Lets not forget all the problems the game had while it was p2p, will those be fixed or left in the game for years to come as they were in the previous model. Thats one reason i dont support a company right away, i take the wait and see approach playing for free until i see more development. ( p2p players supported for years without any change so dont think my little contribution would change much )
Yeah, your knowledge of events is off. SoE fixed the major issues. Yeah, it wasnt absolutely perfect when they were done, but its pretty widely acknowledged that SoE made it to where it should have been at alunched, with some added content on top of that.
And what p2p players 'supported' for years after that was the development costs SoE incurred while paying a large staff to fix broken code while virtually no one was playing for 18 months. I would be absolutely shocked if SoE has seen one cent of profit off of VG.
As a thought experiment: has anyone tried to think up their own model for converting a traditional fantasy/questing/levelling MMORPG from subscription to F2P?
It ain't easy. These are not games that have a lot of obvious seams to divide free from paying customers.
So every scheme I've seen has had its own flaws. The Sony model is very obviously angled towards treating free play as an extended advertisement for subscribing, and I got no problem with that. They clearly feel that their games are good enough to be worth subscribing to, and that all they needed was broader exposure to potential customers via a limited F2P option. Maybe they're right, maybe they're not. I'm not subscribed to any Sony game so obviously they weren't right about me, but I'm just one gamer.
Is LOTRO's pay-as-you-go model better? I thought it was. I have played it casually since it went F2P, I've spent a lot less than $15/month, and I've unlocked a lot of quest packs. I'd say the money I spent was proportional to the fact that I was playing it off and on compared to paying a sub and playing it as my sole game. However I think they have gotten rather greedy with crap like the lottery boxes, charging money for the full implementation of their half-assed barter wallet, and selling the I-win button skirmish soldier in the open world. I haven't played much this year and am not likely to in the future.
Comments
Yeah, your knowledge of events is off. SoE fixed the major issues. Yeah, it wasnt absolutely perfect when they were done, but its pretty widely acknowledged that SoE made it to where it should have been at alunched, with some added content on top of that.
And what p2p players 'supported' for years after that was the development costs SoE incurred while paying a large staff to fix broken code while virtually no one was playing for 18 months. I would be absolutely shocked if SoE has seen one cent of profit off of VG.
this post gets it.