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Now that ESO set example, FTP soon?
Now that ESO has set the example, will Wildstar go FTP soon?
I might come back to it if so. When I played Wildstar, I just queued for BGs and was upset about the gear factor. So I took a cold hard look at the game and realized I was better off just playing SMITE.
I love the graphics of Wildstar and the pvp is fun, although gear effect in any pvp is just stupid IMO. Anyway, the cumulative negatives overcame the positives and I stopped playing.
If at least there were no monthly subscription, however, I might take it up again.
Note: I am just talking about myself here and what value I see in games. I am not trying to stir up any controversy.
Comments
No. Wildstar and ESO's situations are completely different.
Wildstar isn't launching on consoles and using PC players as payed beta testers, Zenimax did.
I did enjoy their early advertising videos they were great fun to watch,however not once did i consider the game to be any good.
I mention this because i am actually surprised the game is not already f2p ,i definitely would not sub a game like that.To answer the question i would say no question but who knows ,i know that Square Enix said they would pull the plug rather than go f2p.
However i feel Square Enix has always been a respectable develoepr,they don't pull the nonsense i see over here.In saying that i truly believe that NA devs/publishers have no morals ,they can and will make a cash shop work where as Sqaure would try to be too honest and probably not make nearly enough money running a CS.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Wildstar has arguably far less players than ESO...what makes you think the situation is so different? Do you really believe that if the PC version of ESO's subsciption numbers were what they wanted, they would go B2P simply because of the consoles? FFXI and FFXIV already proved that as a bogus excuse...
If anything, hasn't ESO's situation taught you that white knighting till the bitter end doesn't help any game's situation?
Wildstar needs to wait it out ..... Consider this.... Wildstar is alot like World of Warcraft ..... World of Warcraft expansions take to long to come out... Where will everyone go? Answer: Wildstar - the challenge it's content brings is most like WoW's, it's the perfect filler between expacs.
What do I want to happen, well.... f2p or b2p of course, but from a business standpoint, it may do WS best to wait it out and see if they can rake in some subs when Warlords wears off of the raiders.
I'm not so sure. By the time WoW's hardcore raiders are "wearing off" of its current tier, the next tier will be released. Xpacs are released every couple of years, but raid tiers containing the hardest raids of any game on the market are released every few months. Thus is the cycle of WoW, and the reason its still going 10 million strong after 10 years.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Ayep.
Of course, the default/standard answer to that is "FFXI and FFXIV are only doing well as P2P because they're Final Fantasy games".
And of course, the people who'd make that argument will always ignore the fact that FFXIV 1.0 bombed horribly - despite being a Final Fantasy game - and had to be redesigned from the ground up as 'A Realm Reborn'...
I wonder if people will ever stop trying to make arbitrary excuses while completely ignoring the blatantly obvious fact that a subscription model works absolutely fine for a MMO - as long as enough people find the game worth paying a subscription for to satisfy the developer/publisher.
Why are fewer and fewer MMOs working out as P2P? Because not enough people find them worth paying a subscription.
Why are the MMOs that continue to have a sub doing fine with them? Because enough people do find them worth paying a subscription.
It really is that simple.
The reason fewer and fewer MMOs are lasting as P2P is because their designs are completely counter-intuitive to supporting one. P2P MMOs rely on long-term dedication to the game. They depend on having people digging in and playing for the long haul... months or even years.
In most modern MMOs you can "reach the end" within weeks... even playing casually. When you have people reaching the highest level content you have to offer within their first month of service, and your first major content patch isn't due for another several weeks... you're going to have a problem with retention.
Square-Enix, incidentally, demonstrates the two main ways you can maintain a successful P2P model...
FFXI demonstrates it by being a game that is designed (or at least was, up until Abyssea) for the long-term. It was designed as a long-term hobby, with a heavy emphasis on community and cooperation. Hence, over 11 years into its service, it's still doing fine with a subscription.
FFXIV demonstrates it by having consistent updates that introduce a large amount of new content - not only main scenario and dungeon-related stuff, but all manner of side-content and smaller "fluff" things as well.
If you want to maintain a successful subscription-based MMO, you have to do one or the other. Either design for the long-term (something that won't necessarily fly these days), or have the manpower to crank out substantial updates often enough to keep players busy and entertained.
This "finish and forget it" approach to design that many newer MMOs seem to have adopted will simply not support a subscription. F2P/B2P with microtransactions is the only feasible revenue model for them.
/Thread
Really?
Name one SINGLE MMO that launched FTP that actually had good quality? LOL
And no B2P doesn't count, and ones that were converted to FTP don't counter either.
There isn't any. This quality your talking about doesn't exist.
That is why games like WoW will continue to crush these garbage games under its heel and never even notice they existed in the first place.
Define 'good quality'?
To me PlanetSide2 is a pretty good MMO and it launched as a F2P.
List of F2P games are fairly extensive now so this 'hate' on F2P is bizzare.
Heck, DOTA2 / TF2 are F2P games that most would agree are 'quality'.
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
I think if there is anything Carbine does not have, it's time. And even IF Carbine had all the time in the world, they have shown various times that they are terrible at managing timeframes.
The game took them 9(?) years to develope and that wasn't enough to even get basic mechanics of an mmorpg or a working engine in place. And then right after release AGAIN they noticed that they can't keep up their patching schedule. The game is already slipping through their fingers for a variety of reasons. If your game is lacking left and right at launch, at least it had to be fixed yesterday..no such luxury as sitting things out.
Everyone who went to Wildstar when Blizzard did not release anything for a year already left again month ago. A game has to be able to stand on his own feet and can't live on unhappy WoW-players that sub for a month or two only.
-free trials to level XY to get some movement back into those every-since forsaken low levels
-B2P
-Premium packages from 6,99 to 9,99 per month
or somethig like that.
No.
NCsoft is notoriuos in being stubborn to the point that they would rather close the game than change its payment type.
This is was evident many times over the years. With City Of Heroes being paticulary notorious , because it still had big fan base and the game was perfect candidate for F2P. But also Tabula Rasa where they not only closed the game suddenly but went to do it even though they had to pay 20 million dollars penalty if they close it.
Its like they do not care at all.
Wildstar was supposed to be F2P game pre-release. Than just some month before release they decided on p2p , technically killing it before birth.
I think they hate western developed games and have some internal politic war probably some factions within trying with all might to justify that only korean developed games make money.
Whatever it is though. Do not expect Wildstar going F2P, but rather closing very soon
Well, I think there are two things that can happen.
1) Game goes F2P (what a normal company would do)
2) Remain P2P and shut down the game after a while (what NCSoft like to do).
In all honesty I really hate NCSoft and I don't buy any of their games. Only exception I made was Guild Wars as I loved ArenaNet and GW.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
Except:
NCSoft converted CoH to a F2P game. The F2P lasted what - 10 months - before they closed it.
Another example of how going F2P is not a magic wand; it does not guarantee anything.
NCSoft is not a bad company it is simply a company that makes business decisions. It will come down to:
NCSoft will likely just close the game down. I'm surprised they've let GuildWars survive this long to be perfectly honest. They practically only want Aion (garbage) and Lineage (also garbage) in their lineup.
It's one of the reasons I avoided Wild Star, and why I'm wary of putting too much effort into Guild Wars 2 despite it being a wonderful game.
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Wildstar IS going to go F2P or B2P, it's inevitable and you can't deny it. Game isn't doing well at all, either. Even with megaservers population is struggling. Not to mention that they've had to change their content release schedule. It's an NCSoft game, too. That's a major sign that it's going F2P in 2015.
I expect the announcement to come after ESO makes the jump.
Muhahahahahaha. never heard something so funny lol. carbine and wildstar are 100 times worse than eso, and even eso sucks hard.
YOu shouldn't be surprised. Guild Wars is doing great. GW has always been designed to be a game based on the B2P model. GW1 was the only MMO at the time without a subscripion. The only one! The original GW1 sold 5/6m copies and had a huge fan following. GW2 is also doing pretty well.
So I am not sure why you are worried about GW2. NCSoft are thinking about their goodwill too. GW1 and GW2 were a financial success overall. They both achieved their targets. They were never supposed to be sub based games and they sold millions of copies. Why would NCSoft close GW down? Also there is the potential of GW3. And GW2's projections for Q3 are looking great (e.g. expansion coming in). If GW2 needed more money, they should just work on expansions. That was the main complaint about the game.
So yeah if you are enjoying GW2, don't worry. It's not shutting down any time soon.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I think you will find Elder Scrolls went buy to play and not free to play . Wildstar will have to change its business model at some point within the year I hope when ( not if ) it does that it goes for a buy to play model too .
Anyone who thinks this game will stay subscription based is in serious denial .
So ESO is going free2play and everything will be through cash/item shops that will be alot more than a monthly subscription?
Shit I still have 3 or 4, 60 day gametime cards yet
I have a feeling, if WS doesn't go to F2P or B2P it will likely shut down by NCSoft. They have a tendency to do this with games that aren't delivering at a high enough rate.
Drop 4 will really determine this. There's already talk about Drop 4 happening in "2 weeks" (early Feb), but they've already stated that Itemization changes aren't ready for launch. Apparently, DS20 is also not yet complete/tuned. Guilds who are already clearing up to Avatus in DS40 aren't able to reach the same point in DS20 with the BiS gear from DS20 (You can get a full set from a vendor on the PTR).
If Drop 4 is successful and is the second "miracle patch" (remember Drop 3 was supposed to be) I see them going F2P or B2P relatively quickly in order to pick up a second wind (Drop 5/end of Q2). If it fails to deliver, I see them doing more lay offs and eventually just shutting down before the years-end.