Original Everquest Taking the Free-to-Play Route

[Rob Williams]

A popular trend happening with MMO gaming today is to either launch a title as free-to-play (F2P) from the get go, and to transition a failing pay-to-play into a free-to-play one. The latter fate struck one of my favorite MMORPGs this past December, Lineage II, and it's certainly not alone. In recent months, both Star Trek Online and Everquest 2 have gone the F2P route. Apparently, Sony wasn't about to stop with just EQ2, as it's now been announced that the original game will become F2P in March.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

 

[marfig]

That they all are moving these things to free-to-play, doesn't bother me. What bothers me is calling them free-to-play when they are anything but.

Here's a few alternative names I humbly present to the community for adoption:

M$2P - Moar Expensive to Play
??2P - I Though They Said It Was Free to Play
$%#2P - Fuck This, I'm Going to Play Single Player Games

 

[Tharic-Nar]

There is a better alternative naming for such games. Pay 2 Win - and every single one of them uses the same formula. They're free trials with an unlimited level cap, it'll just take you 10 times longer to do anything compared to someone with an infinite bank account.

Companies proclaim that going free will not change the balance of the game, or the items won't - this is not true. When a subscription is dropped, anyone can join, which means gold/item farmers can now create wave after wave of accounts, for free, and just keep making them, flooding the market and destroying the balance. I have yet to see a company handle farmers effectively (farmers pay the company by buying items, thus they are more reluctant to ban them).

This is not to say ALL mmo game companies do this, it's just a very common trait.