I don't think we need meaningless time sinks any more. I think MMO's need to go the route of Demon Souls. Making progression less about time and more about skill. If you don't have the skill then it becomes about time (learning mechanics) Obviously the better the loot the harder the dungeon. Away goes meaningless time sinks. Skilled players that don't have as much time are happy and people with heaps of time are also happy. The middle ground between those two will be the middle ground in every MMO anyway.I bet you can think of a lot of hours spent in EQ for silly things that you wouldn't ever do again, though, that seemed very meaningful at the time.
I saw a few posts earlier about giving a free trial every 3 months or something but I think a better idea is to have 2 days free every month for ex subscribers. Costs the company barely anything and keeps the monthly sub a viable business model.That's a pretty nice idea, do any games do that? I mostly dont like $15 subs anymore because the time of going steady with one or two games is over and I dont want to put down $15 3-5 times per month for only an hour of checking out what changed. (Luckily most games went F2P anyway, only one causing this "check it out" itch constantly is EVE). I also like the PS2 way of sub giving the xp bonus, so you can check it out anytime and if you notice you want to play a few days throw down the money then (although I never subbed PS2, sticking with Heavy/Infiltrator/sunderer most of the time and maxed those through regular play and micro-transactions).
Depends on your interpretation. For me (and I think most people) P2W means you can buy something for real money that you cannot obtain through play (or only through ridiculous hours, like 20 hours play for a 1 hour consumable or the like). Microtransaction and subscriptions that only buy you time, if reasonable, are fine with most people (League of legends boosts and champions, PS2 subscription and weapons, xp pots in most F2P games are all fine imo).
Also when it comes to leveling I enjoy the "Do X skill you gain points in X skill" and programs set in place to stop people from macroing. It gets you into the game much quicker whilst still giving you a huge amount of options.