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Why the B2P (buy to play) model works
minusian
Member Posts: 29
I see a lot of chatter over the forums about how "this is my final post, the mmorpg genre is tired and old and wearing me out". Most, if not all, of those posts contain a blurb about how the author finds the genre to be stagnant, stale, or feel like they're simply being ripped off for "yet another clone".
The prime example of this, in the current market is Rift. I played Rift for two or three months, from a few days into the Open Beta onwards. I knew that it was not my sort of game, but after discovering that my guild (TOG) was active in Rift, and being an Oceanic player, one of TOG's most active member base regions, I was able to cope with the whole experience, and even enjoy it on some level, for that period of time I was in-game.
However, like I said in the forums during the release period for Rift where newbies were trying to find out more about the game, the reason Rift was successful was because, well, let me use a proper analogy: compare your favourite movie, or in my example a novel. You might read it twice, even three or more times, but there comes a point where you have to put it down and simply pick up another novel. World of Warcraft has had great success over the years. I should know, I saw how it destroyed the population in my favourite and first ever MMO "The Saga of Ryzom" within the first few months of World of Warcraft's release. There was nothing like it on the market at the time, which is where it got its main popularity, but then it somehow continued to hold on, and hold on, and hold on. I eventually played WoW for about a year or more, but got sick of it eventually once I had my very sexy looking, but hard earned tier 1 set for my Tauran Druid (it had PINK; it was sex; every day I'm hussling.)
Looking at Rift and other games previous to Rift that I've enjoyed, even on a minimalistic level, they mostly had one thing in common - the enjoyment factor ran out after about 2 months.
This is why the Buy 2 Play model would work so well. This way you only need to design your game to have an audience of, say, three months, and then merely wait and see how the game is faring after the first two months to decide if you're going to offer a second or third expansion. Of course, any good gaming company would have their code monkies hard at work on the first expansion before the intial launch whether they believe the game will succeed or not. That's just sensible.
But it also means that the company involved would require a different strategy on the white board for marketing the game. What that strategy is, I can't tell you. That's for the marketing department monkies to devine (using something other than a crystal ball, hopefully).
The prime example of B2P working is, I know what you're thinking but you're wrong, /not/ Guild Wars. It's single player rpg's and strategy rpg's. Those games have been about decades, and I know from personal experience they suffered the same fate as what the fledging MMORPG market is suffering from now. Repetition. Just look at Baldur's Gate. How many Baldur's Gate clones exist now?
My favourite billionare is not Steve Jobs, Wozniak, or Bill Gates. It's Richard Branson, aka The Red Baron. He made his fortune by taking incredible risks, the same way Gates did when he sold IBM an operating system he didn't have yet. He's a genius at taking something people say "that can't work" and then making it work. I hope you get my gist with this along with the above.
Take a risk Oh Great Gamer Lords And Ladies Of The Overworld. Develop a strategy that works, put it on your bosses table, state your arguments, and if he or she can't tell you why you're wrong, then "Win" for you. And me, and others like me.
It's a Win-win...win, situation!
/minusian@gmail.com
Comments
long thread, scimmed it but the B2P model does heavily revolve about the game you have.
Make no mistake Guild Wars 2 will not have some sort of "endgame" so they know players either turn into altoholics or stop playing, till they release the next update. (mini expansion). Its a different approach.
You can't do that in games like Rift, Everquest, Aion or World of Warcraft. Anyway the B2P model is way better than the p2w rip off modell games such as Lotro, DDO, CO or Aoc are using.
As a dedicated player I'd get maybe! 1 month out of Guild Wars 2 and thats it ->waiting till an update comes. Personally speaking thats not what I expect from my MMORPG.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Yeah, but a single player game wont last you longer either.
Even if games like GW2 just last a month it will be a fun month, I am getting more and more tired of logging on every day and just farm dailies and repeasting the same raids and dungeons...
I hope CCP gets WoDO right with player created content.
I think I will enjoy GW2 for at least 6 months myself since I ain't in a hurry and want to see the entire game, but I rather have 1 month of fun than 5 years of so-so.
So offering a game that is fun from level 1 and does not change at max level (motto of Anet is endgame starts at level 1) is less durable than a game which consists of a race to max level with the reward of a grind treadmill? Is that why a lot of single player games are played so much without having (a lot of) grind? People play games like Counter Strike and Starcraft for hundreds of hours but where is the endgame there?
Many MMO players actually really like the hamster wheel of gear, and taste is personal.
Loke nailed it for me endgame is more than just raiding but Guild Wars 2 won't have the things I miss:
1. UO like housing
2. meaning crafting
3. Alternate Advancement
sometimes I just don't feel like raiding/fighting mobs so I want to work on my crafting skills or build a house. I know Guild Wars 2 has some sort of instanced housing but for me thats not good enough.
So I fear once the shinyness of dynamic events has worn off, whats there to do for non altoholics? I'm not interested in playing dungeons in 3 different modes they are either challenging from the get go or not if not, I wont visit them again.
I would still have tried the game but they've removed my prefered class. Anyway I get your point Loke if the price is right 1 month worth of gaming might be something I'dconsider meaning not more than 40 - 50 $.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
stictly speaking PVE
-- anyone who wants to do PVP in GW2 will get probably spend much more time w the game
EQ2 fan sites
This model ONLY works if the game is $50-$60 a copy and never goes dow in price. Which actually would be a good thing.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Having worked in the hosting industry, I've always wondered how a B2P model for an mmo could stay afloat.
Having servers in a co-location facility with good multiple-path (multi-homed) bandwidth is rather expensive on a monthly basis. Not to mention maintenance and monitoring..
For an FPS on the other hand it works, usually because the servers end up being player rented and run heh
You think Arenanet, having created GW1, would make GW2, which actually is an mmo unlike GW1, B2P if they didn't think it was possible?
the original guild wars was b2p and has done this 6 years -- with over 7 million boxes sold
back in 2006, ANET gave some server info
http://gigaom.com/2006/10/26/guild-wars/
Guild Wars from the Server Side
When NCSoft acquired Arena Net, Guild Wars’ developer, Garriott and his team discerned an audience not being served by the traditional subscription-based MMO. (“There’s a large number of people who don’t want to pay 15 dollars a month”, as he puts it.) Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to capture that niche, with community and help tools that minimized the need for frequent customer service– a key money sink for MMOs. By Garriott’s estimate, Guild Wars incurs 80% less support costs than NCsoft’s more traditional MMOs, like their Lineage series. There are no Game Masters in Guild Wars, wandering around the world settling disputes and helping players—and charging NCsoft by the hour.
The other cost-saving feature comes from economy of bandwidth. MMO players know all about long download times, when a game has an update, with patches that often exceed 100 megabytes, and thousands of players simultaneously piling on, to get it. (“It can cost us a million dollars for an update patch,” Garriott says of other NCSoft MMOs. “You peak when you release a giant download.”)
By contrast, Guild Wars streams its updates in small chunks, depending on what part of the world you’re in. “Instead of having peaks of bandwidth usage… [the update] streams it evenly over time, so the costs don’t peak.” Numerous areas and quests in the world are “instantiated”, meaning specially created only for a small group of players, and that also minimizes bandwidth, since it means tracking less player data across the wider world. Garriott estimates 100,000 people play Guild Wars across the US and EU at any given time, and 1.5-2 million total every month—and still, connection costs remain manageable.
EQ2 fan sites
The main reason GW1/GW2 works is because you create the net in your game. There's very very little server interaction other then post game/match and pre game/match.
Check the netcode...very little sent to server.
Also, your own GW1/GW2 client checks itself for the data packets for hackers and the like (hp stats/damage) and that's why your client kicks itself from games--because it may spot one.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Was wondering how long it would take someone to bring up the server upkeep cost as the main reason why a B2P game won't be able to stay afloat (-_-). I'm surprised that in this day and age of broadband internet and Free to Play games making up the majority of MMOs; people still bring up that pointless arguement that server upkeep & bandwidth costs so much for for an MMO company and that all MMOs need some kind of ongoing fee to offset that cost.
Well I could waste my time arguing this, I'll just link everyone to this video, of someone else arguing this point across.
Just want to point out that I read from an insider that AT&T charges ISP's 10 to 15 cents per gigabyte (in the bigger markets) of bandiwdth.
That's actually quite a bit if you do the math.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Good arguments, and all I am saying is: it's expensive to host an mmo with decent bandwidth.. Not just the bandwidth but the space and employees to handle it, etc..
You can argue that all you want, but I know this personally from having spent years working in that specific industry
.
Now, I've played GW1, and I can see how their instancing and such can offset some of that - the game wasn't designed like your traditional mmo, though.. I don't see something like WoW or EvE managing to do that heh.
There's a reason everyone else doesn't use the B2P model for their mmos lol
f2p games take even in more $ monthly than a sub model, if the industry talking heads are to be believed, and so they can pay the costs even easier than the p2p model.
I do not know what your are talking about because my understanding of this stuff is very basic. That said, it seems unlikely to me that GW1 and GW2 function the same since the former is a non-persistent game (called a CORPG by Arenanet) while the later is a persistent game (or a true MMORPG).
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
"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
Expansions keep the game going.
For example GW1 series. If you want to be viable in PvP you require every single expansion. If you want the ultimate fun you require every single expansion.
It's a lot of money, maybe not now since it's lowered in prize but when it all came out.
I assume same thing will happen to GW 2.
The question is, are other models used because they are needed to substain servers or are other models used because they are percieved as more profitable? Besides, as I said before, explain why Arenanet is creating a true MMORPG with a B2P model.
Still works out cheaper than a monthly sub
PC Games: "How do you plan to do this? Building such a complex world which is shared by all players without having monthly fees?"
Strain: (laughing) "A very good question! Interestingly many people believe that the completely instantiated world was the reason for Guild Wars 1 to not need monthly fees. This is completely wrong! The existence or lack of a persistent world is totally unrelated to the running expenses which are needed to maintain an online roleplaying game."
PC Games: "What do you mean by that?"
Strain: "Really important are the innovative technologies which we developed for Guild Wars 1. They allow us to keep the running costs very low which then results in the huge advantage for the player: the absence of fees. We continue with that principle for Guild Wars 2: as soon as the game is available, we will begin our work on new content. Such content for which the player is free to decide if he wants to have it or not. Maybe that will be add-ons or complete campaigns or online-extensions with costs, we don't know. But one thing is very certain: we will again have in Guild Wars 2 the comprehensive support our fans are already familiar with!"
Sounds to me like you are repeating one specific company's talking-head propaganda, forgetting that every other company out there doesn't agree with that guy.
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if GW2 hits the RMT model within a year or two of launch, especially in today's economy
Let me qualify that with:
explain why Arenanet is "going to try to" create a true MMORPG with a B2P model
As it was said, gw1 wasn't really a true mmo in the usual sense. GW2 is going to be an experiment. It's not been done before, and they are basically rolling the dice and hoping it works out as expected.
Which, especially considering the economy, is some pretty long odds, in my opinion..
Don't get me wrong, I'd love b2p to work out, no more f2p shops and monthly fees and whatnot.. that'd be great for us the player, but hmmm.. One has to be realistic about such things heh
Like I said above, I fully expect GW2 to become an RMT soonish
But having worked on GW1 and even battle.net and WoW, Arenanet should know a thing or two about servers their costs. Besides, they have the experience from other NCsoft employers to back them up. Further more, it seems unlikely that they have not researched this and thought about it a lot. Of course in the end it remains to be seen, since it is, as you said, an experiment. But NCsoft would not pay as much money and take as much time as has been done know for the developement of GW2 if there was no reason to expect a profit.
You do realize that even though Guild Wars 1 has instancing, the players are still playing on the game's servers. So it will cost as much to maintain those server, as any other MMO with a similar size in playbase. Instancing in GW1 actually causes a greater load on servers, because it's having to create multiple instances of different spaces for the thousands of individual players/groups in the game. And yet almost 7 years on and the game is still going fairly strong.
Other games like WoW charge a sub fee because they can get away with charging a sub fee. It's why these games can even get away with having a cash shop, with $70 monocles and yet if someone mentions that GW2 will have a cash shop people will immediately assume it will be P2W. It's also why even terrible games like Gods & Heroes felt they could get away with charging a full £15. Because they can. However at least the market is finally changing as the great Jeff Strain once said:
"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. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money. This is the legacy of games like Guild Wars, Maple Story, and Silkroad Online, all of which introduced new business models into the MMO genre and were quite successful. The subscription model is still perfectly viable, but the pain threshold is very low now. It's no secret that gamers don't want to pay a subscription fee. If you can convince them that your game offers enough value to justify it, more power to you! But be prepared to defend your decision, often and loudly, and back it up over the lifetime of your game."
That's the first time i've watched that video and i find mysef agreeing with him on most of the points. However, i'm not sure if it's too late in the game for the genre to make the switch. We as the consumers may have let it get to the point where subscriptions + expansion costs are the norm and even expected but the development side costs have also risen with that trend. Not because it costs more for the hardware and software but because of the amount of money generated through the sub models pushing the salaries and expected profits through the roof.
Unfortunately Anet is the only company i know of to go the B2P route and if others had adopted the same method then things might be changing right now towards that bias, but i think GW2 will be the last hope for it to be something of the future. While it seems to have worked for GW1 sadly that game wasn't your typical MMO but rather was more in line with the lobby based game such as LOL but with a few MMO features added in. If they can prove that it generates a similar amount of profit to sub based games and even f2p cash shop based ones & can get and keep a playerbase in large numbers with this game then it will set not only an example to other MMO creators but also alter the expectations of the consumers.
Maybe I expect too much of us the customers to buck a trend but it's always nice to have a little faith.
One last thought, even if it does sway the consumers there isnt a likelyhood of this model being adopted anytime in the next year due to already in place plans for future MMO's so personaly i think it wouldn't become more widespread until 2013/14 for games that can afford to switch strategies.
Who cares if any other company agrees with him or not? We're talking about MMOs with 50-100 million dollar development costs made by people who only care about the bottom line. How many shoddy MMOs have been made? How many have fallen on their faces due to terrible launches? Doesn't it stand to reason that people are going to look at WoW's subscription and WoW's profits and want a piece of that, whether or not it's actually the best decision for their company?
Hell, look at Rift. They finally got it right and actually finished their MMO before releasing it, but that's P2P and for whatever reason (not going to bash the game), it's sitting at 500k subs, that's like 7.5 million in revenue per month. Then take a look at something like the F2P League of Legends, of which 15 million people have played that. If the average purchase per month per player is only $1 (as in every player buys a $10 thing on average once every 10 months) that's 15 million a month. Yet would anyone ever argue that LoL should be a P2P game?
People need to stop thinking that P2P is a license to print money and no other model is equivalent.
GW1 significantly outearned the P2P City of Heroes during its run.
We know from NCSoft's quarterly reports that things like bandwidth and rent don't even merit their own entries, only footnotes. GW1 earns enough still, despite not having put out paid content since 2007 to pay for the bandwidth for ALL five on NCSoft's games and websites.
GW1 made a fantastic profit, otherwise GW2 would not be being released with exactly the same business model. GW2, being a true AAA B2P MMO instead of a CORPG made by a handful of people, is going to sell a ton of copies, way more than it would if it were P2P.
Believe whatever you want to believe. Sit here and wait for them to go away from B2P with a vanity cash shop. 6 years from now you'll still be waiting.
"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