The success of DDO under the f2p model is relative to the numbers it had previous to going f2p. And those numbers were incredibly small, making it really easy to shout "We increased profits 700% and subs 1000%" (or whatever, I don't have the numbers they touted at hand) after going f2p. TOR still has hundreds of thousands of subs and the percentage increase they see from going f2p will be much, much smaller.

But they'll still have the store shoved in their face on every screen and panel.

It's a safe bet you'll be in the same boat as the f2p people if you're not subbed. If you've unlocked stuff through legacy you'll probably get to keep it, but otherwise the answer to your question is yes, you will overwhelmingly likely be expected to pay twice.

Considering I just bought this game a week or so ago (I figured it would be next year before it went f2p), I'd like to know what's in it for the people that purchased the box. Or are they just going to go the Turbine route of "haha, we got your money once, now pay us again for the same content." Which I refused to do, for the record.

Warhammer Online isn't f2p.

First off, the expansions are far more expensive in the LotRO store than from the website. Rise of Isengard ranged from $20 to $70 on the website, depending on which edition one purchased, whereas it costs about $70 worth of Turbine points in the LotRO store, for the equivalent of the basic edition from the website. Second, the game was redesigned to make the store attractive. For example, relic-removal from deconstructing legendaries is now available ONLY by purchasing a $5 scroll from the store, where previously players automatically got those relics back. The relic grind was also made far more lengthy and grueling in the transition to f2p, making top end relics require MONTHS to achieve. It's also worth pointing out that, although people often talk of points as a $0.01 to 1 point ration, that is almost never the case. Points generally cost more than a cent, and point bundles are provided in ways that a player ALWAYS ends up paying more for something they want than the actual number of points would indicate. For example, when the Excelsior was released into the STO store by Cryptic, it obstensibly cost 1,600 Cryptic points; however, the smallest point bundle one could purchase that would cover that amount was 2,000 points for $25. It's also apparent that as time wears on, the power of the items in the game store creeps up as game developers must find new ways to entice people to spend money there. And let's also not forget that the latest LotRO expansion, RIders of Rohan, initially was going to release with no new instance cluster; that cluster was going to be added to the store after launch, except - this time - there were enough people arguing that the expansion wasn't worth the $70 Turbine wants for it without the cluster. Free-to-play may (initially) be good for the accounting department, but it wreaks havoc with the game itself.

Sure, after Outback was forced to close because somebody didn't want KFC to have the competition.

Don't know. And neither does anybody else, so arguing about it is pointless.

You don't even have to dig that deeply, Taorus. "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. " [italics theirs]. It's right there on the page, beneath the biographical blurb. If somebody can't find it, they're not really looking for it. Also, arguing that unknowingly reciting a lie makes it not a lie is... well, only bad things could ever come from it.

The game will run until it is no longer profitable. I don't understand what is so difficult to comprehend about this.

Yeah, why didn't they learn from WoW?

So he doesn't speak for Forbes. IT EVEN SAYS THAT RIGHT ON THE WEBPAGE. Ergo, the subject line of this thread is an outright lie.

No, it really doesn't.

Voice-acting does not a story make.

Really? Because the arguments he uses for it being a failure are the same one sees on this forum - with the same quality of information, as well. Also, just to reiterate: "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer."

Also, with so many quests to do, it all tends to blur together anyway. Simpler is better.

I don't find having people tell me their life-story as background for why they want me to kill five malfunctioning droids very fun at all, voiced or no. In fact, being voiced makes it even more tedious, and less fun. And for the record, I'm somebody that reads quest text, usually even when I've previously done the quest.

In forty-three pages has ANYBODY bothered to point out that is not only not an article so much as an editorial, but also that it isn't somebody speaking on behalf of Forbes but just some contributor from the internet? It even says it right there on the page: "The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer." That means he's not even a Forbes staffer. So to say that *Forbes* thinks TOR is a financial disaster is pretty much an outright lie.

So, Comic-Con.

Because the free-to-play model takes over the game. Take LotRO, for example. It was a good game before the conversion to f2p, and even a bit after. Yet now everything in the game is designed to push players into the store. For example: before f2p, upon deconstructing a legendary item, any relics that had been placed in it were returned to the player. After f2p, players must buy a scroll from the cash-shop to get those relics back. And the grind to get top-end relics just happened to get ridiculously longer and more expensive. Also, every screen in the game has "LotRO STORE" stamped somewhere on it, often in multiple places. Having the store constantly shilled at you gets annoying very quickly. Another example is STO. Even when it was a cash-shop/subscription hybrid, virtually every desirable addition to the game was only available from the cash shop for a fee; that was in addition to the monthly sub cost. A counter-example: despite struggling, Warhammer Online has NOT gone f2p because the developers don't feel there is any fair way they can monetize the game without turning it into the ubiquitous "pay-to-win". The point of all this is, even if the game doesn't initially start out that way, the cash-shop eventually overwhelms the rest of the game. So while a conversion to f2p may be good for the accountants (and I'm skeptical that it's a sustainable model in the long-term, as the cash-shop becomes more and more of a necessity and drives away players), it is invariably bad for the game.