In some games today this is so extreme that 80+% of the games income comes from <5% of the playerbase. I have yet to see even a single company prove their CS does not cater in any way to that <5%. You will end up logging into a world defined by it's highest paying customers and not a game driven by the vision of it's developers.
I used to think that way about F2P. But after STO went that direction, I think they have done a great job. You can either spend real money on the CS or you can grind in game to earn the ZEN for the CS. I prefer the grind and earn a nice 200 ZEN every day and buy what I want off the cash shop that way. STO is a prime example of how a F2P game should be. They get good content releases and it's all FREE except ships and other fluff. But the main content (leveling and questing) is all Free for everyone.
This is why guilds have become of paramount importance and PUGs suck. But this isn't all to be laid at the feet of F2P. Some of it has to be put to another factor.
Listen, I have been working on the Internet since 1982. When I got my first email address I am given to understand there were less than 5000 on the Internet proper. USENET was a civil little social club where really, everyone knew each other as though it were a small techie campus of like minded geeks, for the most part, although (like any campus) we had our flamage and cultural divides (thus was born the alt.* heirarchy).
Then in 1989, this guy in the US Senate decided that the backbone needed to get off the National Science Foundation tab (who'd taken it up after DARPA), and get picked up by the private sector. By making the backbone of the computer networks that made up the Internet private, any company could join, not just military contractors and researchers and engineering schools.
Thus, Senator Al Gore reinvented the Internet, and shortly thereafter, AOL let their hoards onto the net, and it was the end of the freaking world.
My point is, it wasn't. Every one of you is here very much post the END OF THE INTERNET, and some large proportion of you weren't born when the Internet culture death knells were rung over the walled garden walls coming down and the advent of spam and all the freaking rude clueless NOOBS coming in from AOL and everywhere else. But especially AOL.
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the Internet survived. It just gave birth to lovely civil venues like this message board. (smiley left off for emphasis)
Free to play is the same thing. It is not killing the game industry -- it is forcing adaptation in ways you are not comfortable with. You can't turn back the clock. You'd be a lot better off thinking about more positive things like:
How can I help game companies develop social tools to help better players encourage good behavior in games?
What are better tools for a wider variety of guild structures?
What kinds of games encourage community and make money for game studios?
How can we prove to game studios that good community means profit, too?
Are indy games the new path for games with strong community, and if so what funding models (crowdsourcing? subs for games with less than next-gen graphics and features?) will support those games?
That would be a better column, frankly, and a more forward reaching discussion.
I agree with the article up to a point. Not quite 100% but close. I think that F2P is the worst thing for gaming and in the end will kill most quality titles from ever reaching any kind of audience. Why? Because F2P is meant to be marketed to "everyone" and not be great for anyone. Companies want to get as many people to come play so that they can get a FEW to pay. I would rather have a good quality game that I pay for up front rather then a ho-hum game that is diluted for the masses.
Of course, f2p is a lie. It is not free.....someone HAS TO PAY for it to survive. And if some pays, it can't be free.
The problem is that gamers aren't making these games anyone. they're playing these terrible games or churning out mediocre indy games because they don't have the means to make a studio quality game. Meanwhile the companies that make studio games are way out of touch. They're old men who only see dollar signs.
I hope the industry dies and they all leave and go back to ruinging television. And let gamers make games again. That's the only way games will stop sucking.
As games shift to the F2P model I am seeing that there is nothing new being made in terms of game mechanics or ideas. All of them seem based off old EQ (EQ came before WoW check your history.) game play mechanics with just different textures and models. SWTOR was the last sub based game to do this and I think due to its failure devs are taking note and are now trying new ideas for the games they are making.
Also F2P games means your going to be spending way more than the standard £8 a month sub fee on adventure packs, EXP boosts and when playing Perfect World MMO's Identity Scrolls at a silly amount of money. Or you end up grinding the same content over and over.
As for community the best two communities for MMO's at present are Eve Online and The Secret World.
I would prefer to pay per month for a great game than pay untold amounts on a F2P game thats always asking you for money to do the cool stuff.
Free to play is the same thing. It is not killing the game industry -- it is forcing adaptation in ways you are not comfortable with. You can't turn back the clock.
Great post, and the internet evolution is a fitting example for f2p.
It's not 'killing' anything, it changes gaming as we know now and liked in the past. Sure, many of the older gamers won't like the changes f2p brings in... but it will happen anyways. I think it's not even the industry's plan (there's no evil scheme for let's go and destroy gaming...), they're only following the demand, the widening group of casuals, the youngsters, etc.
It may sound weird to someone who played with subscription for years (and most of us fall into this category), but there are lots and lots of people, who like this new model. And in time their number will go up, while the protester's group will get narrow.
It's sad, but as shava wrote, the best thing we can do is try to find some positive in the whole process. (I, for example like that I can log in anytime for a quick chat or an assist to my buddies without dropping 1month in. It's not much, but at least something positive )
Awesome, so f2p games killed community? Glad to know, even though community started to whittle away before f2p came into full swing(mostly with those leet terms and behaviors garnered from WoW), but sure I guess its a possibility. My neighbor works at the police department, I'll let him know about his community corrupting behavior and see if he can make a correlation between f2P games and crime increases.
I'm not a fan of f2p(and no, not because they screw dumb people into wasting money for the newest horse mount), soley because they don't garner the revenue for long term developement of content. Of course, no sub games are really doing that outside of WoW either though. Six months and done, seems to have been the pattern of all mmo's. Or they sit at a happy medium where they have 300k to 500k subs and garner a niche for themselves while being heraled as the newest flop in the industry on gaming forums.
No, what I believe killed community, is culture. Gaming culture has been changing just a tad every year since gaming came out. Blaming f2p for community is like blaming murder on the weapons used and not the person. Not to mention, that people are more sensitive about their feelings than they ever were in history as well.
To sum up the naivety of your post with a question: What honestly do you think would happen to the community in Wow if they suddenly went entirely F2P with in game cash store?
That should truly test your understanding of the F2P model.
What would happen if WoW turned entirely to a F2P model .. what kind of community would it have?
These are pointless questions. WoW has a melting pot of Uber players and asshats, just like anyothr game. What sets WoW apart from F2P games at this point is that the trolls and tards are paying as well.
As far as that "at this time" comment about wow. its 9 years strong and supposedly has over 10 million accounts active.. No other game can boast that.. ever. When a game finally does itll probably be because Blizzard shut WoW done in favor of whatever this Titan Project is.
And yes, Blizzard also has a CS for WOW.. but Blizz doesnt offer points or coins. Its straight cash for a digital item or you can order Affiliated items. They have not stooped to pounding out a but ton of mounts, pets, stupid vanity skins, skill reset scrolls, gambling Tokens(Eden Crystals), character slots, bag slots, omfg the list goes on.. simply put the sub model for games has so far proven to be the longer running version and the one that has paid more attention to the player.. yeah blizz sold out to the Gimmee Generation.. screwed all those millions of players with every new expansion.. Yeah the Armor sets in WOW now look like geeks in Spandex with a bad paintjob.... yeah Content wise Every new expansion is getting less and less material/dungons/raids...
But all in all is that very surprising? Blizzard had a game come out (D3), Had another game coming out in July (Starctraft 2) and is developing a new MMO for release in 2015 (Project Titan).. and is still releasing expansions... Thats what happens with "Solid" Sub-based games.
Unfortunately that is not always the case and as another posted you have players from WoW that bounce to other games and complain and compare... in thier defense I will only say this: WoW is nearly 10 years old, Graphics have been upgrades since its release, New game engines have been released since 2004, Higher standards of sound and design have been created since WoWs birth.. SO WHY THE HELL CAN NO ONE DO IT RIGHT?
Its hard to beat a game with 10 million Subs so most companies gave up.. F2P is around.. get used to it. Itll prolly get worse before it gets better. But again with the Sub based games its no different.. how many have come and gone in the last 9 years? Say what you want about WoW.. the one thing it has that no other game does... Stability...
When devs stop treating f2p games like slot machines we might see an improvement but I doubt that will happen. They are all too money hungry to care about the quality of gaming.
Except all the games that have been released in the last say 6 years have been horrid. P2P and F2P. They are releasing games like concoles are. Anything and everything they can think of. Complete or not.
There are two reasons, I'm leaving the pc gaming community and this article touches on one of them. My desktop is for sale right now, I can't wait to get out. Yes the community on consoles as a whole is not very good, but at least the pay for this and pay for that isn't there and the people I roll with I personally know.
interesting F2P games are letting all types of players into the game and it lets people do whatever they want but I never thought about it being a major problem
I've observed, over the last several years, the "casinofication" of MMOs.
I hesitate to say that MMOs have become gambling houses, but they are using the techniques of casinos to prey on the segment of the population that can become addicted to casinos.
"Free to Play," if we are to call it that, is simply a method of enticing an individual to spend more money. Notice, you never spend "cash" in the casino...or in the FtP item shops. You use what ammounts to casino tokens, a level of abstraction one step removed from the cash, so you'll part with it easier.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
It's not just F2P .. most games now are just looking at WoW and basing around that :-(
Which means we beta test it and the community is great, we hit the headstart and it has slightly declined as people start with the comments about game being like WoW, insults to those speaking other languages etc etc
And so the community starts to spinter, I remember when i started playing mmo's .. back when it was just a choice of Meridian 59 or UO :-)
Now that back then had a GREAT community, if you got killed by a red, then you could head back to town and others would get together and go lynch him/them.
SWG .. first time I played that players banded together to go out and fight, year or two later it had changed but still ok, decent community, great if you liked trade as well as do combat. Unfortunately after the NGE it started to decline more as players left due to more than just the change of the game. They found that friends and guild members had left and it killed the community as they left to be with their friends.
Then game hoping began to grow as we'd try a new title hoping it would bring back the feeling of one of the oldfer games, then find get dissapointed and try another and another etc
Some titles are still going .. UO despite the changes made to it :-(
AO which had a marvellous community but has whittled down, I have a Sub & F2P account to that due to the cost of the sub
EvE online which has been dumbed down since I first played but there's always a good amount playing
P2P / F2P .. if the game doesn't have a good community then it's going to decline, F2P has an advantage in that you can put it down and pick it up and there's no cost, P2P then you check to see the game state before parting with your cash and people post negatives more than positives.
Anyone remember when people used Noob as an insult, not to also describe a new player needing help (Newb)
"Who can blame gamers, after titles like Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars Galaxies, Dragon Age II, Call of Duty: Black Ops"
So let me get this straight you're saying Star Wars The Old Wallet Rape is better than Star Wars Galaxies (even post-NGE) ? Dear God Sir remove your cranium from your boss's rectal orifice, your site is losing more credibility by the day defending the TORtanic.
I'm still reading through comments, but you seem to mis-read my post.
Let me clarify for everyone in this thread: I DID mean to say Star Wars Galaxies.
Let me explain this. SW:toR, to me, was nothing epic or revolutionary. I only ever played it a handful of times in beta and at friends' houses before I decided I hated the game. SWG, on the other hand, despite all it's flaws, was fun for me. The community was absolutely AMAZING, because it consisted of dedicated MMORPG players, and Star Wars Fanatics who, no matter how bad the game was, were determined to enjoy it. For anyone who ever hated on SWG, you never went to a lively cantina, you never stumbled across a campsite where you made friends out on foreign planets, you never got to be a part of the limitless planet exploration. For all the things that SWG did wrong (see: just about everything) the game did succeed in one aspect; it had a soul. People interacted, talked, role-played even. There was a community of players who, despite the boundaries of inferior programming, bug-testing, and optimizing, managed to make an atmosphere that was still tolerable.
If you're one to disagree with the notion that SWG did do some things well, that's fine, as I stated that in the article. However, please don't read my article, and then bring in totally unrelated, irrelevant hatred of SW:toR.
I'll continue posting as I read through this
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I agree with the article up to a point. Not quite 100% but close.I think that F2P is the worst thing for gaming and in the end will kill most quality titles from ever reaching any kind of audience. Why? Because F2P is meant to be marketed to "everyone" and not be great for anyone. Companies want to get as many people to come play so that they can get a FEW to pay.I would rather have a good quality game that I pay for up front rather then a ho-hum game that is diluted for the masses.
Of course, f2p is a lie. It is not free.....someone HAS TO PAY for it to survive. And if some pays, it can't be free.
This is a really good example, in my mind, of my thoughts on this subject.
Let's compare gaming to fire. In my opinion, F2P games burn like wildfires; they have no real direction, eat up as much area as possible in a short time, and blanket whole areas. There's no real direction or focus, it picks up with the wind, carries it in different directions towards different people, and after awhile, it becomes contained. P2P games burn like controlled fires; they can start off small, and their direction and size can be dictated and directly influenced via interaction. It's easier to limit damages and direction of the fire, and similar to a bonfire, you can pick who is involved (to a degree) and how many people get to see it.
Like Gruug said, F2P caters to EVERYONE. As a result, it saps any sense of originality or unique aspects right out of a title, because anything I might like, someone else might NOT like. It butchers creativity and innovation, because if the companies take a risk that people don't like, their customers leave in droves for the next best thing. F2P reminds me, in a sense, of a blue-chip stock. Nothing new, stay-with-what-works, little gains here and there but nothing substantial.
P2P can be catered towards very specific niches in the market. Eve Online is a great example; the community is essentially player-run, and has a very set and established group of players who have been around for YEARS! I'd dare to say it has one of the most established communities ever created in an MMORPG. It's tried multiple new things, but it stays true to it's loyal and dedicated fans, relying on the product to sell itself, moreso than a cash shop to fund it's development.
These factors are reasons why I'm not a fan of F2P. I like feeling cared about and special in my games! Hahaha. I don't like being "Oh, well, there's another number....". When I'm paying for my game monthly, I know that I'm not only paying for it, but I'm funding the contiual development of a game I enjoy, a team that I feel is on the right track, and an atmosphere I want to be a part of. It's like a cover charge at a club, really. In a sense, just by slapping "P2P" on a title, you're weeding out a lot of players off the bat (the ones who won't pay to play, who can't for whatever reason, etc)
Also, a key point I didn't touch on specifically has been mentioned by a few of you. It's the attitude of developers that does have a lot to do with this as well. For any of you who want a glimpse into what kind of person some of the gaming industry's largest CEO's are like, I recommend this read: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
yeah the tokens vs money issue has been brought up in several places and in my own community.. PW is a prime example of that with thier Eden Crystal wheel of torture.. "you can win 20k Eden Crystals" yeah as far as Ive heard noone has yet... and some have spent upwards of 8k Eden Crystals in trying.. Thier forums are filled with complaints and its not getting any more popular.
oh and if youre in the dark about the wheel of torture for Eden Crystals its Perfect Worlds Eden Eternal gambling system, you have to have 99 Eden Crystals just to attempt it.. then once you are in game you can use thos eden crystals to gamble some more on the "Crystal Altar" its friggin rediculous.. and the Eden Crystals can be won with the loot chest via thier ignite launcher (has never happened for me.. gained a crap load of useless scrolls, a few charms and one bag enlarger scroll but no crystals or you can order them from the in game store @ 10 for 499 Aria points or 50 for 2450 Aria points.
Aria point cost = 1 dollar per 101 AP
so 10 Eden Crystals 5 bucks...
50 Eden Crystals 25 bucks
99 Eden Crystals 50 bucks..
if you consider the number of eden crystals needed to gamble on the wheel of torture and the Crystal alter it adds up to hundreds of dollars very easily...
So I'm supposed to pay for something I think is garbage, just to satisfy "the community?" I played WoW since launch and saw it transform from a dar fantasy to a cheap Wal-Mart kiddie game. No thanks. Itried Secret World. The interface was a killer for me. I'm not spending 15 bucks a month on something I have to contnuously put up with.
SWTOR and Rift. Both just wow clones, But at least they understood how important a GUI is in an MMO.
Right now I'm playing Xcom and GW2. Show me a MMO thats worth 15 beans a month and I'll play it.
"Who can blame gamers, after titles like Final Fantasy XIV, Star Wars Galaxies, Dragon Age II, Call of Duty: Black Ops"
So let me get this straight you're saying Star Wars The Old Wallet Rape is better than Star Wars Galaxies (even post-NGE) ? Dear God Sir remove your cranium from your boss's rectal orifice, your site is losing more credibility by the day defending the TORtanic.
I'm still reading through comments, but you seem to mis-read my post.
Let me clarify for everyone in this thread: I DID mean to say Star Wars Galaxies.
Let me explain this. SW:toR, to me, was nothing epic or revolutionary. I only ever played it a handful of times in beta and at friends' houses before I decided I hated the game. SWG, on the other hand, despite all it's flaws, was fun for me. The community was absolutely AMAZING, because it consisted of dedicated MMORPG players, and Star Wars Fanatics who, no matter how bad the game was, were determined to enjoy it. For anyone who ever hated on SWG, you never went to a lively cantina, you never stumbled across a campsite where you made friends out on foreign planets, you never got to be a part of the limitless planet exploration. For all the things that SWG did wrong (see: just about everything) the game did succeed in one aspect; it had a soul. People interacted, talked, role-played even. There was a community of players who, despite the boundaries of inferior programming, bug-testing, and optimizing, managed to make an atmosphere that was still tolerable.
If you're one to disagree with the notion that SWG did do some things well, that's fine, as I stated that in the article. However, please don't read my article, and then bring in totally unrelated, irrelevant hatred of SW:toR.
I'll continue posting as I read through this
Yep. I was warned away from SWG before release by friends who were on the dev team. People enjoyed it in spite of its many many problems. But many left because of those very problems.
No one in game development has managed (apparently) to figure out and replicate the aspects that made it enjoyable. But taking it for a competantly built game is a mistake.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
A lot of what you mention hs no relation to free-to-play at all. World of Warcraft was polluted with all the negative behaviors you associate with F2P well before F2P was even remotely viable. Gold farmers and bots leave their mark on every game, it's the games responsibility to deal with them. Many Pay 2 Play games are over run, or were at one point, with bots and gold spammers. Heck, after six years of playing WoW (I'm not purposly picking on WoW, it's just my longest played MMO and therefore the source of most of my examples) gold spam actually got worse, not better. And that had nothing to do with the introduction of free trials. You try farming enough gold to sell on a pre-level 20 character, and get back to me on that one.
In all honestly, what's killing the MMO market is the same thing that's wrong with everything else, people today have no patience for anything. They expect perfection from everyone but themselves, and expect everyone to cater to their every whim. Just yesterday I was reading on the GW2 forums that being "forced" to PVP to get 100% map completion was "ridiculous" and the player had a "right" to the achievement. This mindset is killing games. You don't have a "right" to anything in a game. You have the "right" to use your access to the game to experience different parts of it, but not all those parts will be for you, and the ones that aren't aren't. Remember when we used to accept that doing everything wasn't possible for everyone?
I can remmeber playing single player games, and not being quite skilled enough to get some of the harder objectives (fighting Bass's final form in some of the Megaman Battle Network games for instance, never could S rank all the other bosses to get 100% chip completion) but I certainly never dreamed of complaining to Capcom that the game was too hard and because I paid for it I had a "right" to that part of the game. I accepted my own shortcomings and used the experience to forge myself into a better gamer.
Anyway I'm getting ranty. F2P is not what's killing the genre, the people that are playing the games are. Until developers stop catering to every vocal minority that can construct a forum post, the decline will continue, and there's nothing we can do about it except smarten up.
Comments
I used to think that way about F2P. But after STO went that direction, I think they have done a great job. You can either spend real money on the CS or you can grind in game to earn the ZEN for the CS. I prefer the grind and earn a nice 200 ZEN every day and buy what I want off the cash shop that way. STO is a prime example of how a F2P game should be. They get good content releases and it's all FREE except ships and other fluff. But the main content (leveling and questing) is all Free for everyone.
Profanity is an issue in all games not just F2P. Sure a subscription based game has the ultimate right to ban a player but they rarely if ever do.
Some F2P games have been accused of a double sided policy. Baning profane freebie players but not the profane players who visit the cash shop.
To argue that profanity is rising because F2P is rising is just wrong IMO.
This is why guilds have become of paramount importance and PUGs suck. But this isn't all to be laid at the feet of F2P. Some of it has to be put to another factor.
Listen, I have been working on the Internet since 1982. When I got my first email address I am given to understand there were less than 5000 on the Internet proper. USENET was a civil little social club where really, everyone knew each other as though it were a small techie campus of like minded geeks, for the most part, although (like any campus) we had our flamage and cultural divides (thus was born the alt.* heirarchy).
Then in 1989, this guy in the US Senate decided that the backbone needed to get off the National Science Foundation tab (who'd taken it up after DARPA), and get picked up by the private sector. By making the backbone of the computer networks that made up the Internet private, any company could join, not just military contractors and researchers and engineering schools.
Thus, Senator Al Gore reinvented the Internet, and shortly thereafter, AOL let their hoards onto the net, and it was the end of the freaking world.
My point is, it wasn't. Every one of you is here very much post the END OF THE INTERNET, and some large proportion of you weren't born when the Internet culture death knells were rung over the walled garden walls coming down and the advent of spam and all the freaking rude clueless NOOBS coming in from AOL and everywhere else. But especially AOL.
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the Internet survived. It just gave birth to lovely civil venues like this message board. (smiley left off for emphasis)
Free to play is the same thing. It is not killing the game industry -- it is forcing adaptation in ways you are not comfortable with. You can't turn back the clock. You'd be a lot better off thinking about more positive things like:
I agree with the article up to a point. Not quite 100% but close. I think that F2P is the worst thing for gaming and in the end will kill most quality titles from ever reaching any kind of audience. Why? Because F2P is meant to be marketed to "everyone" and not be great for anyone. Companies want to get as many people to come play so that they can get a FEW to pay. I would rather have a good quality game that I pay for up front rather then a ho-hum game that is diluted for the masses.
Of course, f2p is a lie. It is not free.....someone HAS TO PAY for it to survive. And if some pays, it can't be free.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Anyone thinking that a game is free is extremely desillusional. Nothing is free!
A dev house is not a charity institution. It's a business and a business needs to make money.
The problem is that gamers aren't making these games anyone. they're playing these terrible games or churning out mediocre indy games because they don't have the means to make a studio quality game. Meanwhile the companies that make studio games are way out of touch. They're old men who only see dollar signs.
I hope the industry dies and they all leave and go back to ruinging television. And let gamers make games again. That's the only way games will stop sucking.
F2P games are runing the gaming industry.
As games shift to the F2P model I am seeing that there is nothing new being made in terms of game mechanics or ideas. All of them seem based off old EQ (EQ came before WoW check your history.) game play mechanics with just different textures and models. SWTOR was the last sub based game to do this and I think due to its failure devs are taking note and are now trying new ideas for the games they are making.
Also F2P games means your going to be spending way more than the standard £8 a month sub fee on adventure packs, EXP boosts and when playing Perfect World MMO's Identity Scrolls at a silly amount of money. Or you end up grinding the same content over and over.
As for community the best two communities for MMO's at present are Eve Online and The Secret World.
I would prefer to pay per month for a great game than pay untold amounts on a F2P game thats always asking you for money to do the cool stuff.
Great post, and the internet evolution is a fitting example for f2p.
It's not 'killing' anything, it changes gaming as we know now and liked in the past. Sure, many of the older gamers won't like the changes f2p brings in... but it will happen anyways. I think it's not even the industry's plan (there's no evil scheme for let's go and destroy gaming...), they're only following the demand, the widening group of casuals, the youngsters, etc.
It may sound weird to someone who played with subscription for years (and most of us fall into this category), but there are lots and lots of people, who like this new model. And in time their number will go up, while the protester's group will get narrow.
It's sad, but as shava wrote, the best thing we can do is try to find some positive in the whole process. (I, for example like that I can log in anytime for a quick chat or an assist to my buddies without dropping 1month in. It's not much, but at least something positive
)
Awesome, so f2p games killed community? Glad to know, even though community started to whittle away before f2p came into full swing(mostly with those leet terms and behaviors garnered from WoW), but sure I guess its a possibility. My neighbor works at the police department, I'll let him know about his community corrupting behavior and see if he can make a correlation between f2P games and crime increases.
I'm not a fan of f2p(and no, not because they screw dumb people into wasting money for the newest horse mount), soley because they don't garner the revenue for long term developement of content. Of course, no sub games are really doing that outside of WoW either though. Six months and done, seems to have been the pattern of all mmo's. Or they sit at a happy medium where they have 300k to 500k subs and garner a niche for themselves while being heraled as the newest flop in the industry on gaming forums.
No, what I believe killed community, is culture. Gaming culture has been changing just a tad every year since gaming came out. Blaming f2p for community is like blaming murder on the weapons used and not the person. Not to mention, that people are more sensitive about their feelings than they ever were in history as well.
What would happen if WoW turned entirely to a F2P model .. what kind of community would it have?
These are pointless questions. WoW has a melting pot of Uber players and asshats, just like anyothr game. What sets WoW apart from F2P games at this point is that the trolls and tards are paying as well.
As far as that "at this time" comment about wow. its 9 years strong and supposedly has over 10 million accounts active.. No other game can boast that.. ever. When a game finally does itll probably be because Blizzard shut WoW done in favor of whatever this Titan Project is.
And yes, Blizzard also has a CS for WOW.. but Blizz doesnt offer points or coins. Its straight cash for a digital item or you can order Affiliated items. They have not stooped to pounding out a but ton of mounts, pets, stupid vanity skins, skill reset scrolls, gambling Tokens(Eden Crystals), character slots, bag slots, omfg the list goes on.. simply put the sub model for games has so far proven to be the longer running version and the one that has paid more attention to the player.. yeah blizz sold out to the Gimmee Generation.. screwed all those millions of players with every new expansion.. Yeah the Armor sets in WOW now look like geeks in Spandex with a bad paintjob.... yeah Content wise Every new expansion is getting less and less material/dungons/raids...
But all in all is that very surprising? Blizzard had a game come out (D3), Had another game coming out in July (Starctraft 2) and is developing a new MMO for release in 2015 (Project Titan).. and is still releasing expansions... Thats what happens with "Solid" Sub-based games.
Unfortunately that is not always the case and as another posted you have players from WoW that bounce to other games and complain and compare... in thier defense I will only say this: WoW is nearly 10 years old, Graphics have been upgrades since its release, New game engines have been released since 2004, Higher standards of sound and design have been created since WoWs birth.. SO WHY THE HELL CAN NO ONE DO IT RIGHT?
Its hard to beat a game with 10 million Subs so most companies gave up.. F2P is around.. get used to it. Itll prolly get worse before it gets better. But again with the Sub based games its no different.. how many have come and gone in the last 9 years? Say what you want about WoW.. the one thing it has that no other game does... Stability...
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Going to get lots of hate for this, but..
Ahem... RuneScape. They're doing it right. (Except for the newer cosmetic item shops)
He means Star Wars Galxies. SWG was epic the first 6-9 months then Sony destroyed it.
I've observed, over the last several years, the "casinofication" of MMOs.
I hesitate to say that MMOs have become gambling houses, but they are using the techniques of casinos to prey on the segment of the population that can become addicted to casinos.
"Free to Play," if we are to call it that, is simply a method of enticing an individual to spend more money. Notice, you never spend "cash" in the casino...or in the FtP item shops. You use what ammounts to casino tokens, a level of abstraction one step removed from the cash, so you'll part with it easier.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
It's not just F2P .. most games now are just looking at WoW and basing around that :-(
Which means we beta test it and the community is great, we hit the headstart and it has slightly declined as people start with the comments about game being like WoW, insults to those speaking other languages etc etc
And so the community starts to spinter, I remember when i started playing mmo's .. back when it was just a choice of Meridian 59 or UO :-)
Now that back then had a GREAT community, if you got killed by a red, then you could head back to town and others would get together and go lynch him/them.
SWG .. first time I played that players banded together to go out and fight, year or two later it had changed but still ok, decent community, great if you liked trade as well as do combat. Unfortunately after the NGE it started to decline more as players left due to more than just the change of the game. They found that friends and guild members had left and it killed the community as they left to be with their friends.
Then game hoping began to grow as we'd try a new title hoping it would bring back the feeling of one of the oldfer games, then find get dissapointed and try another and another etc
Some titles are still going .. UO despite the changes made to it :-(
AO which had a marvellous community but has whittled down, I have a Sub & F2P account to that due to the cost of the sub
EvE online which has been dumbed down since I first played but there's always a good amount playing
P2P / F2P .. if the game doesn't have a good community then it's going to decline, F2P has an advantage in that you can put it down and pick it up and there's no cost, P2P then you check to see the game state before parting with your cash and people post negatives more than positives.
Anyone remember when people used Noob as an insult, not to also describe a new player needing help (Newb)
I'm still reading through comments, but you seem to mis-read my post.
Let me clarify for everyone in this thread: I DID mean to say Star Wars Galaxies.
Let me explain this. SW:toR, to me, was nothing epic or revolutionary. I only ever played it a handful of times in beta and at friends' houses before I decided I hated the game. SWG, on the other hand, despite all it's flaws, was fun for me. The community was absolutely AMAZING, because it consisted of dedicated MMORPG players, and Star Wars Fanatics who, no matter how bad the game was, were determined to enjoy it. For anyone who ever hated on SWG, you never went to a lively cantina, you never stumbled across a campsite where you made friends out on foreign planets, you never got to be a part of the limitless planet exploration. For all the things that SWG did wrong (see: just about everything) the game did succeed in one aspect; it had a soul. People interacted, talked, role-played even. There was a community of players who, despite the boundaries of inferior programming, bug-testing, and optimizing, managed to make an atmosphere that was still tolerable.
If you're one to disagree with the notion that SWG did do some things well, that's fine, as I stated that in the article. However, please don't read my article, and then bring in totally unrelated, irrelevant hatred of SW:toR.
I'll continue posting as I read through this
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
This is a really good example, in my mind, of my thoughts on this subject.
Let's compare gaming to fire. In my opinion, F2P games burn like wildfires; they have no real direction, eat up as much area as possible in a short time, and blanket whole areas. There's no real direction or focus, it picks up with the wind, carries it in different directions towards different people, and after awhile, it becomes contained. P2P games burn like controlled fires; they can start off small, and their direction and size can be dictated and directly influenced via interaction. It's easier to limit damages and direction of the fire, and similar to a bonfire, you can pick who is involved (to a degree) and how many people get to see it.
Like Gruug said, F2P caters to EVERYONE. As a result, it saps any sense of originality or unique aspects right out of a title, because anything I might like, someone else might NOT like. It butchers creativity and innovation, because if the companies take a risk that people don't like, their customers leave in droves for the next best thing. F2P reminds me, in a sense, of a blue-chip stock. Nothing new, stay-with-what-works, little gains here and there but nothing substantial.
P2P can be catered towards very specific niches in the market. Eve Online is a great example; the community is essentially player-run, and has a very set and established group of players who have been around for YEARS! I'd dare to say it has one of the most established communities ever created in an MMORPG. It's tried multiple new things, but it stays true to it's loyal and dedicated fans, relying on the product to sell itself, moreso than a cash shop to fund it's development.
These factors are reasons why I'm not a fan of F2P. I like feeling cared about and special in my games! Hahaha. I don't like being "Oh, well, there's another number....". When I'm paying for my game monthly, I know that I'm not only paying for it, but I'm funding the contiual development of a game I enjoy, a team that I feel is on the right track, and an atmosphere I want to be a part of. It's like a cover charge at a club, really. In a sense, just by slapping "P2P" on a title, you're weeding out a lot of players off the bat (the ones who won't pay to play, who can't for whatever reason, etc)
Also, a key point I didn't touch on specifically has been mentioned by a few of you. It's the attitude of developers that does have a lot to do with this as well. For any of you who want a glimpse into what kind of person some of the gaming industry's largest CEO's are like, I recommend this read: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
yeah the tokens vs money issue has been brought up in several places and in my own community.. PW is a prime example of that with thier Eden Crystal wheel of torture.. "you can win 20k Eden Crystals" yeah as far as Ive heard noone has yet... and some have spent upwards of 8k Eden Crystals in trying.. Thier forums are filled with complaints and its not getting any more popular.
oh and if youre in the dark about the wheel of torture for Eden Crystals its Perfect Worlds Eden Eternal gambling system, you have to have 99 Eden Crystals just to attempt it.. then once you are in game you can use thos eden crystals to gamble some more on the "Crystal Altar" its friggin rediculous.. and the Eden Crystals can be won with the loot chest via thier ignite launcher (has never happened for me.. gained a crap load of useless scrolls, a few charms and one bag enlarger scroll but no crystals or you can order them from the in game store @ 10 for 499 Aria points or 50 for 2450 Aria points.
Aria point cost = 1 dollar per 101 AP
so 10 Eden Crystals 5 bucks...
50 Eden Crystals 25 bucks
99 Eden Crystals 50 bucks..
if you consider the number of eden crystals needed to gamble on the wheel of torture and the Crystal alter it adds up to hundreds of dollars very easily...
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
So I'm supposed to pay for something I think is garbage, just to satisfy "the community?" I played WoW since launch and saw it transform from a dar fantasy to a cheap Wal-Mart kiddie game. No thanks. Itried Secret World. The interface was a killer for me. I'm not spending 15 bucks a month on something I have to contnuously put up with.
SWTOR and Rift. Both just wow clones, But at least they understood how important a GUI is in an MMO.
Right now I'm playing Xcom and GW2. Show me a MMO thats worth 15 beans a month and I'll play it.
Yep. I was warned away from SWG before release by friends who were on the dev team. People enjoyed it in spite of its many many problems. But many left because of those very problems.
No one in game development has managed (apparently) to figure out and replicate the aspects that made it enjoyable. But taking it for a competantly built game is a mistake.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
A lot of what you mention hs no relation to free-to-play at all. World of Warcraft was polluted with all the negative behaviors you associate with F2P well before F2P was even remotely viable. Gold farmers and bots leave their mark on every game, it's the games responsibility to deal with them. Many Pay 2 Play games are over run, or were at one point, with bots and gold spammers. Heck, after six years of playing WoW (I'm not purposly picking on WoW, it's just my longest played MMO and therefore the source of most of my examples) gold spam actually got worse, not better. And that had nothing to do with the introduction of free trials. You try farming enough gold to sell on a pre-level 20 character, and get back to me on that one.
In all honestly, what's killing the MMO market is the same thing that's wrong with everything else, people today have no patience for anything. They expect perfection from everyone but themselves, and expect everyone to cater to their every whim. Just yesterday I was reading on the GW2 forums that being "forced" to PVP to get 100% map completion was "ridiculous" and the player had a "right" to the achievement. This mindset is killing games. You don't have a "right" to anything in a game. You have the "right" to use your access to the game to experience different parts of it, but not all those parts will be for you, and the ones that aren't aren't. Remember when we used to accept that doing everything wasn't possible for everyone?
I can remmeber playing single player games, and not being quite skilled enough to get some of the harder objectives (fighting Bass's final form in some of the Megaman Battle Network games for instance, never could S rank all the other bosses to get 100% chip completion) but I certainly never dreamed of complaining to Capcom that the game was too hard and because I paid for it I had a "right" to that part of the game. I accepted my own shortcomings and used the experience to forge myself into a better gamer.
Anyway I'm getting ranty. F2P is not what's killing the genre, the people that are playing the games are. Until developers stop catering to every vocal minority that can construct a forum post, the decline will continue, and there's nothing we can do about it except smarten up.