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EverQuest II: Stats Show Impressive Growth Since F2P
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
According to a pair of 'tweets' by Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley, EverQuest II has shown impressive growth since going free to play in early December.
We are seeing some amazing growth in EQ2. 40% increase in daily logins since going f2p. 300% increase in new players.
And 200% increase in Item sales. Plus we have added a lot of new subs. All during the time that some really good competition hit the market.
What about you? Have you tried EverQuest II since it went F2P? Let us know!
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Comments
I think it's a positive sign that well done F2P systems (where you can actually play through most or all content free and there is no pay-to-win items for sale) are profitable. I'd like to think a lot of games would benefit from this kind of model, for one main reason.
MMOs need people online to be interesting.
P2P games are locked in the dilemma that a given player is very unlikely to invest their money into more than one game at a time. Furthermore, if they do have a subscription in one game, they are also quite unlikely to spend their playing time on another MMO.
Free accounts might not bring much money in themselves to the F2P games, but they bring the people online, which in turn brings more paying customers. Bandwidth is not a cost factor anymore, so the free players don't really cost the company running the MMO anything.
Here's hoping EA will also realize this some day and adopt the F2P model for a few of their slowly dying games (UO and WAR say hello).
ya it was the thing to do ,a lot never experienced eq2 and went directly to wow ,but eq2 has been following along for all those years also and most are like eq2?nha i dont want to put money into that too many bad review by making it f2p like this people get to experience it and make their own mind .i guess by the numbers they like what they experience!
Ehh... a lot of people actually DO complain on the official forums about it! About how empty most of the zones feel. Saying the server is full and yet they encounter hardly any people ingame, because each instance allows too few people!
Actually the alarming thing is after going "free to play" almost of these mmo's end up making much bigger profits than when it was pay to play, figure that one out. I can sort of see why, there is no upfront cost, no credit card needed to even try the game out, so it brings more prospective customers into the game.
If you think world of warcraft is big, its actually very tiny to the playerbases of some of these f2p titles, Dungeon fighter online for example has over 200 million players worldwide. thats over 10 times what wow has. The major hurdle to get past for these p2p gone f2p mmo's is just how much content to offer for free, and just how much to charge for. Some get it right, some get it way wrong. But either way in most cases they do far better as f2p than they ever did as p2p.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Ok great. Now that they aren't sinking and can get back on the boat, how about repeating the same with the better game, Vanguard!!!
Also to answer the question, Yes I have tried the game since it went F2P and it turned me off completely. Having to pay to unlock my characters gear, chat and auction house usage....that's just not right. Why play F2P when I can sub and get everything unlocked for a measly $15 a month? Not only that but the expansion I thought was going to be fantastic, and the game mechanics introduced are, but it's not enough to justify an expansion price and should have been part of the normal content patches. Probably wont' touch this game again, if at all, until the next expansion that actually earns it's fee.
Yep, made a post like this myself on the official forums. It's just killing the game for me personally.
No signature, I don't have a pen
I left for good since F2P...
Yes, I have. And its complete robbery what they're doing. Plus all the glitches and problems, including the massive memory leak thats existed since the game was released are still there. I used to love EQ2 and its still my favorite game next to SWTOR but if EQ2 is doing so much better, then where the hell is the money being spent? Because it isn't being spent on the game.
More details on the link in my signature. I posted a two part long review.
Siveria: Fundamentally, the subscription model used by MMORPGs is flawed. Unlike the magazine/newspaper subscription models this model derives from, the MMO sub misses out on the largest piece of revenue from the print sub model -- advertising revenue! MMORPGs haven't (yet) incorporated loads of in-game ads to pay the bills. Read a story in a magazine or in a newspaper and your eyes will skim over a dozen ads trying to sell you products. If the MMORPGs had carried this business model foward, we'd have the 'Nokia Firebrand Quest' with 2-5 product plugs in each quest, and level 23 Sponsored by General Electric.
The P2P is failing because the microtransaction model of F2P + CashShop recaptures some of this 'lost' revenue
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
personally i think f2p will always win over p2p apart from some exceptions..namely wow,swtor maybe.time will tell..main reason is there is absolutely no layout in money whatsoever.why pay for something when you can d/load,test and decide if its right game for you before you want to layout anything.. i dont understand why people quit a game just because its gone f2p..i personally was glad when lotro went f2p..it brought masses of people into the game..
my main concern when lotro went f2p was how the community was going to be.turned out pretty good also.maybe someone that quit could give reasons when this game went f2p why they quit.i found myself playing eq2 a lot more and ended up subbing to game..which i guess its wot soe hoped for.
i think eq2 is a fantastic game..maybe not has polished as wow..a bit rough round the edges but still a fatastic game.i will say one more thing on the subjuect..recntely swtor was released..now i would have played and subbed to this game but for the fact that in the uk it costs £45 which for me is a lot of money..so for me i had no choice,could'nt afford the game.but if it went f2p i would probably play and end up subbing.i think its the initial layout for stuff that people dont like and i do understand that gaming companies need to recoup some of their money that they have invested in the game.just for some people they do not have the money.and from what i hear eqnext will be the same as well.
My family and I are three of these new accounts, always wanted to get into EQ2 and this is the perfect time. Being a "serious" gamer I wanted a "kick back" with the kids game.
Some F2P MMOs do have ads on their login screens. Years ago before it was F2P, EQ2 even introduced the /pizza command, which automatically opened your browser and took you to the Pizza Hut web site for you to place an order.
ya today what kill a game very quick is the lack of meeting other player it isnt anything else!i bet this is one big reason wow is going 64 bit it wont be huber graphic etc but we might see a huge bump in number of player we can interact with if we re using 64 bit!i can picture content specificly tailored to 64 bit user!like instead of 40 man bg might see 80 man bg same for wintergrasp style fight we might see 500 man fight instead of typical 250 .i agree with lot of player here check in the fleet zone in swtor even lowering everything if you meet 250 player in that zone you wont get pass the 25 fps mark(and if you are lucky)this is one reason this game is more of a corpg.maybe we re wrong here ,cause if you got to tatooine anywhere there it is a huge desert some are pvp i see people pvping there ,maybe it is a special area of server designed specificly for high number ,i dont know any that have tested this with say 100 vs 100 but i doubt it if blizzard cant make it happen with all the money they made in the past so far i dont see how ea could.they havent exactly use microsoft technology donnybrook,i dont think they use differential compression from ms either .corp tend to try to dev their own solution and very rarelly get successfull at it!there is a reason ms is THE top dog in software,THEY KNOW THEIR TURF!
Funny, because I was thinking about messing around in EQ2 until GW2 drops since SWTOR isn't for me. EQ2 is one game I didn't play very much of because I had other distractions, so most of the content is completely new to me. Might as well give it a shot I guess. I'll download it now.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I like to see a good game that was designed to be as good as a pay to play game become free to play.
I have played over 40 mmorpgs, from F2P to P2P, etc! Right now, I am having a blast with Everquest 2 and I can tell you right away, that this game is really good, when you get into it. It may be different in the beggining, but after a time it becomes a beauty!
If you feel like you want to come into a good, mature, casual and social guild, then pick the server; "Freeport" and send me a tell! The guild I am in, makes the experience alot better! My name is: Sulfury.
Hope to see ya in-game!
Played EQIIX for about 200 hours, Spend about 50$ on the free portion and got my character up to about 40 with multiple alts ranging from 1-30.
Unfortunatly that money has now been wasted because I had an 80 on Nagafan.
Sorry SOE but you messed up again.
well eqx i have to agree was a disgrace..but they seem to have got it right this time..its just a shame that it takes them so long to learn..you only have to look at the way they totally ignored vanguard for that..that game could have been so much more as well.
I just hate how they waited so long to fully F2P.
I wasted 20$ on Spell and Item unlocks for my level 40 Shadowknight just to have them let me be able to play my level 80 Shadowknight for free?
Edit: I am honestly DLing it as we speak because I want to take a break from SWTOR (Played it like crazy for the last week) but there is no way I am going to shell out the same amount of money.
I'll hit you up on that ingame.
I was playing for a while and then they released the patch that removed Shader 3.0 (which apparently was buggy for some and not for others) and my performance has since gone down to unacceptable levels again.
They can kiss my ass if they think I'll be purchasing anything from their store when the game still runs like it does (across 3 different PC generations the game has been like this)!
It's a real pitty, too, because I was having fun with a couple of friends but we've all decided after the removal of Shader 3.0 (which will realistically never make a return despite what SOE tells us).
I wish I didn't seem so bitchy but it really was a deal breaker. My game was looking fantastic and running excellently. Now it looks like dog poo and runs like it, too.
Of course the numbers went up, you can log in for free.You can even play free if you dont mind severe restrictions and being majorly gimped. Once people figure out they are spending more and getting less being nickle and dimed, the numbers will shoot down again. If you actually like the game , you are better off paying the gold sub
I enjoy EQ2 I have played it off and on since its launch and still play eq1 from time to time. I just cannot get past the avators look like something from gumby.