One of my friends, Wind brought this up last night when we were having a discussion about MMORPGs. The difference between Pay to Play; also known as Subscription, and Free to Play; or Micro-transactions.
Many people have opinions on this subject matter so I thought I would get mine out there as well. In my opinion, P2P is better; in most cases. Some cases it's... meh.... at best. Over all, World of Warcraft is a great MMO. They have made mistakes yes, like, ALL OF WRATH, for instance. But they made up for it with tomorrow's highly anticipated release of Cataclysm.
I have already tasted some of the content. As you are highly aware, 4.0.3a or "The Shattering" was released two weeks ago. And with it tons of content. The new world was reshaped with over 3,000 new quests.
Now I did roll an alt, I love alts now. I rolled a Dwarf Shaman to experience the new zones. And what an improvement. I am very proud to be a subscriber to WoW now. I hope the raiding content is as juicy!
Now a bad example of a P2P in my personal opinion was Dark Ages. Not Dark Ages of Camelot; This Dark Ages. At one point they were good under Nexon. (I will get to Nexon in a minute) But under Kru... it became aweful. Now it is a 10 buck a month sub plus you micro transaction! Not only that I believe they stopped enforcing the role-play only rule which is a crying shame. That is the biggest reason I liked that game back in 2004 over six years ago under Nexon.
When it was under Nexon it was just sub only, no micro transactions and I felt it was a decent game with how much you paid. Plus I felt that role-play added to the uniqueness of Dark Ages. Now they give you the option to do micro-transactions as well and you know subbers are purchasing from their item shop.
Free to plays; this is a tenuous subject at best. There are some that are good and some that are really bad. One such example of a good F2P is DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online). It has micro-transactions, yes, but they don't force it down your throat in my opinion. Some races/classes are only available through purchase but the core of them are free. Some dungeon runs are available through purchase as well but you don't have to do them.
Another good one I recently got into is League of Legends. It may be a PvP but it doesn't force you to buy anything. You can also buy things with points you earn as you play. Since I am so new to the game I can not explain it well. I recommended you go here and watch this video. TotalBiscuit explains the game way better than I could.
Now an example of a bad F2P can be summed up in two words. Maple Story.
That's it. I hate that game. Nexon has become a bunch of money grabbing monsters. Not only that it is impossible to level in that game without going nuts. I mean, the level cap is 200! And at that level, I kid you not, you need 1,697,021,059 experience to max out and hit 200. Do you know how long that takes? Let me give you an idea. I played that back in 2005 to 2007 I went to level 62 in that time and stopped. I quit that game.
And that isn't the only reason that game sucks, oh no. It is rampant with Meso farmers, botters, hackers and a variety of other low lives. And the GM's rarely do a damn thing about it. They just sit there raking in there millions a month from their cash shop and occasionally put out new content.
Don't play this game. Ever.
In closing, I feel that games that require you to subscribe, in general, hold a higher standard of service and are willing to learn from their mistakes and admit when their wrong. I would gladly sub over a F2P game any day. And you can look for me to try out The Old Republic and give my feedback on that. If you want quality gaming, buy them, sub to them. You will not be dissatisfied.
And that is my take on the P2P vs F2P argument.
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