Money. Profit. Big game developers don't think anymore like a true artist would (i.e. for gamers by gamers), they think like drug dealers nowadays.

Regards,
Eno

Wait, it is a monthly fee? And suddenly all my hype for this game died.

Haha, when DDO went F2P, I ended up spending at 3x as much as my monthly subscription buying mana pots and exp pots, and stuff like that. Pretty easy to drop 25 bucks here, and 30 bucks there. I hope this game is normal sub with no cash shop.

There is the truth, the ugly truth of F2P.
"Free" isn't as free as you would think.

Point of Free 2 Play is to LURE players into believing it's free until they realize, snap! I need to buy stuff to compete with the best players.
So yeah, free if you don't plan on playing the game seriously, just unseriously like playing Tetris from time to time.

I love how so many people on this forum accuse others of not being "experts" or "professionals" on the subject and when an actual EXPERT opinion (this guy gets PAID to research and make these predictions) comes along, they balk at it...




Again, what? Of course he doesn't work at Bethesda, he's an anolyst; they HAVE to be third-party otherwise their anolysis will be skewed! And this isn't a "news" article, no one is saying: "this is fact." By the term anolyst, this denotes that he makes educated guesses based on market research data, insider information and relevant experience. Sometimes they're wrong, sometimes they're right, but you can't say they aren't credible. Are you only going to listen to Zenimax on this? You do realize everything they tell us is going to be spun and disseminated through their marketing/PR department, right?


But it does leave it up to the players. I have played many free-to-play games quite happily without dropping a dime. Ya know, cuz I'm not a svcker. Then again, I've seen stuff that I've really liked the look of (I think I bought a vanity item in EQ2 once), and had the cash to spare, so I went for it.

I have a co-worker who spent $6,000 dollars on Maple Story, that's insane and sad (which he freely admits), but it's nobody's fault but his own (which he also freely admits). Did you know in Maple Story that you can buy a HAND for your HAND, "Poop-on-a-Stick" AND...AN INVISIBLE WEAPON. If you see those and want them bad enough to spend 8$ (the invisible weapon is 8 dollars) then that's on your head, no-one else's.

Outside anolysts certainly have their place, but I wouldn't pay much attention to stuff like this - it seems far too generalized to be of much worth.

Now if he wanted to discuss in depth why he felt F2P was the way of the future that could be interesting. But putting a copy of Game Informer up to your forehead and prophesying about changes to a system that hasn't been announced is rather silly.

There you go, that is the problem.

It should NOT be left up to the players to decide how powerful they can become with the power of using real life money in a in-game world in a MMO.
This ruin FUN for MANY people that enjoy playing FAIR games.

It's like playing soccer with no boots while other players have boots because they have more real-life money then you. Wow, that's fair. Ouch!


Do you want to pay 15 euro a month to listen to all the music you can?
Or do you want to be able to have the option pay for each song you want, 15 euro there, 15 euro here.

In the long run, the monthly cost saves you money as you can anytime set the subscription on pause. Heh!

F-2-P is the future, subscription models are the past. The MMO community needs to get over it's fears of P2W, it's something non-korean fly-by-night companies will not implement if they have any basic understanding of the MMO target audience.

Whatever it is. I am not buying this game. I don't like MMO's so yeah .. good luck to those who are paying money, money.

No you clearly don't understand the idea behind anolysts. You are confusing them with opinion-journalists like, say, Adam Sessler. They are not here to give us their personal editorial opinion, or scrye some divination from their mondula oblongata, they are here to make educated determinations based on research and anolysis. He may or may not believe that F2P is the way of the future but that's irrelevant: just because you don't believe something doesn't mean all other evidence doesn't point toward it.

I would be a lot more inclined to pay attention to this than to A. the Zenimax PR team or B. laymen on forums (like you and I).

I pay only once for my games and never pay anything if I'm not getting a physical copy of it. So if it's with the monthly fee and have no disc then no go for me.

We're rightly afraid of F2P becoming the norm; it's a slippery slope from that to P2W. It starts off small, an exclusive re-skin of a sword with slightly better stats. Then, a set of armor to match the sword, with slightly better stats.

"Hey, people really like these! I wonder what else we could sell?"

Hand for your Hand - 9$
Poop-on-a-stick - 9$
Invisible Weapon - 8$

Source: Maple Story

I should rephrase what I said -- "The MMO community need not worry about a growing trend in P2W models". I absolutely encourage people to abhor and abstain from P2W supported games, that's fun for no one. What I mean is some companies (Arenanet) have recognized the MMO communities distaste for such a model. They understand that the "fluff" and aesthetic aspect of MMO's are just as important to players as min/maxing. There's no need to sell that +5 strength sword when a reskin sells just as well. The Guild Wars franchise specifically has an incredible track record of integrity in this regard. Subscription-less models promote longevity to a games life cycle, healthier communities for the players and better communication between developers and fans.

Most of these games still give you the option of going gold, if you want to be that serious of a gamer.

I recently went back to EverQuest because of it's F2P. Because basically, you have access to the entire game and all of it's expansions (all but one expansion, the newest one) with FTP. Your race and class selections are limited, and so I did spend some cash to unlock a class that I wanted to play. And I don't have to spend another penny on the game to access full content.

Now, if I become a serious gamer in EQ, and want extra character slots, and unlimited amounts of money on top of the ungodly amounts of money I can already get, and all the other "top gamer" perks, then I can subscribe, go gold, and that investment will probably be worth it.

WAR is FTP for 1st tier Empire v. Chaos, with gold options for full content. I don't know how LOTRO works. I believe Champions Online is fully free to play. I'm not exactly sure how AoC's free to play works.

But if TES:O keeps the option to subscribe and go gold, then hey, you can subscribe and get full content.

To start, why bethesda why?? But then i read into it and it started sounding interesting. I hope this isnt the way bethesda will go on tes 6 though.

I hope this (when it is f2p) wont be another pay to win game. Do we have a date for this?

I have a very good understanding of what an anolyst does. They can do excellent work, but I don't trust anything one says unless they back it up with their process and data.

This doesn't mean I reject his conclusion, just that I wouldn't put much weight in it unless he's going to share his decision process.

Well the only way I'll be playing this is if it is non subscription based.... that is if it actually turns out to be good

Fair enough, but often anolysts can't or won't share their market research data. Market research firms sell their information at high prices and usually attach an NDA to any research package. In order to get any real concrete info from the NPD for example you have to show a lot of industry credentials and pay a high premium. His conclusion isn't coming from nowhere, he just may not be able to share the source.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities has discussed this a few time when accused of having no data to back up his claims.

well i personally have no problem with the monthly subscription model. i've played 3 mmo's and it's the only payment model I know. personally hesistant of free to play games. Suppose i should try some out as there's nothing to loose but I just have alot more faith in the quality of a game that has upkeep that needs to be paid. kinda funny, all these people saying they won't pay a subscription to play...i'm kinda the opposite, i avoid free to play games.

I personally have no issue with it either. I play F2P games too for sure but it's all about whether the game is worth my time or not. The amount of money spent just mitigates that really. The issue here though, from what I've read, is that companies usually make more money on the Freemium F2P plan.

WoW actually is F2P up to level 20. And it has a player shop and subscription fee beyond level 20. How can they do this? Becuase they have by far the largest subscriber base of any MMO, even with their recent losses. No other MMO, especially a new one, could handle a system like that of course.

They aren't. Really, they aren't.

The thing is, each genre only has room for one game, because most people don't want to pay $15/month to play a game, and they sure as hell won't pay that to 2 different games. The bland vanilla fantasy gear-grinder (aka WoW clone) is dominated by WoW. If Zenimax shoots for a different audience, they WILL succeed.

Look at Eve Online - 9 years subscription-based and still growing. I have over a decade worth of subscriptions between my 2 accounts and I don't consider a single penny of that wasted.

Free-to-play is not the future. It just appears that way because WoW is annihilating all contenders into F2P status.

I certainly hope not. F2p games svck and are extremely expensive even if by some miracle they are not p2w as well. They are also crowded with morons, hackers and spammers.

If its a game worth playing i'll happily pay a monthly fee as 15$/month is peanuts.

The latest model is the Real Money Auction House (RMAH) used by Diablo3. It partially addresses the "buy power with real money" problems because

1. Each item sold has to be found in game, by players and not by Blizzard, this limits the number of top end gear in the market to what would be naturally available.

2. The player earns about 70% with a 30% cut going to Blizzard. The cut seems high to some, but when have there ever been a posibility of positive cash-flow for a player in a game? (except boring gambling games where you tend to lose mostly)

I am sure many developers are watching RMAH. If Blizzard can make it work and not be hassled too much by local gambling laws, it is certainly an attractive option.

True, but predicting the increased prevalence of F2P gaming hardly takes a supercomputer. Before 2004 almost all MMOs had a subscription service. Mid-decade there were several years where tons of MMOs were released and promptly died, a combination of the market being glutted, games being backed by studios that were too small to support them, and WoW steamrolling the competition. During this time we see the rise of alternate revenue: some MMOs switch to being F2P, others only require that you pay for the game and expansions, and a few try a hand at real money in-game stores. Since the initial rise of these alternate methods they have continued to become more common. So it hardly takes a professional games anolyst to see that alternate methods are trending up and subscription services remain exclusive to a few major titles. The reason for this is also pretty clear: people don't want to pay for multiple MMO subscriptions are once, so a paid service requires stealing people away from an existing MMO or tapping into people who have already left.

This anolyst also didn't mention a time frame. I would have been far more impressed if this anolyst claimed that TESO would switch to F2P within a certain time frame if it launched with a subscription service. But I'll admit this is a catch-22: the more specific he is the less I'd trust him without seeing the data, but the more specific he is the more likely his data and process are worth protecting.