FF14: ARR! World class MMOs? Must be Free to play, League of Legends! enough said .

WoW is the only MMO that can live healthy on sub base that can hold 5mils subs for years never drop that mark. and it'll stay that way.


Im sure ARR will pass ff11 on subs numbers, but need like 100-200%+ (1mil-2mil) stayble within a year if not ARR will be force to Free to play.

A nice mmo like ARR that have 1mil-2mil stayble subs can go long way, if that ever happen 1mil-2mils can grow 2-3 times in subs in 2-3 years. but for that to happen looking at % is only at 35% that will happen.



as for WoW have what % subs in the MMO market , they should be in the 50%+ to the whole mmo market sub base, if only can steal 25% out of them.

A game doesn't need x million subs to "live healthy", it needs a stable playerbase to live. XI peaked at 750k accounts with 2 million characters and was stable at 500k players for numerous years. That is living healthy.

FFXI, gtfo. (Four threads about this now.. seriously I'm thinking RMT are trying to push the forums)

I happily played 1.0 because it was P2P I dont like any hybrid choices (some as personal preference others for game effecting reasons (sometimes both)).

WTF I don't even...

What exactly makes you think this deserves yet another thread?

Oh, and FYI, Eve Online has lived very healthy, growing consistently every year since it came out in 2003.

This thread deserves to be thrown in the fire and die a fiery death.

Please dont feed the troll.

Please close this. -.-;

Get real SE will be happy for ARR to be another FF11, no way in hell.

As i said yoshi team need still have a chance to make ARR to be a baby WoW then can grow from it if not bye bye subs base. thou chances are really small, i can see SE is making all the chance together this time around, hence is why the game is not coming out anytime soon, timing is the key. SE is aming for mid-2013.

Free to play and pay to play can be good, just how smart you go at it. at the end of the day is all about money $$$, no money no talking.

Every company need a back up plan, well SE is too big of a head on FF14 1.xxx then when live, BANG all gone lol. millions of dollars just lost and ppl trust too priceless.

Wish ARR all the best ! :p

HON is way better than LOL = LOL totally unbalanced game is really bad.
and LOL is not an mmo
Looks like your just being cheap tbh you have no valid claims on why ARR should be F2P
close thread plz.

Troll OP is Trollin'

Whether FFXIV can survive on a subscription model has nothing to do with whether it goes free-to-play. It depends on the size of the team that developed it, the persistent cost of the server infrastructure, and the size of the team that maintains it and develops new content for it.

Frankly, it will be a long time before FFXIV will be profitable for Square|Enix, no matter what its subscription base ends up being, or whether it goes F2P or not. It's an MMO that's been almost completely restarted, in addition to its initial up-front cost and ongoing server maintenance. It's also possible (maybe even likely) that FFXIV will never be profitable, and that Yoichi Wada knows this, and that 2.0 is more about saving face and repairing his company's tarnished reputation.

I believe free-to-play will result in a worsened play experience than a subscription model. Free-to-play incentivizes developers to water-down the base experience of a game in favor of the up-sold version. It creates pressure for them to contact their users as frequently as possible to try and sell them on the game's paid-for assets. This is why free-to-play games usually become pay-to-win: You've turned the game from a service to a retail outlet. It's the same difference between a fitness club and Wal*Mart. I don't want to give Square Enix an incentive to email me reminders that I haven't played recently, or to give them an incentive to make paid-for weapons of any sort better than the weapons I'll earn in-game. If you ask for the game to go free-to-play, these things will happen. That, or the quests will become for-pay, similar to Dungeons and Dragons Online. Or the player customization. Or maybe even the different zones of the world. Possibly, all of these things. Whatever it is you like most - whatever would make you pay the most - that's what Square Enix is best off barring from you until you pay real money. That's the business model you're asking them to go into. That's what you're asking them to do.

League of Legends is no exception: They operate as a retail outlet for characters and customization, with what could really only be described as a free online trial. They have almost no map or gameplay options. You find a hero you like in the random roster? Then you have to wait for them to cycle back into the roster, or you have to pay real money. And you want the latest Teemo skin? Money, money, money by the pound.

And as a game developer, myself, I tend to find the free-to-play model ethically questionable. Free-to-play games survive on what are called "whales". These are people who spend thousands - thousands - of dollars every month. I can't understand what drives these people to spend this kind of money, and I can't imagine that it represents a healthy relationship with the game. Knowing that they exist leaves me wishing never to work on a free-to-play project.

But in summation, I suppose if you'd really be happy paying nothing and doing nothing except grinding vanilla mobs in New Gridania, then I guess I can't stop you from asking for free-to-play. But please stop jumping on the free-to-play bandwagon as if it will make the game free for you without fundamentally altering your play experience. It will not.

Edit: Oh. Bother. Obviously I fell for the troll.