Optimistic About ARR's Launch

[Gramul]

It will no fail because it's a good game with no competition.

No competi-...are we in the same reality?

[Elexia]

No competi-...are we in the same reality?

Not to mention XIV has already failed once so there's already that image they have to shake off. Throw in the fact people are generally content with their current outgoings excluding SWTOR and TERA and there's plenty of competition. She was talking more for herself personally.

[Aela]

In my eyes, going f2p is a sign of failure.

The entire F2P thing is really messy. Unfortunately, in the western market, we have all decided F2P is a sign of failure. Currently I am playing TSW (The Secret World), and there had been a lot of discussion about TSW and the possibility of it going F2P. The sales just weren't great, and in the end the game has had some SERIOUS issues with population. It is my opinion the biggest issue with TSW was the fact is released so close to GW2, and there was so much buzz over GW2 no one even noticed TSW. (my husband and I had been big fans of AO, and really had a lot of hope for TSW, so we went all in, we even started a website for it -- our first attempt at a website). When it was clear there was a \really big problem\ with the population in TSW, Ryahl started doing a lot of writing on the topic on our fansite. The end result was a series of editorials that made there way up the ladder into both the Funcom investor relations private communities as well as the development team of TSW. When the game did finally go "Buy 2 Play" (B2P) they ended up using a model that so closely resembled our Box+ model that it couldn't be a coincidence (it was later confirmed by their lead developer that Ryahl's article was critical in the creation of the entire model).

Long story short, there is a way to get a "F2P" (or better B2P) model for the game and it be a success. The problem is, it really needs to be done from the GET GO, not a "well we failed, I guess we'll go F2P now /shrug". The entire player base views that at a failure. And, that isn't good.

I remember the morning that TSW went B2P, I told Ryahl about it during breakfast, and he said.. "oh well, I guess TSW finally officially failed". And, this is from someone that WANTED to see the game go "B2P" and felt like it was necessary in the end. The entire problem is one were the player base has a perception of failure that is created due to the change from subscription to B2P.

Link to the Box+ Model Editorial

[hikoneko]

f2p more often than not attracts all the idiots that just play to annoy others. If they really need to go f2p (which I don't think they will anytime soon), they should probably just have subscription servers and completely separate f2p servers.

A good community means a lot to me in an MMO, otherwise I'd just play a single player FF every day


Back on topic, Yoshi-P and his team have done an amazing job so far with ARR, and I'm definitely looking forward to playing it

Yeah, i totally agree with your point about how important a good community of a mmo is, it does mean ALOT, that's the main reason i quit my last mmo, everyday u logged in and look at these idiots chatting in world chat(cursing out, topics about sex explicitly, arguments, etc.) When you're in such community, it totally destroy the mood to play. I'd rather quit.

Yoshi is just amazing! I'm one of the FFXIV 1.0 quitters and when I take a look at how things change over time recently, it's attracting me again, now I just can't wait to try out the beta and I believe this team is going to make FFXIV better and better. Thanks for this positive thread OP

[AmandaHuggenkiss]

Long story short, there is a way to get a "F2P" (or better B2P) model for the game and it be a success. The problem is, it really needs to be done from the GET GO, not a "well we failed, I guess we'll go F2P now /shrug". The entire player base views that at a failure. And, that isn't good.

I agree.
I have played many f2p games that were great, but they all started that way.

[trep]

I have yet to see a MMO with a good F2P model. On the other hand, games like Dota2, LoL and PS2 prove that the F2P can work even better than box sells (Dota2 is still beta and people are spending money on it already). Maybe it's something with the genre, but for MMOs, I'd rather have a sub based model and pay a fix amount of money to access everything.

[Molic]

4-5 mill player base, so dont worry about f2p at all o=!

[Aela]

4-5 mill player base, so dont worry about f2p at all o=!

Maybe I'm missing something here, but who are you talking about having 4-5mm playbase? Here is another one of Ryahl's editorials on the Obituary for the subscription MMO. The fact is, the playerbase is just not there for a traditional western style subscription MMO. At least to sustain it long term. Pretty much you would have to find a WoW killer, and how many games have attempted and failed at that over the years?

If you take out WoW from the mix, you can see that the entire western subscription market was under 4million players (when the piece was written the data available was upto Dec 2011).

[HiirNoivl]

No competi-...are we in the same reality?

looool

Well I can't find anything I like.

[Ksenia]

The in-house funding is an interesting point. It speaks of early days EVE when it was an Independent MMO. FF14 is independent with strong backing really. They have the sauce for a long term revenue stream, not a get rich quick scheme. While EVE never broke 500K subs and I think it sits at around 250K right now, it makes money hand over fist. That's the sort of business model I hope SqEnix is going for. Something that pays the bills, makes some profit and keeps people working.