I happen to think that 2008 was a turning point for f2p mmos and on the heels of horrible mmo deliveries that I actually and sadly had to pay for like Tabula Rasa, AoC, PotBS, WAR.

What i payed for was someone else's mistakes, lazyness, mediocrity, etc.  But many in the market continue to reward poor performance with cash, thereby funding the mundane. 

So why is that people feel the need to spend so much money on something that absolutely does not garner them (imho) any more content, game-play, features, graphics, community, etc. than what they can get for a f2p product today versus similar content that they get for paying for something like AoC, WAR, WoW, etc.  Sure, you can pay at your discretion for a little bump in experience gain, but it in no means is a game-changing event versus the player that doesnt take advantage of an item mall either at all or as frequently.  But my experience this past year is that the f2p games are offering certainly as much if not more than a single p2p title available today.

I thought of this as I read a story on Ten Ton Hammer:

Runes of Magic (RoM) plays like the traditional MMOG, borrowing several of the best gameplay systems of popular AAA titles already on the market. Despite the elements it shares with its predecessors, RoM is not just a lazy copycat. It delivers a rich world that feels complete and a story to link it all together. And like Atlantica Online, RoM does not seem interested in fleecing players through its item mall. It provides an experience that gamers can enjoy without ever spending a cent, allowing those of us with more discretionary cash to finance the game.

I have noted and maintained that it would take a top quality game with a big name publisher to overcome the Western prejudice against item malls, but maybe all it will take is one developer that is really committed to making a great game. As it stands now, RoM is free to download and free to play. Gamers need not worry about falling behind their friends if they don’t spend money while they pay off bills or look for a new job because the merchandise in the item mall is 100% optional. Deciding not to spend money on RoM will not deter their progression.

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

I happen to think that 2008 was a turning point for f2p mmos and on the heels of horrible mmo deliveries that I actually and sadly had to pay for like Tabula Rasa, AoC, PotBS, WAR.

 

What i payed for was someone else's mistakes, lazyness, mediocrity, etc.  But many in the market continue to reward poor performance with cash, thereby funding the mundane. 

 

So why is that people feel the need to spend so much money on something that absolutely does not garner them (imho) any more content, game-play, features, graphics, community, etc. than what they can get for a f2p product today versus similar content that they get for paying for something like AoC, WAR, WoW, etc.  Sure, you can pay at your discretion for a little bump in experience gain, but it in no means is a game-changing event versus the player that doesnt take advantage of an item mall either at all or as frequently.  But my experience this past year is that the f2p games are offering certainly as much if not more than a single p2p title available today.

 

I thought of this as I read a story on Ten Ton Hammer:

Runes of Magic (RoM) plays like the traditional MMOG, borrowing several of the best gameplay systems of popular AAA titles already on the market. Despite the elements it shares with its predecessors, RoM is not just a lazy copycat. It delivers a rich world that feels complete and a story to link it all together. And like Atlantica Online, RoM does not seem interested in fleecing players through its item mall. It provides an experience that gamers can enjoy without ever spending a cent, allowing those of us with more discretionary cash to finance the game.

I have noted and maintained that it would take a top quality game with a big name publisher to overcome the Western prejudice against item malls, but maybe all it will take is one developer that is really committed to making a great game. As it stands now, RoM is free to download and free to play. Gamers need not worry about falling behind their friends if they don’t spend money while they pay off bills or look for a new job because the merchandise in the item mall is 100% optional. Deciding not to spend money on RoM will not deter their progression.

bah its not a western prejudice, its western wisdom, there has literally been NO GAME that has an item mall that could even be called MEDIOCRE. I mean sure this game is free but it costs 100$ a month to compete...

We'll see how good RoM is, and if its good, it proves that f2p is a viable financing system in the west (where stupid grindfests aren't rewarded, of course item malls are viable in the east). I still think the best financing method is to have in game non intrusive ads, have no or a small sub fee, and you have to pay extra if you simply do not like adds at all and want them out of the game.

nothing special about 2008 being a "turning point"

- bad mmo deliveries have been ongoing since 2001 with Anarchy Online

Originally posted by Nadia

nothing special about 2008 being a "turning point"

- bad mmo deliveries have been ongoing since 2001 with Anarchy Online

on a side note, anarchy online is one of the best mmo's on the market currently, right up there next toEvE, its complicated as f#ck though but that's what makes it great and unique (since its in direct contrast with every other mmo in the market)

So, if I follow the gist of your thesis, you're saying you want to get someone else's mistakes, laziness, and mediocrity for free.

Well, who wouldn't? This is about as freakin' obvious as "water sustains life."

What keeps me from all these so-called "free" MMORPGs are the following:

1) They're mostly medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasy.  I was never a fan of the genre. Any so-called "science fiction" games (FlyForFree, for example), are just pale imitations of what should be produced.  Those that are based Asian mythology I can do without simply because I have no reference points.

2) I have no opinion whatsoever on "item malls."  What I don't like is grinding.  I like to feel like I'm accomplishing something.  (I don't play WoW, either, and you could already have deduced that by now.)

3) When the MMORPGs come from overseas, generally the English is, well, horrible.  That really bugs me.  Products with spelling and grammar errors don't seem professional to me.

4) If there's no obvious revenue stream for a game, how are the programmers, designers, and artists being paid?  Would you play a game you knew was being produced through slave labor?  (This has nothing to do with RoM--it's just a question.)

5) The people who pay for games are generally more the kind of people I'd like to encounter.  As it is, in the games I play, I won't team with anyone who doesn't pay for his or her own auto insurance.  (This separates the adults from the children.  I don't team with children because, in general, they're too self-interested and don't understand teamwork and team roles.  They're also less likely to leave in the middle of a team mission or quest ["sry i gtg"].  They also don't confuse in-game messaging with texting.)

6) I pay for other forms of entertainment.  I pay for cable, I pay to see a movie at the theatre, and I have the disposable income to do so.  Why wouldn't I pay for on-line games?  If someone doesn't pay to support this form of entertainment, eventually all we'll have left is free-to-play grinding crap from mainland China.  This is not a future you want.

That brings me to Runes of Magic.  From what I can see, this is an effort out of Germany and is not likely to be the run-of-the-mill Sino/Japanese effort.  Maybe they can make money in the mall/micropayment arena, maybe they can't.  I think it's a worthy experiment.  I won't be playing it, because it's simply not my genre, but they might be on to something.  Hopefully it will succeed on the strength of the gameplay, and not because it's "free" or some other factor.

Originally posted by rageagainst

 I mean sure this game is free but it costs 100$ a month to compete...

But in the past perhaps, but with an emerging group of f2p it doesnt.  Not only from my experience but as stated in the article.

So how can you make that judgement without the game-play experience from newer f2p games like Atlantica Online or Runes of Magic?  Seems a little misplaced.

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

Originally posted by rageagainst

 I mean sure this game is free but it costs 100$ a month to compete...

 

But in the past perhaps, but with an emerging group of f2p it doesnt.  Not only from my experience but as stated in the article.

 

So how can you make that judgement without the game-play experience from newer f2p games like Atlantica Online or Runes of Magic?  Seems a little misplaced.

if you kept reading my post you will see that I withhold judgement on ROM until a later date, I probably do on Atlantica too.

So, mrprogguy,

Who knows what your playing, but for one that doesn’t like grinding, your in the wrong market, it seems. There is absolutely a level of grinding in every mmo game, though I’dlike to know of one where that doesn’t exist.

Secondly, there really aren’t horrible English-based games with the new cast of f2p games that are recently coming from overseas. Im not one to judge based on geography…I take it you drive an American car.

Thirdly, f2p is a distinction from p2p and I’m sure you get that, so to assume that f2p means that a large portion of the community won’t pay a small discretionary amount for an in-game perk to support something that they are getting at a fraction of the cost of a Western title, then that’s a little ignorant. There’s your revenue stream. It doesn’t take a SOE to produce a game.

Fourthly, you’ve got issues aside from mmos if your drawing a distinction between paying for personal auto insurance and paying more than seems to be warranted for a game.

P2P games generally have a larger staff dedicated to them, so when it comes to content development and customer service, they are generally - though not always - much better.  There are some games that aren't worth the money yes, but all F2P's at the moment aren't worth my time either.

Runes of Magic is horrible and is exactly like the rest of the F2P. Being better than awful is not exactly an accomplishment.

I'd rather pay $15 a month for a quality dev team, quality customer service, and chance to have everything in the game, then to play F2P and have to buy items and advantages anyway. People spend more than $15 a month easily on an F2P game, you know. Once you get hooked to a game, you'll think, "well a couple bucks here and there won't hurt."

And despite what you may think, paying $15 a month is not a lot of money.

Originally posted by rageagainst

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

Originally posted by rageagainst

 I mean sure this game is free but it costs 100$ a month to compete...

 

But in the past perhaps, but with an emerging group of f2p it doesnt.  Not only from my experience but as stated in the article.

 

So how can you make that judgement without the game-play experience from newer f2p games like Atlantica Online or Runes of Magic?  Seems a little misplaced.

if you kept reading my post you will see that I withhold judgement on ROM until a later date, I probably do on Atlantica too.

And if you read my post, you'd see that the subject was around emerging and newer f2p games.  That having been said, there are 4 p2p games ive tried this year (the obvious)...and the 2 f2p games that I've tried were Atlantica Online and Runes of Magic, which have given me greater satisfaction and entertainment than the p2p games.  Having spent a couple weeks in Atlantica Online, for example, my experience was so enjoyable that I decided, at my discretion, to purchase a 30-day teleportaion scroll for $5.  On the other hand, I spent over $150, not including the monthly fee on the p2p games over the course of the year for less enjoyment and content.  Sure I'll jump into Darkfall and Aion, etc. to test drive them, but it still boggles me how some justify spending any more than 6-months in some of the Western titles that were, quite frankly a reskinning of currently available titles.

Well first of all ,to the OP.

You will not EVER see a F2P game that looks as good as AOC,so you pay for what you get.In the case of WOW,yes it is a very low budget effort,everything is low end,but it was also made quite some time ago and would therefore compare to MU online or SHADOWBANE,is there really any comparison there?

Every F2P game i have seen uses a VERY cheap game engine,they spend all their effort into making glowing animated curvy weapons.They hope that will be enough to excite the player base and over come the rest of the bland game world.They have to of course also spend a lot of time drawing up their creatures and animating them,so does take time.The rest of the game will always be bland quests and NOTHING else.

Sure a game like ROM stole FFXI's sub class system,but i found the game to be so cheap,that i never even got that far to play the subclass system.

Really EVERY single P2P game is MUCH better looking than most F2P games,however the content can never be compared.FFXI is the one game ,again an older game that would fall into the OLDER looking graphics that F2P uses,but the CONTENT in FFXI not only leaps above any F2P but is has the most content in the MMORPG genre period.

Personally i do not mind item malls, "IF" they were done FAIR,and the game shows the content.F2P games are designed to get out the door quick,they see as,every month the game is not up ,they are losing thousands of dollars.These games believe they WILL always gather a following,just because it is free,where as grinding money out of people for inferior products is a LOT harder.

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

So, mrprogguy,

Who knows what your playing, but for one that doesn’t like grinding, your in the wrong market, it seems. There is absolutely a level of grinding in every mmo game, though I’dlike to know of one where that doesn’t exist.

Secondly, there really aren’t horrible English-based games with the new cast of f2p games that are recently coming from overseas. Im not one to judge based on geography…I take it you drive an American car.

Thirdly, f2p is a distinction from p2p and I’m sure you get that, so to assume that f2p means that a large portion of the community won’t pay a small discretionary amount for an in-game perk to support something that they are getting at a fraction of the cost of a Western title, then that’s a little ignorant. There’s your revenue stream. It doesn’t take a SOE to produce a game.

Fourthly, you’ve got issues aside from mmos if your drawing a distinction between paying for personal auto insurance and paying more than seems to be warranted for a game.

Okay...interesting.  RoM is horrible compared to what?  And specifically, where does it fall short on content or customer service where a specific p2p doesnt?  All i know is that while playing RoM, I had an issue and immediately, i mean immediately got a customer service response and help with....and an in-game GM support.  So Im more interested in specifics than subjective generalities.

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

So, mrprogguy,

Who knows what your playing, but for one that doesn’t like grinding, your in the wrong market, it seems. There is absolutely a level of grinding in every mmo game, though I’dlike to know of one where that doesn’t exist.

Look up the concept of sandbox.

Originally posted by mrprogguy

So, if I follow the gist of your thesis, you're saying you want to get someone else's mistakes, laziness, and mediocrity for free.

Well, who wouldn't? This is about as freakin' obvious as "water sustains life."

What keeps me from all these so-called "free" MMORPGs are the following:

1) They're mostly medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasy.  I was never a fan of the genre. Any so-called "science fiction" games (FlyForFree, for example), are just pale imitations of what should be produced.  Those that are based Asian mythology I can do without simply because I have no reference points.

2) I have no opinion whatsoever on "item malls."  What I don't like is grinding.  I like to feel like I'm accomplishing something.  (I don't play WoW, either, and you could already have deduced that by now.)

3) When the MMORPGs come from overseas, generally the English is, well, horrible.  That really bugs me.  Products with spelling and grammar errors don't seem professional to me.

4) If there's no obvious revenue stream for a game, how are the programmers, designers, and artists being paid?  Would you play a game you knew was being produced through slave labor?  (This has nothing to do with RoM--it's just a question.)

5) The people who pay for games are generally more the kind of people I'd like to encounter.  As it is, in the games I play, I won't team with anyone who doesn't pay for his or her own auto insurance.  (This separates the adults from the children.  I don't team with children because, in general, they're too self-interested and don't understand teamwork and team roles.  They're also less likely to leave in the middle of a team mission or quest ["sry i gtg"].  They also don't confuse in-game messaging with texting.)

6) I pay for other forms of entertainment.  I pay for cable, I pay to see a movie at the theatre, and I have the disposable income to do so.  Why wouldn't I pay for on-line games?  If someone doesn't pay to support this form of entertainment, eventually all we'll have left is free-to-play grinding crap from mainland China.  This is not a future you want.

That brings me to Runes of Magic.  From what I can see, this is an effort out of Germany and is not likely to be the run-of-the-mill Sino/Japanese effort.  Maybe they can make money in the mall/micropayment arena, maybe they can't.  I think it's a worthy experiment.  I won't be playing it, because it's simply not my genre, but they might be on to something.  Hopefully it will succeed on the strength of the gameplay, and not because it's "free" or some other factor.

Correction:

"Water sustains plants", "Beer sustains life"

I don't think that the failures of one type of gaming improve the quality of another.  Just like the lack and failure of a decent sandbox game doesn't improve the quality of linear games in any way. Either F2P games are great on their own or they are not. 

To me they all start out with optional items and the gameplay has no barriers that force people to buy items or the gameplay suffers.   In the end all companies need money to operate.  If a free to play game would make more money by charging $15/month then why would they choose the item mall option unless they were going to make more money using that route.  Free to play games need people to spend money on items and do so at a steady pace which creates a rather amusing oxymoron.  They only way to do that is offer items that can be purchased repeatedly or keep increasing the value of items so players keep spending money.

Maybe someone is more creative than past F2P game makers and figures out a comfortable area in between, but I have my doubts.

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

Originally posted by rageagainst

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

Originally posted by rageagainst

 I mean sure this game is free but it costs 100$ a month to compete...

 

But in the past perhaps, but with an emerging group of f2p it doesnt.  Not only from my experience but as stated in the article.

 

So how can you make that judgement without the game-play experience from newer f2p games like Atlantica Online or Runes of Magic?  Seems a little misplaced.

if you kept reading my post you will see that I withhold judgement on ROM until a later date, I probably do on Atlantica too.

 

And if you read my post, you'd see that the subject was around emerging and newer f2p games.  That having been said, there are 4 p2p games ive tried this year (the obvious)...and the 2 f2p games that I've tried were Atlantica Online and Runes of Magic, which have given me greater satisfaction and entertainment than the p2p games.  Having spent a couple weeks in Atlantica Online, for example, my experience was so enjoyable that I decided, at my discretion, to purchase a 30-day teleportaion scroll for $5.  On the other hand, I spent over $150, not including the monthly fee on the p2p games over the course of the year for less enjoyment and content.  Sure I'll jump into Darkfall and Aion, etc. to test drive them, but it still boggles me how some justify spending any more than 6-months in some of the Western titles that were, quite frankly a reskinning of currently available titles.

why would you want to try Aion? I mean if you didn't like the p2p games that you listed in the OP you will HATE Aion. If you liked lineage 2 however, you will like Aion. Aion is a reskinned korean game with one added feature: flight, just like how AoC was a reskinned theme park game with one added feature: directional swings.

Originally posted by Wizardry

Well first of all ,to the OP.

You will not EVER see a F2P game that looks as good as AOC,so you pay for what you get.In the case of WOW,yes it is a very low budget effort,everything is low end,but it was also made quite some time ago and would therefore compare to MU online or SHADOWBANE,is there really any comparison there?

Firstly, I can say that the Atlantica Online and Runes of Magic item malls are fair.

Lastly....i have never, ever, ever, ever based my appreciation for a game on graphics.  I find it absurd to think that someone would choose to pay for an mmo because even though it fell short of content, like AoC horribly did and admittedly by their own development team, the graphics looked good.  dont want to get off track, but AoC is the money-sink of f2p games...just that your paying for their development, literally, up-front.

It goes as simple is as this:

If the game is fun, I'll pay for it.

I find WAR fun (after the latest patch), I found Tabula Rasa run. Not to mention it's devs were probably the best ever. Releasing a pretty big patch with at least a new dungeon and weapon once a month, plus a whole new planet with mechs and PAUs in just a year. I find CoH fun, so I pay for it. I think WoW is boring, so I don't pay for it.

Even if I play a FTP game and think it's fun (and like the dev team) I'll usually buy something from the item mall and not use it.

People just pay fro what they think is fun. They want to continue playing, so they continue paying. Now, personally I think 15 bucks a month is fine. Being a new game is 15-20 bucks. And unless you're at the level cap, each month is all new content you're playing.

I've yet to find a F2P game that i could get into for any real length of time....usually the controls are messy or require you to left click on the ground to move your character, very few options to customize (camera settings, mouse settings, hotkeys ect.).

If i have to play a P2P for smooth controls and be able to set everything up the way i'm most comfortable with, so be it.

Originally posted by Kelathos

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

So, mrprogguy,

Who knows what your playing, but for one that doesn’t like grinding, your in the wrong market, it seems. There is absolutely a level of grinding in every mmo game, though I’dlike to know of one where that doesn’t exist.

Look up the concept of sandbox.

Just because you can do something other than the grind doesn't mean the grind doesn't exist.

Sandbox games have a grind too. Heck, in some cases it's even more pronounced.