This article is a trial balloon. They are seeing how well it would go over. (Judging fan reaction)

Also;

The Cashshop is obviously not for greed but in order to have a F2P system already in place in case they had to go F2P like AOC did. 

Having gone through it with AOC, a game that sold a lot of boxes, they understood this could happen and made sure to have contingency plans like any smart business.

Since the game did not sell anywhere near what they hoped it would, this would be the next logical step.

Originally posted by Opapanax

Both MMORPG.com and Massively have these articles as headliners today.. Sucks..

I enjoy most my time with TSW but I can see how they are financially in trouble enough to consider these things. They'll have to accomidate those who have gotten lifetime subs big time.

Throwing 200 dollars down and seeing the game go free to play within it's first 6-12 months would make me infuriated to say the least..

Does not bode well that this conversation is already coming up from Funcom..

well i have not seen one game surviving which had got lifetime sub .so if they donot accomodate you . than you should blame yourself because everyone else saw it coming . 

I love these forums.

All of you people typing out what "Funcom SHOULD have done" or "SHOULD BE doing."

As if any of you are qualified or have any idea what you're talking about.

Its this stuff that keeps me coming here to read this stuff.

Thanks.

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

I love these forums.

All of you people typing out what "Funcom SHOULD have done" or "SHOULD BE doing."

As if any of you are qualified or have any idea what you're talking about.

Its this stuff that keeps me coming here to read this stuff.

Thanks.

 

Oh, come on, if forums were dedicated only to people who were foremost experts in a field, they would be very dry, desolate places.

Also, just because somebody doesn't have a company doesn't mean they can't see choices that seem logical.

I mean, owning a company doesn't mean you make all the right choices either. :)

Most people in this world have their own opinion of what is Logical.

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Most people in this world have their own opinion of what is Logical.

Right, which is why we're on a forum, sharing our opinions.  That's what forums are FOR.

The funny thing is, some of us are actually right.  It's your job to figure out who it is. :)

You can't have a forum where only correct people share ,because so many people they ARE correct (Though some people ARE right, again.)).

Originally posted by roo67

Well that didn't take long . Funcom were very greedy with thier EU subscription prices . I don't know why they thought they could charge more than any other game . It all seemed a bit of a mess at the start . The game itself was OK but these companys have to be realistic about the product they are selling . TSW was another game that would have done well with a buy to play model . Instead of that we have another mmo that will go free to play in a market flooded with free to play games .

I feel sorry to those that spent money on a lifetime subscription .

     Well they charged for the box too so in reality it was b2p+p2p+ cash shop.....THe mad cash grab that Funcom displayed with this game was sickening...IT was blatantly obvious that Funcom was trying to get as much as they could as fast as they could with TSW.....I dont feel sorry for the lifetime buyers because they knew exactly what they were getting: a game that had little content that would be f2p within its first year of release.

Seriously? Is anyone surprised with this? 

This is the standard EA business model these days, the exact thing happened with SWTOR - all went according to plan from day 1.

Launch on sub with expensive box ---> half year later go sub/p2w ---> another half a year for pure p2w

Frankly i'm shocked you people keep buying these games.

Originally posted by Theocritus

     Well they charged for the box too so in reality it was b2p+p2p+ cash shop.....THe mad cash grab that Funcom displayed with this game was sickening...IT was blatantly obvious that Funcom was trying to get as much as they could as fast as they could with TSW.....I dont feel sorry for the lifetime buyers because they knew exactly what they were getting: a game that had little content that would be f2p within its first year of release.

Hrmmm... mad cash grab?

Let me go through part of my MMO history....

• UO = box + sub
• EQ = box + sub
• AC = box + sub
• AO = box + sub
• EnB = box + sub
• SWG = box + sub
• SB = box + sub
• CoH = box + sub
• WoW = box + sub
• EVE = box + sub
• AA = box + sub
• DDO = box + sub
• RIFT = box + sub

Hrmmm, you see - unlike you, I would not separate B2P & P2P...since my general experience has been having to buy the box (which usually came with the first 30 days) and the deciding whether to continue with a sub after that.  That's not a cash grab - that's standard.

What about the cash shop part though, right?  Well, how does one argue that an entirely optional aspect of the game's not a cash grab?  Er...maybe the optional part?

So um...I don't see your attempt at a point in the least, the one where you're suggesting that Funcom was trying to grab as much money as possible up front.  It sounds like the typical nonsense spread by folks that have a preference for...not paying for anything...misrepresenting the TSW payment model and what Funcom was doing as something other than what it is.

edit: Hrmmm, yeah - I'll edit before getting thwapped.

Originally posted by lotaparty

Originally posted by Opapanax

Both MMORPG.com and Massively have these articles as headliners today.. Sucks..

I enjoy most my time with TSW but I can see how they are financially in trouble enough to consider these things. They'll have to accomidate those who have gotten lifetime subs big time.

Throwing 200 dollars down and seeing the game go free to play within it's first 6-12 months would make me infuriated to say the least..

Does not bode well that this conversation is already coming up from Funcom..

well i have not seen one game surviving which had got lifetime sub .so if they donot accomodate you . than you should blame yourself because everyone else saw it coming . 

 

You're right honestly, I would be at fault if I did have a lifetime but I don't. I was talking about those that do have lifetime subs. I myself am only a monthly subscriber to the game..

Originally posted by MeGaTronPower
Yea i knew tsw woudl go free to play, i heard the content in that game is shallow compare to swtor. I wasnt suprised at all.

I must respond something when you mention my best game of all times, swtor. :-)

Actually TSW is not bad, I started to like it a lot, had 3 alts. But first 2 weeks I had crashes aprox. 4 times per hour, some lag, .... No problem at all with ANY other big game. And when discovered I will be limited at all times to 7 active buttons only, I already know this spells button masher. However after buying another hard disk and w7 64 my satisfaction went up by 10000%. No lag at all, no single crash in a week. Otherwise same hardware. But they can not seriously aspect spending 50€ and more for client and 7 times this ammount for windows and possibly new hd. Along with monthly sub. I'm however not sorry for my decision, now i can play much better all my main games (wow, swtor, rift, ... and now - I admit to my big surprise - gw2). But they advertise game works with xp then should stick with this. ok, decreasing i.e. graphics, ... but is unacceptable constant crashing to which only solution Funcom provides is upgrade windows to w7 and explictily 64 bit (otherwise I had 32bit) + more then 3gb RAM.

It's not like they didn't say it was set up to allow them to go F2P in the future ... BEFORE the game was even released ( Interview with Ragnar I believe )

So old news is no news 

Originally posted by eskela
It's cheap journalist trick to quote as a title one sentence from article, just to draw attention, even if the implication from the title isn't logical regarding whole interview.

Especially when people sometimes don't bother or doesn't have enough english to understand it correctly and they assume that 'title says it all'. Well, it doesnt. 

Yep - unfortunately though, so many folks do not read beyond the headline.  I got into an argument with somebody recently about that - a headline, that is.  It's been a few weeks since they spoke to me, lol.  They were ranting and raving about the "headline" in the link of a story - after a bit of discussion, I asked them if they had even clicked that link.  If they had, they would have seen the full headline (literally, the full headline at the top of the article) rather than the link headline.

It's about drawing viewership, readership, and making money - taking things out of context while hiding behind the cop out that if the person had clicked on the story....meh, they know very well that folks are used to reading 140 or less these days and they've not read the actual story.