Subscribing

[Sylar]

When you play an MMO, do you subscribe or are you a fan of the "Free to play" option?

When I play an MMO I like to subscribe for a month or two at least, just to get the feel for it. That way I can see how the game is really meant to be played. If I don't like it, I'll probably just move on to a game I know I like. I don't usually play in the F2P mode of a game just because it's so restricting.

 

[JoshSucksAtGames]

I'm broke as fuck, so I'm definitely a fan of F2P xD. I'm willing to deal with the restrictions.

 

[Jordan]

I don't mind at all xD

I mean I loved SWTOR, then stopped playing when it became free to play.

 

[Avex]

If I had the money to spare I'd be all for P2P. I played WoW for a while but that's because Jordan was paying for me :kissingheart:

 

[Patrick]

Typically I play F2P for about a month or two to familiarize myself with the game and make sure that I'm not wasting money on something I'll likely quit.

 

[Sylar]

I'm broke as fuck, so I'm definitely a fan of F2P xD. I'm willing to deal with the restrictions.

Haha I hear that! I justify the 15 bucks a month as most of my entertainment budget so I don't spend much else on games and such.

I don't mind at all xD

I mean I loved SWTOR, then stopped playing when it became free to play.

Ah ok. Any reason why? When F2P dropped I was pretty pumped to be a continuing subscriber, but I did know a lot of people who quit.

Typically I play F2P for about a month or two to familiarize myself with the game and make sure that I'm not wasting money on something I'll likely quit.

That's a pretty good way to look at it!

 

[teranoid]

I prefer not to play games that are free to play. I've found that the communities are worse. Free to play tends to attract a lot of children and other poor players. Of course, there are always exceptions, but generally that's what I've observed.

 

[lexinonomous]

I am usually completely broke. I am a fan of a lot of the Free to Play games. They aren't bad at all and I never was a fan of subscribing. I never liked the idea of subscribing to a game that you already put money into buying. I always thought that was a crappy way to keep your customers drawn in, but alas some people don't mind dishing out the money.

 

[Kaitara]

I have played quite a few MMOs of both F2P and subscription models, and have ALWAYS found the subscription MMOs to be far more worth playing. There is no doubt that if a company feels their product is good enough that they can charge their customers per month, they are going to be dishing out more content per year with better quality. Not all sub MMOs work out properly (look at FFXIV 1.0, truly a disaster), but sub or no sub is generally a good indicator of how robust a community the game will have. People who sub may feel like they've put more resources into the game and will be less prone to quitting whenever they feel like. F2P on the other hand... most of those games have very poor, rather empty ingame communities and economies.

The F2P model is probably a much better option for some companies, but often it can become "pay to win" if too-powerful items are added to the cash shop. That hurts customers and makes them feel pressured into buying items when they didn't want to spend as much money on the game as the pay to win model asks.

So when I hear that an MMO is F2P I usually cross it off as a major contender in the MMO-sphere. F2P is a payment model that's used mainly for failed/old/dead games or games that weren't taking their profit margin that seriously in the first place. I've seen too many MMOs recently move to a F2P model after they failed to garner enough subscribers (Tera, Wildstar, etc)...it's getting pretty sad in the world of MMOs.

 

[SerSlavos]

I am a free to play guy, since I hardly decide to give money on games (because I don't work yet). But when I get a job and all that, I will probably think differently. Then I could do actually what I want and I wouldn't mind to subscribe once or twice for a game.

 

[OursIsTheFury]

I honestly don't like the idea of playing a game by purchasing it, then having to pay more every month. It's just milking the players of all their money. I don't like that, and it's really unfair that those "subscription deals" involve the player paying more monthly just to get stuff like extra inventory space or being able to customize their appearance. No thanks, I'll keep my money.

 

[Gladdy]

A subscription fee has its own advantages and disadvantages. Not many games can really afford to keep the sub fee, except major games like World of Warcraft because they just lose so much. Therefore, a ton of games went from sub to free to play (with in-game microtransactions). The bad side of this is that when a game suddenly goes free to play this massive amount of new players emerge on the serves and a lot of them either cheat, abuse the system or are just there to be rude/toxic. It completely changes the games community.

That is why I prefer to pay a reasonable fee for MMORPG type of games. For FPS games a sub would never work well and I guess that's why they're all free to play.

 

[Makef0rt]

When you play an MMO, do you subscribe or are you a fan of the "Free to play" option?

When I play an MMO I like to subscribe for a month or two at least, just to get the feel for it. That way I can see how the game is really meant to be played. If I don't like it, I'll probably just move on to a game I know I like. I don't usually play in the F2P mode of a game just because it's so restricting.

Well, it would really depend on how good the game is and what it has to offer. F2P games usually put free players far under the high paying players, so that is one of the problems F2P games have. For some it won't be a problem, for some it will. Although I have never been a fan of subscription games, I would probably choose sub over F2P.

 

[giovanniiiii]

For free-to-play games, I don't find Team Fortress 2 and Defense of the Ancients 2 to be restricting since all classes and heroes are unlocked from the beginning. I remember though that TF2 was not a free-to-play game. In DotA 2, it feels like the only thing you would be missing out on is the cosmetic items since they are almost only obtainable by buying. There are item drops but most of the time there is only a drop that is just one part of a set, instead of the whole set itself.

 

[sephyr]

I don't mind at all xD

I mean I loved SWTOR, then stopped playing when it became free to play.

Same. I like swtor. Unfortunately, i understand the switch to F2P because it was losing players. The server I was at had a very low population. Most worlds were literally empty. Then it became F2P and bots and gold farmers came in... tsk tsk

 

[Soulwatcher]

I always subscribe to a mmorpg even if its free to play. Because the sub benefits are far greater than the non sub benefits. And to be honest these days most people are like the OP, they subscribe for 1~3 months and go play another game until something new comes out and sub another 1~3 months again.

That's one of the reasons why I gave up on MMORPG's people are in an out of guilds faster than a revolving door. That even includes guild leaders and guild leaders use to be the diehards that never quit!

 

[reginafalange]

I always use free-to-play because I don't want to spend much money on gaming. I change games I play pretty often so I rarely feel attached to them enough to justify the paying. I think the options I get in the free version are enough for me, I don't need more.

 

[manmad]

I've played most MMO's when I was a kid, so I didn't really want to make my parents pay for games, so I generally played f2p. That includes all kinds of private servers and other F2P MMO's. Now that I'm older, I prefer playing in the main servers, because it's not really that expensive to pay for subscription for something like WoW, as an example. Especially when you can buy game time with gold now. However, I can't really complain, because I've always been playing with my friends and none of us bought any of the games and still had great fun.