Gaming Industry shifts more to F2P. Will TOR follow?

[efylinx]

You do understand that it's against the law to lie in a press release, right?

 

People keep saying that it's leaking subs, I have yet to witness that at all (i.e. Fleets are well populated at prime time, I usually get a heroic group very fast, WZ queues are within 5 minutes, and my guild's membership is healthy and raiding frequently). Am I doing something wrong?

[Wolfeisberg]

There is no such thing as f2p, if you want to do anything in your average f2p game, you've got to pay more money than you would be in a subscription based game. Therefore I hope that this game does not go f2p. I wish people would realize this was the case.

 

 

I really really wish I would have saved the lotro developer and another article that talks about Free to play games where they state that the average paying customer spends between $5-8 per month, and to be considered a big spender you would hit $15 a month, and it very very rare to go above the $20 per month. I know several people who dropped $200 when LOTRO went free to play, and since then they have only spent money on new content as it has released, if they didn't have the store points to buy them, though most of them said they had enough points to buy most of the new content as being released. LOTRO has been F2P for 18 months now, so they have averaged about $11 per month, and with each month passing that number goes down. With some minor quality of life stuff they don't have that subscribers have, they have everything a subscriber has and spent less money then a subscriber has.

[Wolfeisberg]

People keep saying that it's leaking subs, I have yet to witness that at all (i.e. Fleets are well populated at prime time, I usually get a heroic group very fast, WZ queues are within 5 minutes, and my guild's membership is healthy and raiding frequently). Am I doing something wrong?

 

IMO, I believe that people are starting to leave their current servers are going for the more populated servers. Or are people like me, who played this game exclusively for 2 months straight and burnt myself out, so I significantly reduced my play time in the game, now I only log in 1-2 days per week, instead of my 4 days per week I was doing for 2 months straight. Still love the game, but to much of a good thing is actually bad.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Wolfeisberg

[Farho]

Right now I spend $15 a month and I'll probably spend a lot more with F2P so no please.

[Kaedian]

Generally, when p2p games go f2p, the cash shop options etc do not make available anything you do not already get as a paid subscriber other than cosmetic items that do not affect gameplay. Hence if you have no problem continuing to subscribe, you lose nothing. However if money becomes an issue, you can go the a la carte method and pay as little or as much as you desire.

 

LotRO and EQ2 have done a fantastic job of opening the options while keeping both sides even.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Kaedian

[Rogoo]

No, SWTOR will not go free 2 play, simply because it is impossible to produce quality content (i.e fully voiced over storyline), in a free2play model.

 

Also, f2p sucks and SWTOR is cool.

[Celwinn]

Sorry I wasn't around to talk about this thread. Work got in the way.

 

It's very interesting to read all of the opinions on this topic.

 

It seems my fears were misplaced but I will still be wary. Not because of the game itself, but because of it's parent company, EA.

[Coldin]

Going to F2P doesn't necessarily mean a failing game. In fact, by being F2P, a company may draw in more money, either by drawing in players that wouldn't pay for a subscription, or by getting more cash from players that already have a subscription.

 

Now, SWTOR, it may go F2P. They may go some hybrid model. Bioware would be foolish to not be at least looking at it and having some plan in advance if they decided to go that route. That said, I don't think we will see any transition for some time. Subscriber numbers are still good, and Bioware has a lot more content to fill in. I would expect we might hear more about it once a year or two passes, an expansion is released, and they are trying to encourage former players to check into the game again.

[Lethality]

Reading this article has me somewhat afraid of what EA would do with TOR in the future.

 

Don't get me wrong, F2P probably makes more revenue for game companies and I totally get why companies would do it, but basically, when you play F2P MMOs, you have to Pay to stay competitive.

 

So is my fear misplaced or is there a small reason to have it?

 

 

We dropped by GDC 2012 Tuesday afternoon to complete our Press Registration and get the lay of the land. It’s a short trip – the Moscone Convention Center is literally 10 minutes from where we live.

 

The Game Developers Conference is the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event. As the target audience is not the gaming public, the focus and feel of GDC is very different from other recent conferences that we attended, such as New York Comic Con back in October 2011. We didn’t see a single cosplayer. Most of the sessions are hosted by developers sharing their insights and experience with various properties or companies hawking their upcoming games, platforms, and tools.

 

When I attended GDC back in 2010, “Social” was the big buzzword as there was a lot of attention paid to the burgeoning Social Gaming market. Skimming this year’s schedule, “F2P” (Free-to-Play) and “Cross-Platform” are the hot keywords.

 

Why the shift in focus?

 

Let’s talk about F2P first. In a nutshell, the business model is to entice players to download and try your game and convert some of them to paying customers. The concept has been around for years and as the Internet’s infrastructure has matured, it has become an increasingly cost-efficient and viable distribution platform.

 

Most Social Games have been F2P from inception, as the games are very lightweight to download, require no separate (e.g. Facebook Apps / Games) or minimal (e.g. App Store) installation, and have viral incentives to encourage players to rope in their friends.

 

However, the traditional gaming markets, PC Gaming and Console Gaming, have their roots in physically-shipped boxed products and the games were – prior to a few years ago – impractical to distribute en masse online as the game downloads were huge relative to the average customer’s bandwidth. The costs of real-world distribution are significant.

 

The synergistic rise of high-speed Internet access by ISPs and the maturation of CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) has made it feasible and viable to distribute even large games over the Internet. E.g. everyone I know playing SWTOR, which launched 3 months ago, downloaded the 20GB game instead of waiting for installation discs. Contrast this to Blizzard’s The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft just 5 years ago, where I dragged my wife with me to Target in the East Bay to stand in line with hundreds of other diehard WoW gamers at midnight to buy the game. (The game sold out about a dozen people after us, and there was a near nerd-riot LOL).

 

So the distribution side of making games F2P is there. But what about the monetization side? This in my opinion is the bigger challenge. How do you create a game that is sufficiently enjoyable without paying that it attracts and retains players, while still providing virtual goods and other perks that a fraction of the playerbase will gladly pay for? And how do you do this for massively-multiplayer games without creating a game that is essentially “Pay-to-Win”?

 

F2P is a bad word to the majority of MMORPG players, but that is mainly due to poor design and implementation rather than the concept being flawed itself. I’ve had both positive (Knight Online back in 2005-2006) and negative (Allods Online in 2010) experiences with F2P properties. Back in KO, one of my guildees, a pizza shop owner down in Brazil, was forking out hundreds of USD a month to maximize his enjoyment of the game, and I became a monthly sub ($15 USD) because it was worth it to me as a full-time working stiff who valued his free time.

 

The PC and Console Gaming industries have the benefit of watching what has worked with Social Games, which have proven that players will pay for convenience and for virtual goods, e.g. cosmetics / customization / in-game items, etc. Microtransactions FTW.

 

It’s only in recent years that some of the larger mainstream MMORPGs have transitioned to F2P, e.g. Turbine’s LOTRO and NCSoft’s Aion. Industry analysts and bloggers have been predicting the end of P2P (Pay-to-Play) games for a few years now, and while the industry is moving in that direction, P2P games are not dead yet – see EA/BioWare’s SWTOR and ArenaNet’s upoming Guild Wars 2 launch.

 

One huge reason why games are still P2P is that game developers need to recoup their sunk costs to reach product launch. E.g. the estimates for SWTOR have ranged anywhere from $100-200+MM USD. (The ironic thing: the most common complaint I’ve heard about SWTOR is the lack of endgame content or issue-free content. But hey we’re gamers and we’re never satisfied, amirite?).

 

And here’s the basic problem: how to make a P2P game scale its customer base over time. Having a hefty (e.g. $50 USD) price tag is a significant deterrent to acquiring new customers. Arguably no developer has figured it out aside from Blizzard with WoW, and even Blizzard started offering WoW to level 20 for free last summer.

 

As MMORPG developers sort out F2P, what I expect to happen is for the large-scale AAA-quality launches, e.g. the RIFTs’, SWTOR’s, and GW2′s, to be continue to be P2P at launch to recoup the sunk costs, and for those games to eventually transition to F2P but with mechanics that entice players to pay on a recurring (subscription) basis, expansion basis (GW / GW2), or microtransaction basis. We’ve already seen Trion Worlds offer new mounts (spider!) for a microtransaction even though the game is P2P and requires a monthly sub. This shift from P2P to F2P for a given game may be necessary to achieve a sustained net-gain of customers over time after the initial “burst” of customers at launch.

 

http://taugrim.com/2012/03/07/gdc-as-a-bellweather-the-industry-is-shifting-towards-f2p-and-cross-platform/

 

 

 

Short answer? Absolutely, yes.

[AJediKnight]

Successful MMOs don't need to go F2P. For true MMOers, a F2P game is a game that failed to live up to the hype, or even turn a profit. It is in every sense of the word a failed product.

 

So, uh, yeah, I think TOR will definitely be F2P shortly!

[Tiam]

Has Warhammer Online gone to F2P yet? Arguably one of the worst launched MMO of our generation behind only Asheron's Call 2.

 

Has it gone F2P yet? If not then why would TOR ever go F2P... one of the most successful launches in gaming history (think subscriberships not bugs or people who are or going to quit)

 

I'm asking a serious question because i don't know. I would like to play Warhammer Online again... heard is was good now but don't want to pay $16 a month

 

Since I am still paying for my 7 WOW accounts plus 1 SWTOR account.

 

Because EA owns them. Look at UO it's been out for over a decade now, they still have microtransactioins and a montly fee. I don't see any reason EA would change.

[ThiborF]

They would be smart to go F2P. I have friends that would play SWTOR and most likely subscribe but will not pick the game up solely due to having a box price. No amount of begging will get them to go spend $60 to buy the game when F2P is almost now an industry standard.

 

If DC Universe can get 1 million new users from going F2P, I bet Bioware/SWTOR could get 5 million easily.

 

Easy to make that bet when you're not the one responsible for the accounting.

 

So I guess your friends don't play any game they have to shell out a box/DL fee for? Interesting.

[Darth_Grissom]

The day all mmorpgs are F2P/B2P like guild wars etc with microtransactions and havng to purchase EVERYTHING, I am never playing them again. Idont mind paying for expanions but I would never pay money PER RAID like in some F2P/B2P Models.

 

Nor will I ever support a company that does this.

 

More over, it aggervates me that others get to look awesome the more money they put it, yet I still have to look like crap, no thanks.

[souloferdrick]

I can't see it happening even if it did make perfect sense. Too many big egos (EA, lucasarts, etc) in the mix here.

[Sarfux]

f2p sucks sorry...

[Umeko]

Highly doubt EA will go the F2P model. DAoC and Warhammer are still P2P. Those two are really low population games.

[thewatcheruatu]

I honestly don't see it ever happening. Just doesn't make sense for a game like this.

[Sernon]

I pay for a honest delivery of services, instead of a psychological nightmare of layered deceit.

 

---

[Pink_Saber]

Just because new FTP games are launching says nothing about what'll happen with pay-to-play games. It's like suggesting that because a lot of games are launching on Facebook, that it must mean this is going to turn into a Facebook game. Both positions are absurd.

 

The market for subscription games isn't shrinking. New ones still launch (for proof, see http://swtor.com). Just because people are launching more free-to-play games doesn't mean, in any way, that pay-to-play is dead.

[illgot]

I hope Bioware puts up a micro-transaction shop on their web site and sells a lot of fluff.

 

-Orange unmodded outfits/weapons

 

-New speeders models and colours

 

-New pets

 

-New crystal colours

 

-Fleet Passes (for those without security keys)

 

-Plant Passes (work like Fleet Passes)

 

Blizzard made over 2 million in the first 4 hours of their Celestial Mount release. The Celestial Mount was account wide, scaled to your riding skill, and had a unique model.

 

Micro-transactions and subscriptions work well together when done properly.

[Amera]

Uh...why would you be upset about paying per raid? You already do that. In WoW, Icecrown Citadel was out for a year. Someone who was subbed paid $150+ for that one raid, 3 5 mans, and that's basically it. 5 or 10 or 15 dollars for a raid is nothing compared to that. I believe the current raid (Dragon Soul?) is the same - a patch is going to last an entire year. How is that possibly a bargain compared to buying content in chunks?

 

 

Anyway, "paying to win" is just a bad F2P model. There are plenty others that work fine. The original Guild Wars, for example, didn't hold anything back from non-paying people. You can buy extra inventory space, costumes, and similar fluff items, but that's it. I don't see what is wrong with that.

 

 

Also, Blizzard's last fiscal report showed something like 75%+ of WoW's profits come from the Blizzard store/character transfers/etc rather than sub fees. WoW could go F2P and potentially make even more money than it does now (this is also why their future MMO, Titan, will almost assuredly launch F2P).

[GnatB]

To be honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this game goes F2P, regardless of whether or not it starts losing subscribers.

 

Just looking at the bank/inventory system, it seems like possible F2P stuff was in the design from the very beginning. Buying more bank/inventory space is VERY F2P. Today it's 5000 creds, tomorrow it's $1.00. Legacy stuff also seems an ideal place to stick cash shop unlocks. (in the summit thing, they actually had to specify that the legacy unlocks were in-game cash and not real cash.)

 

That being said, I don't think F2P is the *eventual* future of gaming. I think in the distant future subscription is the enventual future of all gaming. But not in the way it currently work. You won't have a subscription to WoW, and a subscription to SWToR, and go out and buy ME3 to play on your computer at home.. You'll have a $50/mo subscription to some streaming service like OnLive, playing games on whatever video output terminal is handy with whatever input device is convenient. And if you spend 50% of your time on the service playing ME3, 10% playing WoW, and 40% playing TOR, EA will get $45 and Activision will get $5, (minus whatever the services cut is).

 

And I'm not really sure how "far off" that distant future is. With the rapid increase in broadband availability, this "streaming" future seems more and more plausible.

[Holinyx]

with 2 million subscriptions, why would they ever go F2P ?

[Pink_Saber]

Also, Blizzard's last fiscal report showed something like 75%+ of WoW's profits come from the Blizzard store/character transfers/etc rather than sub fees.

 

While the rest of what you said may be true, this most definitely is not.

[illgot]

To be honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this game goes F2P, regardless of whether or not it starts losing subscribers.

 

Just looking at the bank/inventory system, it seems like possible F2P stuff was in the design from the very beginning. Buying more bank/inventory space is VERY F2P. Today it's 5000 creds, tomorrow it's $1.00. Legacy stuff also seems an ideal place to stick cash shop unlocks. (in the summit thing, they actually had to specify that the legacy unlocks were in-game cash and not real cash.)

 

That being said, I don't think F2P is the *eventual* future of gaming. I think in the distant future subscription is the enventual future of all gaming. But not in the way it currently work. You won't have a subscription to WoW, and a subscription to SWToR, and go out and buy ME3 to play on your computer at home.. You'll have a $50/mo subscription to some streaming service like OnLive, playing games on whatever video output terminal is handy with whatever input device is convenient. And if you spend 50% of your time on the service playing ME3, 10% playing WoW, and 40% playing TOR, EA will get $45 and Activision will get $5, (minus whatever the services cut is).

 

And I'm not really sure how "far off" that distant future is. With the rapid increase in broadband availability, this "streaming" future seems more and more plausible.

 

you're completely wrong. People will want a lot of options without having to pay for them. That will mean a lot of free to play games. Then if you like the game you can then start to invest more money for more access to that game, that is micro-transaction.

 

TOR was going to be free to play with micro-transactions in early development but the investors backed out because they were scared about how the public was reacting to the "news leak". Sadly micro-transactions have proven time and time again to the bigger money maker, not subscriptions.

 

I personally, as an adult with a job, can easily spend 100-200 a month on a game I enjoy. That's 25-50 dollars a week, not a lot. I spend more on eating out a week than that.

 

with 2 million subscriptions, why would they ever go F2P ?

 

Because as someone posted earlier, Subscriptions only make up a percent of what Blizzard makes from World of Warcraft. The other percent comes from micro-transactions. Bioware, Blizzard, etc all exist to make money, not just entertain us and make enough to get by.

Edited March 8, 2012 by illgot