You forgot to include that B2P game box also has a cash shop which isn't all that different from one from a respectable F2P game, and in fact does not offer much difference between the other system and can milk even more money for a 'B2P' game then it might be able to produce if it was straight P2P. 

I'm very iffy on the B2P model. With F2P games becoming a lot better as time goes on (Tera being a recent example given no changes or additions to its model as being a good one) the B2P seems like a possible way to drain the customer's wallet quickly up front and still provide exactly the same cash shop perks of another game that doesn't have that box cost.

Originally posted by eyelolled
I think Gamerjoe should go on the forums and post about how he hates TrojanHorse 2 hoping maybe that someone might actually want to come and play Freemium Wars: Hotbar Hostage Republic

 Hahahaha! I spat out my coffee! Hilarious!

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by eyelolled
I think Gamerjoe should go on the forums and post about how he hates TrojanHorse 2 hoping maybe that someone might actually want to come and play Freemium Wars: Hotbar Hostage Republic

 Hahahaha! I spat out my coffee! Hilarious!

only prob, 4 bars should be more than enough. yet, they are still crying.

standart mmo gamer:

i'd say the were spoiled by their parents or sth, there gotta be a reason for such a behaviour :)

Originally posted by romanator0

Originally posted by Dantae87
i find it funny how GW2 was the most talked about game towards the end of 2012...now you hardly hear a wisper from it...its one of thouse games that slowly faded away...like GW1...only the devoted fans will stick to it...and it will end up just like GW1 did...devoted fan base with no income of new players...we can only hope that 2013 is a much better year for mmos...

You sure? I still hear quite a bit about it. Whenever I hear people talk about MMOs it's usually about GW2. 

Over the last week it had more than double the amount of unique hits on this site than any other game.  Yeah deadly quiet on the GW2 front.... hahaha.

Originally posted by Thane

Originally posted by evilastro

Originally posted by eyelolled
I think Gamerjoe should go on the forums and post about how he hates TrojanHorse 2 hoping maybe that someone might actually want to come and play Freemium Wars: Hotbar Hostage Republic

 Hahahaha! I spat out my coffee! Hilarious!

only prob, 4 bars should be more than enough. yet, they are still crying.

 

standart mmo gamer:

 

i'd say the were spoiled by their parents or sth, there gotta be a reason for such a behaviour :)

 We all know its fixed now, but the fact they did it in the first place just goes to show what you are dealing with in that game. Its SoE V2.0

Although having said that, SoE seems to be fixing its greed lately. Both EQ2 and Vanguard have had significant boosts to F2P standards.

Originally posted by Purutzil

 

I'm very iffy on the B2P model. With F2P games becoming a lot better as time goes on (Tera being a recent example given no changes or additions to its model as being a good one) the B2P seems like a possible way to drain the customer's wallet quickly up front and still provide exactly the same cash shop perks of another game that doesn't have that box cost.

Isn't that true for Tera or most other "used to be F2P games too"?

They pretty much start the game as selling box and montly sub when player base is high and change it to F2P later.

Even the elder scroll online dev says they will "start the game as P2P", and change it to F2P sometime later.  The game isn't even out yet.

Those are just marketing strategy.  And market spereration from its competitor.  The game studio really just choose whatever model they think will max their profit. 

Let's forget about developer X and TH2 for a sec. Tell me this if you were developer M or R, and you were watching this, what would you do? 

You would make your next title just like TH2 with about 2 months of umph, maybe three, but no more. Why the heck would you want players playing your game for 2-5 years just for the box price?! 

Originally posted by bcbully

You would make your next title just like TH2 with about 2 months of umph, maybe three, but no more. Why the heck would you want players playing your game for 2-5 years just for the box price?! 

Expansions

Cash shop

Attracting other players

People played GW1 at least until GW2 came out. It had years of oomph.

Like with any business model out there, B2P is only as good as the way the publishers decide to implement it. In theory, B2P is probably the "best of both worlds" for which the consumers and the companies win. To further elaborate, consumers buy the game and pay for it only once (just like they would with any other game for the Xbox of Playstation, for example), while the companies make money for those who purchased their game. Simple as that. It's obviously better than P2P where it seems like it's really just the companies who "win" here, while it's also better than F2P because as we all know there's no such thing as truly free-to-play so eventually a consumer is going to be made to pay at some point (with the exception of perhaps TERA's F2P business model, which looks to be really breaking the norm and for the better).

With all this said, I would still prefer if publishers pushed more for a B2P business model. I can see so many benefits to it (which I haven't listed), but maybe I'm just seeing everything more from an idealistic point of view. Even if I were to be realistic, I still don't see why no one's going for the B2P route.

But in the end, it also depends on the games themselves. It doesn't matter if it's F2P, if the game sucks no one's going to play it. If it's B2P, people will still expect to get their money's worth and some loyalty from the companies. Even more so if the game is P2P.

ArenaNet doesn't necessarily need people to stick around forever.  But they do want people to think the game was fun and tell others the game was fun and come back to buy the next expansion and play that.

But which is better:

1)  a game that lets you play through content and have fun until you run out of content, or

2)  a game that makes you spend most of your time grinding something stupid in order to occasionally get access to some new content, in order to make it take much longer for you to run out of content?

Personally, I'd spend a lot more time on game (1), as I'd quit game (2) as soon as I figured out that that was what they were doing.  Which would probably be before I ever played the game.

Originally posted by Quizzical

ArenaNet doesn't necessarily need people to stick around forever.  But they do want people to think the game was fun and tell others the game was fun and come back to buy the next expansion and play that.

But which is better:

1)  a game that lets you play through content and have fun until you run out of content, or

2)  a game that makes you spend most of your time grinding something stupid in order to occasionally get access to some new content, in order to make it take much longer for you to run out of content?

Personally, I'd spend a lot more time on game (1), as I'd quit game (2) as soon as I figured out that that was what they were doing.  Which would probably be before I ever played the game.

Of course the answer to this question is (1). The real question is, are the developers and publishers "getting it"? (If you catch my drift...)

Originally posted by Theocritus
I think too many gamers think B2P is the same as F2P because there is no sub fee......B2P basically forces you to pay your sub fees up front and gambles you wont play much longer than 3-4 months (which the statistics show that most gamers dont)..... Also alot of games that have B2P also offer cash shops or some other form of bringing in income.....Personally I dont like b2p....I like to move around and try new games and like many I often dont play most MMOs for more than a month or two so b2p for me is a bad model.

The most expensive B2P game I've purchased is GW2 at $70 and then TSW at $30.  Subscriptions cost $120 to $180 per year ($10 - $15 / month) with the exception of long term annual commitments that can cost less per month.  Nearly every P2P game also has a box fee of $50 - $70 and a tertiary revenue generator like a cash shop, some sort of micro-transactions for digital items or rmt for in game cash.  It's just more expensive all the way around.

B2P allows me unrestricted access to that content until the servers shut down.  P2P rents me temporary access to the servers until that time period runs out.

The advantage of B2P is that the developer recoups a predictable up front cost and generates revenue for every account.  It has a small barrier to entry that discourages troll accounts.  Compared to P2P I'm more than happy with B2P and don't mind the box fee.  I also play a lot of F2P games and often buy a starter pack or something else in the store early, if I like the game, to support it.

I think of my games as sub-free not B2P or F2P really.  Some have an up front loaded cost and others a back loaded cost.  Neither of which I mind and both models are working rather nicely for me because I also play several different games.

Originally posted by Scalpless

Originally posted by bcbully

You would make your next title just like TH2 with about 2 months of umph, maybe three, but no more. Why the heck would you want players playing your game for 2-5 years just for the box price?! 

Expansions

Cash shop

Attracting other players

People played GW1 at least until GW2 came out. It had years of oomph.

To add to your thought:

Not only that but we've seen one developer, Funcom, have enough foresight to adjust their business model to save their game.  That was one instance where the game was really good and hte revenue model was hampering its success.  Bad games aren't going to be made successful by a revenue shift especially if they botch their sub-free model (TOR is a good example).

With B2P and good F2P models the developers don't need everyone to play with the same singluar devotion that sub-restricted games do.

Originally posted by Istavaan

Originally posted by Fangrim

I get what your saying but you know there are 2-3 million r-tards that buy every single piece of x$^&*,$%Y*,^*(  that comes along  and plays it until the next piece of %Y&&*()*_*_&_%^% comes along and so on and so forth,they will keep splurging it out as long as these r-tards keep pre ordering and even buing life time subs of the games haha.What can you do?

 

Edit : The right hand side of my keyboard is totally devoid of letters,I just have black keys.Ontop of that my M key decides it wants to also contribute to anything I type without me pressing it... guess you shouldn't eat while typing? So I edited and got some spelling mistakes also bearing in mind I am on my 10th pear cider....

People who buy games that you don't like are r-tards? what are you 12?

I guess you bought a lifetime sub and then moved to another game then another and another .Then you go on to post that italian food is better than french.How dare you decide what people like? What are you 5?

GW2 is doing fine its getting more updates than TOR and TSW combined, devs are talking with players all the time, crazy new content coming in february and march, more stuff to do in outleveled zones.

Anet didnt lay off any dev unlike TOR where BW laid off like half the stuff. TSW failed so hard that Funcom will probably die or never be same again had to shut down most of its studios....

So yea, you can gloom and doom GW2 all u want but its here to stay for long time and its getting better and better whit each day !

Originally posted by Theocritus
I think too many gamers think B2P is the same as F2P because there is no sub fee......B2P basically forces you to pay your sub fees up front and gambles you wont play much longer than 3-4 months (which the statistics show that most gamers dont)..... Also alot of games that have B2P also offer cash shops or some other form of bringing in income.....Personally I dont like b2p....I like to move around and try new games and like many I often dont play most MMOs for more than a month or two so b2p for me is a bad model.

How much would you spend on sub fee + box in Sub base MMO ? Around 230 euros/dolars for 1 year ?

How much would you spend in GW2 for the same time ? 50 dolars/euros !!!! + you dont have to buy anything from cash shop,

B2P is a bad model for you ? So you like to buy box and pay sub for around 2months and if you want to come back you have to pay sub once again... That is better model for you?

Originally posted by laokoko

Originally posted by TwoThreeFour

So given your analogy,a regular McDonalds meal is clearly more value than a recommended meal at a 4-star restaurant given that when you pay equally, you get much more food at McDonalds. 

I don't know where you are getting at.

The fact remain GW2 is actually better than almost all mmorpg on the market right now.  Not because it is cheaper.  Because it is better. 

I don't care if you talk trash about GW2.  But you seemed to forget very few mmorg right now even have more active player than GW2. 

 

The post I quoted didn't just compare GW2 to other B2P MMOs, he compared it to all other B2P games and that's why I presented my counter-argument.

Originally posted by Vannor

 

ALL BTP games should be compared to OTHER BTP games.

agree 100%

it's the simple things that people have trouble with. they think that just because it has some MMO features that it must have them ALL, when in reality, if the game is to your taste, there is an incredible amount of time to kill for the money you put down. 

I played for 3 solid months after launch and always saw many people across the world. I am sure (very sure) that i will find many people to play with when i go back, most likely when they release an expansion.

i thought everyone knew that this was how to best enjoy GW2. why didn't anyone tell 'gamer joe'?