Voted no, their greed is everlasting and will ruin every game they touch. Take a look at some of their F2P maticies on their more popular games and compare it to other F2P companies. It's sad as is SoE.
Originally posted by JimmyYO Voted no, their greed is everlasting and will ruin every game they touch. Take a look at some of their F2P maticies on their more popular games and compare it to other F2P companies. It's sad as is SoE.
If you look at SoE's f2p matrices and think 'wow they are greedy', then you suck pretty badly at analyzing things. Consider the amount of content EQ and EQ2 have...If they had charged for that like Turbine does it would be *far* more costly to play as a non subscriber than it is now.
You can argue it feels more restrictive or they should have done Turbine's model, but if you try to argue it is more greedy you are just flat out wrong.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.
EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.
All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.
MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before
Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.
SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.
PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P
DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?
And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.
How long is it going to take people, like yourself, to realize that there's NOTHING wrong with F2P. 99% of all games in the past, present, and future are going with the F2P model... Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!
F2P is largely the payment model of last resort. Virtually all of the P2P converted to F2P games changed over because it was a choice of doing that, or closing. Or as a last ditch attempt to make some money off a title or to recoup expenses in developing the game in the first place. Name one AAA up to now that was designed F2P from go.
There aren't any.
And frankly, those former P2P titles had little to lose in converting, so long as their initial development costs were paid: it costs almost nothing to keep a "developed" MMO going. So any revenue is good enough.
As to SOE, their "F2P implementation" is among the worst in the industry. They don't want people to play their games F2P at all, that is clear from the model, they make F2P access as crappy as possible in order to make people pay for the freemium upgrade. To the point that they won't let you use the toons/equipment you had previous acquired when being a "paying customer".
SOE won't even let people pay for sub time with their own SOE Smedbucks anymore, and that was their own scam to begin with.
Fortunately, as the years have going on, SOE has become less and less relevant in gaming circles.
F2P is largely the payment model of last resort. Virtually all of the P2P converted to F2P games changed over because it was a choice of doing that, or closing. Or as a last ditch attempt to make some money off a title or to recoup expenses in developing the game in the first place. Name one AAA up to now that was designed F2P from go.
There aren't any.
And frankly, those former P2P titles had little to lose in converting, so long as their initial development costs were paid: it costs almost nothing to keep a "developed" MMO going. So any revenue is good enough.
As to SOE, their "F2P implementation" is among the worst in the industry. They don't want people to play their games F2P at all, that is clear from the model, they make F2P access as crappy as possible in order to make people pay for the freemium upgrade. To the point that they won't let you use the toons/equipment you had previous acquired when being a "paying customer".
SOE won't even let people pay for sub time with their own SOE Smedbucks anymore, and that was their own scam to begin with.
Fortunately, as the years have going on, SOE has become less and less relevant in gaming circles.
This subject quoted is off topic but worth bringing up as it pertains to SoE. SoE's freemium model, the one you say is the worst in the industry, actually addresses the first two paragraphs of your quote above. You're correct, true free to play development produces a subpar product whether the game was made for free to play or not. Allowing players to play a AAA game but with gateways/structured lockouts is as close as you can get to AAA F2P gameplay that can sustain itself. There is no other way to move the slider without charging a sub or lowering the quality/scope of the product.
Like SoE or not their model will work for the future because it ensures development past a game's F2P inception. Both PS2 and EQN will be a part of SoE's freemium model so I guess we'll have to see how it works out.
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If you look at SoE's f2p matrices and think 'wow they are greedy', then you suck pretty badly at analyzing things. Consider the amount of content EQ and EQ2 have...If they had charged for that like Turbine does it would be *far* more costly to play as a non subscriber than it is now.
You can argue it feels more restrictive or they should have done Turbine's model, but if you try to argue it is more greedy you are just flat out wrong.
This is all that needs to be said.
F2P is largely the payment model of last resort. Virtually all of the P2P converted to F2P games changed over because it was a choice of doing that, or closing. Or as a last ditch attempt to make some money off a title or to recoup expenses in developing the game in the first place. Name one AAA up to now that was designed F2P from go.
There aren't any.
And frankly, those former P2P titles had little to lose in converting, so long as their initial development costs were paid: it costs almost nothing to keep a "developed" MMO going. So any revenue is good enough.
As to SOE, their "F2P implementation" is among the worst in the industry. They don't want people to play their games F2P at all, that is clear from the model, they make F2P access as crappy as possible in order to make people pay for the freemium upgrade. To the point that they won't let you use the toons/equipment you had previous acquired when being a "paying customer".
SOE won't even let people pay for sub time with their own SOE Smedbucks anymore, and that was their own scam to begin with.
Fortunately, as the years have going on, SOE has become less and less relevant in gaming circles.
This subject quoted is off topic but worth bringing up as it pertains to SoE. SoE's freemium model, the one you say is the worst in the industry, actually addresses the first two paragraphs of your quote above. You're correct, true free to play development produces a subpar product whether the game was made for free to play or not. Allowing players to play a AAA game but with gateways/structured lockouts is as close as you can get to AAA F2P gameplay that can sustain itself. There is no other way to move the slider without charging a sub or lowering the quality/scope of the product.
Like SoE or not their model will work for the future because it ensures development past a game's F2P inception. Both PS2 and EQN will be a part of SoE's freemium model so I guess we'll have to see how it works out.