MMORPG.com Columnist Richard Aihoshi discusses the transition for one developer in particular in moving from a career working on subscription based MMOs and into the F2P sector of the industry.

"Imagine an MMOG based in a fantasy world with multiple classes to choose from. You can customize your look. The core play includes leveling up your character, defeating creatures, improving your equipment, and getting other players together to defeat some pretty tough bosses. You can trade items with one another, fight in PvP battles, send in-game mail, and form guilds. Am I talking about World of Warcraft? Warhammer Online? EverQuest II?"

While the feature set listed by Chris Lena is common enough to be in quite a number of releases, his questions point out an undeniable reality, which is that many people would initially associate it with major subscription offerings. In fact, he's referring to Dragonica Online, the free to play game launched a couple of weeks ago by publisher THQ*ICE.

Read A Developer's Shift to F2P.

Right, your case here is abased on a anime game that mostly kids will play and you think this guy understands the market?

If he understands the genre so, why is he going for a highly competitive niche in it?  There are tons of anime games out there.

The funny thing is, content is king and the subscription games have it, while none of the f2p do.   Whether his game has the content to succeed most will never know because of the niche he choose to operate in.  So much for his alleged in depth knowledge of the genre.

If you want to cite success in the f2p MMO's, all you have to do is look at DDO and how they have melded the subscription and f2p forms of the genre.  Turbine has a far better understanding of what the players in this genre want.

You're making a bold assumption there that DDO is doing well or that it is a good example of a free to play game.

As for the article, this Chris guy clearly never played a free to play MMO before he took the job, its not rocket science and anyone who has worked with free to play games or played them for any serious length of time will know they are drastically different to subcription MMOs.

It scares me sometimes how narrow minded and blind people within the industry are.

This developer is spewing corporate propaganda to promote the new game.  He went from working on a large budget, high quality, state of the art subscription based MMO to a low budget 2D sidescroller craptastic f2p.

He's not happy or excited about that.  He just went from the NFL to the Euro league and now he's trying to put on a happy face because its his job and its expected of him.  Hell the poor guy is probably trying to convince himself it isn't as bad as it seems.

Some interesting points here about the differences between F2P and subscription, like the need for F2P games to offer quicker initial gratification and more frequent content updates. The problem with that I think is that F2P games typically have smaller budgets, so it's a tall order for them to be more appealing out of the gate and to offer more frequent updates than the big budget subscription game competitors.

I think F2P will remain the ugly step-child in the MMO family until a major developer designs a big-budget game targeted at the core MMO audience as F2P out of the gate -- and I don't mean one of these games with subscription fee + item shop shenanigans.

What made me laugh was this paragraph:

One revelation was that "Subscriptions make you lazy." He explains that the monthly nature of this revenue model tends to promote thinking from one patch to the next, which may be a couple of weeks apart, but can be far longer. In the F2P space, this time frame is significantly compressed. "The barriers to entry and exit are much, much lower, so you have deliver to your players all the time: content, contests, automated events, GM-driven ones, special offers... and whatever else people want. It takes almost no effort for them to try another game, so you have to prove yourself constantly. Everything happens faster."

He is basically saying that to make a GM event where a GM is ingame giving away an item to the first who gets to him, or to have a contest where the first 300 people who log into mmorpg.com get a free shoelace, or to make a costume that they sell for 150000000$ on the item mall that doesn't give anything ingame other than looking different is more challenging than making a full expansion with a new continent, new classes, new races, new sets of weapons and armor, new instances, new raids, new storyline, 1000 times more content for a P2P game....

Come on, F2P games are the same as making a game with the good old RPG maker that we all used to play with to make our own adventures, nothing really complicated :) And also there isn't much programming involved, because all they do is take some other game's model and just copy it and change colors and classes.

Originally posted by CayneJobb

Some interesting points here about the differences between F2P and subscription, like the need for F2P games to offer quicker initial gratification and more frequent content updates. The problem with that I think is that F2P games typically have smaller budgets, so it's a tall order for them to be more appealing out of the gate and to offer more frequent updates than the big budget subscription game competitors.

I think F2P will remain the ugly step-child in the MMO family until a major developer designs a big-budget game targeted at the core MMO audience as F2P out of the gate -- and I don't mean one of these games with subscription fee + item shop shenanigans.

Uhh... Item shop shenanigans ???? Wow you clearly have no idea don't you, How else is a FREE 2 PLAY mmo going to get money to develop if there is nothing to get money from..

Originally posted by mercesa

Originally posted by CayneJobb

Some interesting points here about the differences between F2P and subscription, like the need for F2P games to offer quicker initial gratification and more frequent content updates. The problem with that I think is that F2P games typically have smaller budgets, so it's a tall order for them to be more appealing out of the gate and to offer more frequent updates than the big budget subscription game competitors.

I think F2P will remain the ugly step-child in the MMO family until a major developer designs a big-budget game targeted at the core MMO audience as F2P out of the gate -- and I don't mean one of these games with subscription fee + item shop shenanigans.

 

Uhh... Item shop shenanigans ???? Wow you clearly have no idea don't you, How else is a FREE 2 PLAY mmo going to get money to develop if there is nothing to get money from..

I think he was referring to games including both Subscription and Cash shop like CO or STO.

Wow... 

I must have tried all the wrong F2P MMOs, because so far - having played Perfect World, Archlord, Shaiya, Last Chaos, Runes of Magic... and at least half a dozen others - I've yet to see a F2P MMO that comes close to the P2P MMOs I've played in terms of content, quality and depth. Almost without exception, they've been shallow, simple grind-tastic affairs with lazy designs that focus on trying to get you to use the cash shop. At best they've been underwhelming and I've lost interest in playing them after a couple days.

Also, the presumption that people stick with P2P MMOs longer because there's a financial investment just rings hollow to me and seems to be nothing more than spin. People are *more* judgemental of a P2P MMO and more demanding of quality and quantity because there *is* a monetary investment... They want their money's worth. With F2P... well... you get what you pay for.

Gotta agree with what someone said earlier in the thread, it sounds like a lot of hype and propaganda for the model to me as well. Frankly, a lot of Aioshi's articles come across as to me anyway; like he's evangelizing F2P to convince people that they're something special. In my experience, they've been underwhelming at best and come nowhere close to providing the experience I've had in all but the worst P2P MMOs.

As someone who pays monthly for Aion and still makes sure I have time to play the F2P games I enjoy, I did enjoy reading this post.  I disagree with the people who say F2P updates are not as good as P2P ones as my current favourite F2P game 'Runes Of Magic' has just done a few major updates recently, adding a new race, two new classes, new raids and new places to explore.  The game also allows people who don't wish to spend money in the item shop to access items from there via auction houses in game.

I feel like Runes of Magic offers a very high quality product with excellent updates and offers each and every day I log in.  I find myself playing it more and more often and have even ended up spending some cash in the cash shop for some rather gorgeous looking mounts.
I have played quite a few F2P MMO's, Dragonica also being a good quality game, although didn't grab my attention as much as RoM.  It is nice to see different styles of game making it to the MMO stage via F2P.
RoM offers a better experience in my eyes to WoW, WAR and DDO, it has a busy yet friendly set of servers and lots to offer to anyone bored of the standard P2P offerings right now.

I feel that if the P2P big boys want to attain some of the same excitement past launch that RoM offers and its users enjoy, F2P will start to become far more prolific.

I understand I also subscribe to Aion, however as mentioned in the article, I felt I had to persevere as I had paid for it.  It is an excellent game with features and qualities that make it probably the greatest P2P game on the market right now, however, it doesn't make me want to stop playing RoM.

Originally posted by mightyikari

 

I feel that if the P2P big boys want to attain some of the same excitement past launch that RoM offers and its users enjoy, F2P will start to become far more prolific.

Errr... that sounds like spin to me. Sorry.

AC1 to this day provides free content updates on a regular basis. Lineage 2, to this day, has free expansions adding entire new areas, new items, weapons, a new race some time back, etc. LoTRO provides substantial content updates... and so forth. Any P2P MMORPG on the market that's at least *decent* has been providing quality content updates, including new races/classes, etc. for years now.  The concept isn't something pioneered with F2P MMOs that "P2P big boys" need to pick up on. Many of them have been doing it all along.

 

I'd like to point out that DDO recently went F2P and their actual PAID subscriptions went up over 40%.

Paid subs mean you have an edge over the free players.

As many MMO vets know, these advantages may very well be worth a paid sub, especially in games featuring PvP.

Originally posted by metalliham

I'd like to point out that DDO recently went F2P and their actual PAID subscriptions went up over 40%.

Paid subs mean you have an edge over the free players.

As many MMO vets know, these advantages may very well be worth a paid sub, especially in games featuring PvP.

F2P increased thier paid subscriptions by 40%... it also gave them microtransaction based income, that is also significant (no good numbers yet to give the exact ratio of Monthly Fee vs Microtransaction). It would not be unreasonable to assume that this change may have doubled thier revenue...

It is hard to believe that they would consider something like this not successful.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by mightyikari

 

I feel that if the P2P big boys want to attain some of the same excitement past launch that RoM offers and its users enjoy, F2P will start to become far more prolific.

Errr... that sounds like spin to me. Sorry.

AC1 to this day provides free content updates on a regular basis. Lineage 2, to this day, has free expansions adding entire new areas, new items, weapons, a new race some time back, etc. LoTRO provides substantial content updates... and so forth. Any P2P MMORPG on the market that's at least *decent* has been providing quality content updates, including new races/classes, etc. for years now.  The concept isn't something pioneered with F2P MMOs that "P2P big boys" need to pick up on. Many of them have been doing it all along.

 

Indeed they do offer these things, if you pay to play the game.  All I was saying is that RoM offer it all for free and I personally enjoy playing the game massively.  Even more than my favourite P2P game.  P2P doesn't need to pick up on this, however F2P is offering these quality updates to everyone, even those who haven't spent a penny.

Originally posted by mightyikari

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by mightyikari

 

I feel that if the P2P big boys want to attain some of the same excitement past launch that RoM offers and its users enjoy, F2P will start to become far more prolific.

Errr... that sounds like spin to me. Sorry.

AC1 to this day provides free content updates on a regular basis. Lineage 2, to this day, has free expansions adding entire new areas, new items, weapons, a new race some time back, etc. LoTRO provides substantial content updates... and so forth. Any P2P MMORPG on the market that's at least *decent* has been providing quality content updates, including new races/classes, etc. for years now.  The concept isn't something pioneered with F2P MMOs that "P2P big boys" need to pick up on. Many of them have been doing it all along.

 

Indeed they do offer these things, if you pay to play the game.  All I was saying is that RoM offer it all for free and I personally enjoy playing the game massively.  Even more than my favourite P2P game.  P2P doesn't need to pick up on this, however F2P is offering these quality updates to everyone, even those who haven't spent a penny.

Err... well okay I can see the clarification in that,  but it still seems like spin to me. 

RoM might be the exception to the rule, but F2P MMOs are still pretty widely regarded as being inferior to P2P MMOs... and it's not because people are "trying to justify the subscription fee" as the article seems to imply.. Time and again, players explain how the F2P MMOs feel like half-baked, shallow grind-fests and that's why they don't continue playing them.

What you *could* say and, perhaps, be more on-target is if more F2P MMOs used RoM as an example of how to develop and maintain their own MMOs (using your opinion of RoM's overall quality as reference, for example's sake) and brought the overall quality of them up, that maybe they would see the same success as the so-called "P2P big boys". Even moreso, they could use the better P2P MMOs as a measure as well.  

It's a matter of the F2P developers rising to the standard people have come to expect from a well-done P2P MMO. Not the "P2P big boys" realizing the brilliance of F2P and jumping on that bandwagon.

Even then, however, they're still going up against the fact that many people do not like the idea of cash shops or RMT in any form and would be turned off by that alone. That's a stigma that isn't going away any time soon. 

 

 

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Right, your case here is abased on a anime game that mostly kids will play and you think this guy understands the market?

If he understands the genre so, why is he going for a highly competitive niche in it?  There are tons of anime games out there.

The funny thing is, content is king and the subscription games have it, while none of the f2p do.   Whether his game has the content to succeed most will never know because of the niche he choose to operate in.  So much for his alleged in depth knowledge of the genre.

If you want to cite success in the f2p MMO's, all you have to do is look at DDO and how they have melded the subscription and f2p forms of the genre.  Turbine has a far better understanding of what the players in this genre want.

Well... Moving DDO to F2P was more desperation than insight... After it bombed so badly as a P2P game(forced grouping being one of the examples of how seriously it niched itself).  Remember Asherons Call 2? Now there is an example of a "learning experience" for you... Between Mickysoft and Turbine they messed up AC2 so badly that they finally decided to close it down(after selling us all an expansion pack of course...).  So I can't really see Turbine as having any great understanding of what the players in that genre want.

Runes of Magic is a better example of a F2P game that has more than the usual depth than one typically finds in a F2P.  I'd still be playing it, if not for the cheesy boss level mobs with long aggro ranges they have roaming around in the quest areas.  They can one or two shot players in that areas level range.  Not sure if they are still doing this, but having to wait 30 days to receive the diamonds one has purchased in the cashshop is a VERY bad decision as well.  F2P doesn't have to equal low quality grinder, but in all too many instances it does.

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by mightyikari

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by mightyikari

 

I feel that if the P2P big boys want to attain some of the same excitement past launch that RoM offers and its users enjoy, F2P will start to become far more prolific.

Errr... that sounds like spin to me. Sorry.

AC1 to this day provides free content updates on a regular basis. Lineage 2, to this day, has free expansions adding entire new areas, new items, weapons, a new race some time back, etc. LoTRO provides substantial content updates... and so forth. Any P2P MMORPG on the market that's at least *decent* has been providing quality content updates, including new races/classes, etc. for years now.  The concept isn't something pioneered with F2P MMOs that "P2P big boys" need to pick up on. Many of them have been doing it all along.

 

Indeed they do offer these things, if you pay to play the game.  All I was saying is that RoM offer it all for free and I personally enjoy playing the game massively.  Even more than my favourite P2P game.  P2P doesn't need to pick up on this, however F2P is offering these quality updates to everyone, even those who haven't spent a penny.

Err... well okay I can see the clarification in that,  but it still seems like spin to me. 

RoM might be the exception to the rule, but F2P MMOs are still pretty widely regarded as being inferior to P2P MMOs... and it's not because people are "trying to justify the subscription fee" as the article seems to imply.. Time and again, players explain how the F2P MMOs feel like half-baked, shallow grind-fests and that's why they don't continue playing them.

What you *could* say and, perhaps, be more on-target is if more F2P MMOs used RoM as an example of how to develop and maintain their own MMOs (using your opinion of RoM's overall quality as reference, for example's sake) and brought the overall quality of them up, that maybe they would see the same success as the so-called "P2P big boys". Even moreso, they could use the better P2P MMOs as a measure as well.  

It's a matter of the F2P developers rising to the standard people have come to expect from a well-done P2P MMO. Not the "P2P big boys" realizing the brilliance of F2P and jumping on that bandwagon.

Even then, however, they're still going up against the fact that many people do not like the idea of cash shops or RMT in any form and would be turned off by that alone. That's a stigma that isn't going away any time soon. 

 

 

 

I fully agree, I think there was much misunderstanding from my post.

I also must admit to cash-shops and RMT being a major turn off for me originally, until RoM.  Even though I know I can work in game to get the same items, I did find myself using the cash shop.

I feel though that F2P quality will continue to improve, the sea of poor quality F2P MMO's will eventually die and true greatness will shine.  That is when P2P MMO's will have its work cut out.

I'll continue my support of good quality MMO games, and that shines in both the F2P and P2P worlds.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Runes of Magic is a better example of a F2P game that has more than the usual depth than one typically finds in a F2P.  I'd still be playing it, if not for the cheesy boss level mobs with long aggro ranges they have roaming around in the quest areas.  They can one or two shot players in that areas level range.  Not sure if they are still doing this, but having to wait 30 days to receive the diamonds one has purchased in the cashshop is a VERY bad decision as well.  F2P doesn't have to equal low quality grinder, but in all too many instances it does.

Just to clarify, as I play Runes of Magic -

- The bosses are still incredibly tough without a party, however it takes more than one or two shots for them to take down a player usually.

- The aggro range is pretty long, however most enemies can be out ran, even on foot.

- Diamonds are added to your account instantly.

I've been playing for a good few months now and really enjoy it, especially since the servers have become even busier and the community is consistantly friendly.

Originally posted by mightyikari

Originally posted by Wraithone

Runes of Magic is a better example of a F2P game that has more than the usual depth than one typically finds in a F2P.  I'd still be playing it, if not for the cheesy boss level mobs with long aggro ranges they have roaming around in the quest areas.  They can one or two shot players in that areas level range.  Not sure if they are still doing this, but having to wait 30 days to receive the diamonds one has purchased in the cashshop is a VERY bad decision as well.  F2P doesn't have to equal low quality grinder, but in all too many instances it does.

 

Just to clarify, as I play Runes of Magic -

- The bosses are still incredibly tough without a party, however it takes more than one or two shots for them to take down a player usually.

- The aggro range is pretty long, however most enemies can be out ran, even on foot.

- Diamonds are added to your account instantly.

I've been playing for a good few months now and really enjoy it, especially since the servers have become even busier and the community is consistantly friendly.

The diamonds are added instantly but you are not allowed to spend them except cash shop items. You have to wait 30 days before you can trade them in the auctionhouse, so if you want that shiny sword from there you should pray that it stays for sale for a month to get it. In addition, all diamonds accumulated before the transaction have the same restrictions, so if you eg have 500 and buy another 1000, the whole 1500 are only spendable in the CS for 30 days.

Something that many people miss is that 99.99% of free to play MMOs are designed around a Korean or Chinese audience, which is much more tolerant of slow and repetative gameplay than the western audiences. Even Runes of Magic, a Taiwanese game suffers from this in some respect, but is arguably the best free to play MMO to be exported from Asia to date.

I think you will find, once western developers start releasing free to play MMOs that the standards will go up drastically. After all, it isn't the payment model that is the problem, in almost all cases it is design decisions that are the problem and none of these design decisions are tied to money, they just happen to be how they make games out there.

Look to Earth Eternal, possibly the first real free to play game from a US developer, it incorporates a lot of good design decisions and very few bad ones, if you look past the somewhat child-like art style they've chosen.

Everyone needs to stop judging games based on the payment model, Aioshi included, and start judging them on their gameplay!

Originally posted by bobfish

Something that many people miss is that 99.99% of free to play MMOs are designed around a Korean or Chinese audience, which is much more tolerant of slow and repetative gameplay than the western audiences. Even Runes of Magic, a Taiwanese game suffers from this in some respect, but is arguably the best free to play MMO to be exported from Asia to date.

I think you will find, once western developers start releasing free to play MMOs that the standards will go up drastically. After all, it isn't the payment model that is the problem, in almost all cases it is design decisions that are the problem and none of these design decisions are tied to money, they just happen to be how they make games out there.

 

Look to Earth Eternal, possibly the first real free to play game from a US developer, it incorporates a lot of good design decisions and very few bad ones, if you look past the somewhat child-like art style they've chosen.

Everyone needs to stop judging games based on the payment model, Aioshi included, and start judging them on their gameplay!

A good point.  I haven't checked out Earth Eternal however I may have a cheeky look later tonight at it.

Indeed, the payment model is not the most important thing, if you think something is value for your money, you'll spend it, no matter what the payment model is.

 I have checked out Earth Eternal and just recently dragonica. I must say the interface and graphics are pretty high quality in both titles. While I really don't enjoy the sidescrolling it seems to be a decent game. There are lots of options but the quests once again in both are the same go get X of Y and return it to me. 

Seems to be a really bad reaction to F2P titles here. I think we will see more and more and as I see it they are getting better and better. Time will tell. 

F2P are comming along.  Look at Gates of Andaron.  There's a nice F2P wow clone.

I do fear that their business model isn't geared to make much profit.   While I'm glad the item shop isn't set up for building pwnage into your low level avi,  the mounts are for rent only.  I wonder how much money they are making.  Hopefully they aren't the next Dungeon Runners.

Originally posted by Rath444

F2P are comming along.  Look at Gates of Andaron.  There's a nice F2P wow clone.

I do fear that their business model isn't geared to make much profit.   While I'm glad the item shop isn't set up for building pwnage into your low level avi,  the mounts are for rent only.  I wonder how much money they are making.  Hopefully they aren't the next Dungeon Runners.

I've played gates. Cute game until it leads one in to contested zones. Then its a typical Asian gankfest.  I managed to get my warrior up to level 32. The game is totally unbalanced in terms of PvP. Using cash shop items I was able to get my gear(weapons, armor and shield) up to around +12. Some crazies have gone as high as +18 from what I hear.  I liked the idea of the solo dungeons, but they proved to be too simplistic and few and far between.  Its too bad its such a gank/grindfest, as I like the graphics.

Some very good points made in your article. It is true f2p do seem to update and add things much quicker and the point made is good. There is a lot of f2p games out there and seems more arriving regularly. So yes the market is a tough one.

I have tried a few of them and I have noticed things seems to move at a much faster pace when it comes to updates and new things. They are not without problems but it sure seems they get them cleaned up a lot quicker than the subscription games do.

It is a whole lot easier to change a game when you are not spending so much in the playing and expansions.