SOE Becomes Daybreak / Russian shutdown

Dumar_sl

shitlord
3,712
4
Not only does F2P lead to P2W, but it also removes novelty items that separate gamers who obtain them in the game.

It's nothing but an excuse to further pad profit margins. Just say no to bullshit.
 

Tauro

Bronze Knight of the Realm
371
26
Over the weekend i loaded up Rift to fool around a bit and chat was buzzing with people coming over from eq2 especially. They said they were looking for a new game because EQ2 is done... for them at least ( and they dont want to play WOW because they hate it). Mr. Hartsman will be happy
wink.png
 

Miele

Lord Nagafen Raider
916
48
There is f2p and f2p: swtor has possibily the best shop ever made. You don't really need anything beyond what you'd pay for a cheap game (say 10 or 15 bucks) to buy two or three basic features and become a premium account. The good thing, is that you'd want to buy a ton of shit there, cosmetic and such. If you want to sub, the benefits are many and you get coins monthly to spend on cosmetic stuff.
Swtor for me is great: I pay only a monthly sub and I got a lot of stuff for it and most important, many hours of fun.

Lotro on the other hand is a fucking disaster: aside from being a dated game with clunky gameplay, you have to purchase most of the questing areas. Holy shit whoever came up with that idea...
 

chantmaster

Lord Nagafen Raider
47
4
EQ2 was imo plagued by the following, which broke the camels back in record time

The game ran like shit, everybody was using lowest possible settings to play.
CPU engine bottleneck wasnt really their fault, but really.. if it cant run, don't release it. Also, it was for sure not "optimized for nvidia"
My guess is that this lost them at least 75% of the potential players. In comparison you could probably get WOW to run on a toaster.

The game was initially too hard. Sure, it was fun for me and doable for the average player, but if you were below average you got stuck and had a shitty time
This probably lost half the guys. In wow, joe blow could hit max level and brag about his lvl 60 rifle, farming forever hoping for a world drop purple.

Mirror class balance was SHIT, balance in general was poor.
This probably only cost about a quarter of the players, as most rerolled to something that worked. It was really really bad. So bad even the overpowered classes knew it and could laugh about it.

So whats left using my guesstimate numbers?
10%?
That's a poor start if i ever saw one. If vanguard had an EQ-X name they'd be close.
If you chase off your initial customers, your business will suffer till it goes under. Most will never come back and tell their friends.
 

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
No it doesn't.
I believe Path of Exile is F2P and not P2W. It's just a design choice. Obviously P2W is immensely popular with certain genres (tower defense on mobile is an example), players and cultures (in China P2W is seen as perfectly normal).
 

Siddar

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
6,354
5,897
Fairly certain LoL is one of the largest video game in terms of players and revenues while being F2P with zero P2W needed.
 

Raes

Vyemm Raider
3,263
2,718
People always try to use non-MMORPG examples whenever the subject of f2p and/or p2w comes up. Yes, LOL, PoE and MH all do f2p extremely well, but they are not MMORPG's. Most f2p mmo's suffer from either not being originally designed for a f2p model, or from being designed by asians. Some have p2w issues, most just suffer from being based on greed instead of efficiency.

Looking at the big picture, IMO f2p has been bad for the genre as a whole. It turns a game studio into a caretaker. Instead of continuing to create new games and push the genre forward, when an mmo starts to fail, they put it on f2p life-support, and as long as it makes enough profit to cover everyone's paychecks, they put all their dev-time into adding onto it. You've got some really competent and experienced coders/artists/designers sitting on their asses babysitting mmo's that are around a decade old. It's just a waste.
 

Jimbolini

Semi-pro Monopoly player
2,560
955
I would have though someone laid off would have spilled the beans by now. (anon of course)

I haven't really heard any gossip at all....no bad blood out there?
 

Mughal

Bronze Knight of the Realm
279
39
Looking at the big picture, IMO f2p has been bad for the genre as a whole.
The entire picture is that the moment WoW was released no other game has been successful in the sub market. Not a single one no matter how popular the franchise or big the dev budget.
 

Byr

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
3,663
4,943
I believe Path of Exile is F2P and not P2W. It's just a design choice. Obviously P2W is immensely popular with certain genres (tower defense on mobile is an example), players and cultures (in China P2W is seen as perfectly normal).
im not sure why people always use PoE as an example. In general it doesnt sell power but theres is a definite need to buy stash tabs. You just cant play in any meaningful way up into chaining 78 maps without using the chaos/regal recipes and doing those with 4 tabs would be a nightmare.
 

mkopec

<Gold Donor>
25,410
37,502
The reason F2P is even around is because for the better part of 10 yrs all we have seen is shit for MMOS that are not worth $15 per month. Make some good games again and watch the people gladly fork over their cash to play.

I also know that F2P is here to stay, but dont kid yourselves into thinking that its somehow good for the genre.
 

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
2,375
1,077
The entire picture is that the moment WoW was released no other game has been successful in the sub market. Not a single one no matter how popular the franchise or big the dev budget.
No one has rivaled WoW in sub #s for sure but to say no one has been successful is not true at all. EVE was and is highly successful in the sandbox space, even massively flawed games like Darkfall made lots of money. And thats only western games. I think people who haven't played alot of the sandbox games in the last decade really underestimate how much interest their is in that area, and why it is smart for EQN to target that space rather than take WoW head on.
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,326
43,170
EVE predates WoW; or are we saying that no game has been successful post-WoW, regardless of when it released? Either way, I somewhat agree with Creslin.

What are considering successful here?
 

Creslin

Trakanon Raider
2,375
1,077
EVE predates WoW.
Ya but 2003 EVE was on lifesupport, the company who owned it sold it for pennies on the dollar, and it was a pale shadow of the game it would be by 05-06. You gotta admit EVE became a successful sub based MMO after the release of WoW even tho its technical release was a year before WoW.
 

Raes

Vyemm Raider
3,263
2,718
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?
 

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
The reason F2P is even around is because for the better part of 10 yrs all we have seen is shit for MMOS that are not worth $15 per month. Make some good games again and watch the people gladly fork over their cash to play.

I also know that F2P is here to stay, but dont kid yourselves into thinking that its somehow good for the genre.
SWTOR has pretty decent subscription numbers. I think the last time I looked it was around 400-500k. Doesn't count the F2P players too.