/servers as well. Raiders want to be better from more causal instance runners, certain tank want to be better than other tank he knows , they compare how much morale they have , how much mobs they can take , how fast they dps ,etc
F2P is a scam. The only true F2P MMO's i know is Guild Wars. I'm not playing an MMO where you success is based on how much you are willing to pay. Success in MMO should be based on dedication not how deep your wallet is.
This.You end up paying more than a sub-based game if you want to keep up. I'd rather earn my rewards rather than buy them anyways.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
Im going to have to point out the absurdity of this comment by simply asking how much out of these games space on my HD's is graphics? How about game engine? UI? Unless your definition of content is purely HD space in which case the less optimized game engine will win. Horray for sloppy programming i guess if thats your defintion of content. Also the size of the client on your HD doesnt reflect the size of the game like it does in single player games. MMO's give you a client and the information not stored on your client is stored on the games server itself. Some games store more of the info on there server's, and some store more on your client.
When i spoke of content i was refering to it in terms of things to do that have a point in the game. Unless i was unsuccessful running an instance, i have never once had to rerun it in GW1 and yet i have not ran out of things to do in it. It isnt a rerun the same instance gear grind masquerading as content like WoW or WAR. The first time you run an instance, that is content, the next 20 times you run the same exact instance with no changes to it, isnt new content.
People keep comparing GW2's (B2P also) to WAR's PQ's (even though they each represent far more content than a WAR PQ due to different possible outcomes at every stage for more replayability/content). WAR had around 250 PQ's (of which you only got to experience half since they were divided between the 2 factions in the game), GW2 is boasting 1600+. My point is that the idea that sub games will always have more content because your giving them more money every month is not always the case. It should be, but it isnt.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
GW1 was a low budget project. It was recently stated that they had about 4 guys on the content team for GW1 and it's closer to 40 now for GW2. They also stopped releasing expansions in 2007 since they started working on GW2.
It would make sense that (if?) WoW is a bigger game, but you can't draw the conclusion that it's due to the subs. The subs just earn them more money. GW1's plan was to have expansions every 6 months. They ended up putting out two entire standalone games, one expansion and some additional free content over the course of 2+ years.
Sure, you had to pay for those expansions, but you have to pay for WoW's expansions too. WoW puts out free content every 3-4 months, there's no reason that a B2P MMO couldn't do the same thing. The difference is that instead of paying automatically and taking what they give you, it has to be content that's good enough for you to spend money on. And overall it's cheaper to the consumer, even if they do buy everything.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
Im going to have to point out the absurdity of this comment by simply asking how much out of these games space on my HD's is graphics? How about game engine? UI? Unless your definition of content is purely HD space in which case the less optimized game engine will win. Horray for sloppy programming i guess if thats your defintion of content. Also the size of the client on your HD doesnt reflect the size of the game like it does in single player games. MMO's give you a client and the information not stored on your client is stored on the games server itself. Some games store more of the info on there server's, and some store more on your client.
When i spoke of content i was refering to it in terms of things to do that have a point in the game. Unless i was unsuccessful running an instance, i have never once had to rerun it in GW1 and yet i have not ran out of things to do in it. It isnt a rerun the same instance gear grind masquerading as content like WoW or WAR. The first time you run an instance, that is content, the next 20 times you run the same exact instance with no changes to it, isnt new content.
People keep comparing GW2's (B2P also) to WAR's PQ's (even though they each represent far more content than a WAR PQ due to different possible outcomes at every stage for more replayability/content). WAR had around 250 PQ's (of which you only got to experience half since they were divided between the 2 factions in the game), GW2 is boasting 1600+. My point is that the idea that sub games will always have more content because your giving them more money every month is not always the case. It should be, but it isnt.
My definition of content is things to do, or amount of things to do.
WoW has about 90 dungeons and raids, and roughly 9 Bgs and almost 10k quest.
The only solid number I was able to find on GW1 was 19 dungeons.
Now once agian, what has more content?
As far as GW2 dynamic events are concernd (Suck w/o spell check) I think 1.6k dynamic events arn't as impressive as they could have been had ANet not have gotten rid of traditional questing all together. The resorces that could have gone into making quest have been turned into dynamic events, all they did was change content and not add to it.
Is it better than Guild Wars? -No? Then why are you paying a subsciption for it?
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
GW1 was a low budget project. It was recently stated that they had about 4 guys on the content team for GW1 and it's closer to 40 now for GW2. They also stopped releasing expansions in 2007 since they started working on GW2.
It would make sense that (if?) WoW is a bigger game, but you can't draw the conclusion that it's due to the subs. The subs just earn them more money. GW1's plan was to have expansions every 6 months. They ended up putting out two entire standalone games, one expansion and some additional free content over the course of 2+ years.
Sure, you had to pay for those expansions, but you have to pay for WoW's expansions too. WoW puts out free content every 3-4 months, there's no reason that a B2P MMO couldn't do the same thing. The difference is that instead of paying automatically and taking what they give you, it has to be content that's good enough for you to spend money on. And overall it's cheaper to the consumer, even if they do buy everything.
Thats the thing though, GW1 hasn't been able to provide the same level of updates that WoW had and they sold 6 million copies. 6 mil x 20$=120million bucks and thats assuming everyone bought the x pacs and stand alones at 20 bucks.
You can see the same thing happen with single player games too, games like Halo:Reach don't get content updates regularly because there is no profit to be made from it.
That's because you think you're just paying for content development. Ever need a gm? It was nice for them to be able to be there, to pull you out of a /stuck situation, when the automated system wouldn't work wasn't it? How about when you lost an item, and they had to retrieve it for you? How about when an asshat guildie stole everyones stuff from the treasury, changed admin on the guild hall? Man it sure was nice there was someone there to fix all that wasn't it?
How about when the server crapped out at 2 am? You know on my favorite BF2 server I'd have to wait until the owner woke up or got home from work the next day to play. Thank god there's that sorry SOB who has to wake up and head to work at 2 am to fix it, right?
That is the reason i pay sub, in the 10 years i have playd mmo i have used gm's twice and both for when i was stuck. Didt take long until that game got an unstuck command.
I never needed support except in wow when my account was hackd.
If i need to pay for services i dont use i see no point in paying at all, hench im getting annoyd by p2p model
You pay a sub because that is the way in which the business itself was developed. Their plan to support the companies live support staff, coders, emergency tech's, content designers, IT personel, etc... is all derived from the sub based plan.
You may only need a GM once or twice, the problem with this thinking is there are thousands of others who need them to.
Also there are many times I've found the automated /unstuck system to not work, regardless of how many times I've tried it. In those circumstances I've needed a gm there to actually manually move my character to a safe place. I'm sure there are hundreds to thousands of others who have as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You may only need a GM once or twice, the problem with this thinking is there are thousands of others who need them to.
Also there are many times I've found the automated /unstuck system to not work, regardless of how many times I've tried it. In those circumstances I've needed a gm there to actually manually move my character to a safe place. I'm sure there are hundreds to thousands of others who have as well.
Yeah not only this. Sometimes there can be problems with bugged mobs in an instance or with loot box not showing. You might accidedntaly throw away your rare item and you want to get it back. Sometimes quest bugs and you need help to complete it.
I found having support is really nice and in some games it really reacts fast.
not yet!but when the datapipe between say china and america or eu gets big enough player will play directly in asia!it is already starting check aika ,all diff langage world wide yet we played all in the same game .so the day you got anglish only or french only or mandarin only server are counted,soon the datapipe will be nig enough that blizzard wont need a specific server in china same for insanelly good title like loong.lets face it title that do great elsewhere die very fast in other country that try to itemise!(localise )
i play loong awsomne game fair amount of player but it is version 1 something in china they are at 3.5 see the difference
some part of the game arent translated yet!but the game run smooth like butter even if server are in eu!
so yes the sub model is dying,too many bad title,or buggy one,bad graphic,not smooth game play etc made player sketish
now f2p is pushing the envellope so high that if just one title like loong per year come even wow wont survive
yes i dont mention forsaken world cause there are ton of odity like lag game not running smooth(at least compared to loong wich is sent to america from eu)so i am sorry if i am using loong as the bar and if it is set too high but i like a game as flawless as possible.and p2p isnt justified anymore.for the same money you would play p2p you will have a lot of fun in a f2p game.
so yes sub model is in their last breath and the genre can only say ty to blizzard ,if it wasnt for blizzard(wich was planed to be a f2p game at the start!)p2p would have been dead a long time ago lol!
F2P is a scam. The only true F2P MMO's i know is Guild Wars. I'm not playing an MMO where you success is based on how much you are willing to pay. Success in MMO should be based on dedication not how deep your wallet is.
^
If the sub model is on the way out then I'll be following it.
Look at the news LotRO just announced, a removal of the stat cap which in turns pushes that game another stealth step in the direction of pay to win via purchasable stat tomes that were added months back.
I have no intention on playing a game for fun in which equality is based not off of IG balance and personal competency but how much I'm willing to shell out to 'the man' and his big corporation.
Lotro is a pve focused game. if people want to buy stat tomes let them. I dont see a problem with it.
Now if the game had competitive pvp that actually mattered like GvG or territory control i would see an issue with it.
Remember people compete and compare themselfves in pve games/servers as well. Raiders want to be better from more causal instance runners, certain tank want to be better than other tank he knows , they compare how much morale they have , how much mobs they can take , how fast they dps ,etc
PvP or PvE people still compete.
Pro 'pay to win' people tend to ignore whatever they themselves do not value and speak according to their own wishes. I guess the same could be said about the other side which might explain why this thread is so long.
The overlooked issue here is that a choice doesn't need to be made. There's no reason why a game can't have F2P AND P2P servers to accommodate the different preferences. Often times you'll see PvP and PvE servers, this really is no different.
I'd be curious to see how the 'competition' would play out give this option. Would the 'free to play but you gotta buy from the store' servers thrive or would the 'pay to play but everything that's accessible in the store is not buyable IG through currency or obtainable through quest reward' server pull a head as the core source.
An important point to mention is that both could succeed in their own way. While one could produce more profit, the other could produce more players. The idea that one type must excel over the other is a flawed notion. We are not highlanders after all, there does not need to be only one.
I know which one I'd choose if I were given the choice. Quite frankly I'd LOVE this dual model-split server idea to happen as I feel my choice would over all benefit from all the extra effort put into making goods worthy of double dipping.
P.S. - Incase you couldn't figure out, I'm in favor of pay to play models. However that won't stop me from supporting devs that do it right like A.net.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
When you look on sites like Youtube or GameTrailers, you see what newer MMO players want.
The first question is:
"is this pay?" when someone answers "yes", the reply is something along the lines of "lol forget it then"
Kids now grow up with Xbox 360 network, PS3 network, Online Facebook games, F2P MMO.
They have NEVER paid for an online game, ever. They EXPECT it to be free, no, they DEMAND it. F2P isn't going to win because people here like it, it will win because random 16-year-old decided that they will only play F2P and B2P.
GW1 was a low budget project. It was recently stated that they had about 4 guys on the content team for GW1 and it's closer to 40 now for GW2. They also stopped releasing expansions in 2007 since they started working on GW2.
It would make sense that (if?) WoW is a bigger game, but you can't draw the conclusion that it's due to the subs. The subs just earn them more money. GW1's plan was to have expansions every 6 months. They ended up putting out two entire standalone games, one expansion and some additional free content over the course of 2+ years.
Sure, you had to pay for those expansions, but you have to pay for WoW's expansions too. WoW puts out free content every 3-4 months, there's no reason that a B2P MMO couldn't do the same thing. The difference is that instead of paying automatically and taking what they give you, it has to be content that's good enough for you to spend money on. And overall it's cheaper to the consumer, even if they do buy everything.
Thats the thing though, GW1 hasn't been able to provide the same level of updates that WoW had and they sold 6 million copies. 6 mil x 20$=120million bucks and thats assuming everyone bought the x pacs and stand alones at 20 bucks.
You can see the same thing happen with single player games too, games like Halo:Reach don't get content updates regularly because there is no profit to be made from it.
First off, they stopped making the game because they couldn't do what they wanted to do with the engine they had. I guess you could argue that they weren't able to provide the updates, but it's a manpower issue or an issue of where they were focused, not because it would have been unprofitable. On the graph I posted on page 8 or so, you can see the spikes in GW revenue that coincide with major content releases.
I think it depends on the game but content updates can be profitable. You have an audience predisposed to buying them. I think the mistake a lot of games is to charge too much for their DLC. Like Modern Warfare 2, $15 for 5 maps in each of the two DLCs, and 4 of the 10 were old maps. GW1 released standalone games as updates so you can argue that they justified the cost. If a person thinks it's a good value, they're going to buy it.
I don't know if you're arguing with your last statement that P2P is better because you get constant updates. It seems clear to me that while one person might think it's money well spent, the playerbase as a whole isn't getting their money's worth. WoW probably brings in a billion dollars a year in subscriptions. How much of that is pure profit?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it."-Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
When you look on sites like Youtube or GameTrailers, you see what newer MMO players want.
The first question is:
"is this pay?" when someone answers "yes", the reply is something along the lines of "lol forget it then"
Kids now grow up with Xbox 360 network, PS3 network, Online Facebook games, F2P MMO.
They have NEVER paid for an online game, ever. They EXPECT it to be free, no, they DEMAND it. F2P isn't going to win because people here like it, it will win because random 16-year-old decided that they will only play F2P and B2P.
First the Xbox 360 requires a fee to play anything online. Second did you really just cite youtube comments as proof of your theory?
Lets not forget it's becoming standard practice to charge an additional fee to play used games online on consoles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
No it is still the most efficient way to make money...
But it will most likley be phased out for the "30-dayspremium account" model... =P
This have been a good conversation
As far as I can tell, most of the curently available MMO were designed with the subscription model in mind. Some have converted to F2P, some haven't. And the conversions have been highly indifferent. I don't think the gaming community will really know what the F2P model can offer until the majority of available MMOs have been designed with this model in mind.
Does anyone else remember the pay-per-minute billing model used in the early days of online networking? AOL (and others) took their billing model directly from the Long Distance Providers (telephone). I know someone who regularly ran up $350-400 bills a month with AOL gaming. It wasn't until EQ came out that anyone convinced him to leave AOL and go with an ISP. They never thanked me for that.
The point is, judging the success of the F2P model isn't really easy, as long as the older design mindset remains. Let's let the F2P model mature before we decide.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
P2P will probably never disappear, but may become cheaper in the future. It isn't possible to make a quality P2W game when the basic game design principles force a developer to choose monetization over fun.
Well now this is the beauty of it.
A person gets to choose which game he wants to play based on the pay model he wants
You want P2P you get a certain group of games to choose from, F2P another group etc etc.
Obviously with the vast amount of differences of opinion on this it is a personal desicion to pay & play what you feel you are comfortable with...or not pay at all. whatever you choose. That is the beauty of the choices right now.
Except I'm not asking for opinions on what people prefer. I'm speculating about the possibility that F2P/B2P could potentially be the better way for MMOs to make money. Subscriptions worked a lot better when the market wasn't so saturated, and the average MMO had a much better retention rate.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Weird, GW1 was my first MMO (Its an MMO GW fanboys) and once I played WoW I thought "I have no problem paying 15$ a month for the amount of content I am getting".
GW1 lasted a month and a half for me, WoW 4 years and only now am I getting bored of Azeroth.
It depends i guess.
I havent played all freemium/p2p MMOs but i found the PvE part freemium to be more expensive and the pvp part to be less expensive. Rofl what MMO upgrades pvp anyway except gear? WoWs arenas havent got new maps for years, i really mean years. 5 or so.
(I usually spend 30 bucks to get everything in a freemium MMO to fully PvP, 90% gotta be leveling maps and the rest stash slots and to fully use AH/guilds/chat system.)
Yawn
There is pay-to-win in P2P too, remember the huge amount of cash paid to gold farmers / levelers. F2P developers are more honest, making those advantages available from the game itself. Even the best MMORPG can become tedious, repetitive, after the 500,000th mob killed the same way, because combat in MMOs usually is not as fun as combat in other game genres.
Most of upcoming P2P games have to face changes in their payment model in order to survive in a market filled with MMOs of variable quality. The way EVE online managed it seems interesting and original to me, and a hit to the face of external RMT traders.
P2P is becoming obsolete and restricted to huge companies with lots of cash to spend, and ultimately, because of the unrivaled growth and popularity of WoW.
I'm pretty sure your speculation is relying on how well Guild Wars 2 does? Well, let's go over what ways Guild Wars 2 will make their money for their development costs, investors, and monthly upkeeps. Normally, studios will fire their development teams and keep a skeletal staff for small updates, patches, and minor bug fixes. Now Guild Wars 2 will have a one time purchase or buy to play. That will work good, as it will bring in some profit. The second way to bring in the money is a cosmetic cash shop. The final way to bring in money for Guild Wars 2 is expansions.
In Short below is this: Most of you are greedy, selfish 2 face people that blame their problems and "ignorant" mindset on others especially game developers and coporations.
Now let's go over some harsh reality for those cheapskates on here screaming "GIVE ME EVERYTHING FOR FREE, AND IN ADDITION PAY ME TO PLAY YOUR GAME." Let me stop laughing because right now your free loading wide bubble butt state of mind reflects your mentality. You think they owe you something just becuase you want to play their game? REALLY? They going to give you welfare to just play their game because you're too poor or too mmog burned out to try and play their game? You bring old crap to a clean slate and ruin the game.
Wipe your face, and let me school you on some hardcore facts. Buy To Play only works for big publisher titles with large followings. That's cool, they make back most of, if not all of their development costs spent on the project. 5 Years, $100M and a boat load of hours spent making the game. Congratulations, now comes the epic "lulz" from the cry babies. They don't want a subscription of any sort, because to them a game should be free and money should float down magically from the sky to the developers hands. Look at a game developer in the face, and in the face of his family and tell him that his sweat, blood and tears aren't worth your $15. Most of you would flinch or wouldn't even bother to do it.
You rage on these forums about games not deserving your money, but you know you paid to try the game out. You weren't forced, and you went and fell for their gimic. You then make up ramblings about how godly their powers of persuasion and advertising are. Ever stop to think that maybe "YOU" are at fault. I mean it's not like 15 big buff judo chopping guys came to your door, beat you down and forced you to buy the game right?
Now let's get back on track so I don't get flamed out. You as the gamer should feel honored to be entertained. This doesn't rule out that some games are turds, but this rules out that the fault rests only on the developers. You see anything that might help someone pay their bills, and you scream "THEY BE MILKING THE COWS!" The truth is, you think you are entitled to everything, but you are not. Sadly, the world needs to make money, else no one would be making mmorpg or any type of game for free. Flash games make money with cash shops or advertisements. Facebook games the same way.
If it is just Buy To Play and no real reason or motivation to cause someone to go into Cash Shop, then don't expect a mmog. Expect a RPG or FPS, but don't come crying because they try to pay their server bills. They met the public needs, they are getting paid to satisfy people's needs, even if the game is crappy and only holds your interest for a few hours.
So lets go into the home stretch. Any game that has fluff in the Cash Shop is fine because "YOUR" to cheap to buy into it. You want highly customizable games that don't link into a Cash Shop. You want it buy once and never need to pay again. Go play Dragon Age. Real Developer costs range from $30M ~ $100M and the upkeeps can be anywhere from IT Structure rentals at $500k USD ~ $10M USD Monthly. This will include bandwidth, operations and mangement of the hardware and software, and then the hardware itself.
Here's what I get from the Buy To Play Advocates. We want to Buy the game, we want them to basically put crap we don't want or ever will need in the Cash Shop, and we will think about buying expansions only if your game never makes us bored and we don't feel the need to buy the expansion. Hypocrits! You go to work for money, and you call these companies lazy? Most of you are the same. How many times at fast food, retail, or a electronics store do the retail employees aka "most of you" go to work and treat customers like crap? You don't like it dished back do you? And for the rest of you, I'm sure you see that when you go shopping if you are old enough to understand.
You now need to come to realization you are a greedy selfish 2 face. Greedy because nothing is worth the money you earn, you rather have the world for free. Selfish because you can care less about what others feel, and you can care less about how they are going to live. 2 face because you claim to want to be treated as gods, and yet you don't treat others like that yourself. GREED is simply at the root. You want the moon for free. You think coporations are greedy but here is the sad truth. They are providing a in demand service that people want, so what are you providing? Are you providing a product or service to meet people's needs? You claim they earn too much off of you, but sadly they aren't the ones who are refusing to create solutions for people. You sit and whine, yet you don't do anything. You wait for that perfect opportunity that never comes and you claim life is unfair for you.
Look at yourself, change yourself, and then come back and see if you think the same things. My arguements are true, 95% of you are full of greed. You want, want, want, and don't give back. You post radically ignorant things like "This game should be absolutely free because thats how my world works." Really? You wonder why you complain about subscriptions and corporations? Haha, look at that you can probably make more excuses about how I am wrong all the while inside it eats you alive that you are in fact exactly that. Greedy, selfish, 2 face. I can add ignorant but the saying you made up goes "ignorance is bliss."
I struggle not with life, money, emotions, and world, but against old mindsets and selves to be proven obsolete in a age and time of rapid changes. Go create fun, so you can have fun.
Good point.
Here's hoping they add a "GM mode" into their store. That way, since it's only a PvE game after all, people won't have the need to go anywhere or do anything, they can just command line it all in.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
Your comparison is flawed. GW1 didnt last you only a month and a half due to lack of content. If all you did all day every day for a month and a half is play GW then i doubt even with that you would be able to succesfully complete all the content available in the game. I played the game for 3 yrs before stopping and didnt complete everything. I then left for 4 years trying out other games both f2p and p2p. I have just recently restarted playing GW1 about a week ago and have been blown away by the amount of new content available that so far i havent paid a dime for. Honestly ive never seen any game come close to the amount of content that GW has. 95% of the games content is end game content as well. And there end game content doesnt consist of running the same instance for a month or 2 on a gear treadmill, so you can move onto the next of maybe a dozen instances for another month.
You may not have liked GW for whatever reason, but to claim it is due to lack of content is absurd, especially at this point.
Remember people compete and compare themselfves in pve games/servers as well. Raiders want to be better from more causal instance runners, certain tank want to be better than other tank he knows , they compare how much morale they have , how much mobs they can take , how fast they dps ,etc
PvP or PvE people still compete.
This.You end up paying more than a sub-based game if you want to keep up. I'd rather earn my rewards rather than buy them anyways.
You're confusing personal replayableity and preferances (I can't spell w/o Spell check) as content.
GW1 has about 10 gigs worth of content.
WoW is pushing it at 25 gigs.
WoW has an ass load of more content then Gw1 does no matter how you look at it. And (I believe) it is due to the money they make from subs that they are able to consistanly up-date the game with about 1-2 gigs every content patch.
Not saying GW1 does not have that much content, its just that to say it has as much as EQ2, WoW, or even RIft that is sitting at about 8 gigs, would simply mean you're wrong.
Im going to have to point out the absurdity of this comment by simply asking how much out of these games space on my HD's is graphics? How about game engine? UI? Unless your definition of content is purely HD space in which case the less optimized game engine will win. Horray for sloppy programming i guess if thats your defintion of content. Also the size of the client on your HD doesnt reflect the size of the game like it does in single player games. MMO's give you a client and the information not stored on your client is stored on the games server itself. Some games store more of the info on there server's, and some store more on your client.
When i spoke of content i was refering to it in terms of things to do that have a point in the game. Unless i was unsuccessful running an instance, i have never once had to rerun it in GW1 and yet i have not ran out of things to do in it. It isnt a rerun the same instance gear grind masquerading as content like WoW or WAR. The first time you run an instance, that is content, the next 20 times you run the same exact instance with no changes to it, isnt new content.
People keep comparing GW2's (B2P also) to WAR's PQ's (even though they each represent far more content than a WAR PQ due to different possible outcomes at every stage for more replayability/content). WAR had around 250 PQ's (of which you only got to experience half since they were divided between the 2 factions in the game), GW2 is boasting 1600+. My point is that the idea that sub games will always have more content because your giving them more money every month is not always the case. It should be, but it isnt.
GW1 was a low budget project. It was recently stated that they had about 4 guys on the content team for GW1 and it's closer to 40 now for GW2. They also stopped releasing expansions in 2007 since they started working on GW2.
It would make sense that (if?) WoW is a bigger game, but you can't draw the conclusion that it's due to the subs. The subs just earn them more money. GW1's plan was to have expansions every 6 months. They ended up putting out two entire standalone games, one expansion and some additional free content over the course of 2+ years.
Sure, you had to pay for those expansions, but you have to pay for WoW's expansions too. WoW puts out free content every 3-4 months, there's no reason that a B2P MMO couldn't do the same thing. The difference is that instead of paying automatically and taking what they give you, it has to be content that's good enough for you to spend money on. And overall it's cheaper to the consumer, even if they do buy everything.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
My definition of content is things to do, or amount of things to do.
WoW has about 90 dungeons and raids, and roughly 9 Bgs and almost 10k quest.
The only solid number I was able to find on GW1 was 19 dungeons.
Now once agian, what has more content?
As far as GW2 dynamic events are concernd (Suck w/o spell check) I think 1.6k dynamic events arn't as impressive as they could have been had ANet not have gotten rid of traditional questing all together. The resorces that could have gone into making quest have been turned into dynamic events, all they did was change content and not add to it.
Thats the thing though, GW1 hasn't been able to provide the same level of updates that WoW had and they sold 6 million copies. 6 mil x 20$=120million bucks and thats assuming everyone bought the x pacs and stand alones at 20 bucks.
You can see the same thing happen with single player games too, games like Halo:Reach don't get content updates regularly because there is no profit to be made from it.
You pay a sub because that is the way in which the business itself was developed. Their plan to support the companies live support staff, coders, emergency tech's, content designers, IT personel, etc... is all derived from the sub based plan.
You may only need a GM once or twice, the problem with this thinking is there are thousands of others who need them to.
Also there are many times I've found the automated /unstuck system to not work, regardless of how many times I've tried it. In those circumstances I've needed a gm there to actually manually move my character to a safe place. I'm sure there are hundreds to thousands of others who have as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Yeah not only this. Sometimes there can be problems with bugged mobs in an instance or with loot box not showing. You might accidedntaly throw away your rare item and you want to get it back. Sometimes quest bugs and you need help to complete it.
I found having support is really nice and in some games it really reacts fast.
not yet!but when the datapipe between say china and america or eu gets big enough player will play directly in asia!it is already starting check aika ,all diff langage world wide yet we played all in the same game .so the day you got anglish only or french only or mandarin only server are counted,soon the datapipe will be nig enough that blizzard wont need a specific server in china same for insanelly good title like loong.lets face it title that do great elsewhere die very fast in other country that try to itemise!(localise )
i play loong awsomne game fair amount of player but it is version 1 something in china they are at 3.5 see the difference
some part of the game arent translated yet!but the game run smooth like butter even if server are in eu!
so yes the sub model is dying,too many bad title,or buggy one,bad graphic,not smooth game play etc made player sketish
now f2p is pushing the envellope so high that if just one title like loong per year come even wow wont survive
yes i dont mention forsaken world cause there are ton of odity like lag game not running smooth(at least compared to loong wich is sent to america from eu)so i am sorry if i am using loong as the bar and if it is set too high but i like a game as flawless as possible.and p2p isnt justified anymore.for the same money you would play p2p you will have a lot of fun in a f2p game.
so yes sub model is in their last breath and the genre can only say ty to blizzard ,if it wasnt for blizzard(wich was planed to be a f2p game at the start!)p2p would have been dead a long time ago lol!
Pro 'pay to win' people tend to ignore whatever they themselves do not value and speak according to their own wishes. I guess the same could be said about the other side which might explain why this thread is so long.
The overlooked issue here is that a choice doesn't need to be made. There's no reason why a game can't have F2P AND P2P servers to accommodate the different preferences. Often times you'll see PvP and PvE servers, this really is no different.
I'd be curious to see how the 'competition' would play out give this option. Would the 'free to play but you gotta buy from the store' servers thrive or would the 'pay to play but everything that's accessible in the store is not buyable IG through currency or obtainable through quest reward' server pull a head as the core source.
An important point to mention is that both could succeed in their own way. While one could produce more profit, the other could produce more players. The idea that one type must excel over the other is a flawed notion. We are not highlanders after all, there does not need to be only one.
I know which one I'd choose if I were given the choice. Quite frankly I'd LOVE this dual model-split server idea to happen as I feel my choice would over all benefit from all the extra effort put into making goods worthy of double dipping.
P.S. - Incase you couldn't figure out, I'm in favor of pay to play models. However that won't stop me from supporting devs that do it right like A.net.
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
When you look on sites like Youtube or GameTrailers, you see what newer MMO players want.
The first question is:
"is this pay?" when someone answers "yes", the reply is something along the lines of "lol forget it then"
Kids now grow up with Xbox 360 network, PS3 network, Online Facebook games, F2P MMO.
They have NEVER paid for an online game, ever. They EXPECT it to be free, no, they DEMAND it. F2P isn't going to win because people here like it, it will win because random 16-year-old decided that they will only play F2P and B2P.
First off, they stopped making the game because they couldn't do what they wanted to do with the engine they had. I guess you could argue that they weren't able to provide the updates, but it's a manpower issue or an issue of where they were focused, not because it would have been unprofitable. On the graph I posted on page 8 or so, you can see the spikes in GW revenue that coincide with major content releases.
I think it depends on the game but content updates can be profitable. You have an audience predisposed to buying them. I think the mistake a lot of games is to charge too much for their DLC. Like Modern Warfare 2, $15 for 5 maps in each of the two DLCs, and 4 of the 10 were old maps. GW1 released standalone games as updates so you can argue that they justified the cost. If a person thinks it's a good value, they're going to buy it.
I don't know if you're arguing with your last statement that P2P is better because you get constant updates. It seems clear to me that while one person might think it's money well spent, the playerbase as a whole isn't getting their money's worth. WoW probably brings in a billion dollars a year in subscriptions. How much of that is pure profit?
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
First the Xbox 360 requires a fee to play anything online. Second did you really just cite youtube comments as proof of your theory?
Lets not forget it's becoming standard practice to charge an additional fee to play used games online on consoles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson