The "WoW Killer," moniker is basically free publicity for Blizzard at this point. People get it in their head that some game will be the next WoW, and when it fails to accomplish that they think "well, may as well just play WoW then," and they go crawling back.
Guys, if you are a fan of a game, DONT COMPARE IT TO WOW. Judge it on it's own merits. This is the lesson to be learned, and its one that will never be learned. It is exactly because of games like WoW, with their copy/paste/improve design philosophy, that the MMO genre is in the gutter. I think 2014 was a great year for games to break away from the stigma that is WoW, we have seen a ton of great titles actually try something new, and 2015 is going to bring a whole hell of a lot more.
The giant, persistent worlds of WoW and EQ are a dying breed. If people want that experience, why would they buy a new, untested game when they could just go back to the grand-daddy of them all? It's the same reason so many competitive shooters wither away into obscurity the second a new COD comes out.
As for ESO... I played it, it was ok. The multiplayer aspects left quite a bit to be desired, but I think if I was a larger Elder Scrolls fan I would have loved it. The way to make successful traditional theme park MMOs at this point is to use beloved IPs, this is why SWTOR and LOTRO continue to enjoy a decent amount of success, while games like Aion, Tera, etc etc just kind of fade away. I guess RIFT would be the exception?
Either way, hype trains will always exist, and they will always give a game a black eye. If you are a legitimate fan of an upcoming game, make sure you are doing your research as a consumer and not getting scammed and that the game is actually what you expect.
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
If Wildstar decides to change (greatly though I admit) it's leveling experience from being a complete fucking timesink. That game could be actually incredibly good. So I wouldn't count it out yet, it hasn't even been a fucking year. Of course, the reality was that a lot of people talked a bigger game than they could handle, but it still has lots and lots of potential.
Where is that Vulcan? He had a point, he used to say that I was just a jaded gamer. BUT! Unless you've been under a rock for the last 20 years you've played at least 3 of the following;
Everquest
Asheron's Call
SWG
DAOC
WOW
SWTOR
RIFT
AION
GW 1/2
So instead of saying jaded, I would say, experienced. It's kill X, find X, escort X, train skills, rinse, repeat. Are any major mmo's really that different from one another? A WOW clone killing WOW is a funny concept though. Tier based gear system and dungeon running, or some wildly imbalanced PVP that has a separate gear system. Missing anything? Any of those games lie and say it wouldn't be so? Maybe GW2?
Thinking about it, I would trade...Rift, AION, SWG & GW2 for a decently written full length SWTOR movie from Blur studios. In reality though, $15 a month is pretty cheap for potentially a couple hundred hours of gameplay per month. In that regard, every MMO is pretty decent and cost effective.
Back on point, I played ESO for a couple of months starting release week. I knew it wasn't going to be skyrim online. Bethesda didn't even make the damn game. Anyway, game seemed ok, for an MMO. The real WOW killer will be father time I guess.
Originally posted by azzamasin The lesson is easy. DO NOT MAKE SUBSCRIPTION MMO'S, THEY ARE DEAD.
if a game came along that was far and away better than anything else, it would flourish with a monthly sub, just like wow has.
not saying wow is better than anything else but it was that initial surge that built their loyal community that will keep coming back.
frankly, i think it's pretty absurd to believe that its because of the sub that games fail. they fail because everything has been done before, the market is saturated, and there isn't one mmo out there that separates itself from the rest.
if a game came along that was far and away better than anything else, it would flourish with a monthly sub, just like wow has.
I doubt it.
Personally i will never play a sub-only game. There are so much f2p or b2p fun out there that there is no need for me to consider anything sub-only. Not that there are many of those anyway.
If a game came along that was amazing and had server tech and regular updates ofc I would happily pay a sub, otherwise I wouldn't get to play an amazing game. Fun > agenda.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
where the hell were you during the Darkfall 1 hype train
or the Warhammer Hype train,
or the Gw2 hype train
or the Archeage hype train
or the Aion hype train
or the SWTOR hype train
huh?!?!?!?
you people keep saying you LLEEAARRNNEEDD A LESSON
BUT YOU KEEP MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES DAMNIT!
i risk my account getting banned here for years trying to expose these overhyped MMOs so people wouldn't get mislead by bull shit marketing, and buying into the bull shit,
and each and every single time somebody comes with a post like this about learning a lesson, but then a year later they doing the same damn thing!!!!
iam done. I have to let you people make your own mistakes and get taken advantage of. Because I am tired of this!
Are you solely on here to just try and attempt to convince posters to not play any mmo? Do you even like mmos? What mmo's have you played and would be worthy? Are you an old school mmo gamer pre-2004 and can't stand the direction of the genre?
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
No matter how often you repeat that, it doesn't make it true, not even slightly. WoW, Eve Online, FFXIV;ARR all P2P subscription games, one of which is the 'elephant' in the room that so many games aspire to copy, albeit in terms of player numbers if not mechanics.
Even games like SW;TOR, and Archeage, better games if you choose the subscription option. And now ESO, is trying to do the same thing that SW;TOR did, like SW;TOR, ESO failed at the sub only method, it (SW;TOR) couldn't maintain player numbers at a sustainable level, we saw it happening back then and i guess nobody was really surprised the direction it eventually took, that ESO, having much the same issues is now choosing the same path, and is broadening its finance model to include F2P, and become another hybrid game, should really be no surprise at all, they had to do something, and if its worked in another game, maybe it can work for Zenimax too.
We will have to wait and see how successful that is, but if the cash shop model is the same as SW;TOR's then you can expect to see a lot of cosmetic items, and of course, gambling boxes, if you check out SW;TOR's cash shop it is loaded with so many items its unreal, not just PVP etc. Unlocks, but so many different outfit and weapon skins (un-modded gear), and it sells, the sales figures that EA released in terms of SW;TOR's cash shop last year were fairly impressive, some items are probably a bit contentious however, not just the 'random item' boxes you can buy, when it comes to cash shops those kinds of things are probably inevitable.
Lapsed players to the game, already own the thing, they don't have to pay anything to check the game out again once it goes F2P, and in terms of the PC game, they probably weren't going to make many (any?) more sales anyway, so whether the box sales remained or not is unimportant, except, if they did remove the PC box price, then they would have to do the same for the Console versions, otherwise it would severely impact sales on Console, but a few months after launch on Console, all bets are off, although if they try to go the AAA pricing route for Console ie $60 a pop, they will probably have trouble, at $30 though, they might just pull it off.
Subscription MMO's are not dead, their doing just fine, what is happening, is that some of them are moving to encompass more F2P options, namely the cash shop, alongside the P2P option.
There is one good thing to come out of this, and that is it will likely make the F2P only games look harder at their own games, at their own financial models, it may even improve them, those that can't evolve will continue to die, no change there, but in the end i think we will continue to see more F2P/P2P hybrid games.
No matter how often you repeat that, it doesn't make it true, not even slightly. WoW, Eve Online, FFXIV;ARR all P2P subscription games, one of which is the 'elephant' in the room that so many games aspire to copy, albeit in terms of player numbers if not mechanics.
Even games like SW;TOR, and Archeage, better games if you choose the subscription option. And now ESO, is trying to do the same thing that SW;TOR did, like SW;TOR, ESO failed at the sub only method, it (SW;TOR) couldn't maintain player numbers at a sustainable level, we saw it happening back then and i guess nobody was really surprised the direction it eventually took, that ESO, having much the same issues is now choosing the same path, and is broadening its finance model to include F2P, and become another hybrid game, should really be no surprise at all, they had to do something, and if its worked in another game, maybe it can work for Zenimax too.
We will have to wait and see how successful that is, but if the cash shop model is the same as SW;TOR's then you can expect to see a lot of cosmetic items, and of course, gambling boxes, if you check out SW;TOR's cash shop it is loaded with so many items its unreal, not just PVP etc. Unlocks, but so many different outfit and weapon skins (un-modded gear), and it sells, the sales figures that EA released in terms of SW;TOR's cash shop last year were fairly impressive, some items are probably a bit contentious however, not just the 'random item' boxes you can buy, when it comes to cash shops those kinds of things are probably inevitable.
Lapsed players to the game, already own the thing, they don't have to pay anything to check the game out again once it goes F2P, and in terms of the PC game, they probably weren't going to make many (any?) more sales anyway, so whether the box sales remained or not is unimportant, except, if they did remove the PC box price, then they would have to do the same for the Console versions, otherwise it would severely impact sales on Console, but a few months after launch on Console, all bets are off, although if they try to go the AAA pricing route for Console ie $60 a pop, they will probably have trouble, at $30 though, they might just pull it off.
Subscription MMO's are not dead, their doing just fine, what is happening, is that some of them are moving to encompass more F2P options, namely the cash shop, alongside the P2P option.
There is one good thing to come out of this, and that is it will likely make the F2P only games look harder at their own games, at their own financial models, it may even improve them, those that can't evolve will continue to die, no change there, but in the end i think we will continue to see more F2P/P2P hybrid games.
Why do people see another failed Subscription game and think it was the subscription model? There is very clear evidence that the subscription model works for millions of people.
Every game that failed as a subscription model had player retention issues. These games didn't have player retention issues because they were subscription games. they had player retention issues because they failed to keep players interest past the 1st month or two.
If we start listing the games individually, we would say things like "It has no endgame", "It's geared towards a niche crowd", "It has too much of a grind and it bored players to tears", "The game has far too many exploits and hacks", "It's P2W", "It's too buggy and unfinished, I can't play through the game properly"
All these reasons people left. And yet because they had subscriptions, it was the subscription model that failed as if playing for free would simply fix everything that was wrong with these games. There is nothing wrong with the business model. There were problems with the games.
Many people are also starting to see the fallacy behind F2P as well now too. There's no free lunch.
There one f2p game named Allods that have a subscription server no cash shop just pay up and play, but tons there player base on are the f2p option over the subscription one.
Just subscription mmo are not getting much of any new players, then them taking players from other subscription as there not pulling much from people that are playing free to play.
Any how, if mmo ends up a subscription model game they better hold on a hard long ride as people playing subscription need a why should they leave for wow for this game.
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane. And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes. Hurt - Wars
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
That would be a pretty strange definition of p2w to me.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane. And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes. Hurt - Wars
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
That would be a pretty strange definition of p2w to me.
May people seem to define it as any expedature beyond a sub that will reduce grind or give another advantage over players who do not make a similar expediture. In this case, reducing the amount of farming/dalies that need to be done to buy the same gear that another player would have to work to get
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
That would be a pretty strange definition of p2w to me.
May people seem to define it as any expedature beyond a sub that will reduce grind or give another advantage over players who do not make a similar expediture. In this case, reducing the amount of farming/dalies that need to be done to buy the same gear that another player would have to work to get
Anything that allows you to bypass another player who is grinding and getting a leg up on them and then allows you to maintain that leg up would be considered P2W.
Things don't have to be the best.....just better. Then you can gain a temp advantage, but temp advantages can be sustained if a person is willing to work for it. Then they got theri boost early on.
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
That would be a pretty strange definition of p2w to me.
May people seem to define it as any expedature beyond a sub that will reduce grind or give another advantage over players who do not make a similar expediture. In this case, reducing the amount of farming/dalies that need to be done to buy the same gear that another player would have to work to get
Anything that allows you to bypass another player who is grinding and getting a leg up on them and then allows you to maintain that leg up would be considered P2W.
Things don't have to be the best.....just better. Then you can gain a temp advantage, but temp advantages can be sustained if a person is willing to work for it. Then they got theri boost early on.
Yeah, that's P2W.
The underlined confused me. You cannot purchase gear that is raid equivalent, so sustaining a competitive gear advantage throughout is not possible through in-game currency. And it doesn't take long to get gear that is raid ready by running adventures and dungeons. It ends up being such a small boost it's really boggling my mind how it is still being called p2w. The best purchasable gear is AT BEST, on par with adventure/dungeon drops. Furthermore, they don't even sell for very much anyway, you could purchase most pieces from 1 day of dailies, or just from hitting 50 via quests.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane. And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes. Hurt - Wars
The reason why WoW can mandate a sub is that it has the mass and inertia of broad appeal.
This. WoW biggest advantage is its own mass and inertia, which is increased with every xpac with fluff like WoW-ville or Poke-WoW, and stuff other games have done before (almost every MMO idea in WoW).
This mass in its 10 year bulk is celebrated and lorded over new games and their puny content that barely gets you from level 1 to cap.
New games get little sympathy for trying out new things, while praise is heaped at the feet of WoW when it "incorporates" those same ideas two years later.
The lesson from the "ESO/Wildstar fiasco"? That we'll never get anything nice as long as we torch everything we're given that doesn't bear the mark of WoW.
New games get little sympathy for trying out new things, while praise is heaped at the feet of WoW when it "incorporates" those same ideas two years later.
Because ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is not about new ideas but about good implementation and polish.
Well first off we learned that a sub fee simply doesn't work unless you already have a large player base. Almost every new sub fee game has gone F2P/B2P in under a year in the past few years.
I don't know how anyone played Wildstar for even an hour and thought it was going to succeed though. That game was pretty terrible.
ESO still has a chance now that they dropped the sub fee.
Sub fees made a lot of sense when bandwidth was expensive and there weren't a ton of good games hitting the market. The player base would usually just pick one game and play the heck out of it. Today's market is overloaded with quality games though.
Most people play a bunch of games and don't just stick with one. Games have many different price spots including a ton of really high quality games that can be had for $15 or less. We are now even moving towards a place where you can get quality games for under $5 or even free. Asking the market to spend $15 a month on your game is simply ridiculous and a scam.
The next one of these games that tries a sub fee should lower it to like $5 a month and see if that works.
I say all this as someone who gladly paid by the hour to play MUDs back in the day when the internet was 'new'. The developers have to understand the market and change with it and these developers were either too dumb to do it or wanted a quick cash flow and planned to move F2P the entire time.
I guarantee you that the next Blizzard MMORPG is not sub based even though they would get plenty of subs. You can read the writing on the wall from the fact they released Hearthstone and HOTs as F2P models. A game like EVE where time is how you get skills makes some sense as sub based, pretty much none of the rest make sense.
Also just because it annoys the crap out of me. If all your money does is save time it is certainly not P2W. There are gonna be people who spend more money than me and get where they want to be faster but there are gonna be way more people who just play more than me and also get to where they want to be faster than me. There is absolutely no difference between the two things.
P2W only comes into play when they can get to a place I can never reach. Almost none of these games are actually P2W and to be honest even the sub games are moving towards sub and cash shop so stop trying to make this a F2P thing. F2P and cash shop are two different issues completely.
Only lesson to learn here is if you dont like the growing pains all new MMOs have when they launch, then wait 3-8 months and play the game when things are fixed. All new MMOs follow this same path. Cant take the heat of a new launch, stay out of the kitchen and dont cry like a baby if you do buy into a new game when it does not work perfect.
I guarantee you that the next Blizzard MMORPG is not sub based even though they would get plenty of subs. You can read the writing on the wall from the fact they released Hearthstone and HOTs as F2P models. A game like EVE where time is how you get skills makes some sense as sub based, pretty much none of the rest make sense.
I don't think Blizz will make another MMORPG after they scrapped titan. The next game after HOTS is Overwatch.
Comments
The "WoW Killer," moniker is basically free publicity for Blizzard at this point. People get it in their head that some game will be the next WoW, and when it fails to accomplish that they think "well, may as well just play WoW then," and they go crawling back.
Guys, if you are a fan of a game, DONT COMPARE IT TO WOW. Judge it on it's own merits. This is the lesson to be learned, and its one that will never be learned. It is exactly because of games like WoW, with their copy/paste/improve design philosophy, that the MMO genre is in the gutter. I think 2014 was a great year for games to break away from the stigma that is WoW, we have seen a ton of great titles actually try something new, and 2015 is going to bring a whole hell of a lot more.
The giant, persistent worlds of WoW and EQ are a dying breed. If people want that experience, why would they buy a new, untested game when they could just go back to the grand-daddy of them all? It's the same reason so many competitive shooters wither away into obscurity the second a new COD comes out.
As for ESO... I played it, it was ok. The multiplayer aspects left quite a bit to be desired, but I think if I was a larger Elder Scrolls fan I would have loved it. The way to make successful traditional theme park MMOs at this point is to use beloved IPs, this is why SWTOR and LOTRO continue to enjoy a decent amount of success, while games like Aion, Tera, etc etc just kind of fade away. I guess RIFT would be the exception?
Either way, hype trains will always exist, and they will always give a game a black eye. If you are a legitimate fan of an upcoming game, make sure you are doing your research as a consumer and not getting scammed and that the game is actually what you expect.
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQoK5VZlwBBzpsksmXtjMQ
Where is that Vulcan? He had a point, he used to say that I was just a jaded gamer. BUT! Unless you've been under a rock for the last 20 years you've played at least 3 of the following;
Everquest
Asheron's Call
SWG
DAOC
WOW
SWTOR
RIFT
AION
GW 1/2
So instead of saying jaded, I would say, experienced. It's kill X, find X, escort X, train skills, rinse, repeat. Are any major mmo's really that different from one another? A WOW clone killing WOW is a funny concept though. Tier based gear system and dungeon running, or some wildly imbalanced PVP that has a separate gear system. Missing anything? Any of those games lie and say it wouldn't be so? Maybe GW2?
Thinking about it, I would trade...Rift, AION, SWG & GW2 for a decently written full length SWTOR movie from Blur studios. In reality though, $15 a month is pretty cheap for potentially a couple hundred hours of gameplay per month. In that regard, every MMO is pretty decent and cost effective.
Back on point, I played ESO for a couple of months starting release week. I knew it wasn't going to be skyrim online. Bethesda didn't even make the damn game. Anyway, game seemed ok, for an MMO. The real WOW killer will be father time I guess.
if a game came along that was far and away better than anything else, it would flourish with a monthly sub, just like wow has.
not saying wow is better than anything else but it was that initial surge that built their loyal community that will keep coming back.
frankly, i think it's pretty absurd to believe that its because of the sub that games fail. they fail because everything has been done before, the market is saturated, and there isn't one mmo out there that separates itself from the rest.
has very little to do with subs IMHO
I doubt it.
Personally i will never play a sub-only game. There are so much f2p or b2p fun out there that there is no need for me to consider anything sub-only. Not that there are many of those anyway.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
He played all those MMORPG's too haha
I never had the urge to really play ESO. I tried the beta, but that was it. The questing was just too generic, and it was doomed to be p2w from the start.
Regarding Wildstar: at first I disliked it, when it was announced, due to its style. When I played the beta it was more fun though than I expected. I had nearly considered buying it, were it not for following things:
- p2w
- subscription fee AND initial purchase AND p2w
- always the same weapon type for your character
That somehow put me off.
Also, there was after the beta no free trial available.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
I'm still having fun in ESO. Will see how 1.6 and the B2P conversion go. Can always walk away then.
As for WS; I tried the Beta and hated it. Plain and simple. Won't ever play it.
No matter how often you repeat that, it doesn't make it true, not even slightly. WoW, Eve Online, FFXIV;ARR all P2P subscription games, one of which is the 'elephant' in the room that so many games aspire to copy, albeit in terms of player numbers if not mechanics.
Even games like SW;TOR, and Archeage, better games if you choose the subscription option. And now ESO, is trying to do the same thing that SW;TOR did, like SW;TOR, ESO failed at the sub only method, it (SW;TOR) couldn't maintain player numbers at a sustainable level, we saw it happening back then and i guess nobody was really surprised the direction it eventually took, that ESO, having much the same issues is now choosing the same path, and is broadening its finance model to include F2P, and become another hybrid game, should really be no surprise at all, they had to do something, and if its worked in another game, maybe it can work for Zenimax too.
We will have to wait and see how successful that is, but if the cash shop model is the same as SW;TOR's then you can expect to see a lot of cosmetic items, and of course, gambling boxes, if you check out SW;TOR's cash shop it is loaded with so many items its unreal, not just PVP etc. Unlocks, but so many different outfit and weapon skins (un-modded gear), and it sells, the sales figures that EA released in terms of SW;TOR's cash shop last year were fairly impressive, some items are probably a bit contentious however, not just the 'random item' boxes you can buy, when it comes to cash shops those kinds of things are probably inevitable.
Lapsed players to the game, already own the thing, they don't have to pay anything to check the game out again once it goes F2P, and in terms of the PC game, they probably weren't going to make many (any?) more sales anyway, so whether the box sales remained or not is unimportant, except, if they did remove the PC box price, then they would have to do the same for the Console versions, otherwise it would severely impact sales on Console, but a few months after launch on Console, all bets are off, although if they try to go the AAA pricing route for Console ie $60 a pop, they will probably have trouble, at $30 though, they might just pull it off.
Subscription MMO's are not dead, their doing just fine, what is happening, is that some of them are moving to encompass more F2P options, namely the cash shop, alongside the P2P option.
There is one good thing to come out of this, and that is it will likely make the F2P only games look harder at their own games, at their own financial models, it may even improve them, those that can't evolve will continue to die, no change there, but in the end i think we will continue to see more F2P/P2P hybrid games.
Why do people see another failed Subscription game and think it was the subscription model? There is very clear evidence that the subscription model works for millions of people.
Every game that failed as a subscription model had player retention issues. These games didn't have player retention issues because they were subscription games. they had player retention issues because they failed to keep players interest past the 1st month or two.
If we start listing the games individually, we would say things like "It has no endgame", "It's geared towards a niche crowd", "It has too much of a grind and it bored players to tears", "The game has far too many exploits and hacks", "It's P2W", "It's too buggy and unfinished, I can't play through the game properly"
All these reasons people left. And yet because they had subscriptions, it was the subscription model that failed as if playing for free would simply fix everything that was wrong with these games. There is nothing wrong with the business model. There were problems with the games.
Many people are also starting to see the fallacy behind F2P as well now too. There's no free lunch.
There one f2p game named Allods that have a subscription server no cash shop just pay up and play, but tons there player base on are the f2p option over the subscription one.
Just subscription mmo are not getting much of any new players, then them taking players from other subscription as there not pulling much from people that are playing free to play.
Any how, if mmo ends up a subscription model game they better hold on a hard long ride as people playing subscription need a why should they leave for wow for this game.
From denial.
Wilstar p2w? At least other people have legitimate reasons to not like the game, but this one just made me laugh. I don't view a box price plus sub to be unreasonable.
To each their own, but to just toss a term like p2w around on a game that is so clearly not that, is just hilarious.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
Probably referencing that you could buy CREDD sell it for plat, then buy the best pre-raid gear, which was usually crafted gear thanks to AP stacking off the AH. Havent played in a while, so maybe they rebalanced AP stacking.
That would be a pretty strange definition of p2w to me.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
May people seem to define it as any expedature beyond a sub that will reduce grind or give another advantage over players who do not make a similar expediture. In this case, reducing the amount of farming/dalies that need to be done to buy the same gear that another player would have to work to get
Anything that allows you to bypass another player who is grinding and getting a leg up on them and then allows you to maintain that leg up would be considered P2W.
Things don't have to be the best.....just better. Then you can gain a temp advantage, but temp advantages can be sustained if a person is willing to work for it. Then they got theri boost early on.
Yeah, that's P2W.
The underlined confused me. You cannot purchase gear that is raid equivalent, so sustaining a competitive gear advantage throughout is not possible through in-game currency. And it doesn't take long to get gear that is raid ready by running adventures and dungeons. It ends up being such a small boost it's really boggling my mind how it is still being called p2w. The best purchasable gear is AT BEST, on par with adventure/dungeon drops. Furthermore, they don't even sell for very much anyway, you could purchase most pieces from 1 day of dailies, or just from hitting 50 via quests.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
This. WoW biggest advantage is its own mass and inertia, which is increased with every xpac with fluff like WoW-ville or Poke-WoW, and stuff other games have done before (almost every MMO idea in WoW).
This mass in its 10 year bulk is celebrated and lorded over new games and their puny content that barely gets you from level 1 to cap.
New games get little sympathy for trying out new things, while praise is heaped at the feet of WoW when it "incorporates" those same ideas two years later.
The lesson from the "ESO/Wildstar fiasco"? That we'll never get anything nice as long as we torch everything we're given that doesn't bear the mark of WoW.
Because ideas are a dime a dozen, and it is not about new ideas but about good implementation and polish.
And Blizz is the master of polish.
Well first off we learned that a sub fee simply doesn't work unless you already have a large player base. Almost every new sub fee game has gone F2P/B2P in under a year in the past few years.
I don't know how anyone played Wildstar for even an hour and thought it was going to succeed though. That game was pretty terrible.
ESO still has a chance now that they dropped the sub fee.
Sub fees made a lot of sense when bandwidth was expensive and there weren't a ton of good games hitting the market. The player base would usually just pick one game and play the heck out of it. Today's market is overloaded with quality games though.
Most people play a bunch of games and don't just stick with one. Games have many different price spots including a ton of really high quality games that can be had for $15 or less. We are now even moving towards a place where you can get quality games for under $5 or even free. Asking the market to spend $15 a month on your game is simply ridiculous and a scam.
The next one of these games that tries a sub fee should lower it to like $5 a month and see if that works.
I say all this as someone who gladly paid by the hour to play MUDs back in the day when the internet was 'new'. The developers have to understand the market and change with it and these developers were either too dumb to do it or wanted a quick cash flow and planned to move F2P the entire time.
I guarantee you that the next Blizzard MMORPG is not sub based even though they would get plenty of subs. You can read the writing on the wall from the fact they released Hearthstone and HOTs as F2P models. A game like EVE where time is how you get skills makes some sense as sub based, pretty much none of the rest make sense.
Also just because it annoys the crap out of me. If all your money does is save time it is certainly not P2W. There are gonna be people who spend more money than me and get where they want to be faster but there are gonna be way more people who just play more than me and also get to where they want to be faster than me. There is absolutely no difference between the two things.
P2W only comes into play when they can get to a place I can never reach. Almost none of these games are actually P2W and to be honest even the sub games are moving towards sub and cash shop so stop trying to make this a F2P thing. F2P and cash shop are two different issues completely.
I don't think Blizz will make another MMORPG after they scrapped titan. The next game after HOTS is Overwatch.