So, even Wildstar is going f2p...

[Intaki]

I have to disagree with this statement, I've played plenty of F2P games, and for the most part they were bad-terrible, and most people dont stay on F2P games from what I've seen including myself

League of Legends is the most played online video game in the world by a massive margin, with profits that are as large as their popularity.

Anyone who thinks F2P and micro-transactions aren't the future of western online gaming is in denial. The F2P frameworks, when applied correctly, make too much money and work too well for investors and producers to ignore.

[Catwho]

LoL is a MOBA, not an MMORPG.

Different genre of game entirely. F2P is so far the best payment model for MOBAs - no one wants to pay a monthly fee for random sparring matches.

[silentwindfr]

you can't compare a moba and a mmorpg, the infrastructure needed and the developpement needed behind each are totally different.

it's not without reason that the moba was created by a group of fan... it did recquire little investement for make it work. league of legend work on him own notoriety, it didn't get any improvement or massive change for years. where mmorpg need to always offer more and more, with FF14 they have even push the limit farer by adding a huge load of content every 3 month... try to simply check the add in leage of legend in the same period and check the difference with FF14.

you can't do this without invest money, for get this sort of money from F2P you will need to either find a way to force player to invest cash in the game, by putting restriction or put more of your time into making content for the cash shop than the game itself.

[Intaki]

LoL is a MOBA, not an MMORPG.

Try telling that to a bunch of middle-aged baby boomer/Gen X stock brokers and investment agents.

[MrSmiley]

Try telling that to a bunch of middle-aged baby boomer/Gen X stock brokers and investment agents.

They are also a large part of the reason many mmos fail, trying to make them be something they aren't or demanding wow clones cause wow makes money (mmos don't work that way, why not just play wow which has had more time to shine then) or various other examples. Also, that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that LoL being successful means nothing to the mmo market, even if some idiots think it does.

I'm not saying F2P doesn't have its place, but most mmos that fall to it simply stay in the obscurity that forced them into it.

[Mahri]

I dunno if it's been said in this thread already, but Wildstar was a moderately entertaining-premised by-the-book MMO that had potential until it was hijacked by people whose nostalgia goggles for vanilla WoW were on so tight that it cut off all flow to their brain. They're fun-hating grognards who sincerely believe that tedium and overwhelming numbers = "hardcore" game design, and catered deliberately to the very small section of players who feel the same way. They spoke in unironic glowing terms of endgame loot existing for the purpose of "showing off to casuals". Were you to describe the fiascos of Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium Warden from FFXI to these people, they'd probably pop a stiffy.

Want a laugh? This is the "attunement" process for entry-level raiding. These people thought this was a sincerely good idea.

The story for the raid itself goes like: Some of the biggest name progression raiding guilds in MMOs (those who have more free time than should be humanly possible) banged their heads against it for about six months before the developers finally nerfed their incompetent design down to numbers that could actually be overcome. And when it was beaten, the lead raid designer's immediate response to was to go onto Reddit and openly mock the ones who did it.

Watching Wildstar's crash and burn is schadenfreude beyond compare. The news that it's going F2P is just the cherry on top.

[DreadRabbit]

It means that despite people's calls otherwise, what the MMO market wants are more raiding MMOs. That's nothing new, as both Everquest and it's predessor, DikuMUD also proved the same. However, not all F2P games are throwaway, LOTRO still proves you can take a sub game, make it F2P, and do well.

The whole raiding thing can be a discussion in and of itself. However I definitely agree that F2P does not automatically mean the game using that payment model is bad. My very first MMO was a Korean F2P and that's just a couple of years younger than WoW (Mabinogi, for those curious). Truthfully until I got strong armed into trying WoW the only MMOs I played were F2P. There's definitely gems out there like LOTRO

[Drakkaelus]

I love XIV being a sub game, it means we get high quality content on a regular schedule, its well worth the cost.

That's because the devs can stick to an actual schedule. Being sub based in and of itself doesn't guarantee consistent content.

WoW is sub based. Look at how long Blizzard can (and will) go without adding any content. There are F2P/B2P games that updates more frequently than WoW does...it's insane.

[SirDiscoFrog]

You didn't read my original posts. Registered accounts are not the same as subscribers. People can register and never even buy the game. Players who quit 1 month after launch are still counted in that total. All signs point to the game having less than 1 million subs. As I said, it's not even a bad thing... not sure why you guys are so defensive about it.

I saw it I was mainly going off this part

(could point out that many people play alts, so 700k characters may only mean 500k accounts)

Which to mean made it seem like you were contesting characters vs accounts(as 1 account can have up to 8 characters per server where as to make a completely new account you'd need to have some form of sub fee applied per account, similar to how people were paying for 3 months of play time on separate accounts to get the draught chocobo).
Ultimately you asked for a link to prove her claim and I was giving one I didn't mean to come off as defensive but showing you where they got their info from/showing it was a big deal as you had said it should be lol.

[Twilite]

Frequently updating can have a negative side effect. People will keep expecting them so when there is long time since last one, people will quit. The game is pretty much living on updates. I played an online game just like that.