Well,this article piqued my interest. So in the last week or so I have researched and downloaded what i felt were f2p mmos that would hold my interest. First I was very surprised by the sheer amount of them out there. To me this seems to be the first strong point of the f2p model:choice. After a time consuming search and multiple downloads I settled on three Runes of Magic,Perfect World,and Rappelz. I like them all so far,my first immpression being the obvious quality involved in Runes and Perfect World. I always heard f2p looked like crap and this was hardly the case, both games looked great. Rappelz charachter models were great but background textures lack quite a bit. So far I am very pleased with all three. The main thing I notice with f2p is that I can play more than one at a time. With p2p I am limited by which one I want to pay for at the time. I had always heard f2p had a small immature community and every game i tried was packed with new and higher level players and everyone was willing to help each other. No matter how old they were they all had vibrant communities. The quests were good,the armor designs were also. Progression seems fine to so far. So far it has been very eye opening.
Make any mmo and someone will play it. Manufacture cheap ass radios that are the crappiest of quality and someone will buy it. Reprice socks formally at 99c to 3/3.00 and watch people flock. Beta was better than VHS but did it matter?
The success of F2p is more a product of brute force marketing ploys as well as subtle marketing ploys. Its very interesting to see people participate in the F2P model as if they were getting a deal they hadn't before. Is the value really there? Get out your balance sheet and start the math.
Follow the money backwards and tell me the last time you got anything for free?
F2p is yet another product of an already out of control consumer society that picks food with high benzyne concentrations over a fresh carrot.
Well, ya I can laugh at another's mis-fortune all day long if the fool had been warned and chose to do it anyway.
White-knight post? Telling people you were banned for reporting harassment is not white knight. It is fact!!! Telling people that a company accepts your money and does not enforce their own TOS is fraud, is not white-knight, it is a fact. So my guess is, you think telling people facts is being a white knight? Since when does telling the truth make you a white knight. Maybe you should go look up the words fact and truth and see that "white-knight" is in neither of those definitions.
And to another, how is recieving broken, bugged content and no customer service fun? It is clearly a waste of your time and money when you pay for something only to be banned days later for complaining about harassment. Maybe it was the harassment part you thought was fun, huh?
Lastly, are we going to use DDO to argue my point that f2p games are not free? Lmao! OMG! That has some of the most limited play out there of all the f2p play games. The correct term for this type of game should be limited free play or limited play at best. This game is not even close to f2p.
Is this really the best replies I can get after being banned for reporting harassment? It is no wonder there are many companies moving to the f2p market. It is ripe with people to prey upon.
Moving on now..I have legal aspects to care of regarding this matter and it obviously, is a waste of time to try and warn people would could happen to them.
Axe
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
I think its just how you look at it. If I play the typical mmo for a year it costs me somewhere around 180.00 and I probably don't even play half of that time. With f2p I play when I want for free and if want an advantage at endgame well I would imagine it probably equals out. The only differance being with f2p I play and pay at my own pace. I've played a ton of p2p games and at the begining I feel I am almost always paying monyhly for a game that's not even finished and it takes a year or more for it to get to a polished state.
F2P isn't going anywhere, that's for sure, but the only reason for that is that there'll always be people willing to pay for advantage and people willing not to pay at all.
In my honest opinion the rest of "reasons" are simply made-up.
Lower requirements are results of lower budget spent on graphics. It's sad really that a generic p2p making company spends so much on "shiny" fog effects, grass, shadows and other gimmicks, losing so much in both accessibility (which suffers from lost PC resources) and other spheres (which suffer from lost money). Still that's not an achievement of f2p. A person doesn't automatically go for what one's pc can handle. As a matter of fact most gamers buy hardware to match the games they want not the other way around, the whole hardware industry lives on that.
And even then, at any given moment there's always enough p2p games to cover a pc as weak as one can by at that moment, which pretty much leaves no significant part of customer base uncovered.
"Learning curves" being smaller is yet another tale. For one - an average mmorpg has a learning curve the size of a school uniform, if you get the meaning. As much as you try you can't get significantly lower than that, unless you manage to turn tetris into income binging MMO, and even then who'd do that just for the learning curve?. And for another - it has nothing to do with subscription model, nothing more to say about it, really.
As for "moving-up" this is simple. You either are an MMO player of you are not. People do move on eventually. The moment a game comes out that can hold an average human dedicated to it alone for around a year will be the moment "WoW killer" turns obsolete, unless it turns obsolete before that of cause. There are die hard fans and there is eve which sells years of "off-line advancement", but those are exceptions. Most humans grow bored in one to six months. After that they either stay in the market as a customer of another game or don't stay as a customer of any. Add here the "i pay when i play" which f2p boasts and you get the picture of their income from such temporary customers. P2P can at least sell "watered-down" months (the previously mentioned eve is an good example of this "business" element).
As for improving quality, I don't know what's been going on in RoM lately, but if you count AO as an improved quality then you are insulting those few good f2p games that i know. But let's try to avoid personal opinions on this matter. Truly there are certain f2p games that stand out from the rest of f2p games but that's not a new thing and not a sign of progress. Some games are just better than others, same thing exists among p2p games.
F2P model has it's advantages and disadvantages, but the main factor of it's existence is the model itself. A lot of humans want free stuff. And then there are those who want to feel superior to them (doesn't really matter if that's visual advantage or combat advantage or some other advantage) and are willing to pay for that. While f2p companies sing sweet songs of "choosing options" and "paying for the content you want" we're yet to see even one company which ask money for diversity among one level of quality and not for different level of quality. Can't blame them for that, really, but that's still not what's being advertised by various f2p model hype-ups.
In short - f2p is where money are gained by giving paying customers advantage over free crowd and other customers who pay less. P2P is where this advantage officially doesn't exist.
As long as there are enough people with preferences in their delusions that match a specific model, that given model isn't going anywhere.
I'm really sick of the insults - not the ones directed at the games, but the ones directed at the players of said games. It gets really ridiculous that on threads like these when several people make good arguments to the contrary of the op they are completely ignored. Valid points are not made in response, just comments that basically say, "anyone who thinks differently is stupid."
Allow me to make a few more points that I'm certain will be ignored. In the past 5 years I estimate I have spent $1500 on p2p games via game purchases and subscriptions. These were excellent games for the most part and I continue to pay for WoW and might start paying for EVE if I enjoy the trial enough. But I have also played other games that I enjoyed a great deal that were f2p and am very grateful for the model. Perfect World was a game I greatly enjoyed completely free for a couple months. This game did, however, require a lot of item purchasing to keep up with the Joneses at high levels and I decided that type of constant cash flow on items wasn't for me. If it's for others and they enjoy PW's massive territorial battles enough to pay for said items, more power to them. I enjoyed Atlantica Online for a while and quit, not because of cash shop issues, but because I found the deficiency in inventory space so ludicrous I couldn't stand it. This doesn't bother other people and I have not seen a lot of complaints of Atlantica's cash shop so again - more power to them.
Going back to DDO. It has been well documented that you can buy all DDO content (if you wait for the proper sales) for less than the cost of a 2 year subscription at $15 per month. It has also been well documented that you can reach level cap for free. So you play all you want for free and if you want you can purchase some content for a small sum, or basically buy the whole game and play for years on a fraction of the cost of WoW. DDO's item mall gives no significant advantage in terms of weapons and armor and such so at level cap there is no need to spend money just to keep up.
It is the success of these games that will keep them in the market. Their greed is no more or less than the greed of Blizzard or NCSoft or any other company producing p2p games. And I predict the DDO model will begin to be emulated by a lot of companies who realize that some people would rather pay a sum up front than a monthly subscription.
As for me, I've played DDO for about 7 months or so. I have spent $50 on content that should get me another 7 before I consider spending more. In the same amount of time I will have spent $210 on my WoW subscription. Had DDO not gone f2p I would never have played it at all. So I am happy because I'm playing it very cheaply and get to choose what I spend on and how much. Turbine is happy because they got $50 from me they would not have otherwise gotten.
But you say Turbine is just greedy and I am an idiot. Whatever. I say Blizzard is greedy for not having a model like Turbine's. I'd gladly pay a fee to enjoy Northrend for the rest of my life and be done with it. I'd gladly have NOT paid to drudge through Eastern and Western Plaguelands - ever. But I'm stuck with my monthly costs and stuck paying 4 times what I pay for DDO and stuck with the reality that if I cancel my subscription I lose everything and get to play not at all.
Let the ignoring commence.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
LOL, It was me and tell me how paying $50.00 is free? I believe the difference is you do not sem to be getting my point.Perhaps if I said free with limited access you would agree? But then again, that is not how DDO or any f2p game is advertised, now is it? See my point yet?
Really can't make it much more clearer than that, nor do I want to. You can only beat a dead horse so much until it becomes nothing but goo.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
LOL, It was me and tell me how paying $50.00 is free? I believe the difference is you do not sem to be getting my point.Perhaps if I said free with limited access you would agree? But then again, that is not how DDO or any f2p game is advertised, now is it? See my point yet?
Really can't make it much more clearer than that, nor do I want to. You can only beat a dead horse so much until it becomes nothing but goo.
2 problems with your entire argument:
1) DDO is the worst possible example you could try to use as claiming F2P does not really = free, when it is one of the only F2P games where EVERYTHING in the cash shop can be gained 100% free through earning points by completing tasks in game. Its a trade off, pay and get it instantly, or work for it and get it free, the choice is yours, but you can get it completely free.
2) DDO is also one of the only F2P games still in existence that actually has CONTENT purchasable in the cash shop rather than items. Have you even played or looked into any F2P released in the past 2-3 years? There is absolutely no content that needs to be purchased, you get the full game for free. Its the optional things like faster xp, more loot drops, stat boosts, better weapon upgraders, costumes, pets, etc that you pay for and NONE of those is required to play the game. If you can't control yourself and absolutely have to keep up with every othe rplayer spending money, that's your own problem, but it doesnt change the fact that yes the games are completely free to be played. Seems your complaint is mor ethat you dont get instant max level, best gear, all accomplishments, etc handed to you at login 100% free... but then you dont get that in P2P either, so whats your problem?
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
LOL, It was me and tell me how paying $50.00 is free? I believe the difference is you do not sem to be getting my point.Perhaps if I said free with limited access you would agree? But then again, that is not how DDO or any f2p game is advertised, now is it? See my point yet?
Really can't make it much more clearer than that, nor do I want to. You can only beat a dead horse so much until it becomes nothing but goo.
2 problems with your entire argument:
1) DDO is the worst possible example you could try to use as claiming F2P does not really = free, when it is one of the only F2P games where EVERYTHING in the cash shop can be gained 100% free through earning points by completing tasks in game. Its a trade off, pay and get it instantly, or work for it and get it free, the choice is yours, but you can get it completely free.
2) DDO is also one of the only F2P games still in existence that actually has CONTENT purchasable in the cash shop rather than items. Have you even played or looked into any F2P released in the past 2-3 years? There is absolutely no content that needs to be purchased, you get the full game for free. Its the optional things like faster xp, more loot drops, stat boosts, better weapon upgraders, costumes, pets, etc that you pay for and NONE of those is required to play the game. If you can't control yourself and absolutely have to keep up with every othe rplayer spending money, that's your own problem, but it doesnt change the fact that yes the games are completely free to be played. Seems your complaint is mor ethat you dont get instant max level, best gear, all accomplishments, etc handed to you at login 100% free... but then you dont get that in P2P either, so whats your problem?
Got banned from a f2p game for reporting another player harassing me, what's your problem? Let me guess, you did not read that much and now decided to butt in and make statements that just make you look like...well like you did not read any anything from this entire post,other than the last message. Lmao!
Hey, if you want to make yourself look stupid publically, by all means feel free to do so. But asking me what my problem is in a thread where it has been stated multiple times and expecting a real answer is just beyond ignorant.
Not replying to anymore of these messages, gonna let the trolls have their playground.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
I think Second Life actually has the right idea as far as a revenue model, I think they just need to tie that concept into an actual game. I personally think Blizzard could be making several multiples of their current revenue with WoW by dropping the sub fee and going to the broker/exchange model for peer-to-peer transactions.
As an avid MMO player I have no problem with F2P games. The have their place and I don't see them going away ever.
Where I draw the line is this new marketing model of charging a subscription, and then still having a microtransaction store. This model has completely turned me off to gaming, and in the end I expect to see it drive me out of the MMO market completely.
I've even stopped buying games for my console that require me to spend more money later to get the "premium" content. Its all just going too far. Charge me what you want for the flipping game (be that a one time pop, or your monthly sub) and quit "nickle and diming" me to death.
Here is my main gripe about the F2P with item mall/microtransactions: People, who have money to burn, in real life, will always have better gear and/or access to places to get good things, that the average person just can't afford. This gives the real life "rich people" a huge advantage over you, especially in a PVP-oriented game.
I play games to get away from real-life, work strees, money issues, etc.. Playing a game, where I am a peon, compared to the real-life wealthy people and kids with daddy's credit card, because I don't have an abundance of real money, is not very fun. I believe everyone playing a game should start on the same level playing field.
It is bad enough that some people can power-level to the level cap in a week because they don't have real-life responsibilities and can play 24/7. It also sucks that every games seems to have gold farmers incessantly spamming the chat. Another thing that will cause me to leave a game immediately is when I see bots everywhere. There are way too many cheat hacks and auto-farming, harvesting, and fighting bots on the Internet for just about every game.
Anyeay, I am getting off of the topic, so I will end here.
For me it has never failed, I play a ton of games both monthly and free to play. I will start every new F2P with the same vow " This time I will not spend any money ", sadly it never stays that way long. To make matters worse I find that I always end up spending way more on F2P than I ever spent on a monthly game, sometimes hundred's of dollars more. You buy $5 worth of game currency her, $5 there, ohhh a 50% off sale theres another $20, damn that mystery box didnt give me the cool mount I wanted there goes another $20 before you know it, its the end of the month and the CC bill comes on and you are like omg what did I do..
At that point you are like screw this game and you leave, sigh only to go to another F2P and repeat the cycle.
None of the games are true free to play, if you want to advance, you have to pay at some point, but free to play with a sub option will be the way of the future, I don't see any companies giving up box sales, I think this option will be added later on. I don't see free to play or paid subs going any where, but more of a marriage, of the two giving more options to more people, as a for profit company just another road to profit.. not an issue wirth me..
None of the games are true free to play, if you want to advance, you have to pay at some point, but free to play with a sub option will be the way of the future, I don't see any companies giving up box sales, I think this option will be added later on. I don't see free to play or paid subs going any where, but more of a marriage, of the two giving more options to more people, as a for profit company just another road to profit.. not an issue wirth me..
Actually, there are completely free games out there. WURM and Planescape are two. The problem is these are usually underdeveloped and because of this are usually designed for very niche markets. I agree with the rest of your statement, though.
To keep a game running well you have to make money AND you don't go into this business without intending to make a profit by some means. So to me p2p and f2p are two sides of the same coin. A lot of people seem to be opposed to the name free to play when there is an attached item mall. Certainly I can see where it can be frustrating to invest a lot of time in a game only to find you are very limited in your abilities if you choose not to pay for something. It can also be argued that some companies (gPotato, etc) should be more upfront with reasonable cost expectations at higher levels and I would certainly agree.
The fact remains, f2p is a valid business model and you can enjoy these game, sometimes throughout all of their levels of content, completely for free. As I stated earlier, I have gotten months of enjoyment out of both Perfect World and Atlantica Online as well as very cost effective enjoyment out of DDO so I am very happy with the business model in general.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
yes F2P is going away unless they keep making new stuff ive been on many games beta's and F2P but i have seen it all the same loads of players running away from games they spent real cash on that should be free .. Look at Wonderland its a perfect example of everything thats killing free games
it first started with a few things you could buy to add to your game experience but there were free events in game and good rewards and they treated you well however after time the events died off now they give you such a tiny reward its not worth a players time to go to it .
then they started to show their true side by adding a "glitch" that allows for higher xp rate so you could reach the 180 lvl in under 2 years of 24/7 and yea u guessed it the "glitch" needs you to buy a item mall item well infact if you choose to be a fire it requires a 30.00 usd investment , to do this "glitch" you need 3 fires so almost 100.00 usd
well after a bit we started to see even more take weapons or armor a +6 item mall weapon or armor will cost you well over 150.00 for 1 piece of eq. Oh yea and they break unless you buy repair potions at near 5.00 each . To give you a idea of the real cost to get a "free" game player to level 150 reborn it costs ( are you sitting) well over 2,000.00 usd
The next issue we saw was item mall events buy x amount of points and you get a "free" whatever well it started as there were rewards for the folks that spend any money then it went to if u spend 100.00 then you could get a reward . ok fine i see the reason for some of it but get this : now its if you spend 1,100.00 usd yea over 1k $ they give you a pet "free" and the pet is only worth a few months worth of gold ingame ... all of this is the money grabbing action whats by far the worst issue is the games are infested with "botters" or hackers .. what this is causing is a mass exodis of the older players that wasted tons of time and real cash to reach a point that the botters get to free !!! where it gets more annoying is the fact we have "live support" but they refuse to actualy ip ban the hackers or botters no matter what they do more? yup live support doesnt understand 95% of all english so if you try to explain a issue all you get is "i sorry" so there is no support no help at all oh and no in game gm ever no law /rule enforcement its like a private server that has a cash shop and no one to run the game
one other isue it is a clone well ok private server run by IGG that purchased the game from the original TWWL so you could play the TWWL version (original) and would you believe the item mall prices are over 3 times cheaper so what IGG is doing is offering a "free game" that costs loads to play seriously and we get to pay 300% more points per item mall item just because its english ish for a game with no support to speak of
yes this is one example but ive seen the exact same on 6 other IGG free games plus well over 30 others personaly i would much rather play a game thats P2P monthly and has no hidden costs i can tell you ive seen on this and 3 other games that are huge player bases that the turn over is very high .. put it this way if a player drops over 1k$ on a free game then litterly deletes his character and quits thats poor management and ive seen atleast 100 players that played over 1 yr just walk away in the last 2 months only so yea they are being killed off by greed
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
LOL, It was me and tell me how paying $50.00 is free? I believe the difference is you do not sem to be getting my point.Perhaps if I said free with limited access you would agree? But then again, that is not how DDO or any f2p game is advertised, now is it? See my point yet?
Really can't make it much more clearer than that, nor do I want to. You can only beat a dead horse so much until it becomes nothing but goo.
2 problems with your entire argument:
1) DDO is the worst possible example you could try to use as claiming F2P does not really = free, when it is one of the only F2P games where EVERYTHING in the cash shop can be gained 100% free through earning points by completing tasks in game. Its a trade off, pay and get it instantly, or work for it and get it free, the choice is yours, but you can get it completely free.
2) DDO is also one of the only F2P games still in existence that actually has CONTENT purchasable in the cash shop rather than items. Have you even played or looked into any F2P released in the past 2-3 years? There is absolutely no content that needs to be purchased, you get the full game for free. Its the optional things like faster xp, more loot drops, stat boosts, better weapon upgraders, costumes, pets, etc that you pay for and NONE of those is required to play the game. If you can't control yourself and absolutely have to keep up with every othe rplayer spending money, that's your own problem, but it doesnt change the fact that yes the games are completely free to be played. Seems your complaint is mor ethat you dont get instant max level, best gear, all accomplishments, etc handed to you at login 100% free... but then you dont get that in P2P either, so whats your problem?
Got banned from a f2p game for reporting another player harassing me, what's your problem? Let me guess, you did not read that much and now decided to butt in and make statements that just make you look like...well like you did not read any anything from this entire post,other than the last message. Lmao!
Hey, if you want to make yourself look stupid publically, by all means feel free to do so. But asking me what my problem is in a thread where it has been stated multiple times and expecting a real answer is just beyond ignorant.
Not replying to anymore of these messages, gonna let the trolls have their playground.
It's funny how you speak of stupidity and ignorance.... yet are judging a group of dozens and dozens (if not a few hundred) of games based on nothing but the fact they're F2P simply because you had a bad experience in 1 of them, as if the same company that did that to you is the only F2P dev in existence and every F2P game is identical in every way. Blind ignorance due to being butthurt over a single isolated incident in a single game is not the way to make any sort of valid argument about anything. I have actually read through most of the thread (not post as you like to call it, post = the 1 post of yours i qouted, not this entire discussion) and so many others like it with people spewing "facts" that make it obvious they have very very little knowledge of anything F2P or are still stuck in a mindset based on what F2P games were several years ago rather than the current state. In this thread, like so many others there is practically nothing you have said that is valid or true and it's obvious you are doing nothing but being hateful rather than truthful.
Okay, here's the deal. I have played WoW for along time. It's an awesome game. However, right now I cannot afford the subscription rate. Sooooo, I am currently playing F2P games until I can get back to it. HOWEVER, in playing these other games, I find it annoying that progression in the game depends on how much REAL money you spend at their stores.
ONE GAME that I will ALWAYS hold up high, Runes of Magic. You DO NOT have to spend a dime to progress in this game. The items you buy are XP boosts, outfits, mounts, potions, etc. And get this, alot of the perishable items CAN be looted. They do not hinder a player who has NO MONEY, only regarding SPEED of progression.
I go into an F2P game thinking I will not spend any money, but I end up doing it anyways for that special mount ot XP boosts. BUT I spend just as much as I would in WoW, however, the times I am broke I just have to wait before I can get that nice outfit or that awesome looking mount. The nice thing is I can STILL PLAY without worrying about my subscription expiring.
Unfortunately, this conversation has basically turned into P2P vs F2P, again. The real issue is whether F2P is dying, and I still say I never really saw anyone claim that it was so I find the need for the article questionable. I have seen a lot of F2P fans claim P2P is dying however. So one camp seems more interested in beating the death drums than the other camp.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Unfortunately, this conversation has basically turned into P2P vs F2P, again. The real issue is whether F2P is dying, and I still say I never really saw anyone claim that it was so I find the need for the article questionable. I have seen a lot of F2P fans claim P2P is dying however. So one camp seems more interested in beating the death drums than the other camp.
Think that's partly to do with the fact that anytime that this writer has dared to post any article that was pro-f2p and said anything bad about P2P, or people's misconceptions about F2P it resulted in threads which consisted basically of "OMG YOU SUXXXXXX STOP MAKING FUN OF US! HE (supposedly) CALLED US STUPID, FIRE HIM NAO!!! HE ONLY WRITES ABOUT F2P (even though it's what he was hired to do) AND IS BEING PAID BY F2P DEVS TO BASH P2P"
So the last few articles have been 2 sided.... one covering F2P one covering P2P. He made an article before this one about 3 Reasons Why P2P Isn't Dying.
I prefer the free to play hyrbrid model (ddo) and the buy to play guild wars model . Much better for me. I feel like I dont have to spend hours in a game to get my moneys worth and enjoy the diverscity of the different games I now play . ROM,DDO and LOTRO . Would'nt look at a subscription based game these days unless it was something really speacial .
Comments
Well,this article piqued my interest. So in the last week or so I have researched and downloaded what i felt were f2p mmos that would hold my interest. First I was very surprised by the sheer amount of them out there. To me this seems to be the first strong point of the f2p model:choice. After a time consuming search and multiple downloads I settled on three Runes of Magic,Perfect World,and Rappelz. I like them all so far,my first immpression being the obvious quality involved in Runes and Perfect World. I always heard f2p looked like crap and this was hardly the case, both games looked great. Rappelz charachter models were great but background textures lack quite a bit. So far I am very pleased with all three. The main thing I notice with f2p is that I can play more than one at a time. With p2p I am limited by which one I want to pay for at the time. I had always heard f2p had a small immature community and every game i tried was packed with new and higher level players and everyone was willing to help each other. No matter how old they were they all had vibrant communities. The quests were good,the armor designs were also. Progression seems fine to so far. So far it has been very eye opening.
Make any mmo and someone will play it. Manufacture cheap ass radios that are the crappiest of quality and someone will buy it. Reprice socks formally at 99c to 3/3.00 and watch people flock. Beta was better than VHS but did it matter?
The success of F2p is more a product of brute force marketing ploys as well as subtle marketing ploys. Its very interesting to see people participate in the F2P model as if they were getting a deal they hadn't before. Is the value really there? Get out your balance sheet and start the math.
Follow the money backwards and tell me the last time you got anything for free?
F2p is yet another product of an already out of control consumer society that picks food with high benzyne concentrations over a fresh carrot.
Well, ya I can laugh at another's mis-fortune all day long if the fool had been warned and chose to do it anyway.
White-knight post? Telling people you were banned for reporting harassment is not white knight. It is fact!!! Telling people that a company accepts your money and does not enforce their own TOS is fraud, is not white-knight, it is a fact. So my guess is, you think telling people facts is being a white knight? Since when does telling the truth make you a white knight. Maybe you should go look up the words fact and truth and see that "white-knight" is in neither of those definitions.
And to another, how is recieving broken, bugged content and no customer service fun? It is clearly a waste of your time and money when you pay for something only to be banned days later for complaining about harassment. Maybe it was the harassment part you thought was fun, huh?
Lastly, are we going to use DDO to argue my point that f2p games are not free? Lmao! OMG! That has some of the most limited play out there of all the f2p play games. The correct term for this type of game should be limited free play or limited play at best. This game is not even close to f2p.
Is this really the best replies I can get after being banned for reporting harassment? It is no wonder there are many companies moving to the f2p market. It is ripe with people to prey upon.
Moving on now..I have legal aspects to care of regarding this matter and it obviously, is a waste of time to try and warn people would could happen to them.
Axe
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
I think its just how you look at it. If I play the typical mmo for a year it costs me somewhere around 180.00 and I probably don't even play half of that time. With f2p I play when I want for free and if want an advantage at endgame well I would imagine it probably equals out. The only differance being with f2p I play and pay at my own pace. I've played a ton of p2p games and at the begining I feel I am almost always paying monyhly for a game that's not even finished and it takes a year or more for it to get to a polished state.
F2P isn't going anywhere, that's for sure, but the only reason for that is that there'll always be people willing to pay for advantage and people willing not to pay at all.
In my honest opinion the rest of "reasons" are simply made-up.
Lower requirements are results of lower budget spent on graphics. It's sad really that a generic p2p making company spends so much on "shiny" fog effects, grass, shadows and other gimmicks, losing so much in both accessibility (which suffers from lost PC resources) and other spheres (which suffer from lost money). Still that's not an achievement of f2p. A person doesn't automatically go for what one's pc can handle. As a matter of fact most gamers buy hardware to match the games they want not the other way around, the whole hardware industry lives on that.
And even then, at any given moment there's always enough p2p games to cover a pc as weak as one can by at that moment, which pretty much leaves no significant part of customer base uncovered.
"Learning curves" being smaller is yet another tale. For one - an average mmorpg has a learning curve the size of a school uniform, if you get the meaning. As much as you try you can't get significantly lower than that, unless you manage to turn tetris into income binging MMO, and even then who'd do that just for the learning curve?. And for another - it has nothing to do with subscription model, nothing more to say about it, really.
As for "moving-up" this is simple. You either are an MMO player of you are not. People do move on eventually. The moment a game comes out that can hold an average human dedicated to it alone for around a year will be the moment "WoW killer" turns obsolete, unless it turns obsolete before that of cause. There are die hard fans and there is eve which sells years of "off-line advancement", but those are exceptions. Most humans grow bored in one to six months. After that they either stay in the market as a customer of another game or don't stay as a customer of any. Add here the "i pay when i play" which f2p boasts and you get the picture of their income from such temporary customers. P2P can at least sell "watered-down" months (the previously mentioned eve is an good example of this "business" element).
As for improving quality, I don't know what's been going on in RoM lately, but if you count AO as an improved quality then you are insulting those few good f2p games that i know. But let's try to avoid personal opinions on this matter. Truly there are certain f2p games that stand out from the rest of f2p games but that's not a new thing and not a sign of progress. Some games are just better than others, same thing exists among p2p games.
F2P model has it's advantages and disadvantages, but the main factor of it's existence is the model itself. A lot of humans want free stuff. And then there are those who want to feel superior to them (doesn't really matter if that's visual advantage or combat advantage or some other advantage) and are willing to pay for that. While f2p companies sing sweet songs of "choosing options" and "paying for the content you want" we're yet to see even one company which ask money for diversity among one level of quality and not for different level of quality. Can't blame them for that, really, but that's still not what's being advertised by various f2p model hype-ups.
In short - f2p is where money are gained by giving paying customers advantage over free crowd and other customers who pay less. P2P is where this advantage officially doesn't exist.
As long as there are enough people with preferences in their delusions that match a specific model, that given model isn't going anywhere.
I'm really sick of the insults - not the ones directed at the games, but the ones directed at the players of said games. It gets really ridiculous that on threads like these when several people make good arguments to the contrary of the op they are completely ignored. Valid points are not made in response, just comments that basically say, "anyone who thinks differently is stupid."
Allow me to make a few more points that I'm certain will be ignored. In the past 5 years I estimate I have spent $1500 on p2p games via game purchases and subscriptions. These were excellent games for the most part and I continue to pay for WoW and might start paying for EVE if I enjoy the trial enough. But I have also played other games that I enjoyed a great deal that were f2p and am very grateful for the model. Perfect World was a game I greatly enjoyed completely free for a couple months. This game did, however, require a lot of item purchasing to keep up with the Joneses at high levels and I decided that type of constant cash flow on items wasn't for me. If it's for others and they enjoy PW's massive territorial battles enough to pay for said items, more power to them. I enjoyed Atlantica Online for a while and quit, not because of cash shop issues, but because I found the deficiency in inventory space so ludicrous I couldn't stand it. This doesn't bother other people and I have not seen a lot of complaints of Atlantica's cash shop so again - more power to them.
Going back to DDO. It has been well documented that you can buy all DDO content (if you wait for the proper sales) for less than the cost of a 2 year subscription at $15 per month. It has also been well documented that you can reach level cap for free. So you play all you want for free and if you want you can purchase some content for a small sum, or basically buy the whole game and play for years on a fraction of the cost of WoW. DDO's item mall gives no significant advantage in terms of weapons and armor and such so at level cap there is no need to spend money just to keep up.
It is the success of these games that will keep them in the market. Their greed is no more or less than the greed of Blizzard or NCSoft or any other company producing p2p games. And I predict the DDO model will begin to be emulated by a lot of companies who realize that some people would rather pay a sum up front than a monthly subscription.
As for me, I've played DDO for about 7 months or so. I have spent $50 on content that should get me another 7 before I consider spending more. In the same amount of time I will have spent $210 on my WoW subscription. Had DDO not gone f2p I would never have played it at all. So I am happy because I'm playing it very cheaply and get to choose what I spend on and how much. Turbine is happy because they got $50 from me they would not have otherwise gotten.
But you say Turbine is just greedy and I am an idiot. Whatever. I say Blizzard is greedy for not having a model like Turbine's. I'd gladly pay a fee to enjoy Northrend for the rest of my life and be done with it. I'd gladly have NOT paid to drudge through Eastern and Western Plaguelands - ever. But I'm stuck with my monthly costs and stuck paying 4 times what I pay for DDO and stuck with the reality that if I cancel my subscription I lose everything and get to play not at all.
Let the ignoring commence.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
oh yeah... it wasn't the op that made the comments I was referring to. I got so riled up I forgot how this thread started.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
LOL, It was me and tell me how paying $50.00 is free? I believe the difference is you do not sem to be getting my point.Perhaps if I said free with limited access you would agree? But then again, that is not how DDO or any f2p game is advertised, now is it? See my point yet?
Really can't make it much more clearer than that, nor do I want to. You can only beat a dead horse so much until it becomes nothing but goo.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
2 problems with your entire argument:
1) DDO is the worst possible example you could try to use as claiming F2P does not really = free, when it is one of the only F2P games where EVERYTHING in the cash shop can be gained 100% free through earning points by completing tasks in game. Its a trade off, pay and get it instantly, or work for it and get it free, the choice is yours, but you can get it completely free.
2) DDO is also one of the only F2P games still in existence that actually has CONTENT purchasable in the cash shop rather than items. Have you even played or looked into any F2P released in the past 2-3 years? There is absolutely no content that needs to be purchased, you get the full game for free. Its the optional things like faster xp, more loot drops, stat boosts, better weapon upgraders, costumes, pets, etc that you pay for and NONE of those is required to play the game. If you can't control yourself and absolutely have to keep up with every othe rplayer spending money, that's your own problem, but it doesnt change the fact that yes the games are completely free to be played. Seems your complaint is mor ethat you dont get instant max level, best gear, all accomplishments, etc handed to you at login 100% free... but then you dont get that in P2P either, so whats your problem?
Got banned from a f2p game for reporting another player harassing me, what's your problem? Let me guess, you did not read that much and now decided to butt in and make statements that just make you look like...well like you did not read any anything from this entire post,other than the last message. Lmao!
Hey, if you want to make yourself look stupid publically, by all means feel free to do so. But asking me what my problem is in a thread where it has been stated multiple times and expecting a real answer is just beyond ignorant.
Not replying to anymore of these messages, gonna let the trolls have their playground.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
I think Second Life actually has the right idea as far as a revenue model, I think they just need to tie that concept into an actual game. I personally think Blizzard could be making several multiples of their current revenue with WoW by dropping the sub fee and going to the broker/exchange model for peer-to-peer transactions.
Everything goes better with beef.
As an avid MMO player I have no problem with F2P games. The have their place and I don't see them going away ever.
Where I draw the line is this new marketing model of charging a subscription, and then still having a microtransaction store. This model has completely turned me off to gaming, and in the end I expect to see it drive me out of the MMO market completely.
I've even stopped buying games for my console that require me to spend more money later to get the "premium" content. Its all just going too far. Charge me what you want for the flipping game (be that a one time pop, or your monthly sub) and quit "nickle and diming" me to death.
Here is my main gripe about the F2P with item mall/microtransactions: People, who have money to burn, in real life, will always have better gear and/or access to places to get good things, that the average person just can't afford. This gives the real life "rich people" a huge advantage over you, especially in a PVP-oriented game.
I play games to get away from real-life, work strees, money issues, etc.. Playing a game, where I am a peon, compared to the real-life wealthy people and kids with daddy's credit card, because I don't have an abundance of real money, is not very fun. I believe everyone playing a game should start on the same level playing field.
It is bad enough that some people can power-level to the level cap in a week because they don't have real-life responsibilities and can play 24/7. It also sucks that every games seems to have gold farmers incessantly spamming the chat. Another thing that will cause me to leave a game immediately is when I see bots everywhere. There are way too many cheat hacks and auto-farming, harvesting, and fighting bots on the Internet for just about every game.
Anyeay, I am getting off of the topic, so I will end here.
For me it has never failed, I play a ton of games both monthly and free to play. I will start every new F2P with the same vow " This time I will not spend any money ", sadly it never stays that way long. To make matters worse I find that I always end up spending way more on F2P than I ever spent on a monthly game, sometimes hundred's of dollars more. You buy $5 worth of game currency her, $5 there, ohhh a 50% off sale theres another $20, damn that mystery box didnt give me the cool mount I wanted there goes another $20 before you know it, its the end of the month and the CC bill comes on and you are like omg what did I do..
At that point you are like screw this game and you leave, sigh only to go to another F2P and repeat the cycle.
None of the games are true free to play, if you want to advance, you have to pay at some point, but free to play with a sub option will be the way of the future, I don't see any companies giving up box sales, I think this option will be added later on. I don't see free to play or paid subs going any where, but more of a marriage, of the two giving more options to more people, as a for profit company just another road to profit.. not an issue wirth me..
Actually, there are completely free games out there. WURM and Planescape are two. The problem is these are usually underdeveloped and because of this are usually designed for very niche markets. I agree with the rest of your statement, though.
To keep a game running well you have to make money AND you don't go into this business without intending to make a profit by some means. So to me p2p and f2p are two sides of the same coin. A lot of people seem to be opposed to the name free to play when there is an attached item mall. Certainly I can see where it can be frustrating to invest a lot of time in a game only to find you are very limited in your abilities if you choose not to pay for something. It can also be argued that some companies (gPotato, etc) should be more upfront with reasonable cost expectations at higher levels and I would certainly agree.
The fact remains, f2p is a valid business model and you can enjoy these game, sometimes throughout all of their levels of content, completely for free. As I stated earlier, I have gotten months of enjoyment out of both Perfect World and Atlantica Online as well as very cost effective enjoyment out of DDO so I am very happy with the business model in general.
I was pleasantly surprised when I went from Apprentice to full 5 star Elite in under 2 months. I was pleasantly surprised again when I went from Elite to just barely Hardcore in 2 weeks. Apprentice, here I come!
yes F2P is going away unless they keep making new stuff ive been on many games beta's and F2P but i have seen it all the same loads of players running away from games they spent real cash on that should be free .. Look at Wonderland its a perfect example of everything thats killing free games
it first started with a few things you could buy to add to your game experience but there were free events in game and good rewards and they treated you well however after time the events died off now they give you such a tiny reward its not worth a players time to go to it .
then they started to show their true side by adding a "glitch" that allows for higher xp rate so you could reach the 180 lvl in under 2 years of 24/7 and yea u guessed it the "glitch" needs you to buy a item mall item well infact if you choose to be a fire it requires a 30.00 usd investment , to do this "glitch" you need 3 fires so almost 100.00 usd
well after a bit we started to see even more take weapons or armor a +6 item mall weapon or armor will cost you well over 150.00 for 1 piece of eq. Oh yea and they break unless you buy repair potions at near 5.00 each . To give you a idea of the real cost to get a "free" game player to level 150 reborn it costs ( are you sitting) well over 2,000.00 usd
The next issue we saw was item mall events buy x amount of points and you get a "free" whatever well it started as there were rewards for the folks that spend any money then it went to if u spend 100.00 then you could get a reward . ok fine i see the reason for some of it but get this : now its if you spend 1,100.00 usd yea over 1k $ they give you a pet "free" and the pet is only worth a few months worth of gold ingame ... all of this is the money grabbing action whats by far the worst issue is the games are infested with "botters" or hackers .. what this is causing is a mass exodis of the older players that wasted tons of time and real cash to reach a point that the botters get to free !!! where it gets more annoying is the fact we have "live support" but they refuse to actualy ip ban the hackers or botters no matter what they do more? yup live support doesnt understand 95% of all english so if you try to explain a issue all you get is "i sorry" so there is no support no help at all oh and no in game gm ever no law /rule enforcement its like a private server that has a cash shop and no one to run the game
one other isue it is a clone well ok private server run by IGG that purchased the game from the original TWWL so you could play the TWWL version (original) and would you believe the item mall prices are over 3 times cheaper so what IGG is doing is offering a "free game" that costs loads to play seriously and we get to pay 300% more points per item mall item just because its english ish for a game with no support to speak of
yes this is one example but ive seen the exact same on 6 other IGG free games plus well over 30 others personaly i would much rather play a game thats P2P monthly and has no hidden costs i can tell you ive seen on this and 3 other games that are huge player bases that the turn over is very high .. put it this way if a player drops over 1k$ on a free game then litterly deletes his character and quits thats poor management and ive seen atleast 100 players that played over 1 yr just walk away in the last 2 months only so yea they are being killed off by greed
It's funny how you speak of stupidity and ignorance.... yet are judging a group of dozens and dozens (if not a few hundred) of games based on nothing but the fact they're F2P simply because you had a bad experience in 1 of them, as if the same company that did that to you is the only F2P dev in existence and every F2P game is identical in every way. Blind ignorance due to being butthurt over a single isolated incident in a single game is not the way to make any sort of valid argument about anything. I have actually read through most of the thread (not post as you like to call it, post = the 1 post of yours i qouted, not this entire discussion) and so many others like it with people spewing "facts" that make it obvious they have very very little knowledge of anything F2P or are still stuck in a mindset based on what F2P games were several years ago rather than the current state. In this thread, like so many others there is practically nothing you have said that is valid or true and it's obvious you are doing nothing but being hateful rather than truthful.
Okay, here's the deal. I have played WoW for along time. It's an awesome game. However, right now I cannot afford the subscription rate. Sooooo, I am currently playing F2P games until I can get back to it. HOWEVER, in playing these other games, I find it annoying that progression in the game depends on how much REAL money you spend at their stores.
ONE GAME that I will ALWAYS hold up high, Runes of Magic. You DO NOT have to spend a dime to progress in this game. The items you buy are XP boosts, outfits, mounts, potions, etc. And get this, alot of the perishable items CAN be looted. They do not hinder a player who has NO MONEY, only regarding SPEED of progression.
I go into an F2P game thinking I will not spend any money, but I end up doing it anyways for that special mount ot XP boosts. BUT I spend just as much as I would in WoW, however, the times I am broke I just have to wait before I can get that nice outfit or that awesome looking mount. The nice thing is I can STILL PLAY without worrying about my subscription expiring.
Unfortunately, this conversation has basically turned into P2P vs F2P, again. The real issue is whether F2P is dying, and I still say I never really saw anyone claim that it was so I find the need for the article questionable. I have seen a lot of F2P fans claim P2P is dying however. So one camp seems more interested in beating the death drums than the other camp.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Think that's partly to do with the fact that anytime that this writer has dared to post any article that was pro-f2p and said anything bad about P2P, or people's misconceptions about F2P it resulted in threads which consisted basically of "OMG YOU SUXXXXXX STOP MAKING FUN OF US! HE (supposedly) CALLED US STUPID, FIRE HIM NAO!!! HE ONLY WRITES ABOUT F2P (even though it's what he was hired to do) AND IS BEING PAID BY F2P DEVS TO BASH P2P"
So the last few articles have been 2 sided.... one covering F2P one covering P2P. He made an article before this one about 3 Reasons Why P2P Isn't Dying.
I red both the articles, most of the comments and discussions and such..i just wonder: who the hell seriously though both F2P and P2P were dying?
I prefer the free to play hyrbrid model (ddo) and the buy to play guild wars model . Much better for me. I feel like I dont have to spend hours in a game to get my moneys worth and enjoy the diverscity of the different games I now play . ROM,DDO and LOTRO . Would'nt look at a subscription based game these days unless it was something really speacial .