I prefer B2P GW2 and City of Heroes have/had good business models.
Over time you play different games and collect different accounts, its tiresome being locked / gated unless you subscribe. However that is just a pet peeve of mine.
I would say that financially, i am better off, but thats because i stuck with the P2P options over F2P, even in the games that have F2P options. Some might be okay with microtransactions, but i prefer to avoid them where possible, its cheaper that way. Best example i have is probably SW:TOR, you can play it as P2P or F2P, but, as P2P you get a CC monthly allowance, plus full access to the whole game, a F2P player would inevitably rack up a significant bill if they had to keep buying CC's to buy weekly unlocks, gear unlocks etc. their choice naturally, but i find its cheaper to subscribe, which in SW:TOR's case, i think the cash shop actually steers people in the direction of, that the game seems to be doing well on that basis, indicates to me that its a successful system. Perhaps B2P games will improve things, but for the most part, so far all i have seen are games that not only have a box price, but have a cash shop financial model thats comparable to those found in F2P games.
The other thing is, if the subscription model was so good, why did they all fail? The quality of the game is still the same as a F2P game. Not only that, but F2P games such as Rift were pumping out more content than subscription games, and still failed to stay subscription.
But they didn't all fail, the biggest MMO on the planet is subscription based to this day, even if they did add a fluff shop later on. Before WoW every MMO was subscription based and few of them outright failed unless the devs did something to fuck em up.
They may not have had the sheer numbers we get today but the audience was smaller, the genre more niche. Games like EQ were a huge success considering they were expecting 17-20k subs before launch. UO, AC, DAoC, EVE, all sub based, all pre WoW, all achieved success. WoW blew the MMO genre completely out of the water and still has probably twice the active playerbase of any other MMO.
Since WoW it's a different story. Sub games have failed and had to go free because quality dropped or they just felt too much like WoW. Why play A. N. Other MMO when you already have a lot of max level chars in WoW if they play exactly the same? All your friends are in WoW, your guildies, your time and effort. Of course they failed.
Maybe if they'd given us something different they might have done better. Then again you have to take the audience into account. A lot of new players coming into the genre from FPS or single player games who were used to paying for a box and that's it, the end, no on-going monthly payments.
How many here played WoW? How many people paid a sub to more than 1 MMO? I never did but I'd still try new MMO's. Buy the box and play the free month that comes with it. At the end of the month you have to make a choice, stick with WoW or jump to the new MMO. But then all your chars in WoW are max level, kitted out, new expac coming, all your mates/guildies are there, plus all that time you put in. And the new MMO you tried is basically the same as WoW but with a different paint job. Probably less content, not as polished.
And people wonder why games failed.
Those old-school MMORPGs didn't cost as much to develop though. All the post-WoW MMOs failed because they weren't making a return on their investment. Their only option was to go F2P or shut down.
People writing here, need to realize that a game like Rift that was once P2P and had to switch to F2P (1 example out of many, but is the most popular) had to do so because it was bombarded at a time where MMO's were released by nearly the 3 dozens a year. WoW was very well established because in 2004 the MMO surge didn't really start until 2006-07. And on top of that, who the hell doubts Blizzard? The B2P model can be good for so long, as long as they keep selling 15-20K boxes every 3-4 months, which we all know isn't the reality, they'll keep slacking workers and slack on updates / expansions. P2P and being committed (EVE, WoW, FF14) is the only route for a MMO to prosper. Devs / Pubs need to stop trying to release a "WoW" killer, because it will never happen. But instead create something unique that will grab enough people attention to P2P and prosper for the next 5 years and beyond. The argument of P2P as being rent is so stupid, 10-15$ a month, really now? Doesn't matter what your financial situation is, if you can't afford P2P, what the hell are you doing with a laptop, internet, smartphone, tablet, a child or 2 and so on? Get real please.
F2P is not necessarily bad, but when vertical power scaling in a pvp game is sold directly or indirectly for cash the integrity is gone and it becomes a cash grab that will implode in a few months.
Reddit is no less toxic. If anything, Reddit is far more polarized with a heavier migration to the extremes.
Well, that's what I've noticed in general anyway.
Over my many years of a redditor, I've found that, while there are some very toxic and trolly posters, you can have far superior conversations there than almost anywhere else. That's not saying that you cannot find good discussion elsewhere.
I lost all my taste for mmo's in the F2P era. The only ones I still check now and then are WoW and GW2, one P2P, another B2P. F2P is the cancer of mmo's. All the F2P myriad of worthless garbage that hit the market in the last few years exhausted all of what once was wonderful about mmo's and bastardized it behind microtransactions with their extra bag slots, dollar symbol locked dungeons, faster mounts and XP boosts.
To be fair, I'm not sad about the downfall that the mmo market is suffering. Hopefully some bright guy will notice that it's time to look for another format, and that mmo's have already seen their better days.
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
Jumping into this discussion a little late, but I wonder why more MMOs didn't adopt a hybrid system of either getting everything through a subscription of F2P?
Jumping into this discussion a little late, but I wonder why more MMOs didn't adopt a hybrid system of either getting everything through a subscription of F2P?
I'd imagine it would be very tricky to design a game where P2P players can earn items through normal game play that F2P players can only buy in the Cash Shop. It would lead to very convoluted rules and systems.
And aside from that, the widespread acceptance of Cash Shops meant that developers/publishers could make far more money by selling players a virtually endless stream of stuff. The monthly spend of each player was no longer capped at the subscription rate, only their self-control limited their spending.
Before it sunsetted, City of Heroes had such a system. The subscribers still got regular updates for free, but in all fairness, there was little to be purchased outside of the updates that was anything more than cosmetic.
IMO F2P is similar as what happened in music I guess. Most of the media focus is on pop music, you don't like it, tough shit, but there's always options. Are the options fewer? I guess. Does the quality of other options suffer because people get sucked into F2P crap? Probably, there's a finite amount of players and money. Also, big money corps usually only go for safe money.
WTB parallel universe machine to see what it would be like if F2P was never invented.
Anyway, I'd rather have 10 super uber good MMOs on the market than 10.000 low budget mass produced ones and a handful of decent ones.
"Anyway, I'd rather have 10 super uber good MMOs on the market than 10.000 low budget mass produced ones and a handful of decent ones. "
That's the thing isn't it? F2P is a way to be somewhat "non-committal" to a particular game. You can put it out i the wild with just enough content to fish people in and let the cash shop drive the additions. The concept seems to feed itself and If it dies, you haven't invested more the the initial development costs.
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Over time you play different games and collect different accounts, its tiresome being locked / gated unless you subscribe. However that is just a pet peeve of mine.
Some might be okay with microtransactions, but i prefer to avoid them where possible, its cheaper that way. Best example i have is probably SW:TOR, you can play it as P2P or F2P, but, as P2P you get a CC monthly allowance, plus full access to the whole game, a F2P player would inevitably rack up a significant bill if they had to keep buying CC's to buy weekly unlocks, gear unlocks etc. their choice naturally, but i find its cheaper to subscribe, which in SW:TOR's case, i think the cash shop actually steers people in the direction of, that the game seems to be doing well on that basis, indicates to me that its a successful system.
Perhaps B2P games will improve things, but for the most part, so far all i have seen are games that not only have a box price, but have a cash shop financial model thats comparable to those found in F2P games.
To be fair, I'm not sad about the downfall that the mmo market is suffering. Hopefully some bright guy will notice that it's time to look for another format, and that mmo's have already seen their better days.
My opinion is my own. I respect all other opinions and views equally, but keep in mind that my opinion will always be the best for me. That's why it's my opinion.
And aside from that, the widespread acceptance of Cash Shops meant that developers/publishers could make far more money by selling players a virtually endless stream of stuff. The monthly spend of each player was no longer capped at the subscription rate, only their self-control limited their spending.
WTB parallel universe machine to see what it would be like if F2P was never invented.
Anyway, I'd rather have 10 super uber good MMOs on the market than 10.000 low budget mass produced ones and a handful of decent ones.
That's the thing isn't it? F2P is a way to be somewhat "non-committal" to a particular game. You can put it out i the wild with just enough content to fish people in and let the cash shop drive the additions. The concept seems to feed itself and If it dies, you haven't invested more the the initial development costs.