Originally posted by JeroKane

This!

The only reason why LOTRO's switch to Freemium model was a huge success, is because it was a good and succesful game to begin with.

SW:TOR is a bad game with no longetivity... so switching to F2P is not going to save them sadly. :(

No, LOTRO was also the first AAA MMO switching to it (DDO is a CORPG), being the first means a lot as well.

City of Heroes was just old.....and the genre doesn't hold much against Fantasy games mostly IMO the game doesn't offer gear eye candy progression. CoX is fairly grind/farm oriented too which grows old fast, even new players with good high lvl buds can get lvl maxed  toons in 3-6 hours.

It just has run it's course....a game type that has just needed to die off.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by JeroKane

This!

The only reason why LOTRO's switch to Freemium model was a huge success, is because it was a good and succesful game to begin with.

SW:TOR is a bad game with no longetivity... so switching to F2P is not going to save them sadly. :(

No, LOTRO was also the first AAA MMO switching to it (DDO is a CORPG), being the first means a lot as well.

DDO was the first to go F2P, and because it was successful with that, they changed LOTRO as well. If DDO had not gone F2P, I doubt LOTRO would have switched. It also coincidentally happened around the time of the buyout from Warner Bros, and F2P was done to match the payment model of DDO.

 LOTRO was pretty successful from the start, it has won many awards over the years, AFTER people have played it A LOT. SWTOR only won the award for best MMO of 2011, before people realised what it was fully like. I doubt it will win 2012 or any more awards.

Originally posted by zymurgeist
I wouldn't judge what EA will do based on NCsoft. They'yre very diferent companies. There are no guarantees.

I think it is guaranteed by past events that EA will screw up this hastily arrived at and poorly implemented decision to go F2P.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by ktanner3
The only thing that the closing of City of Heroes proves is that MMOs don't last forever. Something that the rapid fans of any game should keep in mind before sinking too much money and time in. It's bound to happen eventually. 

Partly, but believing going F2P could save any MMO is still not true.

When did I ever say that?

Most people use a certain amount of money for gaming each month so believing that all games would make more profit if you just make them F2P is a bit too good to be true.

It will be a second chanse for TOR but it still needs to become better to keep the players if they want it to work.

I agree. 

We have known for a while that mmos don't last forever - although there was a time when people claimed otherwise.

I think CoH is the first mmo that started with subs and then changed to "f2p" that is closing however. And as such it should provide a "warning shot" for any company thinking that a sub-based game can be saved by going f2p.

(ShadowBane was sub based but it went "free" rather than f2p after the studio closed etc.)

I think todays TERRA announcement is interesting as well - going from 11 to 3 servers. No mention of F2P and not likely with 3 servers. Another DAoC, UO niche product maybe getting by on a small number of subs? Especially if there is no IP cost involved - which there will be for SWTOR of course.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

Blame it on what you will, overly hopeful expectations, a boom-bust economic mentality, whatever.

FTP has been getting serious industry cheerleading. The most egregious example being:

http://www.examiner.com/article/analyst-swtor-move-to-free-to-play-could-attract-up-to-50-million-players

Pachter went from somewhat rosy SWTOR p2p glasses in 2011 up to Fenruary 2012 to FTP is splitting the MMO atom.

He states that the only two things that were holding SWTO back from financial windfall were the monthly subscription cost, and the cost of the game's box.

I don't want people to argue why Pachter might be smoking whacky tobacky, but acknowledge that FTP has been quite hyped as of late.

So was facebook as a way to generate revenue, and all the F2P games on facebook.  Can you say bubble?

Originally posted by thinktank001

It doesn't have anything to do with the other games in the market.   That is part of the beauty of P2W business model.   There is no competition for a players " sub money ". 

Time is more important than money. People don't play bad games. People don't buy stuff in games they don't play. So, for your F2P game to be successful, it has to attract players from other F2P games and that's not easy when those games aren't just lousy, low-budget Korean grinders. TOR will have to compete with other F2P titles, including LotRO, Neverwinter, DCUO, AoC, D&DO and maybe even TSW.

NCsoft is notorious for closing games. They closed Tabula Rasa that was their biggest most expensive project, basically on a whim. Without even trying to save it or fix it.

SWTOR is perfect for F2P it will do well

Originally posted by Lobotomist

SWTOR is perfect for F2P it will do well

No it won't.   It will attract huge amount of people when they will go f2p.  There will be many people that hop on every f2p game to check it out and there will be alot of former players that will log into their old characters to check game changes and similar.

Most of them will start to drop Swtor (sometimes again) fast.  Becasuse Swtor is just bad game.  It will be conversion similar to AoC.  Huge amounts of people intitially rushing it  and 6 months later dead servers again.

Originally posted by gervaise1

Sad panda:  NCSoft have today announced that City of Heroes. CoX was a sub based game from its launch back in May 2004 until it went F2P in June 2011. It had decent 200k-ish sub numbers prior to the launch of WoW but managed to push out at least 20 quarterly content packs. NB: this is not a CoX thread!

In an "effort" to increase its user base CoX went F2P last June. Quotes from the press release at the time:

"Arriving later this year, City of Heroes Freedom™ is a compelling new way for Paragon Studios to deliver more content to more players than ever before."

and

"starting July 1^st, current subscribers will begin accumulating 400 Paragon Points every month up until launch, giving loyal customers unprecedented rewards and options". (The monetization stuff being done by a specialist arm of NCSoft as well).

Sounds hauntingly familiar to what EA Bioware have said is the future for SWTOR.

F2P has proved unable to sustain the staff of 80. They are being laid off and Paragon Studios closed.

 

 

In TOR, the problem is there is no player facilitation that makes a cash-shop & f2p model interesting. TOR is based around 100% static linear paths, wherein you have a perfunctory illusion of choice; In TOR there is no "real" exploration, no crafting to speak of, no player housing, no ship painting or decor. If you buy a vehicle, TOR's engine & graphics make the player & vehicle look like  two troglodytes mating. TOR is completely based around linearity and no choices.

Where LA shot itself in the foot was pulling the license from Galaxies; It had the perfect model for a vast cash shop. Despite its age, Galaxies was a VASTLY superior mmo. The irony is if galaxies had gone f2p, there would have been hundreds of thousands of new and old players overnight.