The reason why Free To Play MMO's are destroying the Genre

Wait now Latex. you are saying we have been trolling you. Hold the phone. We have been debating like fully grown men and you just need to accept that you are wrong.

Only problem with what I said is that I'm 12 and not a fully grown man.
 
Last edited:
I dare Latex to walk into a busy pub during a footy night, and start telling everyone that 'Football is terrible and destroying Sports'.

Trololololo. Fun will commence :)
 
I don't know if it is just because I have no opinion of this and haven't realised, but this seems like the biggest none issue to ever have wall of text thrown at it.
 
I don't know if it is just because I have no opinion of this and haven't realised, but this seems like the biggest none issue to ever have wall of text thrown at it.

exactly my view also as it doesn't impact the experience or enjoyment of those who do not buy them.

I don't see the harm done as it can increase the custimization and enjoyment of those who do i.e vanity pets or speeding up leveling in an MMO after it has an established endgame community. Where i think it crosses the line is if you could buy super items/crafting materials that make those who don't pay feel like they need to buy them to be competitive with those who are willing to pay.(not seen any examples of this yet.)
 
So it's already destroyed it in numbers.

Are you having special moments?

That crappy hotel game barely hits 10k users on a Saturday evening. WoW easily has more than a few million concurrent users at peak time. Comparing lots of people signing up to play it once, against active subscriptions is retarded.
 
Calling all FTP games terrible, and saying that they are destroying the MMO genre is even more retarded though, so why dont you mention how retarded that idea is first (seeing that it's been constantly posted on every page) before picking out on far less terrible posts?

The Arenanet development team have discussed fees lots of times (of course you wouldnt know this if yu dont play / follow / read about the game) -

1) Just to clarify, the reason why GW didnt have fees wasnt because the game was terrible

2) Anet have had a purely anti - fee and anti - grind philosophy since the day they started out

3) Anet have stated many times that they do not need to charge fees, nor do they need anywhere near as much cash to maintain GW / GW2 servers as other MMOs do because they are built using a vastly more efficient engine with completely minimal amounts of data sent between player's computers and Anet's servers, while traditional MMOs actually need fees because their servers are a lot more expensive than Anets are.

4) The game originally didnt need a cash store with vanity items (though they did sell extra character slots, PVE campaighs, PVP access and skill unlock packs to enable people to get right into PVP without having to grind for skills and weapon unlocks) [Guild Wars 2 will automatic PVP unlocks from day one, no need to grind or pay for them anymore].

5) Arenanets business model started out with 'New Expansions as standalone games with a whole games worth of content (hundreds of possible hours per campaign mind you) sold at normal retail price for a new game - you buy the game once and you play it forever without paying anymore for as long as you want, what is so terrible about that?

6) When Anet first made GW, they actually didnt expect players would become hooked to it or play for a long time. They intended the game to have casual PVE that wouldnt take as long to complete as other MMOs (no grind, just mission based PVE - the only grind really was running from one mission to the next which was easy enough with any speed boost skill), and their end game was meant to have been competitive PVP. They stated that in their early design briefings, they expected that players would play the PVE campaign for absolutely no more than 6 months (as they would get bored after completing it a few times), and then they would either start to PVP or leave the game. Leaving the game to go and play something else after it was completed was what Anet thought players would do which was the reason why they didnt want to rely on active subscriptions or fees.

7) In order to keep players interested for more than 6 months, or bring back players that had enjoyed the game, but finished it and left, and to keep income coming in, Anets solution was a 6-12 monthly new campaign / expansion pack. And these campaigns were not your normal little expansions you get from other games with a few extra dungeons and maybe an increased level cap with all the content designed for level 60-70, and then level 70-80, these expansions in GW were FULL standalone games that you could play separately, start again at level 1 with a new character, and not have to play any previous campaigns to complete them.

8) What Anet did not expect would happen in Guild Wars - Players actually getting hooked and playing the game everyday for many hours and not leaving or swapping over to PVP. After the campaign was beat, PVE players stayed and started inventing farming builds to farm for loot, and began putting pressure on the game for a non PVP endgame. There was already some of this available with UW and FoW, but to add to the PVE communities interests, Anet released MANY PVE updates to the games like Sorrows Furnace and green skin unique weapons for farming during prophecies, optional title grind during factions (some people loved it, others hated it, some had mixed opinions, but it definitely kept plaers that wanted to carry on playing the game after completing it very very busy for many years), and then hard mode during Nightfall which added a whole extra layer of gameplay on top of everything that was in the game.

9) After the release of Nightfall came Arenanet's inability to keep the game, now with 10 professions, several hundred skills, and exponentially more secondary class combinations properly balanced - and they showed a lot of incompetency in doing so. They made the most ridiculous changes to PVP (like changing HA from 8v8 to 6v6 without consulting the players first - The PVP elitist community raged over this, and many many of the best competitive PVPers in the game quit for good), and also lots of silly changes to GVG that I'm unaware of as I didnt play it, but the PVP community was complaining about this too. In PVE, they made one major horirid mistake - 'Lets add Hard Mode to the game. ... Wait a minute, now the game is too hard, lets add powercreep to the game and buff every class up to the point where and PVE newbie can enter HM and easily win with minimal effort. To make it even easier, lets add overpowered consumables and PVE only skills ......'.

The vast majority of players began to hate the developers for their incompetency in keeping the game balanced, and GW now reached a state where the powercreep had gone too high, was an inbalanced mess, and also the PVE community was raging and complaining about all the mistakes and changes the developers made.

Arenanets response - 'oh ****, screw it, we fudged the game up. Rather than fixing it now, lets start again and make a better game thats easier to balance with fixed skills on each class, and no secondary profession. However this times lets also listen to the community feedback before doing dumb assed stupid stuff to the game (at least I hope so).

10) After this point they decided to start working on GW2 (for over a year before they released their intensions to the public), but then they announced GW2, they also released on final expansion for GW and made it clear that this was the last full expansion, and due to the team moving over to GW2, there wouldnt be much new GW1 content. But they still carried on making skill and balance fixes, despite the powercreep still being in the game, and added more endgame content particularly focusing on building the lore between GW1 and GW2, and ofc also the hall of monuments as a game crossover thing to provide rewards in GW2 for your achievements in the first game.

11) Anet stated that GW1 servers would never be shut down, the game will be kept alive after GW2 gets released, but due to there not being any new content releases for GW1 they would now have to add a cash shop selling nothing but vanity items to keep making enough income for GW1. They would also introduce the same cash stop method int GW2 from the start, reducing their reliance on having to release new expansions for income which will hopefully give them more time to think things through and not fudge up the second game (which shouldnt be anywhere near as hard to balance without secondary professions and far fewer skills and skill combinations due to half of the players skill bar being determined by their weapon).

12) And OFC, Anet with their design philosophy dont want players to grind, or pay fees to have to play GW2. This isnt because the game is terrible, this is because Anet are not greedy gold diggers. And as most people are well aware, GW2 is going to be the MMO equivalent of sliced bread :D

Phew, now how long was that post?

Now onto Turbine and Lotro / DDO:

.... Jokes, I dont know enough about those games to give a huge wall of text.
 
The only troll post I see is #152, oh wait, and #1.

The only MMO that sucks and is a massive cash cow at the same time is WoW ... and then less so anything wlse which charges the same amount of fees.

If you think that Blizzard need the amount of money they make to keep WoW good, then you are highly delusional. And IMO in comparison to the amount of money that Blizzard make on WoW, the quality is absolutely dire compared to Guild wars, DDO or Lotro.
 
Last edited:
The only troll post I see is #152, oh wait, and #1.

The only MMO that sucks and is a massive cash cow at the same time is WoW ... and then less so anything wlse which charges the same amount of fees.

If you think that Blizzard need the amount of money they make to keep WoW good, then you are highly delusional. And IMO in comparison to the amount of money that Blizzard make on WoW, the quality is absolutely dire compared to Guild wars, DDO or Lotro.

In your opinion those games are better and WoW sucks. In my opinion it's the best MMO.
 
In your opinion those games are better and WoW sucks. In my opinion it's the best MMO.

In my opinion Britney Spears is the best ever singer.

WoW is a nice MMO for people who like nice easy simple childish games with cartoon graphics. Just because this demographic is the largest one, and WoW is the most successful and cons / rips people off for the most money doesnt make it automatically better than everything else out there.
 
Last edited:
Pay to play which will work out more expensive in the long term which to me is not a problem,my problem is that all mmos end up the same,economys become fuked and you have to buy online gold to be in with a chance further on down the line as botting makes trading and crafting class obsolete as its easier to buy online gold cause its very cheap because of the amount of bots in the game server.Admins should ban bots but they do not ban bots that buy premium tickets because they make money out of them,soon everyone realises that bots are the way forward and 90% of players bot and no admins ban them cause there all premium players,hence whole server becomes full of botters....

New mmos like are easy exploited with ccf(credit card fraud)depending how the builds are designed to take advantage of alchemey/weapon/item enchantment,mark my works all mmos end up like this,the worst ones end up ftp and the ones that survive just become lame botfests where everyone leveling up is fighting for supremecy for the best item drops by mobs,the game becomes a game of "who has the most real money will be the strongest" as they can buy online gold with real money and purchase the most expensive items and armour to make them L33T from people in the game who have found the best items dropped by mobs from heavy botting 24/7,also as time gos on things become more expensive as gold prices plummet,the cheaper the online gold the more expensive prices of items ingame become.


You will see that im right in the long run,its an mmo,once you play a few of them long enough you will see that all fundamentals are the same in the way they play and im not talking about grinding,im talking about how they are exploited by everyone except the player,there just a cash cow for bot sellers,online gold sellers and developers who sell the game as pay to play.

If you take the game seriously you will end up botting too as you cant compete with a bot that grinds 24/7,levels up quicker than anybody else,then gos to the highest mobs in the game and farms them 24/7 again for all the best drops while your still "hand grinding" and only level 30 for example.

Banning bots is the way forward but the admins will never do this to premium buyers as it hurts there sales,ive seen this happen over and over and over again.

The best items and weapons sell for millions of gold or real cash,there are even websites that are setup to allow you to sell your highend stuff,either way they all end up the same compared to how the first started.

The best times of an mmo is at the beginning,the longer time gos on,the more expensive things get,the more level caps that are raised the more money for the developer,gold sellers and botters,it takes an awful amount of time/money/effort to stay "on top" all the time especially when a new level cap is raised and new locations are opened for players to farm mobs,at the end of the day the player loses as his char becomes average just like everyone else on the server,or the very strong chars that stay strong with each level cap raise have to spend huge amounts to keep there char strong with the best gear etc.

So either way you spend a decent amount of money with pay to play to develop just an average char or spend huge amounts to make an awesome uber strong char,either way the players loses and the only ones that profit are the gold sellers,bot sellers and developers.

Its like this for 90% of all mmos out there;)

You call me a troll but im 100% dead right.
 
Actually I hate people thinking that I think WoW sucks.

It doesnt, I would love to install it and play it all.

But you see, I dont like any game that forces me to 'pay to win', and I refuse to play games which have such a terrible payment method as 'buy2win'. I couldnt care if its fees or microtransactions.

GW, Lotro, DDO, Maplestory - all of them can be played without paying more than the purchase price of the content. Maplestory as much as people think its bad actually give youaccess to ALL of the content for NOTHING, and you dont need to make a single purchase to play it all. Level grinding in Asian MMOs is just unfun and a huge PITA though.
 
I don't really get the whole point of this (non) argument. The OP was IMO a badly thought through, poorly written rant.

There's no inherently right or wrong way to do MMO games, just different business models - and the facts are you need to monetise your player base one way and/or another to pay for servers, bandwidth, customer support, developers etc.

You see similar billing schemes in many different areas from package holidays to Sky subscriptions. I think Guild Wars gets it right in many ways, you pay now and again for some extra content to consume at your leisure - if you aren't playing you aren't paying. There's a couple of things I think are unfair and not to the benefit of the customer with the traditional subscription model - firstly why do you have to pay for expansions? And secondly a I wonder how many people are inactive in the game, but maintain active subscriptions.

Anyway, regardless free to play isn't killing anything and if you don't want to play then dont.

As an aside, those MMO subs graphs are a bunch of bunk, they are reliant on accurate figures being released from the various publishers that measure the same thing, and have confirmation bias on the part of the author as to what to include. If your MMO isn't doing well, then it's not in your interest to release player figures. SOE stopped releasing them years ago because gamers could see the population was collapsing on some of their properties and used that as justification to not try it. It's only worth releasing them if you are in the top 2 or 3 games and showing population growth.

Even when you are on top the figures don't necessarily paint the whole story, the WoW figures aren't paying subscriptions, the biggest proportion in their is people who have played the game at a PC bang at some point in the last X months. That could be for 10 minutes or 100 hours.
 
Last edited:
I enjoy it more than others because I can load it up and play it for an hour or two happily. I couldn't do that with other games and that'd why I think it was better. Not because it's simple or childish (And at the highest level of skill I assure you it's neither). Making assumptions as to why people like a game based off of nothing but your personal opinion is stupid and childish. It's disrespectful and most of all infuriating.
 
Back
Top Bottom