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A question for F2p MMO fans
metalhead980
Member Posts: 2,658
While i'm not a fan of a cash shop at all.
I have noticed a rather large list of new and up and comming MMO titles on the F2p side of things.
So as a P2p Vet and a guy willing to try out a couple F2p for research What F2p mmo is good enough that if a subscription model was introducted people would still be playing.
I've heard good things about Atlantica, RoM, 4story and perfect world but I would like you guys, the ones that have spent a great deal of time with these games to give me an answer.
Lets see..... maybe give me your top 3 F2p MMOs that you would consider good enough for a subscription model.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Comments
Puzzle Pirates already has subscription option (some servers micropayments, some servers subscription). I wouldn't play on the subscription oceans though. Some people do, however.
I could imagine paying a subscription to Mabinogi (depending on how they set it up), but... if it were 15$/month I'd play once every three months, 10$/month every other month, and it might disrupt the community since I presume it would shrink. I prefer it the way it works now, where when I play a little it's free, and when I play a lot and want some perks I pay 10-15$ month for those months.
There's also the issue of free-trials. I'd never have even tried these games if they didn't start off free.
Another approach is subscription games with a low subscription. I'd accept some cut corners on graphics for example if the game play was still fun.
Atlantica Online, I'd pay a monthly fee for.
Runes of Magic has the potential, but it's still in "beta", or so they say.
I dunno any other F2Ps that are worth it beyond those two.
I dont see any FTP game being worth paying for montly. I do seem them making progress but they are not there yet. Runes Of Magic is probaly the closest to being worth paying montly but its too much like WoW so why pay to play it when you can just pay to play WoW?
There aren't any.
I 've been a long time P2P player, tried Rohan, RFO, PWI, Runes of Magic and couldnt get into any of them.
I was interested in Atlantica until I found out it was F2P, so never gave it a shot. I'm just going to stick to P2P, and there are a lot of promising ones coming up (Aion, JGE, TERA, B&S, C9, GW2 (i know GW1 was not a MMO, but GW2 is)...notice I left Darkfall off that list
).
Ive tried a fair few in my time,most of them are terrible.
Atlantica was fun,I enjoyed playing it but im not sure if id play it for months on end. It has a convinience item cash shop that i only used once,but other than that you dont really need to use it if you dont want,unless it totally changes at higher levels.
Its very asian and has a lot of korenglish. Not a bad game really.
Rappelz is crap,stay away from that
Dunno what some of the newer ones are like as I cant really be bothered to try,requiem was ok I suppose,perfect world was ok,runes of magic might be alright.
just because a game is F2P doesnt mean its bad, that is the case most the time Ill give you that but why would interest fade because its F2P? At least give it a shot...
Guild Wars Closed Alpha Tester
Lineage 2 Closed Beta Tester
Everquest 2 Closed Beta Tester
Risk Your Life Closed Beta Tester
Part of the reason why there are a lot of "free to play" games coming is that IGG and Aeria mass-produce them. I tried coming up with a list of all the games that I thought might release in 2009 and about a third of them were either IGG or Aeria.
Perfect world International.
Lets me explain m MMO exp.
I've played every single major title p2p and I have hated them all. The only 2 mmo's they kept me playing were UO from 96-2000 and Shadowbane. Both these titles now don;t interests me but I played UO and SB a combined 12 years. Every MMO had 1 or 2 things i liked but not enough to keep me in a sea of boring features.
PWI on the pvp server is fun you have 30 lvls to get use to the game(takes about 1 week for me i work a lot) At 30 you can pvp and join in the Territory Wars. Basically the world is 44 territoires spilt up and you fight other guilds for ownership. Now the game is not perfect
but it looks nice has enough content that if the price was right I would P2P(like $10 a month)
MY .02
It doesn't hurt that in F2P you don't feel guilted into playing, lest your monthly investment be wasted playing other games you have yet to begin to loathe. It does come down to taste, a high quality F2P and P2P will never stand side to side with the the exact same audience, except maby now in the mmorpg drought were in, though desperate times have seen stranger things.
"Horse eating... a fire hydrant... the hell?" - Dan
I also have been stupid enough to pay a monthly fee for MMORPGs. With GuildWars (which I really don't like any more) this stopped. I have never played any P2P MMORPG since than.
There are plenty of reasons:
There are three games Iw ould try:
Requiem - if you want good graphics and a something like WoW with better graphics and more violent. Like WoW means an MMORPG with nothing too special
Atalantica: something more feature rich, anime style, fast-paced turn based game. So it's even something for people who normally don't like turn based games
IGGs games are also very good. They are all a bit different than typical MMORPGs
but you have to try them all. There are so many completly different types of free MMOs, so don't give up if you don't like the first ten or twenty.
I think the trend goes into the F2P direction. There are more and more very mature F2P MMORPGs and companies which make a lot of money with them. The only problem is that there are those people who say Free = Bad. They try one or two stupid games and think all of them are bad. Most recent games aren't.
Ether Saga seems to be one of the highest quality mmos to be coming out , It's starting closed beta on the 10th so I'll know if it really is good when I actually have hands on play with it. Holy Beast Online is also quite good , personally played it myself during the closed beta ( which ends on feb.13th. ) and It's one of the better f2p mmos I've played. Also linkrealms looks quite interesting and very unique but haven't played it myself personally.
Atlantica is a game you jsut have to play......You cant let the f2p/item shop scare you from trying it because it is actually a pretty good game and the community is as good as I have seen in a F2P game....... Its about the only f2p I would pay for......RoM is OK but like an earlier post said I would jsut as soon play WoW if I have to pay..........For me the f2p games are jsut time killer usually for a couple weeks......I like to see what new games look like and how they play.......I like ot get new ideas and experiences without having to pay 50 bucks for a game then a monthly on top of that........In general the p2ps are better games but they get boring also.
I like Atlantica, and have been playing it for the last month. But it's pretty bad when it comes to the Cash shop.
For one, without a teleportation license, it takes you forever to walk to some quests. (Some dungeons are 4 floors, plus an additional 4 "shadow" dungeons). It's bearable, but only just.
Next up, once you get about 60-ish, they start hiding the occasional mini-boss in mobs. Some of these can be a major pain. So to avoid them, you need a "patrol" license, to see what is in the mob before you attack.
But hey, you can get these for only $15 a month.
The game has something like 20 character classes you can add to your party. But want more than 9? Well, for each one you're going to have to spend $5 for a room for them to stay in.
On top of that, you get things like power potions to help the grind at the top (only $1 for a day's worth).
But the real way they gouge is off of people who want mounts and or clothing. You can get a horse for $10. But want one of the cool mounts with stats? Well, for only $10 you have a 10% chance or so to get one out of a box. This causes some people to spend $100s just to get one.
I don't mind item shops. But I hate ones that are based on gambling. They are just meant to soak the public for as much money as possible.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
PWI - Very fun game until level like 30. After that, the grinding begins. Also, later when you're higher level, you HAVE TO buy HP and MP scrolls from Item Shop; you just can play without them. Or oh well, you can, but LVLing and bossing etc is 100x harder.
Atlantica - Only played it till level 30 or so. It seemed like a good game. A bit hard controls at the beginning in my opinion. Just didnt seem to be a game for me.
ROM - In my opinion, the best F2P game in a while. Till level 30 you can level up by just doing quests, no grinding needed at all. And the quests arent all ke in most of MMO's: "Kill 15 Raccoons and 25 Moles", there's alot of Boss killing quests etc. Only minus for the game is that leveling your secondary class is pain in the ass.
----
If I was you, Id just try them all, and if you dont like em, just buy Aion when it comes out.
Atlantica online is a good game. However I'm not sure if I'd pay a monthly fee for the game.
I've played Atlantica since the closed beta untill a month ago. The turn based style of action is a good break from the regular MMO's. It's very straightforward, easy to get into and heck, there's plenty of quests to do. However reaching the higher levels for more than 3 times with different setups, I got bored. I don't feel like there's a lot more to discover for me, so no way I'd pay for it at this moment. If I were just to start with the game however, I probably would.
Then there is Perfect World. I'm kind of looking in to this game. I only recently started playing this game and it looks really nice to me. No clue if this game can live up to my expectations, having read what previous posters have noted about the playability in the later levels. I always tend to stay away from the cash shops as much as possible, so I'd rather see a game with a shop that doesn't tear the game apart. So far it looks good though.
The problem with p2p is that when you finally leave a game you feel like you have wasted the money often.....Lets take WoW for example.......If you started from day 1 you would have spent over 800 dollars on it by now (not counting people that buy gold or PL services).......Most people just look at the 15 dollar sub and say oh its just 15 bucks a month that is nothing........The problem is that its 50 for the original game, TBC was another 40 and WoTLK was another 40........also 15 bucks a month is 180 a year........4 years later that 15 dollars a month has become 720 dollars (there are some long term payment plans that are a little lower but it is still significant).......Eventually you end up with nothing (unless you sell the account)......
I went through this in EQ1......I played for 5 years and bought several expansions (8-10 of them IIRC).....So 5 years worth of subs and another 200-300 dollars for expansions gets very expensive.......This doesnt include the dozens of games like EQ2, LoTRO, DAoC, etc etc etc that I have bought and played.......While many complain about f2ps to me they are a nice change.....I can quit at any time and I have lost nothing (I dont even look at the item shops).......Personally I like the Guild Wars approach or the f2p with item shop approach anymore and have grown tired of paying so much money for p2p games.
I've tried quite a few of them and Runes of Magic is by far the best. It could go P2P easily if it got rid of the cash shop to do it. I don't see it happening however as I feel the cash shop brings in far more money than a subscription model ever could.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
well most f2p games have item malls that would eventually force you to buy it after reaching higher level. so its not really free at all.
If you want to give some F2Ps a spin, I would recommend looking into Atlantica, Granado Espada (Sword of the New World), and Mabinogi (Especially Mabinogi). While they are not perfect, all of them *do* offer gameplay different from anything else on the market, P2P or F2P.
guild wars (i would happily pay for a client rather than download one on my crappy internet)
Runes of Magic
Bounty bay online
those are my top 3
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
I am not a big fans of item shop game but anyway, f2p is a model totally different from the subscription model, they have different ways to develop your char(which is the main point of MMO), so you can't just say "a f2p is good enough to be p2p".
MMO played (paid):
AION
DragonRaja
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Lineage
Lineage 2
Tibia
Ultima Online
Warhammer Online
World of Warcraft
MMO tried:
Atlantica Online
Darkfall
Dead Frontier
Dungeon Runners
EverQuest
Lord of the Rings Online
Monster Hunter Frontier Online
Ragnarok Online
Requiem
Runes of Magic
Runescape
The 4th Coming
and some other Chinese/Korean or beta MMOs
Dofus is also worth a look if you enjoy the Atlantica style turn based stuff.Lots of classes and skills,crafting etc.
http://www.wikia.com/dofus/Dofus_Wiki
Mabinogi
This is quite a unique MMORPG.
There are no classes.
If you want to be a warrior, you pick up a sword.
If you want to be an archer, you pick up a bow.
If you want to be a mage, you learn magic.
The battle system is not just "point, click and watch the mob get killed".
It requires some tactical thinking when fighting the mobs.
Even low level mobs can kill you if you don't fight correctly.
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/RZetlin
I'm very impressed with Atlantica, having downloaded it this morning. It is a really polished game, full of nice touches, and different from any other MMO I've played. I'd even suggest people who might be put off by turn-based combat give it a go. I was unsure about that myself, but Atlantica is the best new MMO I've played for a long time. And definitely the most polished 'F2P' I've tried.
Ok so far I've noted:
PWI, Mabanogi, RoM, Atlantica, Sword of a new world and Requiem
And someone mailed me saying Asada story and 4 story were decent.
Im going to give each one of these games atleast two weeks and let you know what I think.
I've done a good amount of cash shop bashing in my time and I think its time for me to actually try the next generation of these mmos and give my 2cents.
Thank you all for the info and you will hear from me soon.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum