Originally posted by Johnnymmo If you want content then a sub works. If you happy with no new content ye then f2p works In the end 15 bucks each month is not much 2 pay.
LotRO has had better content after they went F2P than they provided during their P2P era.
So yea, in short I think MMOs charging a subscription are as out of date and passé as charging per hour for mainframe time is.
Sorry for possible double post, but I over saw this.
I concur with LotRO's content. No new classes, but you know I can't think of anything else resonable to add to the game. Mounted combat coming too. Lots of dungeons too, even if they miss time frames. They're still added to those with the expansion purchased at no additional charge.
Look at City of Heroes too. Most of the requests fans of that game have had over the last decade are just now getting addressed in content updates since they went F2P. Do you know how long I've wanted to see "water" based powers rather than just ice all the time in MMOs? For a long time.
Imagine aoeing with a deluge of H2O?! Well it's finally happening, and I don't think they'd have done so sub based. That's saying a lot too because CoH's content model was damn good even in it's classic era.
IMO not having any sub based MMOs would be leaving money on the table as players like me are only willing to play a P2P MMO and the genre not offering any just means no company would be getting my (our) money.
At this point only a really great sub based MMO will get me to spend my time on it, which I value far more than 15 bucks a month. I've wasted way to much time on crappy games.
With the leval of A+ games out now that are free 2 play is any game worth a sub and if so how much after free 2 play games have made more money then most sub games not counting WOW
so waht do you think
if all mmos were Buy to Play (Buy the box but theres no subscription) then the mmo gaming world would be much better.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
In my opinion I do not think that all MMOs should go free to play from the start. The risks associated with going free to play from the start are way too high. So, most AAA MMOs start off with box + sub and then one day go free to play, and even then they move to a hybrid model and not truly free to play. For example, games like Everquest 2 and Age of Conan. Going with a subscription model is a safer bet for these companies. Also, when you really look at it, I am sure a large portion of the f2p gamers are people who do not spend a single dime on those games anyways.
It's very bad with f2p. A game like lotro is a perfect example. If you get v.i.p they still try to lure you into the cashshop and without v.i.p the game becomes a halfgame nightmare. Eq2 is anothe following example.
A game like DAoC never went f2p its been around since 2001.
With f2p you can group with pretty gimp players who dont have that and cant go there it sucks. Even a cashop button in the corner smells cheap. You get cashshop advertisement in the loading screen too, so utterly laughable.
It's very bad with f2p. A game like lotro is a perfect example. If you get v.i.p they still try to lure you into the cashshop and without v.i.p the game becomes a halfgame nightmare. Eq2 is anothe following example.
A game like DAoC never went f2p its been around since 2001.
With f2p you can group with pretty gimp players who dont have that and cant go there it sucks. Even a cashop button in the corner smells cheap. You get cashshop advertisement in the loading screen too, so utterly laughable.
Explain how LotRO is a half game nightmare?
EQ2 I understand, there's a lot of sub-only features. LotRO is pretty much buy to play, but you only buy the parts you want. You might want to double check on things before you make these types of comments.
With the leval of A+ games out now that are free 2 play is any game worth a sub and if so how much after free 2 play games have made more money then most sub games not counting WOW
so waht do you think
No, I think we as customers should be able to choose between P2P, B2P, F2P and Freemium as we want. If a game allows 2 models then that is fine but there should be separated servers for it.
P2P with itemshops needs to go however. You pay to get access to the entire game. In fact I think expansions should be free as well with P2P games, and to be honest is box fees altogether wrong for it. On the other hand is it fine to take $20 instead of 15 then.
In my opinion I do not think that all MMOs should go free to play from the start. The risks associated with going free to play from the start are way too high. So, most AAA MMOs start off with box + sub and then one day go free to play, and even then they move to a hybrid model and not truly free to play. For example, games like Everquest 2 and Age of Conan. Going with a subscription model is a safer bet for these companies. Also, when you really look at it, I am sure a large portion of the f2p gamers are people who do not spend a single dime on those games anyways.
Smed on SOE disagree with you and all future SOE games will be free to play.
And uncle Scrooge thinks smedis rather cheap, he would not have done it if he thought P2P is safer.
But then again as I sad in previous post, some players want F2P while others want B2P or P2P. If all releasing games were F2P the genre would loose many players.
I was thinking that maybe some of these companies who have several MMOs should offer a sub for their library of games.
For instance maybe to subscribe to SOE for $15/month, but you have total access to Everquest, Vanguard, etc. They still get their $15/month and their games may actually have people in them...
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
With a subscription fee you know up front how much the game will cost.
With a f2p you won't know. A f2p will come with some form of microtransactions. A company needs to earn money after all. A f2p game with microtransactions won't survive by offering only cosmetic items or pets for sale. The company will have to offer other desirable items for sale (e.g. permanent stat increase, permanent/temporary buffs, etc.).
Whether something is seens as mandatory by the playerbase or not changes over time. So the company will be constantly trying new offers. You might end up paying more than with a flat subscription fee.
But there will be more and more f2p games. There are already so many MMOs out. Why should you play a specific game? How can a company draw attention to one of its games? Additionally MMOs don't compete only with other MMOs, but also with all those social games around (which are played inside a browser or on mobile devices). Investors have seen with Blizzard what you can achieve with such a game. Many are trying to play it safe and emulate that success (by copying too much).
And here you are. In the end a poorly accepted game (or with dwindling population) will have no other chance than become f2p to not end up being a total loss. Too much competition isn't that good for the genre because all involved companies won't earn enough to survive and grow significantly. Too many available games will lead to the player base to be very fragmented and scattered over the place ("lonely server syndrome"). Too much copying will reduce the incentive to try out new MMOs since players have already been there and done that.
With a subscription fee you know up front how much the game will cost.
With a f2p you won't know. A f2p will come with some form of microtransactions. A company needs to earn money after all. A f2p game with microtransactions won't survive by offering only cosmetic items or pets for sale. The company will have to offer other desirable items for sale (e.g. permanent stat increase, permanent/temporary buffs, etc.).
Whether something is seens as mandatory by the playerbase or not changes over time. So the company will be constantly trying new offers. You might end up paying more than with a flat subscription fee.
...however, statistically, 90% of the people will pay nothing at all. Of the remaining 10%, most still will pay far less than a subscription fee.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
F2P games almost always suck. I'd much rather pay $15 a month to support the MMO's that I enjoy playing.
People who can't afford $15 a month should be working instead of playing video games.
Those that feel $15 a month is too much to pay for a AAA MMO simply have no clue how much it costs to run and support the server environments that we all take for granted. Not to mention customer support, continued design and development, etc.
I really think it depends on what companies want. I believe companies choose sub because they do make more money than F2P. I never payed for a subscription game before so I wouldn't really know what you get in the packages but I have paid for F2P games though.
I think subscriptions are on the way out because people have to evaluate every month if they want to play this game. Sooner or later the answer will be no.
With F2P only patches can cause an exodus if the game is at least decent and you don't get bored too much. However with F2P they're always looking for ways to milk you and you're constantly looking over your shoulder. What will they throw at us next patch?
With B2P you can get a quality game you can keep on playing for as long as you like without the sub that threatens to push your friends out of the game every single month, and without the need for a P2W cash shop because you pay for the game and the cash shop is optional.
About lotro.. The game stops after lonelands then you need to invest points to go further. Or so it was last time I played.
You can now grind the turbinepoints, maybe you will have for one quest area you can unlock. So it is locks out other areas to go limits freedom significantly.
I still think most games are deserving of the price of the client itself, but the whole issue is that box copies lose value rapidly while they sit on store shelves - especially on sub-based games where the launch period is just about the ONLY time they will sell. Nobody is going to opt in when they hear stories of how servers are emptying out, etc.
Guild Wars remained 50$ for frikken' ever, because they actually cycled out for the most part.
So, when a game ends up being 10$ at a best buy or gamestop (looking at you FFXIV), then they tend to look at changing over to F2P or freemium and turn those box copies into, basically, time cards or extended rewards in-game. It's all they can do at that point.
So all in all, I really hope the box/client price doesn't go anywhere - because it means they have to aim at a certain level of quality to even assure themselves a dedicated point of interest in the title... all the while not having to worry about population dropoff or lost sales over time because of the subscription-based barrier to entry.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
With the leval of A+ games out now that are free 2 play is any game worth a sub and if so how much after free 2 play games have made more money then most sub games not counting WOW
so waht do you think
If F2P games make more money than sub games why is it that 95% of AAA MMO games have been sub-based at launch ?
The sub-based AAA MMO's that introduced F2P, or variants of it, mostly did so after their subscriber base shrank substantially. So it's very possible that they made more money after they went F2P than they did when they had 100K monthly subs. But that does NOT mean they made more money as F2P than they did with 400K+ monthly paying subscribers...
Well, DDO, LOTRO all make more money after their F2P conversion.
There are so many fun f2p games out there now i would probably never play a sub game (after WOW) again. They are all going to convert to f2p at some point anyway.
The subscription fees for MMOs should be removed (or reduced), but making all MMOs entirely free to play? No way. It forces a reliance on a cash shop model for developers to make income which ruins the gameplay.
If F2P games make more money than sub games why is it that 95% of AAA MMO games have been sub-based at launch ?
Well, while I don't accept the thread's premise either, many game companies would like a fraction of WoW's success, and thus the sub fees.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
With the leval of A+ games out now that are free 2 play is any game worth a sub and if so how much after free 2 play games have made more money then most sub games not counting WOW
so waht do you think
If F2P games make more money than sub games why is it that 95% of AAA MMO games have been sub-based at launch ?
The sub-based AAA MMO's that introduced F2P, or variants of it, mostly did so after their subscriber base shrank substantially. So it's very possible that they made more money after they went F2P than they did when they had 100K monthly subs. But that does NOT mean they made more money as F2P than they did with 400K+ monthly paying subscribers...
The box sale obviously play a huge part to determine weather to go F2P or P2P. All those "quote quote" failed AAA MMO, the good thing is they did make a huge chunk of money from box sale. If they went F2P at launch, they probably loss more money because everyone realize how bad the game is and quit the game without paying a dime.
And there really isn't that many 400k+ subscriber P2P MMO, so I'm not sure why you mention that. Making those failed p2p MMO f2p is probably the only way to keep people from quiting, just because of dieing server.
Comments
Sorry for possible double post, but I over saw this.
I concur with LotRO's content. No new classes, but you know I can't think of anything else resonable to add to the game. Mounted combat coming too. Lots of dungeons too, even if they miss time frames. They're still added to those with the expansion purchased at no additional charge.
Look at City of Heroes too. Most of the requests fans of that game have had over the last decade are just now getting addressed in content updates since they went F2P. Do you know how long I've wanted to see "water" based powers rather than just ice all the time in MMOs? For a long time.
Imagine aoeing with a deluge of H2O?! Well it's finally happening, and I don't think they'd have done so sub based. That's saying a lot too because CoH's content model was damn good even in it's classic era.
a yo ho ho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns-IIn-DG-c
Pretty much kills this argument.
At this point only a really great sub based MMO will get me to spend my time on it, which I value far more than 15 bucks a month. I've wasted way to much time on crappy games.
B2P will always be the best way to go.
How can any game dev give MMOs away? Is this a trick question?
if all mmos were Buy to Play (Buy the box but theres no subscription) then the mmo gaming world would be much better.
No
--John Ruskin
<InvalidTag type="text/javascript" src="http://www.gamebreaker.tv/cce/e.js"></script><div class="cce_pane" content-slug="which-world-of-warcraft-villain-are-you" ctype="quiz" d="http://www.gamebreaker.tv"></div>;
It's very bad with f2p. A game like lotro is a perfect example. If you get v.i.p they still try to lure you into the cashshop and without v.i.p the game becomes a halfgame nightmare. Eq2 is anothe following example.
A game like DAoC never went f2p its been around since 2001.
With f2p you can group with pretty gimp players who dont have that and cant go there it sucks. Even a cashop button in the corner smells cheap. You get cashshop advertisement in the loading screen too, so utterly laughable.
Explain how LotRO is a half game nightmare?
EQ2 I understand, there's a lot of sub-only features. LotRO is pretty much buy to play, but you only buy the parts you want. You might want to double check on things before you make these types of comments.
a yo ho ho
No, I think we as customers should be able to choose between P2P, B2P, F2P and Freemium as we want. If a game allows 2 models then that is fine but there should be separated servers for it.
P2P with itemshops needs to go however. You pay to get access to the entire game. In fact I think expansions should be free as well with P2P games, and to be honest is box fees altogether wrong for it. On the other hand is it fine to take $20 instead of 15 then.
Smed on SOE disagree with you and all future SOE games will be free to play.
And uncle Scrooge thinks smedis rather cheap, he would not have done it if he thought P2P is safer.
But then again as I sad in previous post, some players want F2P while others want B2P or P2P. If all releasing games were F2P the genre would loose many players.
http://www.soe.com/allaccess/
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't think f2p is a good trend.
With a subscription fee you know up front how much the game will cost.
With a f2p you won't know. A f2p will come with some form of microtransactions. A company needs to earn money after all. A f2p game with microtransactions won't survive by offering only cosmetic items or pets for sale. The company will have to offer other desirable items for sale (e.g. permanent stat increase, permanent/temporary buffs, etc.).
Whether something is seens as mandatory by the playerbase or not changes over time. So the company will be constantly trying new offers. You might end up paying more than with a flat subscription fee.
But there will be more and more f2p games. There are already so many MMOs out. Why should you play a specific game? How can a company draw attention to one of its games? Additionally MMOs don't compete only with other MMOs, but also with all those social games around (which are played inside a browser or on mobile devices). Investors have seen with Blizzard what you can achieve with such a game. Many are trying to play it safe and emulate that success (by copying too much).
And here you are. In the end a poorly accepted game (or with dwindling population) will have no other chance than become f2p to not end up being a total loss. Too much competition isn't that good for the genre because all involved companies won't earn enough to survive and grow significantly. Too many available games will lead to the player base to be very fragmented and scattered over the place ("lonely server syndrome"). Too much copying will reduce the incentive to try out new MMOs since players have already been there and done that.
...however, statistically, 90% of the people will pay nothing at all. Of the remaining 10%, most still will pay far less than a subscription fee.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
F2P games almost always suck. I'd much rather pay $15 a month to support the MMO's that I enjoy playing.
People who can't afford $15 a month should be working instead of playing video games.
Those that feel $15 a month is too much to pay for a AAA MMO simply have no clue how much it costs to run and support the server environments that we all take for granted. Not to mention customer support, continued design and development, etc.
I really think it depends on what companies want. I believe companies choose sub because they do make more money than F2P. I never payed for a subscription game before so I wouldn't really know what you get in the packages but I have paid for F2P games though.
I think subscriptions are on the way out because people have to evaluate every month if they want to play this game. Sooner or later the answer will be no.
With F2P only patches can cause an exodus if the game is at least decent and you don't get bored too much. However with F2P they're always looking for ways to milk you and you're constantly looking over your shoulder. What will they throw at us next patch?
With B2P you can get a quality game you can keep on playing for as long as you like without the sub that threatens to push your friends out of the game every single month, and without the need for a P2W cash shop because you pay for the game and the cash shop is optional.
About lotro.. The game stops after lonelands then you need to invest points to go further. Or so it was last time I played.
You can now grind the turbinepoints, maybe you will have for one quest area you can unlock. So it is locks out other areas to go limits freedom significantly.
I still think most games are deserving of the price of the client itself, but the whole issue is that box copies lose value rapidly while they sit on store shelves - especially on sub-based games where the launch period is just about the ONLY time they will sell. Nobody is going to opt in when they hear stories of how servers are emptying out, etc.
Guild Wars remained 50$ for frikken' ever, because they actually cycled out for the most part.
So, when a game ends up being 10$ at a best buy or gamestop (looking at you FFXIV), then they tend to look at changing over to F2P or freemium and turn those box copies into, basically, time cards or extended rewards in-game. It's all they can do at that point.
So all in all, I really hope the box/client price doesn't go anywhere - because it means they have to aim at a certain level of quality to even assure themselves a dedicated point of interest in the title... all the while not having to worry about population dropoff or lost sales over time because of the subscription-based barrier to entry.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Both are a reaction to crappy modern MMOs that have been destroyed for other reasons.
Well, DDO, LOTRO all make more money after their F2P conversion.
There are so many fun f2p games out there now i would probably never play a sub game (after WOW) again. They are all going to convert to f2p at some point anyway.
The subscription fees for MMOs should be removed (or reduced), but making all MMOs entirely free to play? No way. It forces a reliance on a cash shop model for developers to make income which ruins the gameplay.
Well, while I don't accept the thread's premise either, many game companies would like a fraction of WoW's success, and thus the sub fees.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
The box sale obviously play a huge part to determine weather to go F2P or P2P. All those "quote quote" failed AAA MMO, the good thing is they did make a huge chunk of money from box sale. If they went F2P at launch, they probably loss more money because everyone realize how bad the game is and quit the game without paying a dime.
And there really isn't that many 400k+ subscriber P2P MMO, so I'm not sure why you mention that. Making those failed p2p MMO f2p is probably the only way to keep people from quiting, just because of dieing server.
I just call it selling alot of box.