Chronicles Of Spellborn just went free to play.

Free version of DDO is released in few days (highly recommended)

APB announced game will be F2P

Runes of Magic is F2P almost as good as major AAA titles , ( or Atlantica that is not to shabby either )

Free Realms is F2P

Heroes of Nevereth , free

... list goes on

Battlefield Heroes just announced 3 million registered users, half of which made purchases. That sounds profitable...

Is this the dawn of age of free MMOs ?

I for one know , i will hold my subscription money.

Nothing on the market is worth my subscription. And as new comers CO and Aion ... definitely not.

(Cryptic went so far to ask for subscription and has item shop ... i feel trainwreck coming)

Have good free gaming

 Don't worry billy oh wait wrong line.

Nah the people are just being smarter and making decent f2p i am sure plenty of excellent or atleast good p2p will outclass them soon yet again.

This is to be expected,it has been about 3 years since i watched a vide oof several big CEO's all claiming they were looking at the F2P model very closely.

IMO,there is actually a lot more money to be made from a F2P model,and i don't like it,they basically rip apart a game,and feed it back to you little by little.Now depending on how much your willing to fork out, the end cost to get the entire game back is much higher than a sub cost.Then you figure in the high amount of players on a server because it is F2P,and they have to lower the bandwidth and quality of the game,or they wil ljust let you lag the crap out of the game.

 It's not the age of F2P MMOs.  It's the age of post-MMOs.

Just people experimenting with old ideas that are suddenly new.

One of the reasons I play MMOs is to keep me from going to the mall and spending a grand or so shopping...   The last thing I want is a place to do the same thing; online, in an MMO.

Originally posted by demalus

 It's not the age of F2P MMOs.  It's the age of post-MMOs.

Yep, basically. I think I've deduced the current formula:

• create a Godawful, linear, casual theme park game / grindfest

• create an online shop where people can purchase I WIN BUTTUNS for $500

• buy servers so idiots can play together and compare their $500 e-peens (this keeps them addicted)

Did I miss anything?

MUDs have actually been doing this since the 1980s, but they don't do the first line above. They typically have 100x more variety, content, customization and freedom available to players, and far better communities with people who actually role-play and stay in character.

This is the evolution of the genre: Addict people just as hard and swindle just as much money from them, while delivering a game with 1% as much variety and content.

F2P, P2P, RMT... whatever, as long the game is well made and FUN

If someone cant spend $20 bucks/month on a game, there is always free TV channels right?

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Chronicles Of Spellborn just went free to play.

This is not AAA quality game.  It is unfinished, and incredibly small.  It should have been F2P in the first place.  This game has never competed with the AAA P2P mmo's.

Free version of DDO is released in few days (highly recommended)

This game is basically Guild Wars with a subscription in the first place.  This game should have also been F2P in the first place.  This game has never competed with the AAA P2P mmo's.

APB announced game will be F2P

APB is not really an MMO.  It is just like guild wars.  Maps are 100 man instances for combat or 250 man instances for social. 

Runes of Magic is F2P almost as good as major AAA titles , ( or Atlantica that is not to shabby either )

Both of these games are pretty shallow and small.  They are not as good as major AAA titles, and they are both more expensive than regular games if you want to play for the long run.

Free Realms is F2P

This is nowhere near a AAA mmorpg...

Heroes of Nevereth , free

Never heard of it.

... list goes on

Battlefield Heroes just announced 3 million registered users, half of which made purchases. That sounds profitable...

 

Is this the dawn of age of free MMOs ?

 Don't think so.

I for one know , i will hold my subscription money.

Nothing on the market is worth my subscription. And as new comers CO and Aion ... definitely not.

IMO Aion is definitely worth a sub if you like dynamic world PvP, but this is an opinion and doesn't have much to do with the topic.

(Cryptic went so far to ask for subscription and has item shop ... i feel trainwreck coming)

 Cryptic is a joke right now.  Lifetime sub offer that expires before launch.  RMT with sub. 

Have good free gaming

Free gaming yes, but not free MMORPG gaming of AAA quality.

This list is weak as hell honestly.  None are anywhere near AAA mmorpgs.  Subscription models may change and evolve, but we will never accept mainstream games to use the popular F2P item malls that build their game around requiring cash shop items towards end game after players have invested so much time.  It is a horrible model that is used in these games because they are shallow and soul less.

Originally posted by kal08

F2P, P2P, RMT... whatever, as long the game is well made and FUN

If someone cant spend $20 bucks/month on a game, there is always free TV channels right?

Hate to tell you, even TV isn't free...  And local stations aren't TV, they're interference.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

I for one know , i will hold my subscription money.

Nothing on the market is worth my subscription. 

Exactly.  I would even go so far as to say that none of these games are worth playing for free.  In fact, THEY would have to pay ME to play most of the games that are out now and the ones to be released in the next few years.

The only reason I keep coming to this site is force of habit.  I've lost nearly all hope for mmorpgs.  I have just one tiny little shred of hope left (not for anything specific) and that hope is hanging by a thread over a thousand foot drop...and all the devs in the world are tossing throwing stars at the thread.

These fuckers have completely lost sight of the fantastic idea behind mmorpgs.  The idea is (was) to create a persistant WORLD in which thousands of people would interact and have adventures.  Instead they create these linear pathways we walk down.  They guide you through the "experience" every step of the way, telling you what to do and where to go.  Half the time time we're in separate instances from the other players.  The entire focus and motivating factor in these games is endlessly upgrading your character untill, finally, you just don't give a damn anymore about getting that next +.01% dps.  Interaction with other players has been reduced to the time you spend with your guildies in an instance.  The entire idea of creating a world has been completely abandoned except by the occassional indie devs who always find some way to screw things up even they do manage to put out a semi-finished game.

So I'm just watching from the sidelines hoping that some day someone who can do something about it will remember the old dream that started all of this in the first place.

no, WoW just blew the lid off of teh MMORPG market. An unprecidented success, and now every other company wants to try it. Expect how many companies can throw that much cash at a game? What it really did was get an ton of gamers who did not previously play mmorpg's to try it.

So, not the clones are being pumped out...big, expensive to make games...they all want to repeat that success. However, I think part of the problem is there isn't another giant untapped market of gamers that these MMORPG's can tap into....So they have to fight over the current mmorpg player pool, most of whom are current;y engages in WoW, or some other mmorpg.

So now they spend a ton of cash on a game and they cannot earn a big enough subscription base to maintain it? Frankly I just think there are too many different MMORPGs out now...so each game gets less and less of the player base. So, rather than shutting down, they are trying a different model of payment.

I mean, players spnd a ton of real-cash on RMT gold and items (if they didn't there wouldn't be RMTs). So I guess the hope is that, if we can get the players to give US their RMT money, maybe we can make ends meet.

/shrug just brainstorming

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by Lobotomist

I for one know , i will hold my subscription money.

Nothing on the market is worth my subscription. 

 

Exactly.  I would even go so far as to say that none of these games are worth playing for free.  In fact, THEY would have to pay ME to play most of the games that are out now and the ones to be released in the next few years.

The only reason I keep coming to this site is force of habit.  I've lost nearly all hope for mmorpgs.  I have just one tiny little shred of hope left (not for anything specific) and that hope is hanging by a thread over a thousand foot drop...and all the devs in the world are tossing throwing stars at the thread.

These fuckers have completely lost sight of the fantastic idea behind mmorpgs.  The idea is (was) to create a persistant WORLD in which thousands of people would interact and have adventures.  Instead they create these linear pathways we walk down.  They guide you through the "experience" every step of the way, telling you what to do and where to go.  Half the time time we're in separate instances from the other players.  The entire focus and motivating factor in these games is endlessly upgrading your character untill, finally, you just don't give a damn anymore about getting that next +.01% dps.  Interaction with other players has been reduced to the time you spend with your guildies in an instance.  The entire idea of creating a world has been completely abandoned except by the occassional indie devs who always find some way to screw things up even they do manage to put out a semi-finished game.

So I'm just watching from the sidelines hoping that some day someone who can do something about it will remember the old dream that started all of this in the first place.

So true , man

SO TRUE

 Isn't AoC thinking of going F2P?  WoW was thinking about it too.

I will believe the trend if:

 -NC Soft offers F2P for their games like : COH/ COV, (they have things you cna buy out of game),  Aion, Lineage, 

Guild Wars is already F2P. 

 -EA makes DAOC F2P, WAR may go that route too if the Asian market doesn't help em

I don't think SW: TOR will, too much fanfare and hype for it now.

SoE- IF they continue the trend by offer DCUO as F2P, then I would say yes, Lobotomist, you nailed it

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Chronicles Of Spellborn just went free to play.

Free version of DDO is released in few days (highly recommended)

APB announced game will be F2P

Runes of Magic is F2P almost as good as major AAA titles , ( or Atlantica that is not to shabby either )

Free Realms is F2P

Heroes of Nevereth , free

... list goes on

Battlefield Heroes just announced 3 million registered users, half of which made purchases. That sounds profitable...

 

Is this the dawn of age of free MMOs ?

 

I for one know , i will hold my subscription money.

Nothing on the market is worth my subscription. And as new comers CO and Aion ... definitely not.

(Cryptic went so far to ask for subscription and has item shop ... i feel trainwreck coming)

 

Have good free gaming

 

 

 

Oh it isn't just MMOs. Most of the PC side of the video game industry is trying to go ad based. In fact, the cutting edge of PC games is browser based right now.

Think about it for a minute. We already have flash games that are as good or better than many of the games we were playing on the SNES. Some developers are making browser games with Unity 3D that rival most PS2 games! Hell, you can even make some pretty impressive first person 3D stuff with Java nowadays.

The real question is why is this trend occuring? Actually that's not really a question. We know why it's occuring: piracy. The whole F2P gig started in South Korea because people there were too poor to buy games off the shelf so they just pirated shit. Moving everything online and adding an item shop allowed the developers to still turn a profit while keeping piracy to a minimum since private servers cost a considerable investment to run.

The item shop thing is kind of a mixed bag here in the west. We tend to look at item shops as cheating, even if the items sold have no impact on the actual gameplay at all. On the flip side, not all advertising is going to fit into every game. Can you imagine an Axe Body spray advertisment in LOTRO?

At any rate, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the games we play will be distributed in the same way as Quake Live or Earth Eternal here in the next five years or so. And that's regardless of whether the games are P2P, F2P or ad driven.

A lot of people are pretty passionate for or against the RMT business model. I don’t know why companies spend any time at all agonizing over this decision and risk alienating many potential customers. Just offer some servers with traditional subscriptions and others with F2P+RMT and be done with it.

I think you have to ask yourself why mmos are going f2p to begin with. Is ii all about the money potential ? I would think this would always be the most logical answer because, hey who doesn't like making money ? If they see more of a profit from this business model then many other mmos will do the same. Perhaps gamers are getting tired  of trying to justify the cost of monthly fees or could it be the combination of both, more profit and less commttment ?

The probelm is none of the F2P games are good as the AAA games.

WoW, EVE, LOTR, are all AAA games and none of the F2P games are that good. Sorry. 

The problem with F2P games is that they are just good enough to play for free and thats it.  I won't sink one dime into them.

Now as for WoW.  Their are so many people addicted to WoW.  It would be in their best interest once the game starts going down hil to immediately swith to F2P with an online mall.  People will be paying out their ears for their "FIX".

Originally posted by ProfRed

(Cryptic went so far to ask for subscription and has item shop ... i feel trainwreck coming)

 Cryptic is a joke right now.  Lifetime sub offer that expires before launch.  RMT with sub. 

It's funny you say this.  CO is number one on D2D,  maybe the joke is on you.

When subscription-based games came out there was a rather huge negative backlash against it.  Perhaps that should've been the first warning that a F2P setup (perhaps in addition to a one time purchase fee like most software) is the better way to go.

Seems like things have been trending towards F2P for a while now, even though it came as a surprise when I first learned F2P was not only viable but potentially better than subscription.