UO Could Go Free to Play

[Flagg]

And who looses ?

The monthly fee paying customers who pay money to play BUT get annoyes by a bunch of free playing players who get their fun at disrupting their game play AND, at the same one time, reduce the bandwith thus causing lag and so on....

NO THANKS !

Want to play UO ? Pay the monthly subscription fee as everyone else...........

Is is a shame how that " everyone else" makes a steadily diminishing pool.

You are describing problems that are, at this stage, entirely imaginary. "I mislike idea of Free-to-Play because the F2P guy I just imagined is really annoying!!See, there he goes again, trolling my friends! Aarg! "

For you is it, by very default, a bad thing to have more people in UO? I'm absolutely certain it'd bring loads of people you don't like. And loads of people you do like. Who do you think plays UO in this day and age? Do you imagine some kind of a horde of 17 year olds just waiting for an opportunity to finally play a game older than they are? Significant majority of people to whom UO has any value or potential anymore are pushing late 20's at youngest.. with majority being around 30's, 40s and onwards. Recon this crowd has makings of such terrible community?

New people is most valuable commodity any old MMO can ever have. This is the case for both developers and community. Your shop needs more customers. Your warrior needs a smith to make him new weapons. Your bored dungeon farming tamer needs few randoms in said dungeon. so he doesn't have to feel like only person in the world anymore. Your miner needs to get ganked in Fel, your PvP'er needs to find another to fight by Yew gate.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

I miss the 17 year olds. They made the largest E-tears, ever...la

 

[Lady Storm]

Well for the most part F2P sounds great and would boost the population and might mind you make EA a few coins to boot....But
We all know that steam will bring in players... that said here is the down side of that.
1. PvP .... most dont need but a bank box to reek havoc all over and many even now who pay for the game would stop paying and go F2P.
Meaning we would loose PAYING players to the F2P set up.
2. The in flux of "transient" players using the F2P mode might ... add something to the population but wiht out more then a bank box how long do you think their intrest will stay with the game... Oh they might sign up for a month or 2 but lets be real here the odds of that happening are 1: 1000 .
3. The disruption of normal players who pay starting to feel squished out for things the "free" players are getting for nothing.
Now people think with your head not your wallet...
Do you really want ot let loose non-paying players into the game who can for the most part mess up your paid play by just being stupid?

 

[MalagAste]

Anyone will tell you that with F2P only about 5% of the F2P users actually pay money for stuff in amounts that would = subscriptions... so most the new people wouldn't pay and if they lost current payers to F2P then the responsibility would be on those few of us who do pay. I don't want to have to buy enough for 95% of the others.... I don't want to have to pick up the slack for all that to maintain the game I can currently play with just my subscriptions.

If money were the actual issue then the DEV's have been going about things all wrong for YEARS. They fail to market what the subscribers want in the first place. Like I said in Landmark I can pay for all the base resources I want... I can buy premade things... but more importantly if UO sold us things we really wanted... as has been suggested over and over... at reasonable rates...and in bulk, they would be making far more income.

 

[Veldrane]

Anyone will tell you that with F2P only about 5% of the F2P users actually pay money for stuff in amounts that would

Where are you getting that number from? The general swing in the online gaming industry to micro-transactions seems to suggest that it is a more lucrative business model.

 

[Veldrane]

Forbes did a piece on RIFT transitioning to F2P back in October of 2013. The numbers are rather interesting - emphasis mine:

“The effect on the playerbase has been tremendous. Our daily active users jumped around 300% after the free-to-play announcement. There was a significant amount of re engagement. Players that were inactive for 14 days or more came back at a rate 900%. It’s staggering,” says Fisher. “Revenue increased more than five times. We’re creating a product that people can fall in love with and not just trying to milk people for dollars. We’re not putting in mechanics to try and trick people out of their money.

This isn't an isolated result either. StarWars, WildStar, and several others are also posting profits and user engagement that would far out strip their revenue under a subscription model.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielt...cription-transition-mmorpgs-and-free-to-play/

 

[The Craftsman]

Do you really want ot let loose non-paying players into the game who can for the most part mess up your paid play by just being stupid?

UO (far more than any other game ive played) already has more than its fair share of players who will mess up your game by being stupid. The amount of griefers in this game is staggering. Its a fallacy that F2P players are more disruptive than paying players. Sure if you increase the numbers of players then you will get more griefers. Thats just a statistical fact. But no more so than if you increased the amount of subscription paying players.

 

[The Craftsman]

Anyone will tell you that with F2P only about 5% of the F2P users actually pay money for stuff in amounts that would = subscriptions... so most the new people wouldn't pay and if they lost current payers to F2P then the responsibility would be on those few of us who do pay. I don't want to have to buy enough for 95% of the others.... I don't want to have to pick up the slack for all that to maintain the game I can currently play with just my subscriptions.

If money were the actual issue then the DEV's have been going about things all wrong for YEARS. They fail to market what the subscribers want in the first place. Like I said in Landmark I can pay for all the base resources I want... I can buy premade things... but more importantly if UO sold us things we really wanted... as has been suggested over and over... at reasonable rates...and in bulk, they would be making far more income.

Look at a game like Runescape. Far inferior to UO. It has over 200 million registered accounts. A recent in game poll fielded over 500,000 votes therefore there at least that many active players. Players online at any given time regularly hit 80k. Being the game UO is compared to Runescape it could easily beat those numbers.

If UO brought in say 500,000 new players in F2P and only 5% of them paid through microtransactions (as per your estimate) then it would be the F2P player base that was propping up YOUR game, not the other way round.

 

[Smoot]

FTP would save UO. my only hope is that the devs decide to put the slight work / effort / $$ into getting it out before its too late rather than deciding its easier to just find other jobs. Im sure if mesanna is looking at UO from an employment standpoint, letting UO die and just finding another job may be easier than actually working to make it a successful game, which at this point pretty much means a fresh, modern FTP business model and promotion of this great classic game.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Before I made my journey back to UO, I was playing Order and Chaos (ftp iphone) game. It was close to WoW on the iphone. I started playing and eventually ended up dropping a few bucks in game.

You buy jewels which in turn are used to purchase equipment and things like gold from in-game vendors. It was a brilliant model, but just as I found with WoW, the content wasn't ever going to be as good as UO even though the graphics were.

I'd love to see the game convert from subscription, but in the meantime, they'll get my monthly payment...la