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As the Britain Stone Turns

tangar

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Give me unlimited accounts and within a week I would have 200 mages casting synchronized explosions on any character in Luna GZ not naked and reciting Gilbert and Sullivan.

And by "I", I mean "a friend of mine".

F2P is not the way to go.
Btw :) You could make unlimited accounts right now. To register UO 14 days free trial account you don't need any credit card. You even dont need to verify email. But since there are no any synchronized mages hehe.

So F2P is great way to go :p
 

Wulf2k

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
By that logic, apparently F2P is a terrible way to go since it's already F2P and nobody's joining.

It's a little bit "Pay 2 Win" since you're at a competitive disadvantage if you don't buy the "get passed login prompt" key monthly from the store.
 

Kael

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
By that logic, apparently F2P is a terrible way to go since it's already F2P and nobody's joining.

It's a little bit "Pay 2 Win" since you're at a competitive disadvantage if you don't buy the "get passed login prompt" key monthly from the store.
I would hardly call a two week free NEW account trial as enticing to older players looking to find some action again. Again, most F2p if they are smart are very careful to not allow any competitive advantage to pvp. Most items you can buy or subscriptions deal only with things such as storage, housing, lands available or amount of characters per account. Spend the coin in the shop for an ethy if you want one or just farm up some gold and buy one from another. It's not like we don't have people buying tokens from the UO store just to sell for some starters gold here on Siege.

EA certainly doesn't foster a ton of confidence from players on "getting it right" ...but they certainly can look to more vibrant games out there using a non subscription method to see where they have succeeded and model their attempt after them.
 

The Writer

Visitor
Stratics Veteran
I totally agreee with Kael.

You guys speaking of your feelings, Kael and I giving you facts. Look:

There are bunch of _new_ MMORPGs which released "dead" because of _old_ model of subscription. For example, LotRo, SWTOR, RIFT, Age of Conan, Fallen Earth.. I could continue this list hehe.

All this games was nearly dead right after release because of subscription model. Nowadays you cant sell pig in a poke. When they went to fp2 they obtain a new life.

I played SWTOR and LotRo with p2p model and after they went to f2p. Its huge difference in a good way. MMORPG without people is quite sad place. Subscription models is dead, not Ultima Online. Even World of Warcraft with all its power would go fp2 soon (first step - they introduced game shop recently).

Troop, thingy is that you could just continue pay subscription and have all benefits which you have right now. You don't have to buy something if you pay subscription. F2P is just giving opportunities to play game without subscription. Its alternative, not a obligatory thing which wouldn't change anything in gaming style of player who would prefer old way to pay for the game.
What I posted has nothing to do with feelings, I play Mmo's and in that aspect those MMO's and almost every MMO loses it's player base for one reason or another, and I seriously doubt it has anything to do with "Subscription plans" Look at the Xbox for example you have to pay to play that and most of the games that are there are also on the PlayStation which doesn't require 15 - 60 dollars just to play online with your friends. Mmo's are getting hit particually hard lately but besides that LoTRo, DDo while they had a "Massive" player base at the beginning regardless of the "Subscription" It fell apart because the player's got bored, or didn't like it, hell I even heard complaints about gameplay and graphics not "Oh It's too Expensive..." This goes for all of the Mmo's or for that matter any online game shooting games included.

Free2Play will not help Ultima Online as much as people are thinking it will, when online games like Lord of the Rings, Or DnD hell even the different StarWars games when they all continue to lose members despite going free2play does that really suggest that going free helped them out?

To me this doesn't inspire much confidence in the subject as I've witnessed this mistake first hand on all my favorite games, I don't play uo because it's pay to play, I play it because I enjoy it the most. That right there is the Bottom Line. People leave games because they stop enjoying them and they are no longer worth the time and effort.
 

tangar

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Free2Play will not help Ultima Online as much as people are thinking it will, when online games like Lord of the Rings, Or DnD hell even the different StarWars games when they all continue to lose members despite going free2play does that really suggest that going free helped them out?
Its not true. With f2p all this games - DnD, SWTOR, RIFT, TERA & etc become more popular. Even Lotro with awful fp2 restrictions (you can't participate in a lot of quests) had great increase of population (look at the graph). Also link which posted by Kael tells about it.

But all mentioned games did not have free servers before they went f2p. UO has, a lot. Simple question: why people play at free servers? First of all - because they are FREE.

Thats why f2p would lead a thousands of people to OSI, and a lot of them would come from free servers.
 
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