Subscription model is dead!

[Uvtha]

Payment model does not influence my game selection. I will play the ones that I enjoy, regardless of whether they require subscription, downloadable content, or microtransactions.

I will say that the F2P title Combat Arms is my primary game at the moment. In the past two years, I've spent an average of 12.5 times more per month than I have paid for my UO account. It's a little scary how quickly it adds up. Careful what you wish for. A subscription--even DLC--would have been cheaper by a wide margin.

People are more likely to try games with no entry restriction. I personally played like 10 MMOs that did not seem all that interesting (and were not) because they were f2p. I spent 0 dollars on all of them, as they were not something I was into.

 

[SpyderBite]

I quit UO to move on to more advanced games like EQ2 then later SWtoR only to return to UO recently because both have introduced a f2p biz model.

I prefer quality over quantity when it comes to the company I keep. Believe me, you don't want to spend much time around the type of players that horde f2p games. I went back to a game with almost 20 year old graphics just to escape them.

f2p in UO would just make me a MMO refugee again.

 

[Zosimus]

I do enjoy how the buy to play model is always over looked.

 

[Wenchkin]

That $13 a month killing you?

Hardly.

Just another person pancakes that they can't play the game for nothing.

Wrong. I don't pay accounts every month just now because I have precious little time to play and enjoy them. Why pay for something you probably won't use? I'd rather spend the money elsewhere than waste it. UO doesn't strike me as great value for money now either.

So during the times you don't play you wouldn't pay anything, and when you do decide to grace us with your presence you'll pay more than u are now. Meanwhile those of us who do play all the time will be paying more all the time.

If it changed to F2P I would certainly give EA a lot MORE than I do now. Other players would be adding their transactions to the bank balance too. I think EA would rather have additional F2P accounts than just their diminishing subscription accounts. When a player stops playing for any length of time, there's a chance they'll move on to something else and forget UO. Then EA gets nothing from those lost customers. Customer are best if they're retained, logging in all the time and constantly wanting to buy new stuff from your shop, especially if you're not pulling in a lot of new players to replace the departures. Other games are coming along all the time to take more customers away from EA. Heck even the new Ultima Forever site has Play4Free all over it Which is handy because if UO doesn't go F2P us horrible F2Pers have an Ultima to go to. Shame it's not UO, and it won't help restock the UO shards, but attitudes like yours make me a lot less upset about that move lol.

Wenchy

 

[Raptor85]

There is no free to play. In the FTP model you must pay to compete or see the next best thing. Anyone that thinks free is really free... *censors self*

Way to parrot the common misconception without providing proof I play a few other mmos, all F2P, mostly just casually logging in now and then like any other game and not ONE of them is "pay2win"...yes you can get GREAT items from the web stores but in every game i've played they're always just SLIGHTLY over the power of other gear of the same level and slightly UNDER the power of the best ingame gear of the same level. The UO equivilant would be like being able to buy minor, doom, and tokuno artys from the web store...yeah they're great items but they're nowhere near the best. I havent paid a dime in any of these games and am regularly at the top of the charts in pvp. Sure you get an "advantage" by buying things from the store, you can sell it for gold or get accelerated skill gains or special items and such....which is basicly no freaking different from what UO already has!
Origin - Search Results


Just like UO's store, remember, just because it's an advantage to get a free few million gold by paying $10 doesnt mean you HAVE to to compete, and other games monster loot drops arent nearly as screwed up as UO's, there's none of the "killing thousands of monsters hoping for one drop" outside of basicly UO and WoW, I can get a nearly top tier suit of armor for whatever my level is in nearly ANY other game within a hour.


Even that said though, i probably still wouldn't play UO regularly if it went f2p, EA's UO is just so far off-base now from the game it used to be the entire thing feels like a meaningless grindfest now, without basicly setting up a pre-AOS shard i don't see myself ever coming back to EA's UO shards.

 

[Woodsman]

Even that said though, i probably still wouldn't play UO regularly if it went f2p, EA's UO is just so far off-base now from the game it used to be the entire thing feels like a meaningless grindfest now....

A game that has serious problems cannot be fixed by F2P. Anybody who thinks otherwise needs to go check out Warhammer Online. An F2P UO would still have the same problems it does now. If you don't have a plan in place to fix those problems, changing payment models will not solve a thing. The biggest F2P conversion success stories were all moving to fix the problems they were having prior to F2P.

Warhammer Online did not move to solve its problems. Going F2P has done nothing for it, they are almost out of servers to merge.

 

[The Craftsman]

The reason all these companies are changing to this model is because..... THEY MAKE MORE MONEY.

the moment I end up paying more than I currently am in order to access the same amount of content I have enjoyed for 10+ years, is the moment I give EA the middle finger and walk away.

If your first quote is true, and it probably is, then EA wouldnt give a damn about your second quote. They dont care whether you quit or not, and frankly neither do I. EA are in the business of adopting the model that makes them the most money. If that is F2P then you can wave goodbye to UO and the rest of us will enjot it rejuvenated with new players and not the wilderness it is now.

 

[Woodsman]

I read an interview with Jeff Skalski from a few years ago when he was producer of Warhammer Online where he said WAR would not convert to a full F2P model because it would consume too many resources (money ) to convert the game as a whole. So for Warhammer, the Endless Trial is it. If WAR is too hard to convert, I imagine that UO would be even more difficult.

 

[Wenchkin]

I think it's perfectly feasible to at least drop the sub price a bit though

More to the point, UO isn't really gathering a ton of new customers under the current model. Sticking with what we have is going to reduce the customer base over time. That's what's happening now, and there's no huge marketing drive or new expansion to reverse it. The money EA have saved on marketing and promotion of UO would probably pay for F2P conversion by itself lol. But the alternative right now is that UO dwindles and dwindles...

Any set up costs for F2P are the same as with any business venture - you look at how much money you will make back from the investment. Also, you have to weigh up the outcome if you don't invest too. No investment in UO is going to kill it at some point in the future. It will get to the point where the running costs are more than the profit. Businesses have to invest money to keep up with the competition and stay up-to-date. It would be lovely if we could set ourselves up, make products and just patch them and maintain a perfect customer base. I think that's an unrealistic expectation. You should always keep back some of your profits and re-invest them in your business.

UO is also a much older game than WAR, with a great history and a lot of ex players in circulation who have great memories of UO. It also now has a status simply through its longevity. That makes for a very good headline when you announce that your oldest and greatest MMORPG is now free. WAR simply isn't in the same league as UO.

TBH WAR never struck me as being that well received, certainly not among the Warhammer players I know. They're still in the shop every week playing on tabletops instead The consensus from my Warhammer friends was that WAR sounded great till it had the EA badge on it and they saw the details. When a game has that sort of vibe from really keen Warhammer fans, well I don't think the price of WAR is the problem really.

Wenchy