Cash Shop a sign of free to play?

I really wouldn't worry about FFXIV going F2P I can't remember the article but Yoshi did say he would rather shut down FFXIV before allowing it to go F2P
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/fi...lay-exclusive/
This is an article that has Yoshi talking about P2P and F2P and why he chose to use a P2P model with FFXIV. I know people don't like the Cash Shop but it does not mean the sky is falling and some of the "possibilities" people are saying this cash shop will lead to are just being very extreme with what they think or "know" will happen.

Half of this is a repost of mine. For the record, I'd rather the game stayed subbed Yoshi does appear to give somewhat confusing stances on the issue:

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Originally Posted by Starlord

Yoshi-P said so many times that he doesn't want this game to go F2P.

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Originally Posted by Delsus

Yoshida has said on multiple occasions he will close the game down before he considers F2P.

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Originally Posted by zetolious

I really wouldn't worry about FFXIV going F2P I can't remember the article but Yoshi did say he would rather shut down FFXIV before allowing it to go F2P
http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/17/fi...lay-exclusive/

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I remember reading that as well, since then though I saw something else:

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

It could be a positive change for a game to move from subscription based to F2P as long as the change is based on the users' needs rather than trying to turn an unprofitable game around.

If there's an impression that I'm determined to stick to a subscription service, that's a mistake.

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Source = http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/120...=1#post6061123

to the OP yes it looks that way to me, I have seen it at a many times before in other games unless it is stated that it will not.

Highly doubt XIV will go f2p while XI is still rocking the monthly sub

The only truth is SE will make this game F2P if it's going to benefit them. Yoshi P will eat his words about the game not going F2P if the company decide F2P is going to make them more money. That's his job, make this game make money. So I'd say part of whether this game is going F2P or not is really up to us. How we respond to the new contents they put out, how much we voice our opinions of the game.

Of course, SE is also responsible of building a solid foundation of trust between their customers for their customers to invest more money. The future of this game will depend on if they can deliver some of the big features they are trying to hype up, such as eternal bond and gold saucer. I hope they won't drop the balls on those ones.

For example, Personal Housing, It's obvious they needed more time on setting it up, and they pushed out an unfinished item. Then Yoshi P would say, eventually the game's old FC will disband, making houses available. So I guess new FCs won't be forming to replace old FCs, Many old super size FCs are breaking down to many micro size FCs, so if anything FCs need more plots and cheaper housing because FC gil reserve is usually lower than personal gil reserve. Then he'd say the reason instanced personal housing is impossible is because they need to be saved and inn rooms are pre-made. WTF is the private chamber in your FC house? 30 houses in each residential area, 512 personal room in each house, that's 15360 instances. Multiply by number of wards.

I'll link this and read for yourself.

http://www.sygnus.org/2014/09/17/ffx...ousing-fiasco/

So to go back to my original statement, Yoshi P will eat his words if SE decides F2P will be a better business model for FF14. I can already hear he say, "When I said this game will not be F2P, what this meant was the following: Final Fantasy XIV will not be Free to Play (At the time of Patch 2.0)" lmao

Did any of the other games also have development of a Chinese and a South Korean version in the works as well? And an ever increasing number of subs?

SE only expected about 400k players at launch yet the number was way higher. I don't think they expected to hit 2.5 million plus either.

Nothing suggests the game failed at all. In fact, the opposite is implied.

Going f2p/adding cash shop was also done by other MMOs because they had investors to pay back and needed quick money. SE doesn't have investors and doesn't need to make quick money.

So why would it go f2p? They wouldn't be able to develop the game with the same or better quality doing that. This is also a Final Fantasy game and not some random new IP. It has way too much value to SE. That much so, they remade the damn game.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

FFXI never went F2P Neither will FFXIV. Please stop begging for it. F2P is a horrible model for this game to take. Subscription based model will keep this game going for a much longer time and with better quality patches/expansions than F2P ever would. Cash Shop will probably help revenue which will in turn help pay for things like server maintenance, wages, lowering the time between patches and the quality of said patches.

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Cash shop pays for two things: Cash Shop and Company Bonus.

Always has, always will.

We were already getting constant, regular updates with lots of new content. An Expansion is due next year with new races and jobs. We're getting one new class/job in a regular patch, fercrissake. Think they're can move from 3 month major patches to 1 month major patches off the back of the cash shop? That's pretty naive imho.

Will the game go F2P. NO, look at FFXI...................

WoW has a cash shop aswell. Mostly Vanity things (Boost to Level 90 is the only thing I see as bad there) And it is stil sub based. So no.

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Originally Posted by Vili

Will the game go F2P. NO, look at FFXI...................

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XI never introduced a cash shop in 12 years. FFXIV ARR is introducing one inside of 18 months. The two trajectories are not the same.

Is FFXI F2P? And they did introduce a shop...you could purchase the shantotto quest line through their playonline store/service thing. However it still has a sub. This is a model that will continue on with FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Synestr

Is FFXI F2P? And they did introduce a shop...you could purchase the shantotto quest line through their playonline store/service thing. However it still has a sub. This is a model that will continue on with FFXIV.

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That was a mini expansion...

Tell me what item you could purchase directly in XI.

FFXI, 12 years later and a dying population, still isn't free to play. Why would SE do that to this game? At least any time soon, with an expansion round the corner.

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Originally Posted by Hanzar

WoW has a cash shop aswell. Mostly Vanity things (Boost to Level 90 is the only thing I see as bad there) And it is stil sub based. So no.

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The instant level 90 boost cost $60 mind u, not to mention atm its bugged and peeps who insta boost their toons regretted their stupid move because they stuck with lvl 1 gear and skill and the only way to get all of their skills is to finish the questline which at least requires ilvl 400

TLDR : for FF14 comparison that means imagine trying to kill fate boss and adds using auto attacks with ur weathered weapon and lv1 starting skill /TROLOLOLOLOLOL

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Originally Posted by Aegis

XI never introduced a cash shop in 12 years. FFXIV ARR is introducing one inside of 18 months. The two trajectories are not the same.

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But still the same company its extra income for them and their getting their money worth now more then later. They didn't expect the success with current player base im sure their expecting number to dwindle down to what they were expecting and just cashing in on current sub's.

The answer is simple: look at the Blizzard Store. Look at what can be obtained from it. Has WoW went anywhere? Has it shut down? Have people stopped playing? Lets just assume the worst and say that somewhere down the line SE does go F2P.....will you stop playing? What if they went to a model like LotRO? Where you can buy everything, but everything you could buy is also unlockable by putting the time in playing the game? To me, if you really enjoy a game, then you will be able to continue to play it no matter what. Look at FFXI though, that game screams to be made F2P, but so far SE hasn't done it. So I just don't think we have anything to worry about yet. So please look forward to it!

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Originally Posted by odintius

But still the same company its extra income for them and their getting their money worth now more then later. They didn't expect the success with current player base im sure their expecting number to dwindle down to what they were expecting and just cashing in on current sub's.

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If this is the case then expect the majority of development time to be devoted to cash shop items, if they aren't confident they can maintain funding on subscription fees alone. A greater proportion of dev time to cash shop is a lower proportion of dev time to actual content.

Lolz I think I'm having a deja vu....kinda like "It's me or I have already seen this arguments in other forums?"


* Age of Conan introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.
* DC Universe introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.
* Aion introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.
* RIFT introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.
* Tera introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.
* SW:TOR introduced cash shop ----> forums question: are we goin F2P? enraged answers: no way we going free to play!!! ----> months later games goes F2P.

Are we starting to see a pattern?....good, because I've been seeing it for the last 5 years.
WoW is the only one who retains subs and has a cash shop....one game, alone, solo, that's not a norm, that's called an exception

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Originally Posted by Erudain

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If they had any respect for their customers they would turn this into F2P instead of double dipping, keeping the subs while adding a cash shop is insulting.

Seems unlikely that the game will go F2P any time soon (Although I really have no idea why some people seem to think it is a fate worse then death...)

I mean, WoW added a little cash shop some time ago and that is still going in its current model.

It feels like playing Devil's Advocate to say this but do you think 3.0 would be coming as soon as it is if XIV didn't profit as well as it did? Why do you think WoW has a decent update rate and expansion update, it's because of it's profit margin. The more profit a product provides the more likely they are to invest resources into making the game bigger and better.

If 14 was only 25% as big of a hit as it actually was I bet you 3.0 would come in 2016, but the reason it's coming so soon is because of how much of a boom they got from releasing it and how well received it was. The popularity, the profit allow them to place more resources on the product so one can say a cash shop of pure vanity helps to further improve the quality of life of the game because you can look at it from this perspective.

A Cash shop could be seen as a donation to support the game while also receiving in game vanity items. If anything I think it would be interesting if MMOs went a step further and had fans speak with their money, since it's about support and giving player's what they want in terms of content, they could take cash shops a step further and provide a means of showing "support" towards which content they are interested in and maybe even have goals to show support for x content.

So you have these cash shop items, you "donate" to receive in game items and if a goal is reached the devs will have the resources to release x content quicker or to actually make it to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Empressia

The instant level 90 boost cost $60 mind u, not to mention atm its bugged and peeps who insta boost their toons regretted their stupid move because they stuck with lvl 1 gear and skill and the only way to get all of their skills is to finish the questline which at least requires ilvl 400

TLDR : for FF14 comparison that means imagine trying to kill fate boss and adds using auto attacks with ur weathered weapon and lv1 starting skill /TROLOLOLOLOLOL

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What? There are zero questline requirements in WoW apart from being at the right character level. Plus you get ilvl 484 from the level boost and 4 20 slot bags. Also: if you boost a 60+ character, your professions get maxed (though without any of the purchasable recipes).

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Originally Posted by Darkdrover

The answer is simple: look at the Blizzard Store. Look at what can be obtained from it. Has WoW went anywhere? Has it shut down? Have people stopped playing?

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I hate when people compare this game to WoW but since you guys want to compare it. I looked up when WoW added the cash shop ok heres the rundown WoW came out on November 23, 2004 the cash shop was added around 12/12/2013 to keep from going free to play, that is a 9 year from launch not 14 months here is where I got the info about the WoW cash shop and when WoW came out judge for yourself,I personally don't want to see this game go free to play. When WoW came out when cash shop was added. you can see my concerns.

Edit: ran out of posts

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Originally Posted by Teryaani

This is when the store was added literally "In game". The blizzard store offering in game vanity items is older than that. Minions were added in 2009 as direct to purchase. I need to double check, but there may have been add on minions before that.

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ok that's still 5 years and not 14 months, thanks for the info.

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Originally Posted by DarkStaoneDragon

I hate when people compare this game to WoW but since you guys want to compare it. I looked up when WoW added the cash shop ok heres the rundown WoW came out on November 23, 2004 the cash shop was added around 12/12/2013 to keep from going free to play, that is a 9 year from launch not 14 months .

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This is when the store was added literally "In game". The blizzard store offering in game vanity items is older than that. Minions were added in 2009 as direct to purchase. I need to double check, but there may have been add on minions before that.

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Originally Posted by Hurlstone

Seems unlikely that the game will go F2P any time soon (Although I really have no idea why some people seem to think it is a fate worse then death...)

I mean, WoW added a little cash shop some time ago and that is still going in its current model.

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The main reason they act like it is because:

A) They never played any F2P games and only go by the worst examples
B) They played the worst examples
or C) They believe that ANYTHING that is beneficial is Pay 2 Win and thus is bad by default.

I have played my fair share of F2P MMOs, but TERA is not Pay 2 Win(They DO have those stupid boxes, but just save up the gold and buy the costumes outright instead) and most people can easily point you to the better examples with massive ease. But for the topic, no, it's not going F2P anytime soon.

I don't like the F2P model and I don't like the kind of peole it attracks. One of the reasons I play FFXIV ARR it's because its NOT F2P. What concerns me about the future is that Yoshi already stated that he is thinking he posibility of F2P in order to attract even more players. He said if he will do something it will be a completely different model than the traditional F2P model. Sometthing totally new. This is what scares me. This game is successful as it is. I prefer Devs will focus more on developing and make this game even better so more people will come. I don't believe FFXIV will become a F2P ever. If it does count me out.

No, FFXIV will be another exception just like wow. It'll have the cash shop while retaining the subscription based model. Just look at FFXI which still isn't free to play. I'd easily bet all the money I have on hand that this game won't go free to play.

All this overreaction is quite funny to watch.

Honestly, in my experience, its when the server merges start happening that you have to worry. they did server merges in all the games ive seen listed before they added the cash shops, and then went free to play. XIV is doing a cash shop, but there have been no talks of server merges.

And a ton of servers are still locked for char creation.