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Shutting down instead of F2P?
Auzy
Member UncommonPosts: 611
I dont get it. Not like SOE to just shutdown and not squeeze every dime out of the customer...
Uhh... what?
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The story said that the contract with LucasArts was ending, didn't it? And with SW:TOR in the pipeline, the shutting down rather than F2P is likely a business minded decision.
Don't want an F2P Star Wars game if there's a chance that it could take potential paying players from the new one
Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat
SOE's contract with LucasArts ends in 2012. I'm sure the cost to renew was greater than the revenue a F2P SWG would genereate, especially with TOR looming.
Yes, Smeds stated their contract was ending in 2012. Pretty much guarenteed LA outright told them there'd be no re-negotiating ;P
Only a few games have gone from P2P to F2P, the majority of them in the past year, and are still going. DDO was the first big one to do it, and its even moree succesful now than it was when it was P2P.
So....youre basing your statements on what exactly?
Most likely LA wants it shut down so the players will potentially leave for TOR and fuel it's future growth. SOE also finally gets rid of the biggest black eye in gaming.
Holy shit there are still intelligent people on this forum! Who would have thought.
Do you really think SOE would shut something down that could still make them money as FTP with an item shop? Really? Most likely this is Lucas Arts pulling the rights to use the Star Wars franchise with the end of the contract. They want their new MMO to make maximum profit and a competing game in their franchise that is free to play is nothing but a hindrance to that.
As to the guy saying he was glad SOE was hacked, I too find nothing more enjoyable than seeing innocent people's information scattered over the web and average employees at Sony with families to feed fired while all the executives who make the choices that fuck over the consumers continue to give themselves raises.
Two games. One IP, one ultimate owner. Why would LucasArts want to potentially dillute interest in TOR to any degree no matter how small?
Yeah... I think you are. You did a mighty fine job of assuming things, and not such a good job proving anything.
EXACTLY THIS!!!
ALL Star Wars fans need to be vested in the success of SWTOR. ALL of them.
They're shutting it down for money.
SWG, what subscribers that are left are hardcore Star Wars video gamers who want anything Star Wars, no matter how bad it is.
So LucasArts has to shut SWG down 100% so that these people will buy SW:TOR, no matter how bad it is.
Its a financial decision. They don't give a rats patoot about Star Wars itself, its about the dollar bills.
You assume that F2P is a natural step to a games death. If that is so, are games that release as free to play half dead already? Was Guild Wars half dead on launch? Is it dead now? Guild wars has been out for years now, so when is it going to "die"?
Why would anyone go F2P to P2P? The appeal of F2P is that you dont have to pay a subscription. Thats how they get most of their players. If they went P2P they would lose the majority of their customers. And they still make a great profit off of F2P IS they do it right, which not many do.
And you seem to be confusing 2 different things here. A game dying, and a game not working out as P2P. Theres lots of reasons for that. With so many identical games out there (wow/EQ clones), its harder to keep their subs up when forcing people to pay $15 a month when theyre already paying $15 a month for something else. Why pay for both when theyre similar games? F2P allows them to keep people playing, wether they buy anything or not. Those who are willing to spend, wont spend if theres nobody else playing. By allowing people to play for free they keep a healthy number of people playing, which keeps those with extra money spending. No game that im awar eof has ever gone from F2P to P2P because the second they put P2P into place theyd lose a massive chunk of their playerbase who either cant pay the sub, or who prefer to buy things a sthey please rather than being required to pay monthly.
As far as some of those examples...
AoC was doomed from an absolutely terrible launch and first year or so. They made a little bit of a comeback, but not enough to keep them profitable on subscriptions alone.
Alganon was just plain bad & yet another clone. It was doomed from the start and never did anything to redeem itself. They actually would probably be better off just shutting down since there are many better F2P options out there.
LOTRO = Turbine. DDO = Turbine. DDO was dying a pretty quick death as P2P, but has made a big comeback ove rthe past few years with a great F2P model. They did the same with LOTRO (though not quite as good of a F2P model). AFAIK LOTRO is still doing ok, though with a few improvements it could probably do better as an F2P. Big problem with LOTRO though is its similarities to WoW. Its just not going to get the population when people are already invested in WoW for so long.
It's LA, not SOE. It would make no sense for SOE to shut a game down that has 10 fold or better the population of a game that will live on (Vanguard)
i think it is LA they want SWG subscribers to go over to TOR. Too bad would have liked to see swg F2P
Suggesting that F2P is half way to death is whats wrong. No MMO that went from P2P to F2P has died, in fact they are all successful now. The decision to go F2P is because they are having trouble on their own as a p2p yes. But f2p creates a new market for them in which players are willing to come try it out and often enjoy the game and spend some money on it. DDO has more actual subscriptions now than it did when it was full p2p only.
We all know a lot of games launch with issues, once these issues are addressed most are not willing to shell out money to play it up front. But f2p creates news and gets people logging on. It also taps into a whole market of players who only play f2p games and never consider trying p2p.
I'm willing to bet SOE coulda renewed the license if they really wanted to. But they prly realized it was not worth the cost and Lucas Arts was just like "Ya, thats fine." SOE has a lot of other games and new ones on the way, they are keeping the whole team from SWG to use on another project, i'm sure it made sense for various reasons.
This. The game's population is low enough that neither LEC or SOE felt it was worth continuing to support it. To change it into a free to play game would take a significant investment, which would never turn enough of a profit to make it worth doing. Better to shut it down and move on.
On the other hand, SOE could always auction off the rights to unplug the servers. Given the amount of hostility towards the game from former players on every game site I've visited that is discussing the shutdown, they could probably make a nice chunk of cash.
On a knee-jerk opposition to f2p, one supposes. Indeed, DDO is far more successful than it ever was under a sub plan. I would argue that this increased success has in fact made it a better game than it was, too, since it's getting a lot more development effort now, and more players improve such a group-orinented game immensely.
What is true, though, is that f2p is seen as a miracle cure for failing games. There's some truth to this, but there's exceptions too. Turbine took a solid but weakly-performing game and made it into a major player, and took a major player and made it a noticably bigger. The f2p-haters can rant about it all they like, but facts are facts, and ultimately the consumer is free to choose a subscription over playing something for free and paying here and there.
In the long run, of course, we will find out that f2p is not actually a miracle cure; right now it seems like one because to many people it's an appealing alternative to a subscription and the market for them is not yet crowded, but there's a lot of competition coming up with AoC, Fallen Earth and City of Heroes all moving to f2p this year, with a couple of others likely to see at least an announcement before January. At some point - no more than a year or two from now, and maybe as soon as the end of this year - the f2p market will be as saturated as the subscription market was, and it will no longer be possible to rejuvenate a game like DDO with it. We also have the factor of imperfect f2p implementations to contend with (see EQ2X for one example.)
For me, f2p got me playing two games that I otherwise would not have invested in; one of them, LotRO, I have probably spent just as much on as I would have with a subscription, but I've been able to pay at my own pace, which suits me. As a lifetimer for another transitioned game (Champions Online) I am happy that the game is doing better now and happy with Cryptic's handling of subs and lifers. And I plan to give Fallen Earth a much-deserved shot when it goes free as well. It's good to have options; f2p is just another option, and in every example thus far one also has the option of just paying the subscription and not folling with all the microtransactions.
As for SWG, there was no chance that it would go free to play. I predicted that LucasArts would pull the plug around the SWTOR release, and that's exactly what happened. I predict right now that SWTOR will launch within 90 days of the SWG shutdown.
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It's a stretch to say that every f2p transition has resulted in a more successful game. One example would be Pirates of the Burning Sea. While I see more talk about people trying in than I did, I've seen no evidence that it's a much more successful game than it was.
The real appeal of f2p is that it lowers the barrier of entry to zero. Thus people will try the game who would not have been comfortable dropping money on a box or sub before being sure they'd like it. Some percentage of those people will like it, and stick around, and many of those will eventually spend some money on it, which is more than the publisher would have gotten otherwise. Since, despite the cries of some, f2p has yet to ruin any game that's moved to it, the vast majority of the players who liked it before the switch also stick around.
I'm not saying that anti-f2p sentiment has no basis, mind - there are a number of factors that are worrying. But the common fears have simply not materialized thus far for a variety of reasons. One example would be the constantly-mentioned idea that f2p will bring in large quantities of idiots who will then destroy the game's community. I am concerned that this might happen with Age of Conan, for example, because of the current dynamics within that game's community. But I have also been through several of these transitions now, as a player, and it hasn't happened yet. It's going to be something that we'll have to judge on a case-by-case basis.
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Well, I guess I am one of many that are the problem. I wasn't going to leave swg for swtor but, I am not going to change my opinion now either. Definately not when the choice is taken away. I may play tor for perhaps a month, see the story. Then delete my toon, cancel sub and say..
Thank you for this game. Can you now please give me the tools to earn my x-wing, create some rebel characters and enable me to crush some stormtroopers / imperial players and hopefully also star destroyers, death stars and have speederbike chase and atmosperic flight.. please?
Thank you, see you in 5 years.
Yes. Yes. Life support. When people wake up and realize they are playing a single player online rpg with dueling that was never anything special to begin with.
Only on this site would people think that f2p is anything but a step down from p2p. You can twist it anyway you want, but the fact of the matter is that p2p is the desired model and the reason most mmorpgs at least try to run the p2p model. How many true mmorpg developers set out to make a f2p game? I think its also important to note that GW really should not be tossed into the f2p discussion as unlike the bulk of f2p games, you had to buy the box.
F2P by its very definition means that the game was not good enough to run under a p2p model. If you have a large subscription base, p2p will always generate more revenue than a f2p. F2Ps only shine in a lower population model wherein the cash shop + limited subscriptions can actually overtake the full subscription income from a p2p title.
I honestly do not know why people even argue this point. The f2p titles are simply not up to the same standards as the p2p titles. The only one you can kind of argue is LOTRO, and it is pretty stagnant in its own right. Its only saving grace is that they do make fairly regular updates. DDO sat in the exact same state for what, 3 years until this last update? Just because a game has more people playing as f2p than it did as a p2p does not mean that f2p is a better model. This is the true failure in logic. Hell, to me, this is really simple. If you have to give it away for free because not enough people will pay for it speaks for itself. And like Cacaphony suggest, when we see a healthy, high populated game move to a f2p model, then we can start to have a valid discussion about the equality of the models. Until then, a move to f2p means you could not cut it.
Alot of "facts" here. For future reference, its called opinion.
And most games do not try to run a p2p model. Just check the list on this very site and see how many cash shop games there are. The f2p market has millions of players, dont kid yourself.
The reason for choosing a f2p model is purely financial.
If you have a large subscription base, p2p will always generate more revenue than a f2p. F2Ps only shine in a lower population model wherein the cash shop + limited subscriptions can actually overtake the full subscription income from a p2p title.
Are you saying that in a low pop game, the players are more willing to pay for stuff? I dont see why they would be. Is this another fact?
They shutting down and my biggest wish becomes true. YES we did it ! we vets fucking owned $OE !!
#The NGE ist too bad for anyone to play and we told them so since Novenmber the 15th 2005 ! the real date SWG died !
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Hate to burst your bubble, no wait i dont
But it is LucasArts that shut down SWG. No new license for Sony, so Sony cant keep SWG running.
You vets only fucked the current playerbase with your constant whining about what happened years ago.
It's about licensing people. READ