because it's very expensive to convert a game into F2P and the owners obviously do not think they would get a return on the investment.
and this is what i meant above by giving the previous poster a +1 to insight. its just too much trouble quite frankly.
as for f2p killing games you might wana reevaluate that. LotRO? DDO? both are now profitable and the creation of new content, even for a game as old as DDO is regular. LotRO's failing b/c of f2p has given them the money to finally finish their next expac Rise of Isengard.
f2p for AoC has been a mixed bag, but at first it was profitable, i have no idea now. WAR's f2p is only lvls 1-10 so i dont think you can blame its failure on f2p.
im honestly trying hard to think of an f2p game thats been destroyed by going f2p. even EQX, which is really only freemium, has had a constant income stream and i know players in EQ2 that play on the EQX server b/c of the options to buy things when they want. as much as i have a great distaste for SoE's model over Turbine's they are doing well and people are enjoying the game. /shrug
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play." Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
how come people are like its still got 2500 players THATS NOTHING even without bots included
Seems that they are saying 2500 players are logged on at one time during peak hours. Most people associate peak login numbers to be 10% of the total subscription base so that is a healthy number of folks still paying a monthly fee. Also since they are more than likely just talking about one of the more populated servers and not the game in whole that also ups the number of total subscribers by a decent amount.
As far as going free to play the game already has a 14 day trial. That gives someone enough time to decide if they like the game or not. If someone likes it they will subscribe and if they do not like it the game being free is not going to make them want to play and spend money in a cash shop anyway.
the game has one server so 2500 WITH bots your lucky to see anything in pvp zones, not to mention i dont care about people playing a 14 day free trial to decide if they like it i want the 100,000 old players to come back to the game they love all i want is daoc to do something to bring those players back
if they make it free and add a store it will prolly be the only game i'd play with a store(and even spent money on it) ,well ok i guess GW is also like that, ok second game :P
But I'd pay to play it again if they sorted things out. X-realming is lame but it's become de rigueur - even in the BGs when I was bringing up an alt last year you'd see hibs beating down on albs for a few minutes then half of the hibs mysteriously dissapear and 5 minutes later albs are taking CK =P just sucks the fun out of it.
Every dollar they take in is pure profit. Sure they have a skeleton crew of lackies and a monkey that's in charge of 'development' and a small budget for hardware and bandwith and that is it. They game probably still has around 5000 active subs. That's $75,000 in free money every month.
Our only 'hope' is to wait for DAOC2 and I don't think we're ever going to see it in our lifetime. EA gobbled up Mythic and ruined it.
Dude, EA owns it. They could remake it into a F2P game but there is no guarantee that it would be worth the work. PvP games like DaoC doesn't make well as F2P since they end up P2win, and they are still getting in money on it as it is.
DaoC wont be made F2P, possibly WAR but I have my doubt on that as well. There is a reason that all the successful F2P games are more focused on PvE (and yes, that includes AoC as well, it is a PvE game in the core). Selling items for real money just make PvP games too inbalanced to be fun.
Every dollar they take in is pure profit. Sure they have a skeleton crew of lackies and a monkey that's in charge of 'development' and a small budget for hardware and bandwith and that is it. They game probably still has around 5000 active subs. That's $75,000 in free money every month.
Our only 'hope' is to wait for DAOC2 and I don't think we're ever going to see it in our lifetime. EA gobbled up Mythic and ruined it.
Well, there is the slim chance that MJ get some money and buys up the IP, or make a game similar to how DaoC 2 should be in a slightly different setting. I don't think he is the type that can stay away from making games in the long run.
Another of Mythics founders are BTW leading a MMO project for Zenimax (Bethesda)... A mix between DaoC and the "Elder scrolls" would be interesting (but I really have no clue what they are working on).
Then we (I and my Dark Age of Camelot Mates) would come back to play for a while and would resubscribe once in a while to check out our characters and stuff too till the day that we die as one our side hobbies.
The game's expansions has reduced any chance in coming back I had to really not good odds. The creation of instances, the introduction to arulite and free class gear handouts all the time from class trainers, Trials of Atlantis is when players started to require players to use voice chat for Raid PvE and nothing was done to help save DAoC's text chat culture from being left out of groups if they didn't join the voice chat and RvR suffered the same fate (Simple Group Finder tools would have solved this), poor quality classes added (Banshee, Vampiir, Heretic, Warlock, etc), the game's world size has gotten too big when it used to be only a couple of places people your level could be, no expansions ever came out that explored the idea of realm invasions.
If I had a time machine I would love to go back and play the original Dark Age of Camelot again or even just go play an Original DAoC Version Free Shard but there isn't one. MMORPG Media is not like most game media, and you can't just go back and play the original game. That is unfortunate too because you can spend so much of your life in them. I wonder a lot at people who play Everquest if they ever encountered the same problems DAoC players did. Or Ultima Online players, or Meridian 59 players, or Asheron's Call players, etc.. World of Warcraft almost was going to succeed because its expansions always built on top of the original game for the most part until recently Blizzard changed it so that level 60 account characters had their protective barrier (which let them stay level 60) removed.
The next MMORPG to understand that players want: a Safe and Stable MMORPG that allows Everyone to play, developers that can recognize struggling portions of their players and solve their problems, to have Expansions that built On Top of the game and not Into the game, or to not be afraid of the game just uprooting itself and changing the game into something else that they don't want, will be the next biggest MMORPG that has players play it forever.
If I had a time machine I would love to go back and play the original Dark Age of Camelot again or even just go play an Original DAoC Version Free Shard but there isn't one.
You should be playing on Uthgard server then. No expansions, Old Frontiers.
It's not free yet due to the 1000 people still subbing.. If they were smart, they'd all get together and quit, then Mythic would have no choice but to make DAOC f2p... So, thank the 1000 people still subbed...
Rallithon Oakthornn (Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
I'd just like to update all you ftp pushers. Daoc has made many many new changes and there are far less Buff bots with the new NPC buffs you can buy that are on a 2 hour timer. A perfect buffbot with + 25% to enhancments for example gives you +155 to str/con ,where as the NPC buffs give you +140 at lvl 50. Hardly worth the extra $15 a month to own a buffbot. Since the new gold/bp rewards in all battle grounds the lvl 49 Cathal Valley BG is an absolute blast and is so close to old emain that I really dont have a legit complaint about the game anymore. You can purchase artifacts and Master levels with BP or Glass now so thats no longer an issue. You can purchase Dragon armor for scales which drop in malm and the new repeatable quests in Atlanitis can net you around 10p in 2 hours of farming witha a solo NPC buffed toon. With my rr9L7 zerker I can wtf pwn most any stealther dumb enough to hit me on bled bridge and I do not own a buffbot. Daoc has worked 99% of the buggs out and I am completely satisfied once again. Anyone still complaining about buffbots hasn't played the game in quite awile.
every server is pretty much *well not pact* but still busy ..the only 2 that are dead are the co-op / pvp servers
the game truly does play like a f2p game..i think if they did open it up f2p it would bring LOADS more to the game..maybe too many imo...the only knock i have on the game is that you can go 1-50 in a day and there is zero pve going on at lvls 1-50 wich is a shame cuz the world is pretty big and dungens are fun
imo they just need to come out with a diff mmo and less focus on pvp like daoc..when your powerlvling in bg it feels and gets repetive like a f2p game and everything is handed to you ..wich is a shame cuz theres alot of wasted space an content..but when / if you ever pve it feels more like a p2p ..it kinda reminds me alot like WAR but WAR's pve was horrible...but daoc still did bg's right..its not some compact arena type like wow's bg..its the best going now with shadowbane servers shutdown...its the best pvp game going handsdown
You may want to follow DOMINUS. The game who's goal is to take a DAOC like game..taking it to the next level(no...it won't be ftp).My guess is a launch by mid-year.
One problem with going F2P is that the devs would have to start paying attention to the game again. Not only to make the initial transition but F2P games really do need new items coming out on a periodic basis in order to keep the game making money. you need new mounts to sell and new pets and all that jazz. If a game is P2P it may not make as much money but it often will continue to make money off the few thousand subscriptions it has left even if you never touch the code base. Look at Vanguard. Completely stuck were it was but pulling in its little subscription the the people who love it and stay with it. A pay to play game is very cheep to simply let run if you already have the infrastructure running for other games. Vanguard can continue to run on a little server in the corner of the server room that contains EQ2 because sony is going to need to maintain the networks and rackspace and backups for all this anyway. no big deal to add one more little thing to the cycle. Same with DAoC and ultima online and even Warhammer. They can continue to run as long as SWTOR justifies keeping a server room runing for EA.
Now certainly if they want to get this title making more money then they will need to probably move it to F2P but for now, they can just keep it on the back burner and the easiest way to do that is to leave it P2P.
Comments
how come people are like its still got 2500 players THATS NOTHING even without bots included
and this is what i meant above by giving the previous poster a +1 to insight. its just too much trouble quite frankly.
as for f2p killing games you might wana reevaluate that. LotRO? DDO? both are now profitable and the creation of new content, even for a game as old as DDO is regular. LotRO's failing b/c of f2p has given them the money to finally finish their next expac Rise of Isengard.
f2p for AoC has been a mixed bag, but at first it was profitable, i have no idea now. WAR's f2p is only lvls 1-10 so i dont think you can blame its failure on f2p.
im honestly trying hard to think of an f2p game thats been destroyed by going f2p. even EQX, which is really only freemium, has had a constant income stream and i know players in EQ2 that play on the EQX server b/c of the options to buy things when they want. as much as i have a great distaste for SoE's model over Turbine's they are doing well and people are enjoying the game. /shrug
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Seems that they are saying 2500 players are logged on at one time during peak hours. Most people associate peak login numbers to be 10% of the total subscription base so that is a healthy number of folks still paying a monthly fee. Also since they are more than likely just talking about one of the more populated servers and not the game in whole that also ups the number of total subscribers by a decent amount.
As far as going free to play the game already has a 14 day trial. That gives someone enough time to decide if they like the game or not. If someone likes it they will subscribe and if they do not like it the game being free is not going to make them want to play and spend money in a cash shop anyway.
the game has one server so 2500 WITH bots your lucky to see anything in pvp zones, not to mention i dont care about people playing a 14 day free trial to decide if they like it i want the 100,000 old players to come back to the game they love all i want is daoc to do something to bring those players back
if they make it free and add a store it will prolly be the only game i'd play with a store(and even spent money on it) ,well ok i guess GW is also like that, ok second game :P
I'd play it.
But I'd pay to play it again if they sorted things out. X-realming is lame but it's become de rigueur - even in the BGs when I was bringing up an alt last year you'd see hibs beating down on albs for a few minutes then half of the hibs mysteriously dissapear and 5 minutes later albs are taking CK =P just sucks the fun out of it.
Afraid to lose the income of loyal "forgot about recurring billing" people still playing?
They should have it free to download and just a sub, maybe 10 bucks/month would prob double the player base easy.
I doubt it, the game was something silly like £3 to buy the last i saw it in the stores here.
The trial is free to download. I think you can start subscribing that account after that is over, but I may be wrong.
Mythic is owned by EA and Ea owns Ultima Online. With the age of Ultima Online you would think its free to play. But EA likes money so the subs stay.
DAOC will never go F2P because it is paid for!
Every dollar they take in is pure profit. Sure they have a skeleton crew of lackies and a monkey that's in charge of 'development' and a small budget for hardware and bandwith and that is it. They game probably still has around 5000 active subs. That's $75,000 in free money every month.
Our only 'hope' is to wait for DAOC2 and I don't think we're ever going to see it in our lifetime. EA gobbled up Mythic and ruined it.
why is daoc not free yet?
Dude, EA owns it. They could remake it into a F2P game but there is no guarantee that it would be worth the work. PvP games like DaoC doesn't make well as F2P since they end up P2win, and they are still getting in money on it as it is.
DaoC wont be made F2P, possibly WAR but I have my doubt on that as well. There is a reason that all the successful F2P games are more focused on PvE (and yes, that includes AoC as well, it is a PvE game in the core). Selling items for real money just make PvP games too inbalanced to be fun.
Well, there is the slim chance that MJ get some money and buys up the IP, or make a game similar to how DaoC 2 should be in a slightly different setting. I don't think he is the type that can stay away from making games in the long run.
Another of Mythics founders are BTW leading a MMO project for Zenimax (Bethesda)... A mix between DaoC and the "Elder scrolls" would be interesting (but I really have no clue what they are working on).
Put this picture back in the game's loading screen: http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20020424/daoc01.jpg
Then put the game back to this game version: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/DAOCanniversarycover.jpg (This is DAoC's first game box or similar to it)
Then we (I and my Dark Age of Camelot Mates) would come back to play for a while and would resubscribe once in a while to check out our characters and stuff too till the day that we die as one our side hobbies.
The game's expansions has reduced any chance in coming back I had to really not good odds. The creation of instances, the introduction to arulite and free class gear handouts all the time from class trainers, Trials of Atlantis is when players started to require players to use voice chat for Raid PvE and nothing was done to help save DAoC's text chat culture from being left out of groups if they didn't join the voice chat and RvR suffered the same fate (Simple Group Finder tools would have solved this), poor quality classes added (Banshee, Vampiir, Heretic, Warlock, etc), the game's world size has gotten too big when it used to be only a couple of places people your level could be, no expansions ever came out that explored the idea of realm invasions.
If I had a time machine I would love to go back and play the original Dark Age of Camelot again or even just go play an Original DAoC Version Free Shard but there isn't one. MMORPG Media is not like most game media, and you can't just go back and play the original game. That is unfortunate too because you can spend so much of your life in them. I wonder a lot at people who play Everquest if they ever encountered the same problems DAoC players did. Or Ultima Online players, or Meridian 59 players, or Asheron's Call players, etc.. World of Warcraft almost was going to succeed because its expansions always built on top of the original game for the most part until recently Blizzard changed it so that level 60 account characters had their protective barrier (which let them stay level 60) removed.
The next MMORPG to understand that players want: a Safe and Stable MMORPG that allows Everyone to play, developers that can recognize struggling portions of their players and solve their problems, to have Expansions that built On Top of the game and not Into the game, or to not be afraid of the game just uprooting itself and changing the game into something else that they don't want, will be the next biggest MMORPG that has players play it forever.
You should be playing on Uthgard server then. No expansions, Old Frontiers.
Waiting for Camelot Unchained
True.
They won't go f2p since there's still players who sub. I come back and sub it seems every other month.
If they made a daoc2, they'd get my money for another 10 years
Already spent ~$2000 on the game sub and boxes 
I'd play f2p DAOC in a hearbeat
hope EA considers it
EQ2 fan sites
It's not free yet due to the 1000 people still subbing.. If they were smart, they'd all get together and quit, then Mythic would have no choice but to make DAOC f2p... So, thank the 1000 people still subbed...
Rallithon Oakthornn
(Retired Heirophant of the 60th season)
INSTA OMG WTF PWN DRAGONFANG! good old days
I'd just like to update all you ftp pushers. Daoc has made many many new changes and there are far less Buff bots with the new NPC buffs you can buy that are on a 2 hour timer. A perfect buffbot with + 25% to enhancments for example gives you +155 to str/con ,where as the NPC buffs give you +140 at lvl 50. Hardly worth the extra $15 a month to own a buffbot. Since the new gold/bp rewards in all battle grounds the lvl 49 Cathal Valley BG is an absolute blast and is so close to old emain that I really dont have a legit complaint about the game anymore. You can purchase artifacts and Master levels with BP or Glass now so thats no longer an issue. You can purchase Dragon armor for scales which drop in malm and the new repeatable quests in Atlanitis can net you around 10p in 2 hours of farming witha a solo NPC buffed toon. With my rr9L7 zerker I can wtf pwn most any stealther dumb enough to hit me on bled bridge and I do not own a buffbot. Daoc has worked 99% of the buggs out and I am completely satisfied once again. Anyone still complaining about buffbots hasn't played the game in quite awile.
every server is pretty much *well not pact* but still busy ..the only 2 that are dead are the co-op / pvp servers
the game truly does play like a f2p game..i think if they did open it up f2p it would bring LOADS more to the game..maybe too many imo...the only knock i have on the game is that you can go 1-50 in a day and there is zero pve going on at lvls 1-50 wich is a shame cuz the world is pretty big and dungens are fun
imo they just need to come out with a diff mmo and less focus on pvp like daoc..when your powerlvling in bg it feels and gets repetive like a f2p game and everything is handed to you ..wich is a shame cuz theres alot of wasted space an content..but when / if you ever pve it feels more like a p2p ..it kinda reminds me alot like WAR but WAR's pve was horrible...but daoc still did bg's right..its not some compact arena type like wow's bg..its the best going now with shadowbane servers shutdown...its the best pvp game going handsdown
You may want to follow DOMINUS. The game who's goal is to take a DAOC like game..taking it to the next level(no...it won't be ftp).My guess is a launch by mid-year.
One problem with going F2P is that the devs would have to start paying attention to the game again. Not only to make the initial transition but F2P games really do need new items coming out on a periodic basis in order to keep the game making money. you need new mounts to sell and new pets and all that jazz. If a game is P2P it may not make as much money but it often will continue to make money off the few thousand subscriptions it has left even if you never touch the code base. Look at Vanguard. Completely stuck were it was but pulling in its little subscription the the people who love it and stay with it. A pay to play game is very cheep to simply let run if you already have the infrastructure running for other games. Vanguard can continue to run on a little server in the corner of the server room that contains EQ2 because sony is going to need to maintain the networks and rackspace and backups for all this anyway. no big deal to add one more little thing to the cycle. Same with DAoC and ultima online and even Warhammer. They can continue to run as long as SWTOR justifies keeping a server room runing for EA.
Now certainly if they want to get this title making more money then they will need to probably move it to F2P but for now, they can just keep it on the back burner and the easiest way to do that is to leave it P2P.
All die, so die well.