So this is a very interesting question when it comes to mmorpg's cause lately most of your mmorpg's are moving into free to play. Why you ask? Cause micro-transactions end up being worth it much more then most standard pay to play mmorpgs. Before I go into deep details let me explain some of these terms this way you won't be lost and confused when I use them:
Pay to Play (P2P)- Games that you pay a subscription fee in order to play it these mmorpg's usually do not have an item shop to buy items from.
Free to Play (F2P)- Games that are completely free and cost nothing up front but are supported by an item shop.
Pay to Unlock- Games that have locked features which you need to pay in order to access parts of the game.
Pay to Win(P2W)- The term that describes free to play games that allow players to win the game buy paying large amounts of money in order to win in pvp or have high advantage against players.
These are some of the terms that I'll be using just wanted to explain them in case your new to mmorpg's and having heard about any of the above or might be confused about them.
Okay so pay to unlock mmorpg's usually are doomed to fail just because everyone likes to experience everything without having to spend money. Basically games which force players into this lose most of the dedicated free players cause they have many other free to play mmorpgs that are not content locked like these. An example of content locking is that of Starwars: The Old Republic another reason why you don't really hear a whole lot about that game is because of how bad content locking is. Of course people still play just because it's Starwars but they lost most of the people who realized theres better games out there.
Pay to Play mmorpg's are the type that seem to be dieing mostly cause developers got wise to the fact they could make more money with an item mall. Of course there's people who will claim to the ends of the earth this is not true. But lets make a math example out of this that way its easy to understand:
The average subscription is usually somewhere between $8 and $15 per month the average cost per expansion or at least the cost of the game itself is between $20 and $120 highest amount being your collectors editions which are usually not worth the money but for this example lets say we are paying:
$15/m x 12 months = $180
If we spent $60 to buy the standard version of the game that's $240 in total for a full years worth of play. At the very most you might spend about $400 if you have to buy an expansion and the game itself. You might think that's a lot but your standard game console is much more usually 400 for the console and 60 at least a month to purchase each new game you need to have. You can google playstation 4 and do the math.
But when we talk about a free to play game the item shop is gonna make more money regardless of whether its pay to win or not. Cause if the stuff in the item shop gives players good enough incentive they will buy things. And people will sell things for the games gold or for trade of items even if your a "free" player and spend no money on items yourself if your buying the item mall items from someone you are paying for the game indirectly. Free players bring paying costumers and make a very active population. Then depending on your item malls usually just costumes and fashion alone will run someone about $100 a month or more depending on the person. Even if it's only $30 or $50 a month it's going to be a huge profit in the end this is why mmorpg's try to bring out weekly sales on items in an item mall.
Players are slightly to blame about it too the fact there are people out there who dump a lot of money into items help ruin a game which inspires many developers to go for the dark pay to win allowing them to gain stats and buffs which are not avalible to some of the free players. Tera Online is one of the mmorpg's which is still trying to keep the game servers free from pay to win at least for the English based servers but the game isnt doing that well in Korea which might end up being the demise of the mmorpg all together and then En Masse might decide to go full pay to win in order to get all that they can out of the player base.
The other issue pay to play has is the issue of money a few years ago people had the jobs and the money to spend for the game and pay for the subscription but most of the player base is on a tight amount of money so you have alot more players looking for the free to play type of games.
For a PvP Mmorpg honestly pay to play won't really work just because most of the community wouldn't have the money to pay for it and believe me when I say those nasty trolls and crappy players actually add on to fun when it comes to pvp games. But with that being said pay to win does not fit cause you will chase away most of your mmorpg community at the near sight of an item mall that lets people buy stuff that gives them an advantage over others in pvp.
I actually will provide some more information about how companies can avoid pay to win in a mmorpg later on but I'm pretty sure its a safe bet to say the mmorpg community will most likely have to be a free to play in order to get a proper player base to back it.
No comments:
Post a Comment