You seemed to think they ALL were.
people hate fake free stuff that is basically a trap.
Boo, I have not heard of one real Nigerian lotto so while that was a valiant attempt at a humorous analogy, it was only an attempt.
I saw that other thread, I don’t know if I agree, I think the successful micro-mmo’s make a ton of money, they’re hiring like crazy too.
In the end once a kazillion pops up, its gonna flatten out, but one thing is crap like Evony, another thing is stuff like Battlefield Heroes and Project Torque, and a few others.
They provide top notch gameplay for free, with the perks of buying your way to glory.
Morally wrong…I’m not so sure, expensive, YES, very.
Hah, I was just thinking of that game while reading through this thread. My friend got me hooked when they were giving away European CBT keys. It took me a few levels but once I set it up with a gamepad, I was hooked. It’s fun not to mention easy to just lean back and chillout with.
I also haven’t felt the need to buy a single thing for any advantage so far, the game plays pretty well as is. Then again, I don’t believe in buying virtual items for real life currency anyways, it just makes no sense.
It makes sense, but when I sat there testing Evony out, It occured to me that I have a Quadcore thingie with a graphic card from hell, and I’m sitting here playing something they could have made on the Amiga 500 back in the days.
Sadly, unless I get an xbox or something, I’m missing out on the cool stuff it seems, and I’m left with Indie games, which have cool concepts but graphics from even earlier days.
I’m playing on the SEA servers, having fun smashing crab and sharks into my monitor.
Wait what?
I played 10 levels of Dragonica and fought the same wolf almost every time with different colour meshes. I don’t find it fun, but YMMV.
I play runes of Magic and I really like it. The advantage is that I don’t have to pay a monthly fee like with Wow, so if I decide to do something else in my free time I don’t feel bad about my subscription fee being wasted. And when I want to go back I can without having to resub. I spent 20 Euro recently to buy my main and alt a mount each (I wanted a fancy one for my main), and had enough left for 2 fungus mini-pets (cuter then it sounds).
I won’t be spending any more money on it now for a long time, the bag space is sufficient and levelling goes fast enough that I don’t feel I need to but XP pots or XP enhancing furniture. Besides, there are so many quests I tend to outlevel the area before finishing all of them.
So, by spending 20 euros after 2 months of playing I’ve spent less then I did on playing other MMOs for the same amount of time, and I don’t feel guilty if I decide to play the Wii, DS or Xbox instead.
Personally I tend to be very frugal with spending money on anything online, be it DLC or virtual items for F2P MMOs, but I can’t see it being much different from that.
Runes of Magic is the first F2P MMO I’ve spent money on even though I’ve played several others, and I haven’t spent any money yet on DLC for our console games, but I’m considering buying some songs for Rockband.
For those of you who feel it’s nonsense to spend money on virtual items, do you spend money on DLC for console games and so on?
For the players who convert, this is frequently true. The games are designed so that players who really get into the game will want to spend lots.
What you also need to realize is that the industry standard for total percentage of your playerbase that will ever pay for anything in a freemium title is roughly 5%. High-quality games will do better and scammy games tend to do lower (and have problems developing good communities). Getting up to 10% is rare, though, regardless of game quality.
So, statistically, most players in a freemium game are not spending a dime on the experience.
I wasn’t really sure abouot that. I was just theorizin’. I would be interested to know the costs of Runes of Magic vs. some of thosse IGG cutesy ones.
Woohoo, a live example!! I really could have ended up buying maybe a mount and/extra bag and I still would have been having fun and spending less thatn WoW. The quality is not equal, obviously, but it is nice to do something different as a change of pace.
It’s my opinion that this is an overlooked and under-rated feature of the free-to-play games. As a long time MMO subscriber to various games over the years, I can attest to the fact that occasionally I’d play just to feel like I was getting my money’s worth from my $15 a month. Not having to pay a set monthly fee means you can go nuts playing Fallout 3 or whatever other game is your current obsession and not worry about spending $15 for nothing when you neglect your MMO. Take three months off of Runes of Magic, you’re not out a penny and everything is right where you left it when you return, all without the hassle of cancelling a subscription and renewing later when you want to return.
That’s exactly it. The quality of the game isn’t as high as WoW. The world for example is a lot smaller, but the gameplay and extra things like the AH and housing are of similar quality of normal MMOs and a lot better then most F2P MMOs.
I’ll never be a hardcore MMO player, I prefer soloing and tend to get bored after a few weeks or so, but this allows me to satisfy the craving I get for the gameplay style of MMOs every now and again without paying a monthly subscription.
I’ve spent 20 euros now, and maybe in a few months time I might spend some money again. I’m a grown-up, I can control how much I want to spend on something. I don’t feel it’s money wasted because with subscription based MMOs I pay more and only get a month’s worth of playtime, whereas the items I bought in RoM I can use for as long as I want to.
It’s a decent game and an expansion has been announced for september, I believe, which will add some high level content, a new race and 2 new classes. So the game is growing. The dual-class system is very handy and ideal for chronic rerollers like me since I can level up 2 classes with one character. If I’m bored with my Priest I just change my main class to Mage for a whole different pace and I’m off again having fun.
My husband started at the same time as me and hasn’t bought anything as yet, he’s quite happy running everywhere and is having fun regardless. so you don’t have to pay to play if you don’t want to.
Edit:
Indeed. 15 Euro is half of my monthly gaming budget and if I then get distracted by another game that’s a waste of money for me. My RoM characters and their mounts will wait patiently until I return from my latest obsession, and I won’t have to spend another penny on them if I don’t want too. :)
Ok, here’s my issue with MMOs and cost, which speaks to F2P. Fifteen bucks a month is cheap. A F2P game really has no price advantage over a normal subscription rate.
So what it comes down to is the quality of the experience. I want something that is as entertaining as my $15/month MMO or else it isn’t worth my time. I have no interest in playing something that is, say, 75% as good as WoW and free to play. I’d rather pay the $15/month and play the better game.
Obviously, some of these games may be quite different and offer a different gameplay experience that is interesting. Chances are if it’s a bash things, grab loot, and level up type of MMO, I’ll want it to be competitive with WoW in terms of quality.
That completely makes sense. Especially if you plan to play regularly and get a decent return on your $15 per month plus the initial outlay for the box/download version of the game. However, as said above, I enjoy it much more when I do not feel like I need to put in my time for the day. Granted, it is still only $15/month. However, if I know I like it and will play for an extended period, I will drop a year’s worth of fees or $180. Once I look at it from that angle, I feel like I am spending a decent chunk and should be playing enough to offset that price.
I do not need the quality to be quite so high if I know I am only going to play 2 or 3 months and quit. However, I am not paying a thing so if I get 75% quality for free and feel no pressure as described above, then I am more than happy. I can drop in play a bit and come back in a week if I am busy at work. I havenot played RoM in months, but my character I enjoyed is still there if I want to come back at no cost. I do not think the gaming experience for RoM is that drastically different from that of WoW…vanilla WoW that is. You would certainly miss your 20-100 mods, but some of the larger cool things that WoW mods add, RoM incorporated into their base gameplay. This is probably more a function of the individual and, you, Mark, probably could not get much enjoyment out of, say, Runes of Magic based on your description of what you are looking for in a gaming experience.
If you have an MMORPG you still enjoy playing, I see no need to try a F2P game. If you are bored with what you are playing, have quit WoW or EQ II or whatever, want a change of flavor or game mechanics, etc., I say RoM would deserve a try. My point from the OP on has been that the F2P games have evolved and developers are making a concious choice to create full-featured gameplay in F2P games that does not require item mall shopping. To discount the entire subset of games, may not be a good idea anymore. I swore I would never play one, but after reading up on several, I gave on a try and enjoyed it.
EDIT: I still like WoW, but I do not have the time to get the enjoyment out of it I feel I need for the cash outlay. I guess I have internally done a cost-benefit analysis and, right now, do not want to re-sub. During the Sumer when I have more free time, that could change.
Gamasutra posted an article relevant to this thread today (saw it on Raph’s facebook feed):
Nice read, and it confirms my suspicions, they are earning money, its quite clear this business model works very very well.
Most misunderstand, its not about being ‘cheaper’ than a sub based model, its about the hook, cause its free right, so ‘testing’ is no problem, there is no shitty trial to endure either, you hop in, and most of the game is at your fingertips…
But if you really wanna rock, check out our store…
And the items, I checked Arcadia, its not as expensive as Evony, but their 30 day packages sit around 15 dollars, but thats just a few booster items…
And ofcourse nothing you buy is really permanent, except a few things, and in Evony absolutly NOTHING you buy is permanent…
I mean in Project Torque, you keep the car you buy forever atleast, even if it also have a few non permanent things.
I’m still gonna heavily recommend that game, sub based games should REALLY take notice of whats going on here, cause this game beats a lot of them hands down.
Frankly, Kingdom of Loathing is the only one of these things that I have ever found particularly entertaining (well, maybe ForumWarz too). I have certainly never liked any of the full on “free” MMOs. People complain about WoW being a grind, but in comparison to those things WoW is like taking a cruise with nubile women attending to your every need.
If you have an MMORPG you still enjoy playing, I see no need to try a F2P game. If you are bored with what you are playing, have quit WoW or EQ II or whatever, want a change of flavor or game mechanics, etc., I say RoM would deserve a try.
Yeah, I know that the F2P games are sophisticated. I reviewed a Korean game, Requiem, that was better than decent. It was very much in the WoW vein – lots of quests, battlegrounds, instanced dungeons, etc. It even had very good art direction, something I don’t always see in these games, and by that I mean someone in charge was clearly making sure that the artwork was thematically similar throughout.
I enjoyed playing it for awhile, and the things you could pay for weren’t really gamebreaking. I wanted to try that side of it so I spent about $6-8 and got a mount that lasted me a month or so and some accelerated leveling via a nice XP bonus.
It was certainly a good enough game to play, but again, the real cost to me is my time. That’s my investment. I’d rather invest my time in a game that’s better. RoM seems interesting, and since I’m MMO-less at the moment, I may try it. But if it’s really not better than WoW, and sort of is styled after WoW, what will be the long-term hook to keep me playing?
(Unfortunately for MMOs, the game experience isn’t scaled to a month of play like it is in single player games. That actually deters me from even trying a lot of them.)
Well, some of these micro-MMOs (see: Metaplace) are more about the social aspects than pure gaming to begin with. Also (while I don’t quite understand what makes them tick), there is a fairly sizable chunk of gamers who actually enjoy grind (see: the people who wasted years of their lives following Vanguard before it even launched), so I can see the grindy ones being relatively successful with some audiences even if I have zero interest in ever playing them myself.
Lots of MMO gamers like feeling they have achieved something. Grinding can feel like an achievement, because it’s difficult.
I feel it, even in a game that doesn’t grind that much like WoW. Getting a couple of characters from 70 to 80 in Lich King took a time investment, but it felt like an achievement of sorts.
It’s not a lot different from real life. I mow my lawn, it takes time, and when I’m done I feel a sense of satisfaction. It’s not like it took intellectual ability or anything to do that – just effort.
Whaddya know, Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons are adopting the style. We’re gonna see more of this…a - lot - more.
That and people hacking webpages and spewing out keyloggers.