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F2P a necessity for upcoming MMOGs?
Lanfea
Member UncommonPosts: 224
first of all please accept my excuse by opening up another 'f2p discussion'. i know it gets boring and most of the time supporters and critics don't move an inch away from their oppinions, but i had a thought i would like your opinion about.
thesis: upcoming high budget (triple a / 25+ mio $ developmentcosts) mmogs have to be released with a f2p payment model because of the heavy and increasing competition the companies are forced to.
background: lets imagine that all current client based mmog players are one big cake and this cake gets bigger every year, not quite so fast and overwhelming like in 2005/6 because of WoW, but since then the player base average growth rate seams to be constant at 15-20%. during the last years (2005 - 2010) only 2 to 5 high budget mmorpgs were released in a year, all with retailsells and a p2p payment model. those went in competition to get a piece of the existing cake and potential new customers. since 2010 the growth rate of new customers slowed down a bit and with sw:tor as the only big name well known beyond the gaming community it might will reduce more. on the other side more and more high budget mmogs are coming. i count about 20 (!) high budget mmogs which are announced to be released until 12/2013. all of them want a piece of the cake and with all the current f2p high budget games like lotro, aoc etc around, the heavy comeptition, it would be very unlikely that the new ones will stand a chance with retailsells and p2p model.
appendix: upcoming high budget mmogs are: sw:tor / the secret world / guild wars 2 / archeage / tera / warhammer 40k / mechwarrior online* / dragons prophet* / planetside 2* / end of nations* / defiance / wildstar / otherland* / tribes: ascend* / black gold / age of wulin* / world of darkness* / neverwinter* / marvel universe / blade & soul / class3 / eligium* / middle ages rising kingdoms / raiderz* / firefall* / unveiled: the supernatural* / project c .... did i miss one?
(* = announced as f2p)
Comments
It will likely be box sales + p2p for 6 months to a year following by f2p.
It would be prudent for any mmorpg to incorporate into its design f2p infrastructure from the start, even if not use it in the first 6 months.
Depending on the success of GW2, b2p followed by f2p with cash shop may skip p2p phase alltogether.
A necessity? No. Likely a more common occurance? Yes. People are greedy will do what they can to get the most they can. It was only a matter of time before the market grew enough in size to attract the same greed strategy that is applied in most other areas of daily life. Capitalism at its best.
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Yeah cause a company letting you play their game for free, with no forced monthly fee and even let you have options to improve your gaming experience ... wow, that is some greedy practices. I don't know how they live with themselves. /sarcasm
F2P isn't a necessity, but choice definitely is. Choice of how to pay and what can be paid for is more in line with how today's generation pays for entertainment than a single subscription model is. Fallen Earth, DDO, AoC, LOTRO... they offer a variety of tiers that one can enjoy their entertainment on, just like every other entertainment service these days. More importantly, the players are not locked into any one tier and can free move around them.
Choice of payment plan and extra options is standard in any other modern entertainment service; there's no reason why it wouldn't end up that way in MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
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Having bought 2 game and paid Life-Time subscriptions too them I can now say. " IVE SEEN THE LIGHT "
and felt the " LOVE ".
MAGA
I support the low-cost B2P with cash shop model. At least it's a win-win situation for both companies and players.
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Counter-debate
If you look at some of the games that started out with p2p but had to go f2p because of declining sub numbers you will find that the player base increased short term but declined back to its original numbers prior to going f2p. It's debateable if there revenue increased during that short period of increase.
The reason for the low player base even for a "freedom" game has nothing to do with its payment option but more to do with the quality of the game IMO.
F2P is not the win-win situation for all games.
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In general I agree with the assertion that large budget MMOs are under financial pressure to include F2P at least in some limited form as WoW has done with unlimited duration free trial (a minimal Freemium model). I think the largest question at this time is how would such games implement Free to Play and whether they would go directly into F2P or open as P2P and then convert.
I did not see an announcment that WoD was going to be f2p, but if so, it may be the only f2p on that list I would maybe be playing....The rest are either b2p or p2p for me....I am not a big f2p fan, as not enough run a cash shop that is not p2w (some do, but they are a minority).
Too true. DDO has reported massive profit since going F2P, and is even well-known for stating that they began making a lot more money than when they were P2P. However, the free model is VERY restricted. I started playing the free version and I realized that it was good enough to sink in a few dollars every so often for the features they restricted. But on the whole, I don't think that's a direction the industry should be going.
I can honestly say I prefer P2P models over F2P. Why? Because it simply takes some proper funding to keep the game going. Server maintenance, updates, expansions, they all need a proper income to realize that. F2P models tend to either mess up, or just feel empty to me. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but from my experience, P2P models just tend to last longer and do better. I don't mind giving up €13 a month for a game I enjoy.
P2P MMO's that suddenly go F2P are usually MMO's that have failed. And when they fail, it usually only goes downhill from there. This is something a good portion of the player community hardly seem to realize. LOTRO went downhill ever since it went F2P as well. Another example of that is Champions Online. I won't go into detail about them though, as the opinion is entirely my own.
I think people are throwing too much opinion into this as facts. Especially when it comes to the current state of certain freemium games. It's no different the people going on about how so and so P2P is dying, losing subs and feels empty when they are still remaining P2P.
naive much?
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The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
Some people think that way, but I wager thats a small minority.
Most people realize that high quality MMOs wont ever start F2P. Its simply the issue that F2P games cannot get the same funding as a P2P game.