On the one hand players complain about a lack of community, and on the other hand they think game hopping is great.
Is adding one and two together so hard.
Uh, those two arguments are usually voiced by two completely different groups of players.
As far as F2P die faster than any other option goes, lets look at the facts we can see, DDO, LOTRO, AOC, and others, the P2P model was short lived, while the F2P option has kept these games afloat much longer than P2P would have.
Because those games are horrible!
If it wasn't for the F2P model, they would be vaporware by now.
Personal preference but i would prefer subscription based MMO's. Simply because i can obtain everything i want in the MMO, instead of having to pay micro transactions to get things id like. Many times the ftp games i have played with the micro transactions have been very temporary. For instance Neverwinter thats run from perfect worlds cash shop mico transactions, i had fun in jade dynasty buying all the outfits and such. Then i realized i spent alot of money on the game for pretty mediocre MMO. Its just preference though, i think 15$ is pretty cheap for a good mmo actually, especially if its one of the only games your playings.
And they went F2P because they were shallow and meaningless. Which again strengthens the point that most of the MMO's that are F2P are mediocre games at best.
And that is also why people will still sub for a good game. We have many live examples still going strong right now.
Do they? The p2p-only market is shrinking. If not for wow, it would be mostly gone by now.
All games are shallow and meaningless. They are there to entertain you .. not to give you meaning of life.
the good thing about the guy making a stand against subscription is that I wont have to run into these guys in any game.
'these people'? you are being very vague. You make it sound as if P2P communities are full of angels. I will just give you examples of the two most rotten P2P communities.
WOW
Eve Online.
Originally posted by Waterlily
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Originally posted by Waterlily
On the one hand players complain about a lack of community, and on the other hand they think game hopping is great.
Is adding one and two together so hard.
Who complains about lack of community? I don't play games for "in-game" community. I do that for fun. And yes, game hopping is great.
And this ladies and gentlemen, is why F2P are garbage.
Yeah because we know that it is an irrefutable FACT that all players who play P2P games do so for the community..right?
He didn't even imply that P2P games are full of angels, but like him, I find F2P game audiences to be much, much more annoying than those attracted to games made for the subscription model.
I also find that when a developer focuses more on gameplay rather than the cash shop, it builds and sustains a feeling of community far better than any game I've played that focuses on revenue from their cash shop.
No that is exactly what he was trying to do. Comparing F2P communities with P2P and trying to make it look as if 'these people' only exists in F2P games. Even when no F2P game can even come close to rotten communities of WOW and especially Eve Online which is notorious for harassment, scams, real life threats, griefing, abuse..you name it they got it.
So much for focusing on gameplay instead of cash shop right?
Yeah, right. WoW doesn't hold a candle to the asshattery that is Tera Online. I haven't played a single game that doesn't have instances of individual behavior such as you described, but what I have noticed in my many years of gaming is that the F2P games I have played exhibited much more of it on a more regular basis. You 'may' have had a different experience, but I think you're painting the F2P scene with rose tinted glasses.
By the way, you inferred the "full of angels" tripe, he was merely pointing out the previous statement from a F2P gamer about how he doesn't play for the community as the perfect example of why so many F2P games have garbage for community.
The only 'tripe ' i see is coming from people like you who have obvious double standards when it comes to the communities of P2P and F2P games. We can argue about this all day long but you have made up your mind. For you F2P communities are garbage and for me no F2P community can even touch the amount of garbage WOW and Eve Online communities produce.
When was the last time a F2P game was in news for all the wrong reasons like Eve Online? the in game bullying extended to real life threats. Even WOW is full of such examples.
I guess paying a measly 15 bucks a month surely doesn't make one a better person now does it?
But please tell us more how P2P communities are much better than F2P ones.
Also your 'rose colored glasses' comment is really ironic especially when you are the one who is defending that guys comment about 'these kind of people'. He was generalizing the entire F2P player base where as i gave two examples of worst P2P MMO communities to put a big hole in his theory about F2P games.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
Originally posted by Torvaldr There were how many games available at the time, you know from 1999 - 2004? You basically had a choice of Lineage, UO, DAoC, EQ, AO, and AC.
Can not let this one go unanswered...
There were about 60 games available in 2004, not your measly handful.
...
From the posts on pre-WOW MMOs on this forum, it seems like a lot of people think EQ was the sum of everything pre-2004
It was the first fully realized 3D MMO that set the benchmark for all MMOs to come after. None of the others, including UO can make that claim.
That's great, and no one is trying to take that away from you. That doesn't change the fact that the ridiculous claims of how, before WOW, MMOs were all about forced grouping, had no instant travel, were very few in number, or any of the other EQ-specific nonsense is, well... ridiculous.
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 "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by Khorrax Both you and the guy you quoted are a bit melodramatic, but he has a point. Subscriptions are a thing of the past, and I think it's a good thing. I'm a fan of the 'buy to play' model, since I started with Guild Wars, but 'free to play' allowed me to play games I would have otherwise not tried. I'm not picky, as long as the business model is fair.
A thing of the past for you, personally, perhaps.
A thing of the past for others, perhaps.
But a thing of the past for everyone, in any objective sense? No way
The anti-Sub people have been beating that drum for at least 3-4 years now, claiming "they're dead!", "they're archaic!", "they're going away!", "all MMOs will be F2P or B2P within the next year!"
Over and over again. Ad nauseum.
Yet, here we are 3-4 years later. There are still MMOs with subs alive and kicking. There are still MMOs that offer subscriptions as a "freemium" setup. There are still new MMOs coming down the road with a subscription model.
Look around the forums. Plenty of people prefer a subscription to pure F2P/Cash Shop setups. People will flat out not play a MMO if doesn't offer some kind of subscription option to bypass the arbitrary limitations and inconveniences imposed by the F2P option. Time and again, in poll after poll where people are asked if they prefer Subs or F2P/Cash Shop, Subscriptions win.
Subs aren't going anywhere. To continue to claim otherwise is nothing but pure wishful thinking.
Those of us who prefer subs and hate all that F2P/Cash Shops entail have come to accept that they're going to be around into the future. Perhaps it's time you anti-P2P folks did the same about subscriptions.
Or, you know... we could just all meet up back here another 3-4 years down the line and have this same exact discussion. You'll still be wrong then. The quotes in my signature beautifully sum up why.
What is this Dude blabbering about the Sub Era? It is still here, its just that there is a bunch of F2P games at the same time.
Some a launched as F2P and some switch to that model after failing mass appeal under a Sub Model, albeit they fail not because of the Model, but rather because of their design, they switch models to survive or even re-launch, like STO recently, the game servers have been full for 2 weeks.
In that sense, I must somehow agree with Lokto here, that guy is way making a big deal out of nothing in that post and yes it can upset one's stomach just reading him..LOL
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
For the most part pay to play will cost the average user more each month than a sub fee. Unless most are just playing it because its free and do not care about buying anything. Its a double edge sword for the gamer and the dev.
I have played both types of games and found that games that require a sub have a bit more stability towards them vs a pay to play one.
Originally posted by Khorrax Both you and the guy you quoted are a bit melodramatic, but he has a point. Subscriptions are a thing of the past, and I think it's a good thing. I'm a fan of the 'buy to play' model, since I started with Guild Wars, but 'free to play' allowed me to play games I would have otherwise not tried. I'm not picky, as long as the business model is fair.
A thing of the past for you, personally, perhaps.
A thing of the past for others, perhaps.
But a thing of the past for everyone, in any objective sense? No way
The anti-Sub people have been beating that drum for at least 3-4 years now, claiming "they're dead!", "they're archaic!", "they're going away!", "all MMOs will be F2P or B2P within the next year!"
Over and over again. Ad nauseum.
Yet, here we are 3-4 years later. There are still MMOs with subs alive and kicking. There are still MMOs that offer subscriptions as a "freemium" setup. There are still new MMOs coming down the road with a subscription model.
Look around the forums. Plenty of people prefer a subscription to pure F2P/Cash Shop setups. People will flat out not play a MMO if doesn't offer some kind of subscription option to bypass the arbitrary limitations and inconveniences imposed by the F2P option. Time and again, in poll after poll where people are asked if they prefer Subs or F2P/Cash Shop, Subscriptions win.
Subs aren't going anywhere. To continue to claim otherwise is nothing but pure wishful thinking.
Those of us who prefer subs and hate all that F2P/Cash Shops entail have come to accept that they're going to be around into the future. Perhaps it's time you anti-P2P folks did the same about subscriptions.
Or, you know... we could just all meet up back here another 3-4 years down the line and have this same exact discussion. You'll still be wrong then. The quotes in my signature beautifully sum up why.
As much as I personally don't care about the payment model if the game is enjoyable, you can't deny that every year there seem to be less and less subscription-exclusive MMOs. Of the ones that are right now subscription-exclusive, very few are very relevant anymore. Sure World of Warcraft is still subscription-exclusive, but it's really and clearly the fringe case and not the majority case.
I haven't read the whole thread but the quoted person expressed his opinion which he is entitled to. If you don't agree, fine, but I don't think starting a thread saying you wanted to vomit because someone has a different opinion than yourself is appropriate but that's just my opinion.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoar Possibly by now. But at the time LOTRO was in no danger at all of closing, playerbase and income was stable.
Indeed Lotro was stable. Lotro went hybrid to produce more revenue and I believe to convince Times Warner that they were worth buying as part of Times Warner's move to own nearly everything with the Lord of the Rings Brand.
And I think there's always going to be the Gun Jumping contingent that feel that simply because someone doesn't want to pay means they can't. Fortunately, you're wrong and subs are going the way of the dodo either way.
Nothing dies as fast as a F2P game. How long does it take before 90% of the playerbase has bailed on an F2P game? 6 minutes? 7?
Maybe we should ask that guy from this forum who keeps hopping from MMO to MMO how long he stays in an F2P, I bet he's onto another MMO before the evening is over.
And who can blame you people. You have 1001 shallow and meaningless F2P to choose from.
Care showing us some examples of these dead F2P MMOS? do you know what is ironic about your post? it was P2P MMOS that went F2P because they were all shallow and meaningless.
And they went F2P because they were shallow and meaningless. Which again strengthens the point that most of the MMO's that are F2P are mediocre games at best.
And that is also why people will still sub for a good game. We have many live examples still going strong right now.
Live examples from 8 to 10 years ago hardly mean anything when there has been a huge shift in over all gaming habits over the years. But if you can give me a recent example of a quality AAA MMO which is doing great as a P2P MMO i would agree with you.
There are no examples. This has very little to nothing to do with a 'huge shift' as you seem to think. This has a lot to do with those 'AAA quality...' MMO's being copies of said older games. People don't want to pay a monthly sub for a game which is almost completely like the older ones they used to play with some better graphics. The games are, as I already stated, mediocre at best, which is why they do not justify a subscription.
There is a reason these older games still have a sub and it has nothing to do with any major shift. I saw someone in this topic talking about game hopping. That to me defeats the purpose of an MMO where you build up a community, make friends and stick around with for years. You are just playing a single player game in an online world, hop away.
And I think there's always going to be the Gun Jumping contingent that feel that simply because someone doesn't want to pay means they can't. Fortunately, you're wrong and subs are going the way of the dodo either way.
Nothing dies as fast as a F2P game. How long does it take before 90% of the playerbase has bailed on an F2P game? 6 minutes? 7?
Maybe we should ask that guy from this forum who keeps hopping from MMO to MMO how long he stays in an F2P, I bet he's onto another MMO before the evening is over.
And who can blame you people. You have 1001 shallow and meaningless F2P to choose from.
Care showing us some examples of these dead F2P MMOS? do you know what is ironic about your post? it was P2P MMOS that went F2P because they were all shallow and meaningless.
And they went F2P because they were shallow and meaningless. Which again strengthens the point that most of the MMO's that are F2P are mediocre games at best.
And that is also why people will still sub for a good game. We have many live examples still going strong right now.
Live examples from 8 to 10 years ago hardly mean anything when there has been a huge shift in over all gaming habits over the years. But if you can give me a recent example of a quality AAA MMO which is doing great as a P2P MMO i would agree with you.
There are no examples. This has very little to nothing to do with a 'huge shift' as you seem to think. This has a lot to do with those 'AAA quality...' MMO's being copies of said older games. People don't want to pay a monthly sub for a game which is almost completely like the older ones they used to play with some better graphics. The games are, as I already stated, mediocre at best, which is why they do not justify a subscription.
There is a reason these older games still have a sub and it has nothing to do with any major shift. I saw someone in this topic talking about game hopping. That to me defeats the purpose of an MMO where you build up a community, make friends and stick around with for years. You are just playing a single player game in an online world, hop away.
If what you say is true how do you explain a game like Arch Age which started as a P2P MMO also going F2P now? and it has not even released in west yet.
Or you gonna tell me that AA copied WOW too? what about The Secret World? is that a copy of WOW too?
One has to be really stubborn to not see the big change in gaming culture and paying habits of the gamers since days of EQ / UO.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
Just because there is a fee doesn't mean there won't be jerks in the game. On the contrary, there might be more of them. Sub fees do not discriminate. I played Rift with a sub and there were tons of A-holes in that game. A sub doesn't guarantee anything expect paying a monthly fee.
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
Just because there is a fee doesn't mean there won't be jerks in the game. On the contrary, there might be more of them. Sub fees do not discriminate. I played Rift with a sub and there were tons of A-holes in that game. A sub doesn't guarantee anything expect paying a monthly fee.
You seem to have misunderstood what my posting was about. I am complaining about the shady business practices of many F2P publishers, eg how a publisher like GameForge tries to pressure kids into gambling with large sums of real life money and how F2P often means terrible update policies. Like with Aion, that didn't receive any updates for a year after it went F2P and GameForge took over.
So I am not sure where you saw me talking about "jerks ingame", but I'd like to comment on it anyway. My *personal* experience tells me that F2P attracts poor/uneducated/younger players more then P2P games. F2P games tend to have a lot worse multilanguage spam compared to P2P titles. There are far more lazy people asking stupid questions on global chat that they could have answered themselves with 5 seconds of using google. Of course that's just a part of the players, but this part seems to increase a lot when a game goes F2P.
Originally posted by Suffur I want a good MMO so bad that at this point I would pay full box price plus monthly sub only if it could hold my attention for years.
No MMO, p2p nor f2p, holds my attention for years. And i don't need that. When a MMO (or any game) starts to become non-fun, I will just move on to another. It is not like there is a lack of electronic entertainment.
And I think there's always going to be the Gun Jumping contingent that feel that simply because someone doesn't want to pay means they can't. Fortunately, you're wrong and subs are going the way of the dodo either way.
Nothing dies as fast as a F2P game. How long does it take before 90% of the playerbase has bailed on an F2P game? 6 minutes? 7?
Maybe we should ask that guy from this forum who keeps hopping from MMO to MMO how long he stays in an F2P, I bet he's onto another MMO before the evening is over.
And who can blame you people. You have 1001 shallow and meaningless F2P to choose from.
Care showing us some examples of these dead F2P MMOS? do you know what is ironic about your post? it was P2P MMOS that went F2P because they were all shallow and meaningless.
And they went F2P because they were shallow and meaningless. Which again strengthens the point that most of the MMO's that are F2P are mediocre games at best.
And that is also why people will still sub for a good game. We have many live examples still going strong right now.
Live examples from 8 to 10 years ago hardly mean anything when there has been a huge shift in over all gaming habits over the years. But if you can give me a recent example of a quality AAA MMO which is doing great as a P2P MMO i would agree with you.
There are no examples. This has very little to nothing to do with a 'huge shift' as you seem to think. This has a lot to do with those 'AAA quality...' MMO's being copies of said older games. People don't want to pay a monthly sub for a game which is almost completely like the older ones they used to play with some better graphics. The games are, as I already stated, mediocre at best, which is why they do not justify a subscription.
There is a reason these older games still have a sub and it has nothing to do with any major shift. I saw someone in this topic talking about game hopping. That to me defeats the purpose of an MMO where you build up a community, make friends and stick around with for years. You are just playing a single player game in an online world, hop away.
If what you say is true how do you explain a game like Arch Age which started as a P2P MMO also going F2P now? and it has not even released in west yet.
Or you gonna tell me that AA copied WOW too? what about The Secret World? is that a copy of WOW too?
One has to be really stubborn to not see the big change in gaming culture and paying habits of the gamers since days of EQ / UO.
You call me stubborn, but you completely ignore the valid points that were given by many people in this topic about a lot of the games that went F2P. Because they were simply not good enough for a subscription. You yourself called these games shallow and meaningless. Yet you seem to want to defend these shallow games at all costs.
And no, I am not talking about Archeache or TSW at the moment, I hope these games do well and I also hope that Archeage will be a big hit in the western market because we need something different.
Also I would like to share a link with you, and before you comment that this does not represent gamers in general, in which I agree, it still is suprisingly to see how many voted for a subscription based MMO:
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
This is what happens when a P2P MMO goes F2P, many of those who supported the MMO from the start will just end up leaving. The problems with funding and the emphasis on the cash shop slow down updates. General chat becomes appalling and so on. I hope you are in a good guild, that's is the best way I know of limiting the impact that going F2P has on your enjoyment of a MMO.
This is a message mostly towards the devs, but also a statement for my fellow gamers. I've seen bits of Darkfall for quite a few years now. I originally lost interest during my highschool years when everything else in life bogged down on me. Seeing it on steam, I was excited and even pondering whether or not to purchase it like I always wanted to. Then I saw the business model...
That death sentence for any mmo in 2013; $15 a month. Can you even fathom how utterly dissapointed I was? I've seen gameplay videos of this game; they look interesting! Fun! Good! I really, REALLY wanted to play this game soooo badly. $40? Sure! I don't mind paying a good lump of cash for an mmo. Pay once to play forever mmos are by far my favorite; unfortunately that wasn't the case here.
I still considered buying the game for awhile, but eventually came to the conclusion that in doing so, I was making a statement not just to the devs of this game, but all devs for any mmo, that subscription fees are acceptable. They're not. Cash shops; expansion packs; things like that are more than welcomed. But blatant subscription fees are a thing of the past. An ugly archaic practice that can not compete with other business practices these days. Something I have to vote 'no' at with my wallet
It's the deal breaker for me, and I'm sorry to see it happen to what looked like a really good game. I hope those of you playing this game are enjoying it thoroughly for that extra $15 a month. As for the rest of you considering whether or not to purchase this game, take into consideration what paying may mean for the rest of the gaming community. What will those added votes, your payments, do to influence the industry later on? Are you alright with the return of the subscription era? Do you wan't to motivate developers and publishers to find compromise in better business models that don't tax players? Think long and hard about this before you hit that 'purchase' button.
I don't know a if I wanted to vomit... I sort of wanted to find the person who wrote this and maybe slap some sense into them (metaphorically of course *cough*). I mean, this person is acting like the cash shop model is cheaper when it's usually more expensive. Not to mention a lot of cash shops have P2W items.
In a subscription game you pay $15 a month and get everything, all the fashion, the mounts, appearance changes for free, and sometimes even server transfers and name changes for free. In F2P cash shop games there are things like exp. pots, extra bag slots, and bank expansion coupons. Those are all deal breakers for me personally. If you want any of the cool stuff in a F2P game you have to buy it. That gets vastly more expensive than just simply playing $15 a month and getting everything.
I am personally sad that the subscription model has been shoved out the door by masses of casual players who demand every game to be free but then go ahead and complain about the lack of innovation in the genre and how expensive cash shops are.
The only game that is the exception is Guild Wars 2 which is B2P and did have a fair cash shop. Unfortunately, it now looks like ArenaNet are going to start adding RNG items to their cash shop so they're probably going to end up joining the "games with shitty cash shop models" category too.
I was on the fence about it too. I never played the original but heard some great things and stories about it. Long story short, I got drunk one night and thought it would be a great idea to download Darkfall: UW. How wrong could my judgment be? I literally projectile vomit with such force that my monitor flew off my desk, went through the drywall and framing, killed my neighbours cat, and finally exploded a transformer just outside the house, leveling the block's hydro for the weekend.
Game sucks period. Nothing would change my opinion of it. Wasn't worth the initial $40, would no way in hell be worth an additional $15/mo.
I gave it a good shot. Had troubles getting it downloaded, had troubles installing it, had troubles getting past the tutorial without the game crashing. People in game are shitheads, controls suck, UI sucks, graphics make my eyes bleed, sounds are made by a 2 year old with a fisher price set.
I thought I had a leak from my ceiling, but it was actually my fucking monitor crying tears of agony pleading me to turn the shit off.
This made me laugh, you sir should be a comedian lol
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
This is what happens when a P2P MMO goes F2P, many of those who supported the MMO from the start will just end up leaving. The problems with funding and the emphasis on the cash shop slow down updates. General chat becomes appalling and so on. I hope you are in a good guild, that's is the best way I know of limiting the impact that going F2P has on your enjoyment of a MMO.
"emphasis on cash shop slow down updates" .. i can argue that if not for F2P, games like STO, DDO, LOTRO will just die, and so all the recent updates owe it to F2P.
Oh ... here is another way to enjoy a F2P MMO .. play it solo.
I am personally sad that the subscription model has been shoved out the door by masses of casual players who demand every game to be free but then go ahead and complain about the lack of innovation in the genre and how expensive cash shops are.
Who complains?
I never complain about cash shop being expensive .. why i play for free .. cash shop prices do not concern me.
And who complain about lack of innovations? There are plenty of different settings, different features, and even online games that innovate beyond MMOs (like MOBAs, WoT, ....)
Comments
Because those games are horrible!
If it wasn't for the F2P model, they would be vaporware by now.
Do they? The p2p-only market is shrinking. If not for wow, it would be mostly gone by now.
All games are shallow and meaningless. They are there to entertain you .. not to give you meaning of life.
The only 'tripe ' i see is coming from people like you who have obvious double standards when it comes to the communities of P2P and F2P games. We can argue about this all day long but you have made up your mind. For you F2P communities are garbage and for me no F2P community can even touch the amount of garbage WOW and Eve Online communities produce.
When was the last time a F2P game was in news for all the wrong reasons like Eve Online? the in game bullying extended to real life threats. Even WOW is full of such examples.
I guess paying a measly 15 bucks a month surely doesn't make one a better person now does it?
But please tell us more how P2P communities are much better than F2P ones.
Also your 'rose colored glasses' comment is really ironic especially when you are the one who is defending that guys comment about 'these kind of people'. He was generalizing the entire F2P player base where as i gave two examples of worst P2P MMO communities to put a big hole in his theory about F2P games.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
That's great, and no one is trying to take that away from you. That doesn't change the fact that the ridiculous claims of how, before WOW, MMOs were all about forced grouping, had no instant travel, were very few in number, or any of the other EQ-specific nonsense is, well... ridiculous.
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
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
A thing of the past for you, personally, perhaps.
A thing of the past for others, perhaps.
But a thing of the past for everyone, in any objective sense? No way
The anti-Sub people have been beating that drum for at least 3-4 years now, claiming "they're dead!", "they're archaic!", "they're going away!", "all MMOs will be F2P or B2P within the next year!"
Over and over again. Ad nauseum.
Yet, here we are 3-4 years later. There are still MMOs with subs alive and kicking. There are still MMOs that offer subscriptions as a "freemium" setup. There are still new MMOs coming down the road with a subscription model.
Look around the forums. Plenty of people prefer a subscription to pure F2P/Cash Shop setups. People will flat out not play a MMO if doesn't offer some kind of subscription option to bypass the arbitrary limitations and inconveniences imposed by the F2P option. Time and again, in poll after poll where people are asked if they prefer Subs or F2P/Cash Shop, Subscriptions win.
Subs aren't going anywhere. To continue to claim otherwise is nothing but pure wishful thinking.
Those of us who prefer subs and hate all that F2P/Cash Shops entail have come to accept that they're going to be around into the future. Perhaps it's time you anti-P2P folks did the same about subscriptions.
Or, you know... we could just all meet up back here another 3-4 years down the line and have this same exact discussion. You'll still be wrong then. The quotes in my signature beautifully sum up why.
Wait a minute, isn't WoW Sub Based still?
What is this Dude blabbering about the Sub Era? It is still here, its just that there is a bunch of F2P games at the same time.
Some a launched as F2P and some switch to that model after failing mass appeal under a Sub Model, albeit they fail not because of the Model, but rather because of their design, they switch models to survive or even re-launch, like STO recently, the game servers have been full for 2 weeks.
In that sense, I must somehow agree with Lokto here, that guy is way making a big deal out of nothing in that post and yes it can upset one's stomach just reading him..LOL
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
For the most part pay to play will cost the average user more each month than a sub fee. Unless most are just playing it because its free and do not care about buying anything. Its a double edge sword for the gamer and the dev.
I have played both types of games and found that games that require a sub have a bit more stability towards them vs a pay to play one.
As much as I personally don't care about the payment model if the game is enjoyable, you can't deny that every year there seem to be less and less subscription-exclusive MMOs. Of the ones that are right now subscription-exclusive, very few are very relevant anymore. Sure World of Warcraft is still subscription-exclusive, but it's really and clearly the fringe case and not the majority case.
Indeed Lotro was stable. Lotro went hybrid to produce more revenue and I believe to convince Times Warner that they were worth buying as part of Times Warner's move to own nearly everything with the Lord of the Rings Brand.
There are no examples. This has very little to nothing to do with a 'huge shift' as you seem to think. This has a lot to do with those 'AAA quality...' MMO's being copies of said older games. People don't want to pay a monthly sub for a game which is almost completely like the older ones they used to play with some better graphics. The games are, as I already stated, mediocre at best, which is why they do not justify a subscription.
There is a reason these older games still have a sub and it has nothing to do with any major shift. I saw someone in this topic talking about game hopping. That to me defeats the purpose of an MMO where you build up a community, make friends and stick around with for years. You are just playing a single player game in an online world, hop away.
If what you say is true how do you explain a game like Arch Age which started as a P2P MMO also going F2P now? and it has not even released in west yet.
Or you gonna tell me that AA copied WOW too? what about The Secret World? is that a copy of WOW too?
One has to be really stubborn to not see the big change in gaming culture and paying habits of the gamers since days of EQ / UO.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
You can't imagine how much I wish for monthly fees in my games. For example I am playing Tera EU on the GameForge servers right now and the game has become so bad ever since it went F2P. Updates take longer - if they come at all - and the publisher now does annoying shady events to pressure 12+year old players into gambling with large amounts of real life money. *THAT* makes me want to vomit, not a $15 fee a month.
Just because there is a fee doesn't mean there won't be jerks in the game. On the contrary, there might be more of them. Sub fees do not discriminate. I played Rift with a sub and there were tons of A-holes in that game. A sub doesn't guarantee anything expect paying a monthly fee.
You seem to have misunderstood what my posting was about. I am complaining about the shady business practices of many F2P publishers, eg how a publisher like GameForge tries to pressure kids into gambling with large sums of real life money and how F2P often means terrible update policies. Like with Aion, that didn't receive any updates for a year after it went F2P and GameForge took over.
So I am not sure where you saw me talking about "jerks ingame", but I'd like to comment on it anyway. My *personal* experience tells me that F2P attracts poor/uneducated/younger players more then P2P games. F2P games tend to have a lot worse multilanguage spam compared to P2P titles. There are far more lazy people asking stupid questions on global chat that they could have answered themselves with 5 seconds of using google. Of course that's just a part of the players, but this part seems to increase a lot when a game goes F2P.
No MMO, p2p nor f2p, holds my attention for years. And i don't need that. When a MMO (or any game) starts to become non-fun, I will just move on to another. It is not like there is a lack of electronic entertainment.
You call me stubborn, but you completely ignore the valid points that were given by many people in this topic about a lot of the games that went F2P. Because they were simply not good enough for a subscription. You yourself called these games shallow and meaningless. Yet you seem to want to defend these shallow games at all costs.
And no, I am not talking about Archeache or TSW at the moment, I hope these games do well and I also hope that Archeage will be a big hit in the western market because we need something different.
Also I would like to share a link with you, and before you comment that this does not represent gamers in general, in which I agree, it still is suprisingly to see how many voted for a subscription based MMO:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/386639/Would-you-P2P-a-solid-Game-Poll.html
This is what happens when a P2P MMO goes F2P, many of those who supported the MMO from the start will just end up leaving. The problems with funding and the emphasis on the cash shop slow down updates. General chat becomes appalling and so on. I hope you are in a good guild, that's is the best way I know of limiting the impact that going F2P has on your enjoyment of a MMO.
I don't know a if I wanted to vomit... I sort of wanted to find the person who wrote this and maybe slap some sense into them (metaphorically of course *cough*). I mean, this person is acting like the cash shop model is cheaper when it's usually more expensive. Not to mention a lot of cash shops have P2W items.
In a subscription game you pay $15 a month and get everything, all the fashion, the mounts, appearance changes for free, and sometimes even server transfers and name changes for free. In F2P cash shop games there are things like exp. pots, extra bag slots, and bank expansion coupons. Those are all deal breakers for me personally. If you want any of the cool stuff in a F2P game you have to buy it. That gets vastly more expensive than just simply playing $15 a month and getting everything.
I am personally sad that the subscription model has been shoved out the door by masses of casual players who demand every game to be free but then go ahead and complain about the lack of innovation in the genre and how expensive cash shops are.
The only game that is the exception is Guild Wars 2 which is B2P and did have a fair cash shop. Unfortunately, it now looks like ArenaNet are going to start adding RNG items to their cash shop so they're probably going to end up joining the "games with shitty cash shop models" category too.
Smile
"emphasis on cash shop slow down updates" .. i can argue that if not for F2P, games like STO, DDO, LOTRO will just die, and so all the recent updates owe it to F2P.
Oh ... here is another way to enjoy a F2P MMO .. play it solo.
Who complains?
I never complain about cash shop being expensive .. why i play for free .. cash shop prices do not concern me.
And who complain about lack of innovations? There are plenty of different settings, different features, and even online games that innovate beyond MMOs (like MOBAs, WoT, ....)