Why pay a subscription?

[Rikudou-Sennin]

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

You guys do know SE is having financial difficulties right? FF11's hard mode didn't pan out for their wallets. They can't afford to make the same mistake twice. I mean they literally can't afford it.. -_-

[C-croft]

You guys do know SE is having financial difficulties right? FF11's hard mode didn't pan out for their wallets. They can't afford to make the same mistake twice. I mean they literally can't afford it.. -_-

What are you talking about? Do you mean FF14 1.0's? Or FF11, which has been their most successful title?

[Rikudou-Sennin]

What are you talking about? Do you mean FF14 1.0's? Or FF11, which has been their most successful title?

No I'm talking about FF11 online. That game was hard. If that was their most successful title they wouldn't be broke. BTW, I still think FF7 holds the title for most sucessful. A game they still refuse to remake.

[Reslin]

EVE Online may be one of the hardest sandbox MMORPG out there, and granted due to that it has low subs numbers, but it never stopped gaining more players ever since it was released. Still rising as we speak.

Eve has no competitors in it's genre. No real competition anyway that's why.

As to Sidious pay to play doesn't make a game more successful than free to play. Look at LOTRO, they had a completely stable player base but moved to free to play. Why did they do it? Because they had a dying game known as dungeons and dragons online. They made it free to play in a last ditch effort to save it. They ended up making more money than they ever did when it was pay to play. So they thought, "What would happen if we do the same with our successful LOTRO? Would it make even more?" According to the devs the answer was yes. People play FFXI a decade later but there's many "Failed" mmorpgs that are also trucking years later. People still play Everquest to this day (note I'm not saying it failed.)

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Eve has no competitors in it's genre. No real competition anyway that's why.

No real competitor as we speak, but there have been some in the sandbox genre, and some quite big (such as SWG for instance). No competition is a factor, indeed, but certainly the quality of the game itself should not be dismissed, nor the stance with which CCCP approach its player base. By all means they've done it right.

[Reslin]

No real competitor as we speak, but there have been some in the sandbox genre, and some quite big (such as SWG for instance). No competition is a factor, indeed, but certainly the quality of the game itself should not be dismissed, nor the stance with which CCCP approach its player base. By all means they've done it right.

SWG was a sandbox game turned themepark which alienated it's own subscriber base. The problem with most sandbox games is that they take an attitude of "Wow! People really like my sandbox game let's include other mmorpg elements and.. well, we lost our devoted following." CCP has done right by keeping the game what it is and not deviating from their vision. EvE is a great game but the problem is this isn't a sandbox game and the market is saturated with similar titles all competing for the limelight. Nowadays you have two choices. Make the game hardcore to please the hard core gamers creating a small circle of devoted followers or appease the casuals. Most businesses opt for the latter because there simply is more casuals. You just try to make challenging content that also keeps as much of the hard core crowd as you can but asking for the company to appeal to the hardcore and only the hardcore is asking it to commit financial suicide.

[Bruiser_Cruiser]

Yeah honestly i dont care about the difficulty of content changing i really just want SE to do something about the bots teleporting around and RTM spammers.

[Kayo]

Wtf? Sub if its fun enough to be worth your money, unsub if you dont. Stop implying the runaway RMT and bots of the game will be around all year, theyre not. They missed some common tools and will likely add them ASAP... do you really expect them to add/change the game at the snap of a finger? Hasnt even been a month!

Funny how you ask why anyone would sub then say a smart person would sub when a new patch releases. Durr, thats not new... players have been doing that for years. I myself will be doing it at the end of the month.

Good god this thread is really reaching for the top of the garbage pile isnt it? Love your last point btw, its the "best single player game in disguise" because despite it forcing you to find and interact with other players for content, and other group features like FATEs, you can still CHOOSE to be antisocial. Great logic there.

[AjoraOak]

Generally, new content provides faster access to better gear (making old content not viable)... and they would provide say af2 for philos at a later point when content uses ilvl90 or so as the new base ilvl for normal content.

Basically, there's never any reason to ever play/pay monthly other than playing in the moment where it's harder.

[Kayo]

Are casuals allergic to logic or something?

Are you allergic to facts? First of all WoW went super casual during WotLK, when it reached its highest point in subs. It was the pinnacle of free epics and mindless faceroll ez-mode end game content. Cataclysm was when subs started dropping and at first the games difficulty was designed to be hard (well, harder than WotLK). Players whined like never before (kind of like theyre doing now) on how stupid some players were in LFG tool so they nerfed everything back to ez-mode. Look it up.

Furthermore, WoW has gone through many changes. Not only are you embarrasingly wrong with your facts, but its highly ignorant to think millions of players left because of one single change in difficulty.