Quote:
Originally Posted by synaesthetic
The game ceases to be something you can play for years on end and becomes something played by the "locusts" who swoop in, destroy any semblance of community the title has, and then move on to the next F2P game to do exactly the same thing.
Lastly, games that go F2P make money because they stop spending money, not because they're actually pulling in more revenue than a subscription-based game. They sacrifice regular content updates, customer service and long-term support for focusing their efforts on cheap ways to make money... vanity items in the cash shop, power boosters, experience boosters, mounts and pets and other collectibles. These things cost very little money to make, so it turns out to be very profitable in the short-term.
If you've got a P2P game that has 100,000 customers at $15 a month, you're pulling in $1.5 million a month, steady and reliable. If you've got an F2P game, you might make three times that in one month, and nothing at all the next month. In order for F2P games to remain profitable, they have to "cut the fat" by laying off existing staff, shrinking their workforce to a bare minimum maintenance crew and focusing all remaining development efforts on trying to get people to buy stuff from your shop.
Honestly, if P2P dies out I'm just done with MMOs in general until the F2P bubble bursts. After that happens I think we'll see some really interesting new games, especially considering how it'll likely happen when WoW's alleged decline starts to become real.
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Any good game can be played for years regardless of the community, especially if they release regular updates and expansions.
P2P games are also capable of focusing their efforts on cheap ways to make money... vanity items in the cash shop, power boosters, experience boosters, mounts and pets and other collectibles. It's not sacrificing all content updates but any effort and money put into the cash shop is less effort and money put into content patches.
Higher subscription numbers doesn't lead to more content patches. WoW at 12million subs then and 8million subs now, I'm still seeing 1 new raid per patch. Content is also prolonged by gating and dailies. Raids with their low drop chance for gear, gating and one kill a week. Other content with dailies for tokens for items with incredibly high token costs that takes months to purchase everything. Btw, if 12million down to 8million is not a decline, then I don't know what is.
But yeah, P2P games have much better customer support, account security and recovery. And that is very important for any customers who put money into games.