Free to Play VS. Pay to Play

For anyone who may be intrested.

On February 24th Xfire will have a debate on the nature of Free 2 Play vs. Subscription-based MMOs. ArenaNet will have representation from Randy Price (Senior Vice President of Global Business & Legal Affairs). This could prove to be intresting and provide some insight into the business model aspect of Guild Wars and other MMOs.

http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_debate/

VS. nothing to play...


Could indeed be interesting though if they actually give insigths into the business model.

too bad the 24th is when the TF2 scout update goes live, so I can't be asked to do anything but try out the new unlockables.

Mm, sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

why can't we debate it here on guru now ?

You may argue it with me but it will cost $5

I wouldn't mind paying a monthly fee if I saw quality updates and balancing on a regular schedule.

I would prefer not to pay but if there is a lifetime fee of what ever the sum is if reasonable I will pay.

The typical $15/month for an MMO is very cheap given the amount of entertainment provided. It's my cable bill that's way too expensive given what I get for it.

Yeah and there is nothing on worth watching even on those mighty US stations hi nieghbour.Sorry for the OT.

i quite like the gw model, as i dont have a large income, plus your not married to the game...

with something like wow, then u really should expect to get more, because you pay more

Thanks to Billiard's blog I stumbled upon a link to an article which I had forgotten about. It provides some interesting insight on the issue. The following is a link to the full article and a excerpt from it;

http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php

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Don't count on subscriptions

In the early years of the MMO industry, from roughly 1997 to 2001, there were a few big MMOs that had active player populations. By the time we started ArenaNet in the summer of 2000, we knew of at least eighty MMOs that were in development. Based on the success of UO and EQ, publishers were reviewing their portfolios and planning to migrate their existing game franchises to the online world, where they believed they could adopt a subscription model and "make bank". Clearly, it did not work out that way. As more MMOs came into the market, two things changed. First, players now had a choice about which game they would play, and as a result their expectations for polish, content quantity, and service increased substantially. Second, and perhaps more telling for the future of the industry, it became clear that the subscription model forced players to choose a single game, rather than playing many different games.

Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true – you know it, and they know it. Gamers may buy the argument that your MMO requires a subscription fee, if you can tell them what they are getting for their money. This is the legacy of games like Guild Wars, Maple Story, and Silkroad Online, all of which introduced new business models into the MMO genre and were quite successful. The subscription model is still perfectly viable, but the pain threshold is very low now. It's no secret that gamers don't want to pay a subscription fee. If you can convince them that your game offers enough value to justify it, more power to you! But be prepared to defend your decision, often and loudly, and back it up over the lifetime of your game.

Be very aware of the choice you are asking players to make, and the frequency of that choice. In a subscription model you are asking players to make a choice every month, and it is a fairly drastic choice: Stay married, or get divorced? It is certainly the case that if every player decides to stay married every month, you can make more money from each player in the subscription model. But that will rarely be the case, and not something that you should count on. Every month, some percentage of your player base will decide on divorce, and as with marriage in the real word, once you are divorced you rarely get married to the same person again. If you go the subscription route, you'll need to have the confidence that your marriage rate will exceed your divorce rate.

With Guild Wars we ask players to make a choice only one time, and that choice is whether to buy the game, or not to buy the game. While we don't enjoy a recurring revenue stream each month, we do benefit from the fact that most Guild Wars players come back to the game when we release new content, so we are less concerned about players putting the game down for a few months. Players don't have to decide whether to stay married or get divorced, they just have to decide whether they want to play today or not. Beyond the benefit of a lower pain threshold to get into the game, this is the core strength of the Guild Wars business model, and one of the reasons it continues to thrive when many other subscription-based MMOs are struggling.

Innovate with your game play, and innovate with your business model! The two go hand in hand, and are mutually dependent on each other. Decide on your business model first, and then build your game around it. Guild Wars can be successful with its business model because we decided that we would not charge a subscription fee before we wrote the first line of code, and every design and technology decision we made served that purpose. We could never turn Guild Wars into a subscription-based game, just as Turbine could not suddenly decide to eliminate the subscription model for Lord of the Rings Online. If you decide to require players to subscribe to your game, be prepared to build a game that thoroughly justifies it.

Yeah, I remember readin' that a bit ago. He did make a good point about Guild Wars giving you the freedom to experience other games. Funny, how one of the biggest complaints around here are from people expecting GW to be the ONLY game to keep them busy until Guild Wars 2.

That's because no other frikkin game gives me the same satisfaction anymore. And I tried other games, they're the same old in a new dress. I hope Blizzard releases Diablo3 soon, it prolly won't happen though.

Yes we were spoiled with GW.

They brought out a dozen MMO's last year, but not one game like GW. They were all eager to get rich fast by jumping on the pay to play boat. In the meantime ANet dominated the free to play coop rpg market as there was nobody else to compete with and so no other similar games.

Be glad you can still find a lot of fun in other games

if i take a break from gw i play something entirely different

il2
various race games
latestest fps like doom/quake/left 4 dead etc

you owe me 5 ectos for replying to my post

anyway, just some interesting reads and graphs and where Free to Play MMO gets their revenue from.


Top 10 Revenue Models for Free To Play Games

The Forge on MMO Subscriptions vs. Free to Play with graphs if i know what they mean lol too lazy to figure out the graph.

and so i was reading about the top-10 revenue models for free-to-play mmorpg, and i remember that WoW is using at least half of those thing mention, they charge fees to enter tournament, they sell expansion packs, they sell real life item (t-shirt etc), they have RMT thingy for instant pay to recustomized your character and are ad supported etc.

"When we were first going to make World of Warcraft, we wanted to make it free and advertising supported". The problem was that the business environment at the moment of the launch was not appropriate and "as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn't support us".

so the question is, why are they still charging their players monthly fees?

just curious.

They're charging them because they tapped the giant gold mine of gaming and are greedy people. And people still keep paying them to play the game.

On topic: It seems morally wrong to have to shell out extra money to play a game you've already bought. True, that money goes towards paying employees for customer support and dealing with reports of naughty behavior and such, but then again after my experience, I'm not that fond of playing with other people.

If you're really aching for an MMO and don't mind burning $50, you'll get about 1 month's worth of fun out of WoW. Even if you aren't a big fan of leveling (and I certainly never have been), I was very impressed with 70-80, it was surprising really. I canceled after that though (I don't raid, and the PvP in that game is beyond awful), but I have no regrets about playing.

I'm thinking about trying out LoTR and D&D Online, I've never tried either one. Time to see if they have a free trial.

I've heard they planning to add fees or paid features to Battle.net.

Battle.net is used now and it's a success. Some of the games that can be used for free in Battle.net are being sold even now.

"Pay once" is the key and will always be. People prefer to know what are they paying for and not having to care about money again.

I don't konw really, i prefer not paying a monthly subscription. Guild wars has this criteria but i may just be playing it becuase i enjoy this game alot more than other online games ive tried

I used to play LoTRO for 3 months when i was taking a break from GW. Game is relatively well designed and colorful, based on an epic books, has perfectly balanced economy, is based on an epic books, has auction house which is extra nice, there is no insta-travel like in GW (you gotta do it on foot or rent a horse until you get enough dough to buy your own horse which is VERY expensive), leveling is way too boring and takes ages, enemies are of the same model, only with different names and levels, there are no modified versions of henchmen, so you will ALWAYS have to pug to get 80% of missions done, there is almost no magic across the classes because the game relies heavily on melee and ranged damage, but the game IS based on an epic books after all, so.. You get the picture. If you want my advice (and even if you don`t), avoid this one like a blight. Turbine ruined a perfect opportunity, but that is again, my personal opinion.

Is that why WoW was the best selling PC game two years in a row? And why its first expansion is the 2nd fastest selling computer game in history... behind only its second expansion? And why it's the 3rd best-selling PC game in history, behind only the Sims and Sims 2?

Yea... with a terrible showing for a subscription-based game like that, people must really have a preference for pay-once gaming.

DDO is terrible, IMO. There's a very, VERY strong focus on grouping to do practically everything. You can solo if you want, but the rewards are terrible and making any progress that way without grinding for days is difficult. The slightly more action-oriented combat is kind of neat, but it wears thin pretty quickly. I made it about 2 days before I had enough and never lookd back.

LOTRO is good. I particularly like that you can collect a lot of quests that all have their goals in the same general area, so there's less focus on running out to do a quest, running back, going back to the same place, etc. etc. One of the things that always really ground on me about WoW was how much time you waste just walking or riding between goals. It's also much less of a grind than WoW while you're doing the quests. WoW quest: Collect 12 buzzard guts.... okay... but the buzzards only comprise 20% of the area's population, and they only drop a gut 30% of the time... ARGH! In LOTRO, if you need to kill something to collect its pelt or whatever, drop rates are routinely 90%+. In a lot of cases, it's a 100% drop rate on quest items (the main exception being where you only need one thing, and even then you usually only need to whack through four or five mobs).

The only problem I have with LOTRO is that it's not terribly challenging for the most part. I chewed through most of the expansion content with little effort and quit to play WoW instead when it got a bit boring. Still, out of all the MMOs out there (with the exception of EvE which I don't play only because CCP is about as corrupt as it gets), it's probably my favorite. Less grind than WoW, MUCH better people than Guild Wars or WoW. Good game overall.

And to the guy above, there's little magic because in LOTRO... because there's little magic in Middle Earth. The only people that use magic in Lord of the Rings are the Istari and their equals. You do get the bogus Lore-Master though who fills in as the caster class... and shouldn't be there at all. And I don't know what you mean about leveling being slow. You musta been doin' it wrong. I burned through 20 levels before the expansion in about 2.5 months and then blew my way through the 10 expanded levels in a month after the expansion came out. The nutters who spend hours upon hours playing games every day always whine about LOTRO because they burn through the entire game in a matter of three or four months. And you don't need to group for anything except elite areas. I almost never group in any game I play and I had exactly zero problems doing any of the world quests.

Totally agree, but this is supposed to be a MMORPG with everything that goes with it, not Middle Earth.

Ok, i leveled to 43rd level in about 2,5 months (was so bored, that i didn`t even play for the last part of PAYED time). And for every serious quest that offers most xp and gold (including storyline ones) i had to pug even though i played as a hunter, which is supposed to be the "nuker" in LoTRO and if hunter can`t solo it, probably only minstrel can. That is why you made it just to lvl 20. I really don`t like repeating myself, so please don`t make me do it.

My money has been well spent.

I love GW, have always, will always.

Heck, my biggest fear is that GW2 will disappoint when it comes out (much like Neverwinter Nights 2 disappointed me), and GW will be shut down.

I hope that doesn't happen!

Shane

No, I made it to level 50 originally (and then the new cap of 60 after the expansion), the last 20 levels of which I did just before the expansion launched, mostly solo, you just have poor reading comprehension. Other than that, welcome to ignore. I don't abide fools well, especially not when they get all smarmy because they don't take the time to think about what they read before getting all snippy.

To sum it up for the guy who was thinking of playing something else, LOTRO is an MMO and it uses basic MMO archetypes: get a quest, kill mobs, craft, etc. It's easier than most other MMOs, can be almost entirely solo'ed (there are lots of group quests, but you don't have to do them if you don't want), and, personally, I think it looks great. It's pretty strict about the lore though, so if you aren't keen on the lore or you don't like the standard MMO design cues, you might not enjoy it.

I don't know if it or DDO has a free trial, but I'll dig out my boxes (well, I'll look to the side at them) if I remember and shoot you a key if one was included with my purchase for either game.

Personally, I'm back to WoW. They cut back on the XP requirements a great deal to reduce grind, and you don't need to grind nearly as hard anymore for gear unless you want to. Personally, I liked Guild Wars and LOTRO better than WoW, but I finished both and unless I go back to single players games (I have The Witcher around here somewhere which is pretty cool if you can abide the horrendous bugs) there's not much else left worth playing.

I really don't mind paying the monthly fee. Guild Wars was fun for what it was, but there's just nothing left to do. I saw all the content (save M.O.X.), I don't like it's PvP structure, so now I just don't play it anymore. It was fun, but it ended. With WoW, LOTRO, etc. they're always developing new content and expanding the game, so even though I get bored with it for awhile, after a few months I can pick it back up again and there's something new to see.

What I don't get is things like Second Life where people pay for digital junk.... that's just weird to me.

Pay-to-play is the one thing holding me back re: Aion, which otherwise looks like it will have a lot of GW elements I like plus some more traditional MMO bits (crafting, etc.) plus twists of its own (3D combat in flight, PvPvE). The expense isn't really the issue for me, it's the continuing agreement to do so and the hassle of cancelling if I don't like it.

Oh, I'm currently taking a break from GW, and playing DiabloII over LAN instead. Heh.

F2P on some parts with P2P on the majority, like Runescape. You get basic parts, and you get more out of it from paying.

And yes, I said Runescape. The way they have F2P and P2P is pretty smart to me, except it's just the game isn't all that good. (least to me anyway)

I'd pay for above reasons, plus if the fee was realistic ($2.00 or so)

Home Run Wanmoke Thank you! You should never pay to continue to access a game you already paid for. Instead they should be up front with it and just charge $200-250 for the game at the store when you initially buy it or would sales would suck then.

In one of the other theads someone mentioned that you even get locked out of portions of WoW after you complete specific sections for a period of time. Paying to get locked out of ANY part of YOUR game for ANY amount of time is just wrong even if you can afford it. Yes this goes for GW also, we all paid for the game at one point and not allowing us in specific sections is wrong.

Not paying fees is strictly a moral choice for myself, but would be willing to bet there are many many people that could use the almost $200 a year for 3-4 other games. It seems if you decide to play another game for a month or two that it is a waste of your money paying monthly fees for the game you are NOT playing.

Come to think of it I will pick up DOW2 this weekend...

And I don't buy BMWs for moral reasons....

Get a freakin' grip. How has refusing a very simple and straight-forward business transaction by making a basic value decision become a moral imperative? Is your life really so simple that this is what you consider a moral dilemma?

I'll pay fees only if they allow a similar level of solo gameplay (read: not having 6+ friends on 24/7, working on the exact smae mission/quest) which to this day, I have not seen yet. Thank god for heroes and henchmen.

I have yet to see a p2p game beat a f2p game in terms of quality, in content maybe, but not in quality. I'll gladly pay money for quality, but I don't see much of it in p2p games.

Agree. The come in and play, with friends or alone, is what makes GW great.

Guild Wars is only free to play if your time if worthless.

LOL, I was thinking the same thing. Can't wait for it, but I'll TRY and find some time to see the debate thing.

Steam ID: Masterandr6 :O
NN: Spitfire <TWM> xD
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I really hate the subscription model.

Currently one of my friends really wants me to hop back in a game with a subscription model but I don't really plan on playing more than a few days? maybe a week? But I still have to pay 15$. I have to pay 15$ to even view my character after already giving them almost a 100$ already. It's completely ridiculous.

Most of these games it doesn't seem I'm even getting my moneys worth, I'll often stop playing before content gets added to the game. And that's if I was even the right level to reach that content, which I'm often not because its always added at the top of some large time curve that disables me from doing content I want to do. They add all these time sinks to make the game longer costing me more money for no good reason.

So what am I paying for? Customer Service? I've used it once for billing. They want to make me pay for them to help me pay them? Bug fixes?

With a guild wars type model I know exactly what I am paying for and how much I am paying for it. I don't have to worry about how I play it, I don't have to worry about being locked out of things I've invested time into unless I pay the toll. For the customer it's a much better system.

I always been in favor of both models but if I had to choose I would rather have the p2p model simply because you get more playable content in the long run. You can simpley compare a WOW expansion and a Guild Wars expansion and clearly WOW offers a ton more things for the player. Why ? Because companies who make more can afford to give more in return.

^
yeah but we're getting a whole new game, PS its extremely difficult to compare WoW to GW, they run two separate models, some people don't even classify gw as an mmorpg, some call it a tmorpg, which makes more sense. (Tactical Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).
Anyway, TBC was pathetic, travel was ridiculous, story was lame, and when I tried WoW on a well balanced blizzlike server (Toxic until it was closed), I learned that all you do in WoW is grind, and past lvl 40 it gets even more boring, while in gw max lvl is where the game actually starts.

Always prefered the P2P model, because of the constant new content. Also since the developer have to care about the customers for the entire lifespan of the game they are more careful about truly balancing and their games instead of playing whack-a-mole like GW.