Free to Play

[charlemagne]

I'll cheerfully pay the subscription when it's introduced and immediately quit if the microtransaction model is introduced.

[Chain]

How many idiots does it take to finally realize free to play does NOT mean its free, you still have to spend money to make the game even remotely fun.

free to play = quit for me and pretty much any other serious player.

also, this forum needs a dislike button

[Cendres]

Free to play models are for games that can't hold subscribers on a subscriber model, and grant the most power and items to people willing to spend the most in a company supported RMT.

If XIV went microtransaction I wouldn't think twice about quitting.

You're so out of the loop it's not even funny. F2P or it's happy new sibling the freemium service is taking over the MMO landscape. SE SHOULD be paying attention, but they won't and instead will play catch up with the rest of the world in 4 years where you'll be able to play FFXIV for on a free model if you choose. Except by then no one will care.

We live in a world where a game like Rift swore to be P2P only and is now giving away cheap copies of it's game or entirely free copies, after how many months after launch??? Yeah... I'm awaiting the freemium version already.

edit: Also Turbine saved ONE of it's game with the free service. Lord of the Rings was doing just fine without, which is why it shocked everyone when Turbine changed it as well since DDO had been so very successful. The other companies started paying attention slowly adding in item shop like deals: SOE and Funcom as examples. (Crytptic too and failed, 'cause they're Cryptic...)

It's not a P2P world anymore sorry.

[KingDante]

I partially agree with the OP. I don't see a point in the future where SE could start charging a monthly subscription for this game. But, I don't think it has to go completely free to play. They could use a model like Guild Wars that charges for the game but then doesn't have a monthly fee.

[Delsus]

I partially agree with the OP. I don't see a point in the future where SE could start charging a monthly subscription for this game. But, I don't think it has to go completely free to play. They could use a model like Guild Wars that charges for the game but then doesn't have a monthly fee.

That would do them no good, P2P mmos never make money off the game alone, they need the subscriptions to make a profit, FFXI for example took 5 years to make a profit because they need to pay the all the staff for constant updates, support, etc, also they need to pay the running costs for the servers. This is why F2P games use microtransactions to cover these costs otherwise making mmos could easily make a company go into administration.

[Carmillia]

As most of the people here, I would quit if FFXIV goes F2P. I choosed a P2P game because I can enjoy the whole content of the game with paying the same amount of money than everyone else. I was very happy to quit the F2P game model as it only comes down to the size of your wallet in those type of games and you end up spending much more money than in a P2P game.

Also in a F2P game, there are too many annoying: 'money plz', 'pt plzzzzz' (and spammed), 'plvl plz'... You get the idea. In general, in those F2P games, reaching cap level is far too tedious and slow if you do not buy those cash shop items to boost experience gained. Some items are only available in cash shops (what about pvp then? Yeah, you know where this is going => check Shaiya online and the cash shop prices/cost of APs).

To sum it up: Pay to play = Enjoy full content straight.
Free to play = Pay to enjoy (as in spend half of your paycheck).

[Kallera]

I'd rather not see messages advertising bought gil being spammed in the streets. F2P has a tendency to attract such a crowd.