MMORPG.com Free Zone Columnist Richard Aihoshi writes this look back at the year 2009 from the perspective of the Free 2 Play side of the MMO business.

With 2009 winding down, it seems only natural to look back at some notable things that have happened in the free to play space since the beginning of the year. Of course, since the topics I've chosen to discuss - note that they're in no particular order - represent a completely personal, non-comprehensive selection, it's a dead certainty other people's lists will differ, quite significantly in some cases.

In this respect, I'm not expecting or aiming for any form of consensus. I look forward to seeing some very interesting and well thought out comments, whether they align closely with mine or not at all.

Continued growth despite the harsh economy

It's abundantly clear that F2P's market share is still growing, although due to the scarcity of empirical data, it's hard to gauge how quickly. My main focus here is dollars, not the grossly inflated and thus essentially useless registrant counts put out by publishers, or the incessantly increasing number of titles.

Read An Intriguing Year for Free to Play.

There really is a lot going on with the MMO industry right now, whether we realize it or not. I myself have been largely uninformed of the prominence of F2P games and the Asian market. I'm learning a great deal now, though, and I look forward to seeing more development as time moves on and the industry progresses.

Personally I think Allods online looks the most amazing mmo to be coming out soon from the F2P market, hell it looks better than most P2P mmo's.

The biggest question I have though, and this pertains to the entire industry, not just F2P, is are we going to keep see games built on flashy features, or games that have a solid foundation of built-in mechanics (combat, story/lore, economy, items, skills, etc.). The lack of one or many of these things is a recurring theme I've been seeing lately. They've just felt... hollow.

I don't understand how the F2P stuf continues to grow, most folks I know say they hate the business modle. However there sure seams to be a lot of it going on.

I for one am not into all the strange f2p stuff with the strange graphics and animations that look worse than wow characters.

Oh well like I said somebody must be having fun with them, just not me.

I spent two years playing the non-instanced game Bounty bay Online. It took an act of God to fight any on the high level drop Mobs. Players would camp on them for days, sometime teams would switch off on a popular Boss. That got old fast. Now I am playing DDO and love the instanced quests. No longer do you have a collection of The Lord of the Flies following your party around, just to jump you after you cleared out everything but the final reward, forcing you to PvP just to finish the Quest.

I just wish there was a Free to Play game that didn't suck. I have played quite a number of them, but they are mostly terrible games. I would be inclined to maybe spend some money and buy a few things if the gameplay itself on some of these games were decent.  I tried Free Realms and it is a cute game, but it really doesn't hold my interest as I'm almost 40 yrs old. I have played games like Perfect World and that game was just a huge grindfest and later levels you HAD to have things from their cash shop to continue. Make a Fp2 game that has a good concept, good gameplay, and the things they want to see are not required to keep playing, but rather are things one can buy for purely looks.

As my experience F2Ps are ( its easy to find some of my point in any F2P )  : 

-Funny looking cute Asian style games... ( personally hate it )

-grind grind grind.. and grind same looking mobs all over. ( why ? its easy to drop lots of  mobs every where )

- Customer service problems

-If I'm gonna play it , it gonna cost me more than a P2P game

-Paying players getting the feeling of the wolf in F2P games.

-Community problems ( random trolls and kids every where )

-Anime and hentai design style ( give me a break ...)

-Usually no a deep design and lore with many content

-the worst it gets the more it has more PVP options..

-damn korean market

-Its the best for bimbo player and care bears  or kids around 10-17 yrs old .

If you keep telling people the Emperors cloths are cloth of gold I am sure some people will believe it, I am not so sure however. Let us look at the 'facts' Mr Aihoshi presents:
 

“It's abundantly clear that F2P's market share is still growing, although due to the scarcity of empirical data, it's hard to gauge how quickly.”

This Means: There is no reliable empirical data, but I know its happening.

“We also tend to discount how many people around the world play F2P games. I haven't seen any recent figures I'd be confident quoting, but whatever the actual number may be, it's huge.”

This Means: I have seen no recent figures but somehow I can tell you player numbers are huge.

“Continued growth despite limited visibility”

This means: You can’t see what’s going on, but I know it is going on.

“was budgeted at $12 million. There are others in the same ballpark, just without specific amounts stated for them.”

This Means: I don’t have a clue what their budgets were but I am going hide that by using the word ballpark.

Its a big probability that DDO:U was a last nail in coffin of P2P MMO games.

One thing MMO developers allready understood is that WOW playerbase is untouchable. And when WOW player leaves he does not leave WOW, he leaves the genre completely.

Rest are faced with 2 alternatives - either go with rest of not very good P2P games , or go with same quality game F2P.

Solution is very simple.

All in all. Only game 2010 that can maybe ask for subscription is SWTOR. Rest should learn from DDO or perish

The gaming market overall is extremely dynamic right now. The winds of the economie and sudden technology jumps are twisting everything. Stability is the last word I would use in today's gaming industry hehe.

I'm very curious to see what recipe will win the current race. Specially with Allods that according to the early comments; appears to be a killer game. We might start seeing some extremely well polished F2P MMOs in the next few years.

F2P represents the ultimate gaming experience with no strings attached.

- It's technically Free

- Since it has no monthly fee, who cares if you only play 1 hour a week

- All your friends and clan can play with you, they just need to download the game

- You pay for the features you really want (not exactly working like that yet though...)

If someone does it really right, he can completely swallow a market. Many have found clever solutions but no one has really found the ultimate customer trap yet.

I cannot help but wonder if Turbine's splitting their Siege of Mirkwood expansion into two products is an experiment in--well, not microtransaction--let's call it megatransaction. One product included the actual content update: the new Mirkwood zone, etc. The other product (adventurer's pack) included a number of features that people used to F2P games expect to see in cash shops: a mount, shared bank space, extra character slots, etc.

Because of their marketing (they essentially gave SoM away for free to subscribers and a reduced price on the "Pack") they could feel confident their player base would chip in extra money.

Of course, a lot of people are saying the amount of material provided (even with both products) isn't enough to justify the $50 of most expansions, so Turbine could have just been honest about their pricing.

Still, Turbine sent out a lot of surveys last year about F2P and micro-transactions...

Perhaps more of a hybrid mode is in the offering. Subscription games with large 'packages' of what would normally be seen in cash shops.

-w

I think any growth we see in F2P MMO games in the west is directly proportionate to the general decline of MMO games. DDO and Chronicles of Spellborn are good examples - games that can't stand up as subscription games have to settle with the less appealing F2P business model. The worse the market gets for MMO games, the more F2P games we will see.

Originally posted by Scot

If you keep telling people the Emperors cloths are cloth of gold I am sure some people will believe it, I am not so sure however. Let us look at the 'facts' Mr Aihoshi presents:
 

“It's abundantly clear that F2P's market share is still growing, although due to the scarcity of empirical data, it's hard to gauge how quickly.”

This Means: There is no reliable empirical data, but I know its happening.

“We also tend to discount how many people around the world play F2P games. I haven't seen any recent figures I'd be confident quoting, but whatever the actual number may be, it's huge.”

This Means: I have seen no recent figures but somehow I can tell you player numbers are huge.

“Continued growth despite limited visibility”

This means: You can’t see what’s going on, but I know it is going on.

“was budgeted at $12 million. There are others in the same ballpark, just without specific amounts stated for them.”

This Means: I don’t have a clue what their budgets were but I am going hide that by using the word ballpark.

You are correct that Richard didnt really give any solid figures. This is clearly a 'from the hip' editorial, put out before vacation. However, lets throw some names out that we CAN identify.

New to the F2P market (and fresh from P2P) this year are DDO and WAR. Clearly this is a change in the market, and these are big names (in the west). I am sure if you dig around you can find some numbers of development cost for both of these.

If you check the earnings for both of these companies (which will be released soon) they will tell thier stockholders how these are doing (profit wise). Most of us already know (from less official statements) that these moves have proved to be good financial choices.

One thing that Richard has left out (because he is old school) is that both F2P and P2P are destined to be niche products. The core of the market is moving towards various forms of hybrids. DDO is just as much F2P as it is P2P, and it is a great example of a hybrid based on its content. Any game that follows this example and builds a business plan that optimizes the strengths of the game to monitize will do significantly better than any game that just says it is F2P or P2P. In the future, the 'winners' will be the games that offer multiple options to its customers.

Originally posted by wyrde

I cannot help but wonder if Turbine's splitting their Siege of Mirkwood expansion into two products is an experiment in--well, not microtransaction--let's call it megatransaction. One product included the actual content update: the new Mirkwood zone, etc. The other product (adventurer's pack) included a number of features that people used to F2P games expect to see in cash shops: a mount, shared bank space, extra character slots, etc.

Because of their marketing (they essentially gave SoM away for free to subscribers and a reduced price on the "Pack") they could feel confident their player base would chip in extra money.

Of course, a lot of people are saying the amount of material provided (even with both products) isn't enough to justify the $50 of most expansions, so Turbine could have just been honest about their pricing.

Still, Turbine sent out a lot of surveys last year about F2P and micro-transactions...

Perhaps more of a hybrid mode is in the offering. Subscription games with large 'packages' of what would normally be seen in cash shops.

 

-w

Actually what that was was trying to get folks who where on the month to month 9.99 plan to go for 3 and 6 month subs. The reason is a lot of folks on 9.99 plan sub for a month then leave.   What I think were going to see is LOTRO eventualy move the same dirrection that DDO went with a F2P and  a store.  Proabably in the next year or so, as I too also got surveys from them about F2P games.

Originally posted by Demz2

Personally I think Allods online looks the most amazing mmo to be coming out soon from the F2P market, hell it looks better than most P2P mmo's.

I don't understand why people are facinated with Allods, it is just another gambling game.  Hardly something to look forward to.  It also does not have the content of any of them either.

I have yet to see a f2p game come even close to the content that you find in the ptp games.  Not to say we won't see that as the existing games continue to add such.

Originally posted by Demz2

Personally I think Allods online looks the most amazing mmo to be coming out soon from the F2P market, hell it looks better than most P2P mmo's.

Couldn't agree more. Allods feels more like a really polished P2P game, rather than a F2P game. I've heard some people in zone chat who said they would actually pay a monthly fee to play it. Others within the blog community that I'm a part of, have already said that if they can stay hooked till the games launches, they'll most definitely be purchasing Store items (and probably every month up to a $10 to $15 limit). What most interesting of all is that a lot of the people within this community normally hate the F2P business model (myself included). Simply put, Allods is F2P done right. Well at least based upon what we've seen so far in the beta test.

Originally posted by CayneJobb

I think any growth we see in F2P MMO games in the west is directly proportionate to the general decline of MMO games. DDO and Chronicles of Spellborn are good examples - games that can't stand up as subscription games have to settle with the less appealing F2P business model. The worse the market gets for MMO games, the more F2P games we will see.

The key is that unlike SP games, a player would NOT subscribe to very many games. The reason is obvious. Most people don't have time to  properly play a MMO for it to worth a $15 sub fee.

In SP games, you don't have to be the best to survive. Most will play Modern Warfare 2 .. but after it is done, many players will get other FPS. Obviously this is NOT true in MMO because it is seldom that anyone will "get done".

F2P is a very good model for the lesser MMOs to survive. Take DDO as an example. My main game is WOW and I won't switch to DDO. However, i do want to play something else in between patches when I have consumed most of the wow content. It does NOT make sense for me to sub DDO too but now it is F2P and i can spend some time in it. I may even spend some money, if it is warranted. I highly doubt I am the only one doing this kind of MMO juggling.

Originally posted by erictlewis

I don't understand how the F2P stuf continues to grow, most folks I know say they hate the business modle. However there sure seams to be a lot of it going on.

I for one am not into all the strange f2p stuff with the strange graphics and animations that look worse than wow characters.

Oh well like I said somebody must be having fun with them, just not me.

 

I am one of those,i have tried tons of F2P and they are all the same ,they lack a ton of game play.There only premise is to get out a super low poly game that uses very little bandwidth to acommodate those that MUST play for free.

They always lack a ton of features you expect from games,and the few they offer usually cost you more than a P2P game,so they really are  a type of game made for those who have no choice.

If you have any money at all,stay away from these games.They are designed so pathetic only a dummy cannot see through them.They are designed to hook you in early on,so that you will eventually spend money,and it will pay at least as much as a normal 15 bucks a month,but usually 2/5/10x more.

You can trust me when i say,if you stay away from all F2P games,you will not be missing out on anything you won't see in P2P games.

Yes and WOW for last 2 years gets contents which were in F2P games for many yrs ;). Some ppl need to open their eyes :p...

Btw. U can trust me WoW sucked at the beginning not less than other MMOs. Anyway payment method is not meter of depth...especially since last year. I wonder why guys who left Blizzard are making f2p title now then.