So, even Wildstar is going f2p...

"Even Wildstar is going free to play"

No crap, it sucked.

When I say "Even Wildstar goes F2P", I meant it along the lines of "yet another MMO goes F2P. This is because of the recent trend where a lot of P2P mmos go F2P or adopt a model close to f2p the past few years.

I think the fundamental difference with an MMO versus other games is that it's not just a game that you want to play through and put down, like the offline final fantasy games or other AAA titles. This is a world you want to live in, to devote a significant portion of their life to like it as a part time job. If the players don't find the world enjoyable to live in, they won't stay.

The F2P model doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether players find the world a fun place to spend their time, but regular content patches do. XIV succeeded because there was something new and refresh every month or two, to keep our interest. Wildstar was unable to provide major patch updates for a long time due to development problems, and now it's too little too late.

They've admitted that the reason they are switching to the F2P model is purely because subscriber numbers are too low. The CREDD method of battling RMT was a good one, but ultimately it requires enough whales participating to make it worth while, and enough regular players farming in game currency to sustain it.

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Originally Posted by Slirith

Wildstar hyped the hell out of their game then failed HARD like SWTOR did

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Swtor has 500k paying subs and another 500k+ f2p subs with a yearly revenue of 1bil a year not sure if that's a failure.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

And what has this got to do with FF14 you ask?

Well, nothing much besides me posting this to plead and beg SE not to make FF14 f2p too please. Don't make it happen ever. Just keep it sub based just like you kept FF11 sub based all these years. Don't follow the trend of the recent MMOs going f2p.

I doubt FF14 would go F2P anytime soon. That would be weird. I just don't want FF14 to ever be considered to be made F2P ever. No matter what happens down the road. Kind of a selfish request but an important one for me since I generally get irritated after playing F2P games for a few months.

Sincerely from a fan.

Edit: When I say "Even Wildstar goes F2P", I meant it along the lines of "yet another MMO goes F2P. This is because of the recent trend where a lot of recent P2P mmos go F2P or adopt a model close to f2p the past few years.

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2 Pages of crap that has already said ffxiv will never go f2p and still you make threads like this to get everyone stirred up.
I only checked in on this to see if you had any proof or links as I was wanting to know if and when wildstar was going f2p.
So now have to go google as you stir up the pot and provide no proof. Thanks OP. :(

Please let the f2p subject die. It's obvious already that it will never happened. Please the subject is overused and quite dead unless ppl just want to go on ranting for no good reason. Here's a tip go play ffxiv and have some fun today. Leave this subject behind.

If a day comes where they'd have to shut down the servers otherwise, F2P is definitely the better option.

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Originally Posted by Renik

FFXIV doing way batter than wildstar, in fact Yoshi was aiming for a 200-500k playerbase, and based on the last information we got, the game has more than 4m subs and 2m active accounts so...

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There is no way this game has millions of subs. Recent scans of the lodestone show around 700k active characters (characters, not accounts). Financial statements made earlier this year put the number around 500k. But hey, if 500k is enough to keep the game going (and it seems to be), then more power to them. I'd prefer this game remain sub based.

That said, the f2p model hate is silly. Everyone acts like it ruins great games, but in reality most games go f2p because they are doing so poorly. I mean how great were they that so few were playing them? Most that go f2p see increased profits. f2p has outright saved many games in this genre that simply wouldn't exist today had they not switched.

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Originally Posted by Riepah

If a day comes where they'd have to shut down the servers otherwise, F2P is definitely the better option.

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Yes! This exactly. If you love a game that is dying, and you knew f2p could save it, you'd be a fool to take that option off the table. There are tons of players in Rift, SWTOR, LotRO and other games, complaining about the f2p model. None of them seem to realize that without f2p those games would be dead, and they'd have nothing to play at all. SWTOR was on pace to be the biggest MMO flop of all time... went f2p and became a very profitable game. It just got a multi-million dollar expansion it certainly wouldn't have received otherwise. Yet you still hear them whine "f2p ruins everything!!!"

Wildstar is also a terrible WoW clone....soo....

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Originally Posted by Akuryu

There is no way this game has millions of subs. Recent scans of the lodestone show around 700k active characters (characters, not accounts). Financial statements made earlier this year put the number around 500k. But hey, if 500k is enough to keep the game going (and it seems to be), then more power to them. I'd prefer this game remain sub based.

That said, the f2p model hate is silly. Everyone acts like it ruins great games, but in reality most games go f2p because they are doing so poorly. I mean how great were they that so few were playing them? Most that go f2p see increased profits. f2p has outright saved many games in this genre that simply wouldn't exist today had they not switched.

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Not sure where you're getting your information. XIV was noted to have 2 million subs just last month, they even advertised those numbers.
As for hating f2p, there's no doubt that a game's quality plummets when it happens. Never seen a game go f2p that wasn't also pay to win.

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Originally Posted by WHS

2 Pages of crap that has already said ffxiv will never go f2p and still you make threads like this to get everyone stirred up.
I only checked in on this to see if you had any proof or links as I was wanting to know if and when wildstar was going f2p.
So now have to go google as you stir up the pot and provide no proof. Thanks OP. :(

Please let the f2p subject die. It's obvious already that it will never happened. Please the subject is overused and quite dead unless ppl just want to go on ranting for no good reason. Here's a tip go play ffxiv and have some fun today. Leave this subject behind.

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Why so touchy? I am only requesting for SE to never consider F2P.

And I know better than listening to others when it comes to this subject. I have played several of those MMOs, and in each of them, everyone is convinced it will never go f2p till it hits them. I am only trying to plead to SE.

And of course I won't post a link to another game on the official forums of a game. It would have taken you 3 secs to find that out through google anyway.

700k is the daily concurrent logins.

FFXI lasted how long before going F2P? lol

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Originally Posted by FoxyAreku

Not sure where you're getting your information. XIV was noted to have 2 million subs just last month, they even advertised those numbers.

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Afraid I'll have to request a source on that. As far as I know, they've never given exact sub numbers. They'll say things like 2 million registered accounts, which is not the same as subscribers. In their recent earnings report they mentioned having "nearly 1 million subscribers" across all 3 of their mmos.

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Originally Posted by Akiza

700k is the daily concurrent logins.

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No.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...y_730k_active/

It is a simple concept which I do not know why some people do not understand.

Crappy P2P mmo = Will go free to play
Underdeveloped P2P mmo = will go free to play
Good solid built well funded P2P mmo = Stay P2P

Wildstar copied the hardcore WoW style mmo, which was a major minority anyways in themepark games, typically that style attracts the more casual player. Used ultra cartoony (aka..... Stylized graphics, seems to be the term for low graphics quality these days) which was another major turn off for alot of people. Then charged a sub when WOW still existed using WoWs model, but then released a ultra buggy game at launch with no content for 95% of people who liked WoW. What did they expect to happen.

My problem with Jak and Daxter the MMO... err wait... WildStar was that with such an action based game it NEEDED controller support in the same way FFXIV has. I might have been able to get into it if they had that but I really love how smoothly the controller works for FFXIV because it was built right in to the game. I tried Xpadder but it sucked. I kept trying to get it to do what I do in FFXIV and eventually said "fuckit".

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Originally Posted by Akuryu

Afraid I'll have to request a source on that. As far as I know, they've never given exact sub numbers. They'll say things like 2 million registered accounts, which is not the same as subscribers. In their recent earnings report they mentioned having "nearly 1 million subscribers" across all 3 of their mmos.

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They stated 2 things to numbers during the event in france.

1.) The "4 million players worldwide" is the number of accounts, that had a subscription at some point since launch.

2.) There are actually 2 million active accounts.


Actally I don't know where is an interview in english language that contains these informations.

The thing with the lodestone survey is, they filter everything as inactive, that meets not their criteria: "Critera same as the last time, must be above level 21. Any changes to HP/mount/minion/gear counts character as active."

So around a half year after introducing i130 gear, the chance is high that there are many active players, which don't meet these criteria, because ... what should change?

The amount of new players in relation to the "old" players is way to high. Actually there is nothing special that would cause a such higher "new player" base in relation to old players.

I don't think 2 month before expansion and a half year after last max level gear was a good moment to do such a survey.

And btw: That earnings report was not "recent" from its content.

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Originally Posted by Akuryu

That said, the f2p model hate is silly. Everyone acts like it ruins great games, but in reality most games go f2p because they are doing so poorly. I mean how great were they that so few were playing them? Most that go f2p see increased profits. f2p has outright saved many games in this genre that simply wouldn't exist today had they not switched.

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Yes F2P has saved suffering P2P games from being shut down but it does usually suck a lot of the fun out of the game in the process. When a game goes F2P from P2P they have to artificially create reasons for the players to spend money. They slow down XP gains in order to encourage people to buy XP boosters, they make rare items even rarer and then add them to the cash shop to tempt you to give up ever trying to farm them, they put limits on the number of dungeons you can do in a day and then charge you if you want to run more...

The F2P model encourages the developers to implement arbitrary barriers to entry on everything that requires the player to pay for access. If you then compare the cost of full access to the game for a month under the F2P model it's typically many many times higher than a regular monthly subscription which would grant the same full access under the P2P model. This happens because statistically only about 5-10% of the players ever decide to pay under the F2P model (the rest usually struggle under the restrictions before getting bored/frustrated and quitting giving F2P MMOs a much much higher player turnover) so those few that do pay have to be milked for all they're worth.

I have never seen a P2P MMO transition to F2P in a way that didn't cause the game to become far more grindy (to encourage cash shop purchases) or cost more per month for the same access. It just doesn't work. From what I understand of SWTOR now it's a relatively fun SRPG up to the level cap and then suddenly you have to cough up a small fortune to do anything at all at endgame. From a business standpoint it can be considered a success because there are a lot of rich players out there that are happy to sit on top by spending $100 a month (yes this has happened in countless F2P games) but from a gameplay standpoint if you have to be rich to have fun then it's not a good game. Just because something is financially successful does not make it good; Twilight and Justin Bieber are good examples of that.

As I said in another post, the F2P model can work in a game that was built from the ground up with that model in mind. The gameplay systems can be shaped around it so as to be less restrictive on free players whilst encouraging spending of money in a way that doesn't feel coercive. For a P2P game though, introducing the F2P mechanics has never worked out favourably for the players in any game I've ever seen make that transition.

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Originally Posted by KarstenS

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Again: link? I follow this community and the reddit community, and I'd think official subscriber numbers being released would be big news.

As for the survey, its not 100% accurate (could point out that many people play alts, so 700k characters may only mean 500k accounts) but I find it hard to believe its as far off as you say. Your argument is there are 2 million players, but that 1.3 million of them haven't changed their gear, gotten a minion, or even changed jobs in months?

730k active subscribers is actually pretty dang good... especially given that we're in the midst of what's possibly the longest content lull since ARR launched.

I wonder how big the subscription jump will be with the expansion plus the usual spike we get with every major content update? Is 900k subs after HW launch out of the question? Or possibly even 1 million?

You are not taking into consideration the people paying a sub who dont log in all the time. Yes there are several who pay and havent logged on in a month or 2 maybe more. The only ones who actually know the numbers are SE. I have a friend who paid for the game for 7 months without logging on before he cancelled it. A FC member plays for about 2 months out of the year and keeps paying. Why? who cares, people do what they want.

Instead of quoting all these peeps... LoL and WoT are NOT f2p mmos, they are MOBAs, look it up if you dont know what a moba is. Those other mmos that went f2p were sinking ships, they were not good under their current model. MMOs that are made to be f2p are not good and I have yet to see someone name one. Archeage? Neverwinter? both suck imo and the constant attempts at selling me things are annoying and insulting and detract from the world experience which defeats the purpose of playing video games for me. If I wanted a storyless combat simulator where I can buy extra skins and ammo Id play a MOBA

Like others mentioned, Wildstar did poorly. Tried it back in beta and it was just...... I saw the problems with it right away (and I don't mean bugs, etc, considering it was beta). Wildstar was also directed towards a tiny fraction of MMO players as a 'hardcore MMO'. If they'd cleaned up their UI and display, made it readible and gave more semblence of a slight direction when they expected you to do something since then, I don't know. Hell, they even had something similar to FATEs. But they pretty much aimed at a tiny portion of people and tried to throw too much with not-so-great design and shot themselves in the foot. Games that didn't do well, didn't meet required revenue goals for the upper management/investors, etc tend to go F2P. Or slowly downgrade themselves (like RO did. Subscription fee down to "pay by hour" then down to "You can play free but pay a subscription if you want extra exp/Kafra warp/etc perks")

FFXIV is one of the more polished games I've happily wandered onto. I don't feel they'll need to go F2P nor rely on the cash shop for revenue like some F2Ps.

That game was doomed from the beginning. Incredibly boring.
The only saving grace was the housing. The ONLY thing that was really, really awesome, was the housing.
When they started using CREED, you knew it was going the F2P route.

I hope XIV NEVER goes into F2P, EVER. I'd probably quit.
WS going F2P is a step in a right direction for them though.

Honestly, Wildstar failed to capture me as an early player. The gameplay just wasn't fun / there for me. And trust me - I was SUPER STOKED about the idea of playing Wildstar back at launch. Meanwhile, FFXIV Got me playing and leveling and hooked early on, and I love the end-game in this game (Contested by people.) I've heard a lot of dissenting opinions regarding wildstar which may have lead to their subscription loss and eventual F2P status.

I played Wildstar at launch. After one month, I was bored and unsubscribed. They really hyped that game and had did well in terms of box sales. The game was not that bad, but it was obviously not ready for release. I blame NCSOFT more for this than Carbine. The guys at Carbine were kind of cocky came off like douchebags at times and this along with an unfinished game, caused a TON of people (like me) to not subscribe at all or drop out after one month or so.

I hate to see any big name MMO fail, because it hurts the genre as a whole, but the REAL issue here is perfectly clarified by Wildstar. It COULD have been a good game at launch, but development teams like Carbine have to basically sell their souls to publishers like NCSOFT. This is why Wildstar went free to play, NCSOFT would have pulled the plug, but figured this was the last ditch effort to regain some of the money they had sunk into advertising and publishing. Business has a way of getting in the way of game development when they push for an early return on their investment or demand that a game be pushed out months before it is truly ready to meet some quota or deadline for marketing.

FFXIV and WoW do not have a publisher to "pay back". They basically use their own money to fund and develop the game. This is why you will probably never see these games change the subscription model to a "ftp" system.

What I heard was that their Launch was just abysmal. They did their best to make it better and they sorta did? But they drove away too many people by the time they fixed or...try to fix whatever issue they had. And now that they are going F2P there is no going back.

Wildstar was weak from the start.
And it didn't have the luxury of being able to remake itself or having a previous franchise backing it. FF14 has had a very unique situation.

NO thanks...... FFXiV servers cant prolly deal with F2P anyway, may a B2P model similiar to TSW but thats it (buy game + expansions + optional suscription + item mall) ... but no F2P.

Wildstar is the living proof: aiming to "hardcore players" and leaving no room / not taking care as u should of casuals is a bad... bad deal.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

Well, nothing much besides me posting this to plead and beg SE not to make FF14 f2p too please. Don't make it happen ever. Just keep it sub based just like you kept FF11 sub based all these years. Don't follow the trend of the recent MMOs going f2p.

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Yes, FF14 must remain Subscription based in order to discourage gold spammers, bots, and trolls! That is a brilliant idea that is sure to work perfectly!

No no, I know. It is so that we can continue getting monthly content updates like the GW2 subscription funds. Oh wait....

hrmn.... Well, at least with a monthly subscription we will get content without having to purchase it on top of that. Er....

Edit: Amusingly enough, I got tells from 3 different gold spammers and one friend request while typing up this very short post. ~.~

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Originally Posted by Peachy

You are not taking into consideration the people paying a sub who dont log in all the time. Yes there are several who pay and havent logged on in a month or 2 maybe more. The only ones who actually know the numbers are SE. I have a friend who paid for the game for 7 months without logging on before he cancelled it. A FC member plays for about 2 months out of the year and keeps paying. Why? who cares, people do what they want.

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While this is true, I think you'd agree such cases are a minority. There aren't 1 million+ players paying for the game but not logging in.


You can use an in-game metric like cactpot. From what I've seen, the number of tickets sold each week ranges from 2-3k on smaller servers, to 6-8k on large servers. But lets say 8k tickets sold on every server, every week (a gross over-estimation). That would be around 500k tickets a week. Now I realize not everyone plays cactpot, but you're telling me 75-80% don't play? Because if you think there are 2 million+ players, that's what you're saying. And again- I'm grossly over-estimating the number of tickets. Probably be more like 90% if we used actual numbers.

I think its far more likely the game has <1 million players, but there is nothing wrong with that. If 500k is all the game needs to survive, then good on them. Game doesn't need millions of players to be successful.

Final Fantasy XI still requires a subscription, and they're ending the story rather than go F2P. WoW came out after FFXI, and that's still subscription-based too.

You can point at all these other MMOs from other companies, but more likely than not, there was a separate publisher involved as well as the dev company with those MMOs.

In the end, SE hasn't even shown a precedent of switching to F2P with FFXI, and even if they eventually did, it would be 13+ years after the game launched.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

op

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F2p is a sign of a failing mmorpg. Wildstar is failing. NCsoft reported 400% decrease in profit from the game's initial launch and "success." It doesn't help that the lead developers of that game are resigning left to right as well. Wildstar going f2p is an attempt to revitalize the severely dwindling player base and to expose players to the new cash shop system they are implementing.

FFXIV is a hit. While not in the dozen million of subscribers. its nonetheless in the millions with China version launched. FFXIV is one of the few mmorpg's thats profitable and in a position to maintain a subscription based business model.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

The thing is, the producers of these MMOs that went f2p said the same thing. Look at Rift. They said, "we will never go f2p" and 6 months later, went back on it. Plans change over years. I am just hoping that this plan will never change for FF14.

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True enough, but the quality of content in XIV is superb. And if that doesn't convince you, remember that XI lasted this long as p2p so XIV will probably last just as long.

I don't expect FF14 to change to F2P. This game already failed so hard drastic action was needed, and we're playing what they did to fix it.

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Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

And snip.

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MMOs typically go F2P because they desperately need population.

Wildstar had some significant issues.
Star Wars the Old Republic had some significant issues.

For as long as people people are getting regular enjoyable content, they will be happy to pay a sub.
Games like WoW only get away with their long patch cycle because of it has a rather established population who don't play because they like WoW, its because they enjoy playing with friends who don't want to leave due to time invested.

I really hope we don't go Free to Play here on XIV, it'd gut the development speed, which is one of things i rather enjoy about XIV.
And FFXIV is the only MMO I've played that gave me a whole new class in a patch. lol
And lets not forget 3 new classes AND a new race in its first expansion. I feel like my sub money is well spent with this kind of pace.
WoW, for all its subs, still only manages 1 class OR Race (Neither in WoD) per expansion. And doesn't even have the decency to give you a race change token when they do >_>

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Originally Posted by RedShipRaider

No no, I know. It is so that we can continue getting monthly content updates like the GW2 subscription funds. Oh wait....

hrmn.... Well, at least with a monthly subscription we will get content without having to purchase it on top of that. Er....

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Trying to compare FFXIV's content patches to the pitiful additions GW2 gets is laughable. Until last year the only persistent new content GW2 had received was the Fractals dungeon (which was actually just delayed content that didn't make launch) and the karka island that has no content at all on it and no one ever bothers to visit... It took them three years to announce an expansion pack with the seasonal story leading into that expansion being the first new content the game had received in well over a year.

GW2's content patches typically amount to nothing more than a redesign of a previous system. In fact ArenaNet has now redesigned the traits system twice! Not only do they not have the money to fund proper content development but they waste what little they have on revamping old systems instead of making desperately needed new ones.

When you pay a subscription you typically get much higher quality content with a much faster release cycle. If anything comparing FFXIV to GW2 proves this point to be true so trying to use GW2 as an argument to disprove it is actually hilarious.

Wildstar lost a lot of players (myself included) because of a few things.

A: Content might have been a smidge too hard (Though personally, I thought the 2 hour long super hard dungeons were actually very fun xD) it's just that kind of thing can scare away a lot of players (Especially the more casual group).

B: There was no incentive for high level players to go back and help lower level players (Unless they were friends or something)...so there started to be a huge gap in player base, and thus a lot of content couldn't get done for newer players.

etc...I honestly think my biggest issue was I couldn't afford two P2P games, and FFXIV won over the two when it came to games I wanted to play. So sadly Wildstar was abandoned. However I do plan to play it again after the model change. (While still playing XIV).........I really miss Wildstar's Housing system though T_T Since I t\dont see FFXIV's ever going that awesome

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Originally Posted by Sylve

For as long as people people are getting regular enjoyable content, they will be happy to pay a sub.
Games like WoW only get away with their long patch cycle because of it has a rather established population who don't play because they like WoW, its because they enjoy playing with friends who don't want to leave due to time invested.

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Actually, when I played WoW (I played for 2 years) there was a ton of content to do in that game. It's not just friends, but that game can be actually fun! Tons of mini games, places to explore (Land/Sky and Sea), backstories, the pvp, the classes are fun (Druid to this day will be my favorite). I love the hidden secrets and lore like in this video. I think what ultimately caused me to quit was my friends (going back to XIV)

The difference between FFXIV and Wildstar is that Wildstar tanked hard after its launch. FFXIV almost did in 1.0, but picked itself up.

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Originally Posted by Spy

snip
Actually, when I played WoW (I played for 2 years) there was a ton of content to do in that game. It's not just friends, but that game can be actually fun! Tons of mini games, places to explore (Land/Sky and Sea), backstories, the pvp, the classes are fun (Druid to this day will be my favorite). I love the hidden secrets and lore like in this video. I think what ultimately caused me to quit was my friends (going back to XIV)

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I played from vanilla to WoD end game.
The friends of mine who still play, in their own words only do so because of the people.
As an Australian on a US server, PvP sucked hard.
Except Season 1 Arena ... Resto Druid + Afflock 2v2 was the only time i truly enjoyed pvp.

Different opinions are different, but game died for me in WotLK, where i got so bored with the endgame i ended up with 17 level 80s before Lich King himself was available to fight.

I will however, full agree with your statement that druids are the best.
Druid was my first class and remained my favorite class (Especially since they gutted the fun of Warrior Tanking) right up until i quit.
Leveling 1 - 60 as a Resto Druid and hanging around Meeting Stones to xxx myself out to groups for dungeon xp will always be my favorite memory though.
Too bad its more of a lobby game than XIV is now >_>

A huge problem WoW has is its huge gaps between content.
If you lot think XIV has a content drought now, Mists of Pandaria received no content updates for 18 months, its first new content was the pre-WoD events ...
Even now, Its 6+ months between updates, and those updates are incredibly anemic, usually consisting of 1 new raid and some bug fixes + class rebalancing. Sometimes a new Daily Quest hub also.

The rapid, constant updates XIV is doing is part of its success, in my opinion. I sincerely hope this cycle continues into Heavensward.

To be fair, Wildstar was aiming too big from the start for what it resulted to be in the end, it was a matter of time to be honest, that game had some good ideas but nothing that justified the pay to play model, plus NCSoft has been dropping the ball in the west lately, they expected a lot from Wildstar which flopped really fast, delayed the launch of Blade & Soul too long (now it's an outdated game) and managed to make GW2 into a boring grindfest with a story that was interesting at first but became a snoozefest really quick (I'm still a huge fan of GW but not interested in playing it anymore)

I don't think FFXIV will go F2P, the game is doing really well atm but if you are really that worried, just look at FFXI, that game has been out for like what? 10 years or more? and it's still P2P. Unless the higher ups change their minds, I don't see this game going F2P anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by Akuryu

You can use an in-game metric like cactpot. Now I realize not everyone plays cactpot, but you're telling me 75-80% don't play? .

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This is an awful metric. Cactpot is played by a fraction of the playerbase. I know many people who gave up after the 3rd week or so because they see it as a waste of time. Mini-Cactpot would be a better metric.

FFXIV is doing too well to go ftp in the near future. :p

Mind you one day... years from now who knows?, never ever go by what developers say, IF one day it is the preferred choice for profit then I guarantee you, it will go ftp, but no worries for a long time yet :)
Remember the $ rules that decision, not us.

I have nothing against any ftp game, would never quit due to something so silly as that, I play a few of them as well as a few sub based games too. If its fun to me then I play, pay or no pay

FFXI never went ftp but thats not because its still successful..farrr from that lol, its simply not plausable to be ftp as they would have nothing to offer. there are no vanity sets, no variety of mounts, no pets ..at all, no xp elixrs etc, its simply too ancient to even handle a store front...most things that ftp brings are not in existance in ffxi. They have to stay sub based even though the subs are very low.

Wow...imo will go ftp, the rate that they are losing ppl, the utter lack of trust many players now have in the developers, i can see it going ftp at one point (and tbh, imo, it already should be and hope it does soon)

I play all of these mentioned and more to this day, just my 2 cents ..meh