Well... Paying $60 (current amazon preorder price) for a game, just to be allowed to pay $15 every month (180 a year!), sucks even more than the F2P model. Would be a whole different story if they would give you a 6 months subscription with the purchase (enough time for content patches to encourage you to pay the monthly fee), instead of the 30 days you get. Or if the subscription would be somewhere between $7 and $10.

I don't know much about F2P games, but I bet you can buy a lot of stuff for that money. And you don't loose anything if you don't play them. With a monthly fee you're paying, no matter if you play or not.

edit: typo

...Shadow of the Colossus, maybe?

Well I'll just wait a year or so until it goes F2P.

Xenoblade on the Wii's a great game that's a single-player game but with a very MMO-esque design. I've not played it, but I gather the same's true of FFXII.

That argument doesn't really work with MMO's though, because MMO's are constantly updated/expanded/monitored etc etc

The whole reason why WoW is worth the 15 bucks a month is because despite what everybody says, Blizzard puts a HUGE amount of money and resources into supporting and updating the game (new 5.4 Patch is releasing soon too btw), because of this, WoW is the only MMO on the market which actually justifies the pricetag

Other companies want to take your 15 bucks as well, just like Blizzard, but unlike Blizzard, they do not want to actually add stuff to the game, expand the game or invest money into the game, hence why they scratch their heads in amazement when nobody wants to play they MMO after the first free month

On the topic of Elder Scrolls online...well...I'm probably the biggest Elder Scrolls fan you can ever meet but everything based on what I've seen about the game so far makes it look very poor and uninteresting

Well, technically it's only 165 dollars the first year since the game comes with a free month when you buy the game. So for the first month the MMO only cost the same as a new game and you don't need to continue your subscription if you don't want to.

You seriously haven't EVER played LOTRO to write what you wrote. Or maybe even no "serious" F2P. Because despite what you wrote, there ARE other companies that put a lot of dedicaction into their MMO.

The book analogy is irrelevant, lets get rid of any type of analogy and actually talk about MMOG's, this isn't Star Trek Voyagers "magic meeting room", equating an MMOG with a book doesn't make it work like a book.

As to what you're saying I completely disagree, try actually enjoying the free to play game without spending money, it gets you in, gets you hooked, makes it annoying and then you pay.

Some people pay, and pay, and pay, and pay and before they know it they're paying THOUSANDS a month, not just the standard 15, thousands, that's two more digits than the standard subscription. Many of these free to play games have purchases that reach upwards of a hundred dollars, that's over six months of subscription on a single purchase that can disappear within a week.

You can say you never pay, and guess what, going back to the drug dealer analogy that potzato seemed to think the sub model fits there's some people who never get hooked, but those who do end up being victims that spend far more than they would have under a subscription model. It's an insidious model, one that sneaks up on you. At least with a subscription you can happily budget for it.

Morrowind is even more MMOish despite being smaller in world-size, but makes up for land variety, and Final Fantasy XII is ok too if you like its MMO combat.


But honestly I feel sorry for the MMORPG genre, it has place in RPGs heck its the only online game I would play more than anyother.

I watched the live event recently about this, i was disappointed, so I won't be taking them up on it. On the F2P issue, I play Rift which is now F2P, I have decided to become a patron (£7 per month) as I would have been quite happy to buy the game originally had i known I was going to have so much FUN. I want to support Trion.

Even if i wasn't a patron, the only thing restricted is - can only make 2 toons, cannot sell on auction house. My son plays SWOTR and he pays monthly, but he still had to buy the expansion to level from 50 to 55.

Any discussion over which way is better doesn't really matter, as if u like a game, u will play it - we don't all like the same things. Anyway, those that do play TES, have fun - I am sure any feedback u can give us will be greatly appreciated :)

never mind...

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MMO is based on the principle that your game experience is based on the amount of game time accumulated on your characters.
The more you play, the more value (in game advancement, emotionnal, monthly fees accumulated) your account has. So the more the time passes, the more you have to lose when you stop.
There are people who are fine with 'arg! this game bores me, I'm done with it, it was cool, I spent 200$ total in it, no biggie, time to play something else', and that's good for them .....
.... but people who are 'hooked' just can't do that easily.

I'm not discussing F2P games because I don't know really much. However, it's not because some F2P games are plain scam that fees in videogames are fine in my opinion.

Past the fact that stepping OUT a 'feed' (preterit of 'to fee' ?) videogame is hard, there is the fact that while you're IN the common human behaviour is to take the most possible out of your money : play as much as you can. Playing stops being a distraction and becomes a duty : you have to get as much as you can of the fees you paid.

I am totally aware that many people don't have any issue with that, but my opinion stays the same.

The book analogy of xa chan is often discarded in that kind of discussion but it is quite interesting in my opinion : the making process of a book and a videogame is the same basically (one or more people write things by hand or computer, they draw things by hand or computer ... ). Even if the medium is different it's legitimate to ask oneself why there are so much differencies in the distribution model (I don't say the differencies are not ok, just pointing out their existence).

I agree that my point of view goes against the interest of people who can manage just fine. But I think it causes so much harm to people who get 'hooked' that I'd like that those companies which ask for fees be really responsible (again, I'm not saying they aren't). I really consider those MMOs with fees a social hazard, people should be very carefull.

Food for the mind : In this drug triangle, who is the most to blame when issues happen ; the dealer ? the human mind/metabolism ? the addict ?

It looks to me that they are eying the Skyrim sales numbers and salavating at the possible subscription profits for their MMO without really thinking about the current market too much. I hope they do have some kind of guest mode where people can try the game in a limited way without any upfront cost, that's the only way a subscription based MMO even has a chance of competing with the glut of F2P mmos out there. For myself there is no way i'm going to shell out for a game client that has a monthly fee without playing it a while first, no matter how much of a fan I am of the series.

Naoki Yoshida, director of Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn (which comes out Tuesday and is awesome), talked about the subscription vs. free-to-play model in this interview. It's not what business model you use, but how you use it. World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Final Fantasy XI, and even Ultima Online are all still around today because they've continued to provide quality content over the years. They would not have been able to do this without a subscription model. That obviously doesn't mean that The Elder Scroll Online will succeed too, but I think that, for the scale of game it should be, a subscription model is the only real option.

A Elder Scrolls game without nude companions that I have to pay for every month? No thanks.