test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
buy/pay-to-play?
seikilos
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Nexon, a fully free-to-play developer/publisher, is rumored to be interested in buying EA, a huge buy/pay-to-play western game developer/publisher. You might say, "wait a minute, that's impossible!" Well, you're wrong. Nexon is actually worth a lot more than EA. Here, take a look at it yourself:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/30/free-to-play-mmo-publishers-nexon-interested-in-buying-ea/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/26/rumor-free-to-play-publisher-nexon-offers-to-buy-ea/
http://games.ign.com/articles/122/1223835p1.html
However, it was just a rumor that's already been cleared out. They were just talking about FIFA Online:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/03/nexon-ea-reportedly-teaming-up-on-game-not-merger/
I was a little surprised about that since we all think that buy/pay-to-play = more money. Maybe free-to-play is the way to go for PWE/Cryptic and NWO. I wonder how much PWE is worth.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/30/free-to-play-mmo-publishers-nexon-interested-in-buying-ea/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/26/rumor-free-to-play-publisher-nexon-offers-to-buy-ea/
http://games.ign.com/articles/122/1223835p1.html
However, it was just a rumor that's already been cleared out. They were just talking about FIFA Online:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/03/nexon-ea-reportedly-teaming-up-on-game-not-merger/
I was a little surprised about that since we all think that buy/pay-to-play = more money. Maybe free-to-play is the way to go for PWE/Cryptic and NWO. I wonder how much PWE is worth.
Post edited by seikilos on
0
Comments
Really anything is better for EA though who got the Worst Company <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> Award.
People who claim P2P equates to better revenue is of the West, in the East there is no P2P MMOs pretty much. Look at WoW, people buy game cards with play time and subs for WoW in non-existent in the East. P2P is a Western thing, not so much Eastern. Just because one thing works in the East doesn't mean it will work well in the West. Look at GW2 leaked cash shops, people raged all over the forums on it and there is much animosity towards cash shops.
It encourages a more stable/reliable profit, if you can get an ardent fanbase and have that kind of long-term gameplay support, but you can earn way more per player with F2P. Not automatically, but even if most players never pay for anything, a few percentage points of big spenders can make all the difference. I know someone who spends so much money on the Cryptic Store in STO, and on PLEXes in EVE, that he's easily paying for what would be the $15 subscriptions of the rest of his guild/corporation.
Its the game which generates revenue, not a business model.
Unless of-course, business model comes from Atari which can change the fortunes of the game.
Remember that thread "Please Make It A Pay Per Month Game?" This thread is a reply to those who still wants NWO to be a subscription based game for monetary reasons.
The whole P2P vs F2P profit comparison is entirely speculation since no company provides concrete sub numbers (which they manipulate) nor does a cash shop company post their profits. People also attach quality to P2P which is why many in the West will immediately write off a F2P MMO on that basis alone. Only for my love for D&D has made me stick around here to see how Neverwinter turns out since it was initially announced as I don't like F2P MMOs and seeing both P2P vs F2P I'd take P2P any day over a F2P.
Long story short, if you know anybody who plays League of Legends, and if they ever bought something simple and mainly "cosmetic," and when people begin to tally up these "little purchases," it works for the company and can work for Cryptic on the same model without the "pay to win" fears many have and PWE makes people worry about.
Mind you, having custom skins and pets and potion XP boosts is no guarantee either. Proper marketing to make it enticing without it feeling begrudging mandatory is a skill in of its own requiring a soft touch.
I for one can say with STO, and Champions Online I have spent over $30 in a month, more than once to get the stuff i liked.. Meanwhile if those choices where in a P2P game, i wouldn't have done it.. But i guess its a mind thing..
Alot of persons seem to think P2P keeps away kids, ignorant players, or makes the community better. But how wrong...
Never heard P2P keeps away kids , ignorant players 9actuall all MMOs are infested with this), or makes a community better (ugh... WoW/SWTOR.. nough said) before.
But in the West P2P really makes more money I'd wager... if it wasn't then WoW or SWTOR or Rift would have long since converted to a F2P model, especially WoW as that comp[nay is a money grubber. The reason I would say that P2P generates more money is the stigmata people in the West place on F2P MMOs. P2P MMOs though are of much higher quality though which is why people play that. Neverwinter might be unique in this respects but they fail to justify as a P2P because many features in a P2P MMO are not included.
I love free-to-play MMOs.
I frakking HATE gold farmers.
Also, it bothers my older MMO playing side when people are able to gain a significant edge over their peers by dumping money into cash shop items. It would be refreshing to see Neverwinter be one of the few F2P ventures that doesn't fall victim to this trend.
Pay2win as a f2p "philosophy" has been so succesful over the past years, despite how hated it is, simply because it only hurts one part of the people playing MMORPGs - those who play for the competition. People who play for rping, for character building, for collecting stuff or just casuals are completely unaffected. And, quite honestly, RPGs always were awful as far as competitiveness is concerned - no matter if p2w or not, there will always be someone with way better gear and level than you that will stomp you to the ground just because of that.
Also, a well-designed f2p game will make gold farmers impossible to function. Why? Because the company themselves can sell gold directly to the players. I still laugh when I recall an instance in PWE's FW, where gold farmers appeared for a week or 2 and then disappeared because they could not offer gold anywhere as cheap as PWE themselves did
/agreed. However, NWO is a kind of action combat hybrid alongwith RPG. I have a feeling it would be a bit different.
Speaking of GW2 and why F2P works, go to this link to see why "Would you pay 90 bucks to buy a CD with two or three instances on it? I don't think so." This written, they charge for the "game box" and never charge anything else as mandatory. The "expansion" and server costs are covered by the micro-transactions, and go to the link for the details of why buy to win is dangerous and other options like cosmetics and expanded features (free realm transfers with cooldowns and paying for more slots, character renamed, etc properly priced) worked. So "free" is not bad.
GW2 is NOT F2P...
DDO's cash shop is Pay for Power, they have stat tomes, permanent xp boosts, vet status and 32 point build unlocks available for purchase. There's nothing cosmetic about their cash shop, and people still play it.
And this game isn't going to do anything special to the F2P market. There are tons of other "Western" F2P games out there, and more on the way.
If anything, this game has a higher chance of falling on its face, because its 4e. Which is a failed product as Wizards is already moving onto 5e.
Did you bother clicking the link? Please listen to the video before saying that. It is by definition of hte game not charging a monthly subscription even if you pay once for the box and may never have to pay again. If they have changed to a subscription monthly model please post links on that too.
Wizards was planning to make a 5e all the way long* but things like the new competition by 3.75e have certainly mermated 4e impact and may have shortened 4e's lifespan. The only real sucky thing about 4e? Lack of good videogames based on it. So much for "MMO D&D" or "easy to adapt ruleset". I could blame Atari for it though. I'd have loved a tactical based 4E Dark Sun game a la Temple of the Elemental Evil (but less buggy XD ).
* and 6e, 7e, 8e... as long as they can make profit
That is not what f2p is however. f2p is FREE to play, and as long as they are charging for the box, then it's not free, therefore not f2p.
By that same way of thinking we should be calling games like CoD and ME3 f2p. Would you really call those f2p? I don't think so...
The correct term is b2p, as in buy to play.
Yeah, technically it's B2P. But all that is charging up front for a f2p game and getting nothing extra for it. It's just a marketing ploy and obviously a good one.
No monthly fee + cash shop = F2P. Add an up front fee to that and you get B2P. And what am I getting for paying an additional $60? Nothing. I think this model will end up being less popular after the honeymoon period is over.
When I play a F2P game I can download and find out if I like it. If I want to spend $60 then I actually get cash shop money and items.
I just can't see paying an up front fee for a cash shop supported game. I really hope Cryptic and PWE don't go down this payment model.
I'm sorry, but how exactly were they failed products? WotC made the system, published a few dozen books, then moved on to create another iteration of the game -- you can still play 3 / 3.5 ... hell the DM in my 4e game is considering running a 2e game.
If one of the editions was a "failed product," Wizards would probably stop publishing them, or would wait LONGER to publish them. The speed at which they're moving from 4e to 5e is a sign that they're making enough money to quickly fund another edition.
Also, WotC is a BUSINESS, and as such cannot function without profit. The people that develop the games are in it for the players. The employers of those people are interested in numbers.
TL;DR -- Subjective opinions on D&D editions.
B2P is a ricky bussiness model for MMOs. MMOs have far higher maintenance costs than any other type of game, because the companies have to keep vast, persistant worlds running on their servers 24/7 and keep developing the game non-stop for as long as the game is live. Other types of games just have the initial developent costs and maybe some small servers hosting limited, instanced multiplayer, and that's it more or less, excluding the completely optional expansions/dlcs.
The reason MMOs have traditionally stuck to subscription models in the past is that exact maintenance cost problem. But they have been making the turn into f2p over the past year, because of the saturation of the p2p market (because you can't possibly expect people to pay subscriptions for more than 1 MMO at a time, due to time constraints, meaning they have to invest a lot in game quality and marketing to succeed). f2p does not have that saturation problem, which means that any new IP could easily get a piece of the pie, and it makes the same, if not more amount of money.
B2P does not have the same saturation problems as p2p but it also is far worse at money-making than the other 2 models. It does not have the subscription profits of p2p and due to the retail fee they cannot put things that will really sell much in their CS. And by that I mean paying for gold, for XP boosts etc, which is what makes the cash flow. So it's not anywhere near "f2p+upfront fee". Because there is only so much a player can spend on fancy clothes before they have bought everything they want, but there is no limit on how much they can pay for gold, speed and power. People paying 500-1000$ each month on f2p games is actually quite common...
Meaning that B2P is bound to fail unless it has a massive playerbase to support it. GW2 has one, but most new games on the market cannot even dream of taking such a risk with their playerbase, NW obviously included... In short, making NW b2p would be suicidal for Cryptic and PWE...
That's not a failure. That's called planned obsolescence, and it's a perfectly common and acceptable business strategy. You'll see it in anything that's ever had a sequel or a series of iterations, though the name of the term can be potentially misleading since the obsolescence may be more opportunistic than planned depending on what we're the circumstances are.
The difference here is that the older editions of D&D, while no longer officially supported, are not invalidated or made undesirable by newer editions. You can still play the older ones all you want and ignore the newer ones, a decision some people make from game session to game session. Unlike my 12 year old car...my old school D&D isn't going to die of age and overuse.
Agreed on the older editions. I haven't bought books since 2e. I don't do much pnp anymore, but I still like the old editions.