SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown

I would argue that the f2p conversion did a lot to help them stabilize after a serious decline.

Utnayan_sl said:

F2P brings in an enormous amount of money. When a game goes F2P, it doesn't mean it is dying. It means the publisher is willing to make a boat load of cash, but without the predictability of the revenue stream from projected (easily projected) subscription revenue during the product cycle.

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Yes, it's a calculated risk when the decision is made pre-launch. Post launch it's a desperate attempt to keep from going under.

Raes_sl said:

I think what Mughal meant was, since WoW launch, all (new?) mmo's that tried to charge a sub either began to fail and went f2p, or failed and shut down. Not sure where Eve lands, can't you play for free if you generate enough isk?

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Not really, its just a formalized gametime buying system. CCP sells gametime cards as ingame items for RL money and then the players can turn around and sell those on the AH for ISK, but no one is playing EVE without CCP getting the RL $ for a sub.

Anyway, I think the fact that no sub game has succeeded like WOW is more due to the issues those games have and less due to any real change in the market. The only sandbox game developed by any studio that was even semi competent was EVE. Darkfall was the best sandbox game released since WoW and that shoudl tell you all you need to know. The guys releasing games against WoW itself have all failed because they suck at programming compared to blizzard and even when they steal the entire spec sheet no one wants to play a reskinned version of WoW that runs slightly worse.

The FTP model really just comes from a lack of confidence in your product. Ultimately the games were not offering anything new so most games were tagged with a "more of the same" from players. I get the easier the access to play the better argument, but it just drives the risk of recouping money up. Not to mention that in my eyes they're also conceding a bit that their rep is bad and people won't risk a box price before reviews, which can be misleading or dead on. I'm not quite sure the indrustry even understands itself at this point. Too many hybrid games for sake of making PVP viable content because they can't pump out pve fast enough, which ends up just upsetting both player bases. they do shit for all the wrong reasons

Flipmode_sl said:

Looks like they forgot to fire some of those great marketing dept people. It's almost criminal how bad SOE's marketing dept is.

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I've said the same for awhile now. But you wonder, is that because they have no budget?

What marketing department?

Seriously.

WoW did 231 million dollars in 2013 from the cash shop alone. Swtor did 139 million dollars from the cartel market. Both these figures are revenues and not profits and both don't count the subs money.

For something that sells mostly cosmetic/useless stuff, you could argue that those numbers are very good. The hours required to create a mini pet are probably single digit from a single person or maybe two, the fact that this mini pet can sell 250.000 copies at 10$ each in a single week, speaks volumes. This generates the revenue that keeps the company running well and steady.

Subscription based games are doing poorly because few are willing to commit to more than one title and most choose WoW as their "main" game.

You can also buy them on the auction house for in game currency.

mkopec_sl said:

But lets not forget what this did to SWTOR. I played that game at launch for about a year or so. Back then they had these mini bosses all over the fucking place, and they all pretty much dropped orange gear, the type that you could put the mods into them. Anything from armor, to guns and light sabers. It was cool to search for and hunt these fuckers down. Even to equip your alts.

Well here comes the F2P and cash shop and what do they do? They remove all this sweet orange gear from these elite mobs loot table and place all the shit in the cash shop.

This is what F2P and cash shop does for games....

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Aww they stopped the global raid mobs?

radditsu_sl said:

Aww they stopped the global raid mobs?

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He's likely talking about champion mobs and heroic areas which had better drop rates for the stuff. They've only added a new planet per expansion aside from daily areas, and they're still lacking the extras from the original release including those things.

zzeris_sl said:

Putting players behind an artificial time wall is no different than a paywall..

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So according to this people shouldn't actually play games? They should just give money to Blizzard/Trion/Daybreak and be given an end-game raider in return and be done with it? Because time invested in playing a game is no different than spending money on what that invested time could have gotten you?


When you play Monopoly do you not bother rolling dice and moving around the board? Do you just auction off the deeds for money to the players? #AskingForAFriend


What's the weather like on your planet? #SameFriend

As usual Tad is arguing with people that don't exist.

Some people feel entitled to play a game for free and never spend any money for some reason.

Here is a recent Gamasutra article on MMO pay models. It uses TESO as an example but the IPD concept can apply to all of them.

Gamasutra: Isaac Knowles's Blog - ESO goes F2P: Was Zenimax stupid like a fox?