So, even Wildstar is going f2p...

[Recaldy]

FFXI lasted how long before going F2P? lol

[Akuryu]

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

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.

700k is the daily concurrent logins.

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

[Xatsh]

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.

[MageBlack]

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".

[KarstenS]

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.

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.

[Alberel]

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.

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.

[Akuryu]

snip

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?

[Thayos]

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?

[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.

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

[Saseal]

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.