I wanted GW2 to be good, heck, I wanted it to be the best game ever.
But like any game, what you want and what you get are two different things.
And let me tell you, anyone who has played GW2 at this point has been severely disappointed.
Many of them are hoping for the God Patch where everything gets better.
But I stopped believing in the God Patch right about when I stopped believing in Santa Claus.
I used to be an advocate of F2P MMO's when they first starting appearing, but now I despise them with a passion.
You end up having to pay a lot more just to enjoy the game at a basic level and it quickly becomes the same as gambling. It is not healthy and certainly not fun.
So I hope more MMO's go back to, or launch with, the pay to play system in place because those are the only ones I will be budgeting for.
The model for the future will be free to play or buy to play. IMO, this is the last year that ANY significant MMO will release with a subscription fee. And once these games focus on making the cash shop only for aesthetic and convenience items, then you'll see less people trolling F2P games with claims of being Pay to win.
FYI, server costs have gone DOWN in the last 10 years. When WoW came out, high speed internet was just coming up and the majority of the world was content with dial-up or DSL. Therefore, having speedy servers was a high cost endeavor, justifying a subscription fee.
Right now, it's no longer that much of an issue. Average server speeds and internet connections are faster, making upkeep costs cheaper since more and more people have high speed internet. Companies now tag on the subscription fee so that they can "add more content". I may be wrong, but adding a few dozen kill-10-rats quests and a boss battle does not cost millions of dollars of development money -_-.
Personally, I like how TERA's subscription model is right now (<10 bucks a month for a 6 month sub), but have no delusions, the P2P model is dying.
Some game will always be P2P because of the development time put in. Take SWTOR for example, it cost them 200million to make that game, do you think they can make that back w/o a sub? Top quality mmorpg require lot of start up money, and cash shop doesn't exactly bring back that money until a long period of time. Almost no one will use cash shop for maybe the first 3-6 month because they are having fun with the content. Once they been through the game than they start look at the extras that cash shop offers. Sorry but invester want money back now not later hoping it would go up. F2P game tend to launch very unpolished because they are low budget, so they spend little money making the game, they can stall longer before cash shop kick in. Top mmorpg it doesn't work so well. GW2, has money backing it up from GW1, also they release lot of expansion you have to buy so its like an annual or bi-annual sub ish. Yes in the future more F2P games will have less broken cash shop but some game just going to make more sense P2P. Google extra credit microtransaction. That was a good video exampleing this topic.
Castanic on 03/07/2012, 09:51 AM
It's going to go F2P, no doubt, but the matter of 'when' is the question.
P2P will be a thing of the past very soon - except for Runescape because they correctly did F2P/P2P.
No P2P will not be a thing of the past. I know many people willing for a P2P game just to keep certain population out. Also P2P game are much more stable than F2P. And as stated before P2P game are usually much more polished.
And Runescape didn't have the correct model, basically you got 1/4 of the game for free, if you wanted the rest of the game you had to pay a sub. It was horrible, they almost never update the F2P part yet P2P get content upgrade after content upgrade.
No P2P will not be a thing of the past. I know many people willing for a P2P game just to keep certain population out. Also P2P game are much more stable than F2P. And as stated before P2P game are usually much more polished.
And Runescape didn't have the correct model, basically you got 1/4 of the game for free, if you wanted the rest of the game you had to pay a sub. It was horrible, they almost never update the F2P part yet P2P get content upgrade after content upgrade.
Knowing close-minded people doesn't support your argument of P2P not being a thing of the past.
The other 2 points are ridiculous.
Also, Runescape's model is pretty restricting, yes, but it's not as bad as some - at least from when I last played it.
Perhaps it's worse now, but back way when, F2P wasn't bad to play in - you could still accomplish huge feats without paying.