TSW is flopping - affects development of other games?

[ByLogic]

You guys really think F2P killed AO ?

For real ?

No mate, Mastas point is the whole Ao community mentality. Thats the problem
with F2P. Because they come inn with zero care and low mentality. Not saying
all are like that, i know some pretty good froobs.

When that is said, F2P helps the population rate its good for that. See the point?

[Gargle]

Yes. I think the whole world is becoming F2P crowd mate, i blame facebook :P kidding....
But i would like to see the F2P removed when the new engine comes out. Maybe only F2P
for 10 days. They stated before that the plan was to stop F2p at some state. Not sure what happen to that.

I just hope they give people at least a month of forewarning. I mean imagine all the bank characters that needs transferring. :-)

[Vhab]

They stated before that the plan was to stop F2p at some state.

There are no plans to remove froobs from AO.

[Mastablasta]

You guys really think F2P killed AO ?

For real ?

No, AO isn't F2P, it's got a very large demo, but there's still a game that you have to pay for, in the right way, not through stupid microtransactions, to get access to. There's a difference in player mentality between games where you pay and those where you don't.

Another thing is microtransactions is often totally flawed as a businessmodel. For instance AO's shop is way too expensive, which is an issue with lots of F2P games, very easily demonstrated by going on Facebook and joining a game there that's "free" or Google Play (i have no experience with apple store) and downloading one of the latest nice looking games. What you get is a game where you can play the first ... who knows, many of these are infinite, so let's say 15 minutes, for free. Then you hit some kind of wall where you either have to grind insanely to get the ingame credits to buy the item that will allow you to get to progress, invite 50 friends, download 5 other games OR buy something. If you choose the buy something option you get presented with something like said item + some gold at a price of... 20$.

Hell, I downloaded a game on my phone once, Gladiator Combat, or some such, from Glu mobile. The top bulk discount option for buying ingame gold, glu credits and some item, was something like 120$. 120$! For a 3D version of fruit ninja! And you didn't own it, you just had some credits to spend in it!

And that's just the singleplayer games.. when you bring in multiplayer, like MMOs, you end up with having the ones who will just play wholly for free, then move on once they hit the wall, or the ones that stay and buy stuff... at least in AO there's a very long time till you hit the wall and there's no mandatory items to buy to keep having fun, at least with PVM. Maybe pvp kills become sort of hard, because of insane powercreep, but I guess if you want to participate in the pvp for real you buy the expansions.... so, that's where the wall kinda sits in AO. But it's not as bad as so many of these other games that are supposedly "free" ...

If the big companies and their big free games keep going without some sort of mandatory purchase, how do they hope to keep going? Allods Online is a perfect example of an MMO that ends up being very expensive if you want to really play it vs. a subscription based one. And I'm sure we can find so many others... My only point is, F2P kills the game, because it introduces a ton of changes that makes the experience either grindy or sucky with a bunch of unfairness for those who don't pay, or the game ends up dying because noone is buying anything, because it's not needed and there's only so much interest in spending 10$ on a new cloak.
I, for one, will much rather spend my 15€ or whatever pr month and get all the real content than play a F2P game where I have to constantly consider what to buy to keep my experience where I like it to be...

We've only just seen the beginning of the F2P business model. How will any of that look in 5 years? Will the F2P community, asocial and disruptive teens, kids and russians (go ahead, ask anyone who plays League of Legends about europe east ) who hate the very idea of paying for anything, destroy these games so utterly that they'll disappear? Somehow Runescape is still going, with its then 10 year old playerbase having become guys in their 20s... as the first F2P game around.

I certainly don't hope that AO will ever go fully F2P. Because that's the day the game will die.

[ByLogic]

I have to agree with Masta here 100%, what i think would be smart, is to have a separate forum thread for froobs.

[Gargle]

I have to agree with Masta here 100%, what i think would smart, is to have a separate forum thread for froobs.

Although AO Froobs is there, and their forum contains a lot of information, it would be nice to see a New Arrivals (Froob) forum.

[Gridpain]

When I compare the level of hate/rage in official forum to the one in AO Froobs, I fail to see how the "F2P crowd" brought doom (tm) to AO ...

And Ironmax, you say you agree with Masta 100%...yet, Masta just excluded AO from his "F2P = bad" discussion

Tbh, I found the F2P + Premium a good business model (a la DDO) : want to pay 15$ to have all stuff, good ! Want to play for free and buy race/classe/adv pack as you wish, good !

About AO, the simple fact is, without froob program, the game would likely have shut down 5 or 6 years ago...

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

[Tanisthonus]

I always thought Star Trek Online had a pretty good f2p model. There is no content restricted to you, all the shop does for you is
-Get you blind box keys (Blind boxes are the worst thing ever invented)
-get you new ships, which on their own aren't much special, but often come with a piece of equipment that is superior.
-Outfits! The best use of cash shops.
-A couple of special races that aren't anything special
-More Duty Officers! An xp and loot gaining mini game that exists.

Besides the ships with modules, it's really nothing you need to get going. I made it to end game, and competed in end game, without buying a single thing from the shop. And it /is/ possible to get loot from the shop without paying real money, it just requires grinding a lot of a special in game currency to convert.

[Mastablasta]

When I compare the level of hate/rage in official forum to the one in AO Froobs, I fail to see how the "F2P crowd" brought doom (tm) to AO ...

And Ironmax, you say you agree with Masta 100%...yet, Masta just excluded AO from his "F2P = bad" discussion

Tbh, I found the F2P + Premium a good business model (a la DDO) : want to pay 15$ to have all stuff, good ! Want to play for free and buy race/classe/adv pack as you wish, good !

About AO, the simple fact is, without froob program, the game would likely have shut down 5 or 6 years ago...

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

I never said that froobs ruined AO. Probably because the froob program was always treated more like a demo and the subscription model was kept. The cordoning off from content by pricetags for access, not imagined borders that require you to spend money like crazy, such as needing to buy a certain weapon or keep spending real money to unlock loot or whatever, like for instance DDO does, is key to that effect, it seems.
And that is fine. However, the other power selling and constantly requiring more to just stay where you are in relation, that's not F2P, or a demo game or anything like it, that's a game where there's just no entry fee.

[ByLogic]

When I compare the level of hate/rage in official forum to the one in AO Froobs, I fail to see how the "F2P crowd" brought doom (tm) to AO ...

And Ironmax, you say you agree with Masta 100%...yet, Masta just excluded AO from his "F2P = bad" discussion

Tbh, I found the F2P + Premium a good business model (a la DDO) : want to pay 15$ to have all stuff, good ! Want to play for free and buy race/classe/adv pack as you wish, good !

About AO, the simple fact is, without froob program, the game would likely have shut down 5 or 6 years ago...

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

I think you misunderstood, we are talking about 2 things. letting AO become FULL F2P and
the mentality from the F2P audiences. Dont get me wrong, i have nothing against froobs
inn general, and yes they are contributing to the game population. You have to look at a bigger perspective here. Its clearly that players who choose the F2P direction have a different mentality
to the game than does who pay for subscription. Example you get allot of minors that
dont have a creditcard to play. I think its good idea to split the forum section, one where froobs
can share there level of knowledge, and one for full subscribers.

With my great memory, i remember Means said that they dont want the same low age effect in AO as in wow. (i am sure its still forum searchable). If you ask me Means was the perfect game director for AO.

[Gargle]

Just saw some three day free offer come through my e-mail, also annoucning they are adding a raid and some new content - bets on time till f2p?

When WoW was released they did the same thing. Patches were announced with raid and other content. This was then reviewed by game magazines and websites.

I don't believe that they would go f2p in the next X amount of years. They offered life time subscriptions and I think some customers would be pretty angry if they went f2p within a year.

Although LotRO has had a successful transition to f2p with life time subscriptions.

[Traderjill]

About AO, the simple fact is, without froob program, the game would likely have shut down 5 or 6 years ago...

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

Interesting question that I had to think about a bit.

Outside of the people that started the game around the time I did or earlier, I would have no way of knowing if someone started as froob and converted or not. Most of the people that I know that still play are really old players and there's no way they started off as part of the free to play/demo program because it didn't exist. Personally I started on a trial program (think it was 14 or 21 days) that came with the then existing expansions of NW and SL. At that point you either chose to continue on or you didn't.

I do know of many people, over the years, that went from froob to paid player but most quit the game within 2-5 months of doing so. I suppose there could be a correlation between the "free to play" player mentality and game loyalty (even after becoming a paid subscriber) but I don't have the data to be able to come to a fair conclusion. Or perhaps rather than say game loyalty it could be a money vs value type thing.

[grndzero]

I wish their would have been a Master Pack for AO back in the day like there is for TSW. I would have taken that back when I started when the game came out considering how many times I have quit then come back. My friend and myself were both paid from game start back in 01'. I might still be able to get my friend to come back. He likes AO like myself.

[Darkbane]

Not seen many FP2 transaction supported games that do a good job... Turbine are about the only company who seem to have got things right there tbh.

[Awikun]

I started to play AO 9 years ago, had some breaks but ALWAYS came back.

I played Age of Conan for almost 3 months, quit and never came back...

Few months ago I was sure that I would join TSW but the more revievs and posts on different forums I read the less I wanted to play it. Up to know I did not buy TSW and probably never will (at least for as long as AO will be online)

Everything I write below is my PERSONAL point of view so I do not expect other ppl to agree with me, just want to share what I think and feel.

AO is in a way unique and there is no other MMORPG that is as hard to learn in every possible way. For new players it has a lot of hurdles and brings a lot of frustration in every possible way:
When you start you are always gimped and poor, there are so many things you do not know or do not understand, the gap between gimped noob and experienced pvp twink is so huge that it looks like twinks were gods or exploiters, even after several months or few years there are still some things that you have never knew about ....

So what kind of player like AO and what kind of players think that AO is a piece of crap?
There is no point in explaing who/what kind of players like AO, but I am sure that this kind of player is for sure a minority compared to all players on the market.

FC wants to attract as many players as possible so they do not want to make another game like AO because as I explained above such game would attract only a small percentage of players.

Instead they want to make a game that would be : very good looking (excellent graphics, sound, animations) will have a popular and interesting main theme (thats why FC has choosen Conan or now modern world + conspiracy theories like "X files", will have very easy rules (so instead of lot of attributes, implants, huds, utils, armour, perks etc, will have no level and a huge flexibility = easy to play with.

Now for the worst part (the one that made me quit AoC) combat:
In AO a well built twink with auto target on and auto attack on will always kill a gimped char (as long as it is not NT)
In AoC there is no twinking at all and your equipment makes no more than 5%-10% of a difference, however all fight is based on speed of your fingers and reflexes, like in Counter Stike

When FC started to create TSW they wanted to attract a huge number of players so they decided to make a game that is a lot closer to AoC than to AO.

So for me it is not the type of game I want to spend my time on ...

One last thing I noticed about AO and AOC (possibly TSW as well):

AO had a relatively small number of players but majority of them were happy and loyal (at least for a very long time untill FC [selfedited to avoid infraction points]

AoC (and maybe TSW) had a lot more customers in the begining but very little of them became loyal paying customers.

From what I read TSW did not even attract so many customers at start ...
but the good thing for FC is that it looks like more of them will be loyal (compared to AoC)

Good luck FC and do not abandon AO PLEASE !!!

[Phixalicious]

Not seen many FP2 transaction supported games that do a good job... Turbine are about the only company who seem to have got things right there tbh.

I think FC has the F2P right as is. I was upset that LotRO chose a different route, honestly.

Means stated there was an expansion planned for after the new engine release. If this holds true, then they make one of the older expansions free (either AI or SL ), it keeps in line with the current F2P base they have.

I actually think that's even better than LotRO. If FC can step up to the plate and keep expansions ( not "booster"-sized DLC crap like NW/XAN but real expansions ) coming at least once a year, and with each new expansion an old one becomes free, it'd provide good incentive for both F2P and P2P subscribers to stick around.

[Keldros]

When I compare the level of hate/rage in official forum to the one in AO Froobs, I fail to see how the "F2P crowd" brought doom (tm) to AO ...

The doom came when AO switched from being an MMORPG to MMOSAFKOHWSEK (Massively Multiplayer Online Sitting AFK On Hills While Someone Else Kites.)

Rather than fix the downhill spiral in risk/reward ratio they decided to end any semblance of an ongoing storyline shortly after LoX was released.

Current plans involve breaking up orgs with a server merge so returning players no longer have the support of their old groups, and cross-server trading so that the unlikely event of expanding to multiple servers again won't provide the community the benefits of a fresh start in an uncorrupted economy.

[-Bugsplat]

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

I'm not really a paying player anymore, but I started out when everyone was paying for less than froob content

[Iancu]

According to my account page, I started playing:

> 2003-12-20 USD 29.95 Approved (Playtime start 2003-12-12 08:02:50)

I'm pretty sure that was before they instituted the froob program.

[Esssch]

How many paying players do you know that didnt start as froobs ?

Created 2001-10-19 06:52:56

You might be surprised how many actual veterans are left.

AO is in a way unique and there is no other MMORPG that is as hard to learn in every possible way.

You've clearly never played EVE, or the more apt name for it Spreadsheet Online.

I think FC has the F2P right as is. I was upset that LotRO chose a different route, honestly.

The worst part of LotRO going free for me was that I already had a level 40 something. I had played when it still required a subscription with a few of my friends. Well we got bored, went to other games, heard about it going free, checked it out a couple months later. My level 40 was in Rivendell. I log in, figure I'll go do some quests to try to get the hang of my character again...I can't go to my quests because it requires that I buy a "content pack". That killed the game for me, I only ever went back to play the starting areas again since those were fairly well done.