Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MMO's that have gone free to play
GrayGhost79
Member UncommonPosts: 4,775
I'm trying to think of all the MMO's that have converted from the pay to play model to the free to play. So far the list below is all I can remember. If anyone has any others to add please do. They must have launched with a mandatory subscription fee. I won't count War as it's just an extended free trial.
1) City of Hero's/Villains
http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/
2) Champions Online
http://www.champions-online.com/
3) DC Universe Online
http://www.dcuniverseonline.com/
4) Lord of the Rings Online
http://www.lotro.com/free.php?
5) Dungeon and Dragons Online
6) Age of Conan
http://www.ageofconan.com/playfree
7) Pirates of the Burning Sea
http://www.burningsea.com/page/home
8) Ever Quest II Extended
http://everquest2.com/free_to_play/extended_faq
(Thanks to Omali 9-13)
9) Hellgate London
10) Alganon
11) Crimecraft
12) Global Agenda
13) FusionFall
http://fusionfall.cartoonnetwork.com/splashpage.php
14) Fallen Earth (Thanks to bugse82)
http://www.gamersfirst.com/fallenearth/
15) All Points Bulletin Reloaded (Thanks to just2duh)
http://www.gamersfirst.com/age-gate/?fbid=CCbRlw1Nigb
16) Anarchy Online (Thanks to Nadia)
http://www.anarchy-online.com/wsp/anarchy/frontend.cgi?func=frontend.show&template=main
17) RF Online (Thanks to Nadia)
http://www.playrf.com/index.asp
Coming Soon!
1) Star Trek Online
http://www.startrekonline.com/
2) Lineage 2 (Thanks to bugse82)
http://www.lineage2.com/gd/play-your-way.html
Went Free to Play and then closed
(Thanks to Nadia for pointing out 1 & 2)
1) Sims Online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_Online
2) Shadowbane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowbane
3) Lego Universe (will be closed soon pointed out by gervaise1)
Comments
Hellgate London
http://www.hellgate.t3fun.com
Alganon
http://www.alganon.com
Crimecraft
http://www.crimecraft.com
Global Agenda
http://globalagendagame.com/
FusionFall
http://fusionfall.cartoonnetwork.com/splashpage.php
Seems like half the P2P market switched.
Fallen Earth
http://www.gamersfirst.com/fallenearth/
Lineage 2 (soon)
http://www.lineage2.com/gd/play-your-way.html
The thing is most of those games sucked pretty bad at some point in their history or are getting old..
So the ones that started off bad .. like AOC they could never recover the playerbase so in the end to get more people in they had to go f2p..
Others like EQ2/LOTRO/Pirates/COH/COV/DDO are getting old and find it hard to get new players in as well.. so f2p was a good option..
the others probally just sucked and never really had enough subs to keep going without doing some kind of cash shop and f2p model..
Any of the real good MMORPGs that have enough subs to keep going probally will never go f2p.
So far that pretty much seems to mean only WOW then.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Even games that are free have items that can be bought so being free isn't always the end.
They may have a flow of players now but in this case conversion to cash is lower because most of such players play there because it is free and are not willing to pay for anything. In particular this is true for people from the developing countries.
Best MMORPG games 2011
They're not even worth playing for free.
Wut?
Tell that to DDO and LoTRO, who saw 500% Increase in Profits since they went F2P.
I think you're mistaken at how many people are actually willing and do spend money in F2P. I know I've spent my fair share in the past. Most recently, in the past year I've probably spent $200 in League of Legends.
Im not sure of the intent of your statement but I do agree. I tried a handful of the games on this list and left either right away or after a time playing. A sub fee has never been a reason I left a game and making a game F2P isnt going to improve the quality of any of them. It does however allow the games to count all the accounts created and tell the world how wildly sucessful the game is since moving to F2P.
Really? This game sucks and Im not having fun? Im going to unsub right now. Thanks for the tip.
LoTR, CoH and DCOnline (when SOE get's their shift together) are the only ones worth putting time into imo.
I am glad to see all this b.s go F2P though, I think there should only be one or two that are P2P. SWTOR, WoW and Rift will stay f2p for some time, I think. War Hammer and Aion - do they even have people playing?
And this is why I hate F2P.
With F2P, you get to spend what you want to spend. And if you want to "buy" the ENTIRE game, you're going to be spending way more than you would have if it was B2P.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
@Creslin
yOu control what you buy...and in LoL, it's entirely optional. the only thing you can get that enhances game play are runes, and you cant use $$ for that.
I realize this.
But if LoL had been a B2P game where everyone pays $60 and gets the whole thing...that's all you would ever spend. That, and expansion packs which typically offer MUCH greater value per dollar than F2P items.
Instead, it is F2P. And if you want to get everything in the game, you will be spending bank.
And also...LoL isn't an MMORPG so it could very easily be B2P...they can't really justify "needing" the extra revenue from P2P or cash shops like MMORPGs do.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I like skins. They like money. It works out well.
If you hate that people spend money on stuff like that, then that's really nobody's problem. LoL has a very good system. You can absolutely, 100%, play the game forever without spending a dime. No where in the entire game does it force you to spend a single penny. Spending money in LoL is 100% Optional. I own 58 champs, that I've bought purely with in game money. I have 3 pages of runes, that have been bought purely with in game money.
You get absolutely nothing game enhancing for it. There are very few F2P games out there where they don't force you to spend money eventually. LoL is one of them.
What have I gotten for my $200?
Well... most of my characters look different. I've collected a few limited edition skins. And I got a couple IP 3 day IP Boosts that helped me buy runes faster, when I had some real money left over in my account. They really didn't do much, but was worth what I had left over.
Don't care that your character looks different? Don't spend money. Pretty simple.
$200 over the last year is well worth the enjoyment they have given me with their game. If you know the game, you can easily tell that I play quite a bit, with an average of 3 or 4 Ranked Summoner's Rift matches a day and maybe 1 or 2 Dominion matches per day.
I could EASILY spend $200 on a nice night out for me and the wife. Bump that up a couple hundred more if we want to go see a show or anything of that sort.
As far as MMOs go, the only one I can remember spending money on is Wurm Online. I think I spent $100 for a deed and some other stuff on that game, but not much more. It was worth it and I'm sure my little bit of money went alot further and helped alot more, than if it was spent on a bigger game.
With the updates and server upgrades that have came out over the course of the last year, I'd say that Riot has spent my $200 very wisely.
But yeah, $200 or $100 is much better than spending $50-60 on a game then paying fees here and there. I don't think you understand just how costly continued development and server costs are. Think of it this way, if they have 5 people working on continued development, that's around $375,000 per year. To make up for that cost with 0% profit, you're looking at 7,500 box sales at new release prices. And lets be real here, 5 people aren't going to be able to push out jack squat. I work in the software industry and I can tell you from first hand knowledge, that salaries constitute a VERY small portion of the costs associated with the development of software.
Now, how many P2P games and F2P games out there take your money and don't give you crap in return, other than the ability to play their game? The answer is: Not very fricken many. When a game shows that they care about their game, cares about their customers, then to me that's worth spending money on. I have no problem with them making a profit. That's what companies do.
Do games like anarchy online and ryzom count or are they considered in the extended free trials batch?
I don't hate the people that spend money on F2P games...I just don't like the business model in general.
Anyway...
I don't think it's really fair to compare the pricing of things completely unrelated to gaming when you can easily compare F2P game pricing with B2P game pricing. Like to like, as it were.
The way I see it...if you want everything in an F2P game, you really should not be paying MUCH more than you would have for an equivalent B2P offering. So if I would spend $60 to get everything in a B2P game, then I would accept paying maybe $80 for the same in an F2P game...but no more. I think that's reasonable.
But that's never the way it works. Microtransactions are almost always implemented in a way that gives you much less value for your dollar.
Take Dragon Age for example. EA released a DLC item "The Warden's Keep" for $7 when DA came out. It had maybe 1.5 hours of content and a new area.
You may think that $7 sounds reasonable...but compare this with what traditional expansion packs (like for NWN2) would offer. Expansion packs are normally $30 and offer around 25 hours of gameplay. Doing some simple math here...
The DLC gives you 1 hour of content for $4.66 and the expansion pack gives you 1 hour of content for $1.20. Almost a 400% price increase!!!
This type of price gouging is incredibly common with microtransactions...and a lot of folks buy into it because of the denomination effect (you are more willing to pay lots of money in small chunks than all at once).
So really, I see F2P as getting less for more even though you have the option of playing a stripped down game for free. Personally, I would rather just pay a flat fee and get the whole game instead of being nickeled and dimed until I spend waaay mroe than I would have on a B2P game.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I added quite a bit more to my last post while you were typing that. It addresses some of your points.
But, I have to agree that the majority of F2P games and DLC games out there don't give you the value of your money in return. Be it with what you're actually buying, or where they spend that money on in the further development of the game. I only spend my money where I see fit.
For instance: I have played quite a bit of World of Tanks. I have not spent a single penny on the game, due the way they handle that money and how they are charging you. I fully enjoy the game, but I do not like how they have handled the way they force you to spend money eventually. Such as: TANKS ARE FREAKING EXPENSIVE! AND THE GRIND IS INSANE! You really can't get very far in the game unless you play literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of matches. I have played several hundred and I am barely into the Medium Tank range. The game itself is solid, but the company and methods behind charging are not.
What have they spent that money on since release? New ideas of trying to get money out of you? I've played the game on and off for about a year and a half, I can't tell you a single thing that has changed over that time period. Where as games like LoL, I can't tell you what has changed in that time period, because it's just simply too much to keep track of.
Not true there is some F2P functioality to wow now. The fact is F2P is starting to become mainstream now. with the sucsess of games like DDO & LotRO once they went F2P it is clear that the developers make more money from F2P then they do from subscriptions because people are willing to buy points/credits once they realy get into a game. Even the CEO of CCP has noticed this.
that's a great point, however. DLC pretty much destroy's your concept - which I do aggree with. implying, that even though a game is "finished" the craze is to add more content for players to buy, which I don't like. In the LoL setup, I control what I buy, why do i buy $15 of DLC for one chars skin who I really want and could care less about the others. Also, Dominion, in an B2P that would have been a $10 content
Would be easier and way shorter to list the games that haven't switched to F*cough*2P.
I'm not a big fan of DLC right now either...at least not how it's implemented. But the way I feel is...
If you buy something in a big package (B2P) you normally get a great value for your money (depending on the game of course). Just think about how much enjoyment someone can get by buying Guild Wars or Oblivion and nothing else?
If you buy something in small installments, you get poorer value for your money, and you normally wind up paying more for the same stuff. This is due to, as I said earlier, vendors exploiting the denomination effect.
So even though B2P games are not using microtransactions, I much prefer a hybrid B2P/microtransaction model to a purely F2P model. At least with the hybrid model you still get tons of value when you buy the game...in F2P it's ALL microtransactions.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I'm sorry man, but I don't buy this at all. Salaries constitute a VERY small portion of the costs associated with the development of software....really????
All you need to develop software is...
1. A working space. (Rent)
2. Equipment. (Computers and servers to develop and test on)
3. Development Software. (Visual Studio and similar for graphics development)
4. (OPTIONAL) Licensing fees. (for IPs or engines that you use...but in the case of game engines this is essentially like outsourcing labor)
5. HIGHLY SKILLED labor. (don't forget you have to pay for benefits and retirement!)
I just don't see how items 1-3 could get anywhere remotely close the cost of labor. And as for item 4, if you buy the rights to use an engine, then you really just outsourced your labor in developing an engine to another company.
If you want "proof" please look at NCSoft's financial statements here: http://www.ncsoft.net/global/ir/earnings.aspx#none.
You will note on the most recent one that labor cost was over FIFTY PERCENT of their total expenses. Also, this statement INCLUDES everything NCSoft does like running their games, marketing, paying royalties etc. etc. And IMO, developing software is much more labor intensive than running a game, which is more equipment intensive. And paying royalties requires hardly any labor at all.
Oh and as for "server costs" and networking costs, server costs would be (part of) depreciation, which is noted as D&A on NCSoft's statement...it's less than 1/10th of labor. And bandwidth cost is just included in "other" expenses...it's less than 1/15th of labor.
So I'm sorry again man, but I think you're wrong.
And as for the whole F2P vs. P2P argument. I honestly wouldn't have any problems with an F2P game that made you pay for content IF IT WAS PRICED REASONABLY. But it never is. The way F2P games work, is they have the paying customers subsidize the non-paying customers. So you can either pay a whole lot (hundreds) and get the full game, pay nothing and get a stripped down version, or pay somewhere in between and get less than you would have got if the game was B2P.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
375000$ wow thats 75000$ per year for one. 6250$ per month.
Nice salaries you got in usa i say. Tip in easten europe you will drop salary cost 5 tiems and they will be happy working for you.
And you just saved 300000$. And i know that corporations are saving money like that.
I would think $75K is low for a game developer in the US...I mean maybe a junior one that would be okay for. I know that SharePoint server admins make upwards of $90K and game developing is a much more demanding job.
Oh and that's not counting fringe benefits like health insurance, stock options, retirement, etc. etc.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Whoa now oO, this wasn't meant to spark any heated discussions, I was just trying to get a comprehensive list of MMO's that converted from pay to play to free to play.
With so many making the conversion I thought it might be handy to have a list.