115520-say-no-to-f2p-page-7

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yes to B2P
 
but HELL NOOOOOOOO!!! to F2P	
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Then you are telling me James Olhen is a liar? Because the public statement of the games Creative director demonstrates YOUR claim to be false. Is there evidence we should consider James a liar? Because the rest of the evidence also demonstrates your assertion is false, including a doubling of monthly revenues directly after F2P was installed. While your argument relies on the tenuous claim that the benefits from the LITERAL F2P SYSTEM INSTALLED BY BIOWARE do not count as a F2P system saving the game because "subbed players might have been involved in the system", My argument relies on the observed financial success of the game directly following the F2P transition and the official statements of it's leadership. 
 
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When I was reviewing the Star Wars article above it occurred to me that a lot of this fight over subs-vs-F2P is happening because of people holding on to rigid definitions that don't actually apply in reality.  It's fundamentally an excellent idea, business-wise, to have multiple points of entry and multiple types of payment plans for your product or service to match the needs and wishes of your potential customer base. Even WoW, the 900 lb gorilla, no longer has "box-and-sub-or-GTFO" for that game, because it's no good when potential players just GTFO.  I see nothing wrong and a great deal right with a game having multiple payment plans -- a completely free version with limits, a sub version, a premium sub version, a "freemium" version, and a cash shop as well, all coexisting. The object is always to get everyone who might like your product well enough to pay for it to actually shell out for it, and different people have different personal rules for how they like to spend their money.  Why put up walls between your game and your potential players by refusing to offer different payment plans?
 
The main argument against offering different payment plans seems to be that it means the player base gets stratified between, if you will, the haves and the have-nots (or the haves and the have-mores.)  As in, people don't like the idea that someone with more money might have a better/easier game experience than they will. But as Yasfan pointed out, that's already true of CREDD.  I like to craft and found getting started crafting in Wildstar to be quite expensive. My first toon went without a mount for five levels longer than he had to because I wanted to craft. That sucked. If I'd been willing to shell out $20 for CREDD I could have fixed that situation quickly with an infusion of some other player's platinum, right?  That's definitely P2W in terms of crafting, I'd say.  And there has been, and probably will continue to be, rampant "run selling" in every MMO including Wildstar -- "Cash for carry", whether it be game cash or RMT. That's completely P2W.
 
And people with a ton of time on their hands always have an advantage in MMOs -- in fact Wildstar's endgame is (currently) kind of set up that if you don't have a lot of time to invest, you absolutely are a second-class citizen of Nexus. Why, if we're all trying to be on an equal footing as players here, should certain parts of the game only be accessible to people without jobs, families, and other hobbies to spend time on?  
 
So why should MMOs not wholly embrace the notion of having different payment models that work for different types of players?  The cash-strapped college student who downloads your game and plays it in a limited way because it's free and that's what he can afford can change in a short time to a person with a job who is willing to pay a sub instead. If you get him on board with a free version, you at least have the option of selling the full game to him when he's no longer paying tuition; but if he can't afford to buy your box-and-sub game he's never going to get invested in your world at all.  He's lost as a player and customer.  I don't see that as a positive thing. 
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There's no question, that American income continues downard, and Americans are barely paying their bills.  The era of 15 dollar subs are going away.  The answer shouldn't always be about P2P or F2P or B2P when considering payment models.  However, the game industry must adapt, and must consider ways of living within the income of gamers.  Hybrid models are the way to go.
 
*30 day units = 19.80 (0.66 cents per unit, which is 24 hour periods of time) these units allows a gamer the freedom to play when they're able.  these units expires after 6 months.  player has no other discounts.1 month = 14.99 (/) + 20% more coins.  for those players that comes and goes.3 month = 29.97 (9.99/m) + 10% off all store items, and also 20% more coins.  a player that enjoyed their time within the game will find this a decent price and may buy from the store.12 month = 95.88 (7.99/m) + 20% off all store items, and also 20% more coins.  a player that loves the game, made some friends, and enjoy their time playing would eat this up for the value!  the store discounts would probably = extra cash flow.
FTP = These ppl would have a swtor style store that would allow for general story play, leveling dungeons, and perhaps some limited PVP.  These ppl would spend some cash in the store and feel compel to buy into the subs.
*
 
I would love the option of daily units.  We all been there, those times where you find your self only playing a 7 or 10 days out of the month.  Howbeit that we're paying 14.99 while only playing 7.50 of that money.  Give gamers that are limited on time the ability to invest in your game without the overcharged and wasteful feeling we get when paying 14.99.  There are gamers out there, like me, that don't sub to games anymore because of how our money goes to waste.The 14.99 dollar sub is no longer a real value to most gamers.  Also, 14.99 sub is becoming too hard to pay.  Folks, people are just not making the income anymore to buy costly games and pay a 14.99 sub.  I know there will be people that will claim 14.99 sub isn't too much, that it's like 50 cents a day, that you should go without that soft-drink.  That was a good statement a few years back but not today.  Truth is, that 14.99 is a weeks worth of super cheap lunches, or the difference of keeping the lights on, or paying for the internet, or making sure you have enough fuel in the car to finish off the week.  You could say that folks in that condition shouldn't be playing video games, and you would be right, except that 20% of americans have no jobs, 40% are working mim-wage jobs, rest are struggling middle class that are losing their homes.Wake up game industry, you either adapt to what people can really afford, what you're really able to budget for, or deal with your games failing.  I wish Carbine the best though, I love how they socialize with their gamers, and wildstar a great game!  Hopefully, sometime later this year or next, I'll have the time to invest in wildstar again.  However, I won't pay 14.99 for 8 to 12 days of playtime.  Carbine, think about those 30 day units!	
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Which is why people are talking about hybrid games with both subscription and F2P options. I don't think anyone here is working from the assumption that switching to a purely F2P model would be good for Wildstar. SWTOR, Aion (EU), Tera, TSW, Rift, LOTRO, STO, DCUO are all games that converted their model and offer a subscription option alongside a F2P option. TSW has a nominal entry price, but isn't B2P to the extent that a game like GW2 is.  The idea behind the hybrid model is to offer enough to current subscribers to keep their subscriptions up (and attract F2P players to sub) while also offering enough options in the cash shop to keep whales paying.
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Yes to B2P.
 
And basically at this point, yes to free to play.
 
It's the ONLY viable solution to bring people back in and/or bring new peopz in.
 
Either that or the game will die and get burried in a matter of weeks.
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Yes to B2P.
 
And basically at this point, yes to free to play.
 
It's the ONLY viable solution to bring people back in and/or bring new peopz in.
 
Either that or the game will die and get burried in a matter of weeks.
 
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Yes to B2P.
 
And basically at this point, yes to free to play.
 
It's the ONLY viable solution to bring people back in and/or bring new peopz in.
 
Either that or the game will die and get burried in a matter of weeks.
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YES TO F2P!!!!!!!
 
 
 
 
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ... for everything else but Wild Star.	
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If the model requires whales, it's vulnerable. Granted, a hybrid model would be less vulnerable.
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Would you please stop with this hyper bole crap your pulling out of your over active imagination.
 
hundreds of thousands of SUBS is not a game going fail2play no matter how hard you wish for it,  no matter what propagandha you try to make up as you go along.
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Or you're totally wrong and being naive.
 
I've been a huge supporter of this game since beta and somehow I'm still supporting it.
 
But there are definitely NOT hundreds of thousands of subs. Some afternoon there isn't even 20 peoples tagging simultaneously into BGs. That's not healthy, I'm not exagerating anythings. There were many servers, now there are 2 and one is slowly getting EMPTY due to servers transfers.
 
Believe what you want, I believe impressions over imaginary numbers.
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If F2P will increase the population and increase PVP matches and instance groups then yes
	If it will not increase the above then No.	
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If F2P will increase the population and increase PVP matches and instance groups then yes	If it will not increase the above then No.
 
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Quite honestly, if a game is going to fail, it's not because it "went F2P". Ultimately it's because people have decided to spend their time and money elsewhere, and that's just as true for a game that remains sub-based as it is for a game that switches from subscription-based to a different model.
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The PVP community does not represent the entirety of the population of this game.
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 Right now, according to market research, the costs per install for a F2P MMO in the US run at around $8/install on average. That's not $8 per paying customer, that's $8 per person who installs the game, whether they pay any money into it or not.
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No matter your reasons, the PvP community was huge when that game first launched. They failed at keeping PvP players because they under estimated how important we were.
Now, I'm not saying that the PvP community represents the entirety of the population of this game, no, I'm saying that there aren't enough PvErs left to only count on PvE in order to stay P2P.
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Anti F2P players seem just as immature as Anti P2P players it seems....
 
I would rather have a B2P option than an F2P option but I've played more than my fair share of all payment types to know that they in of themselves are NOT inherently bad.
 
F2P can either be pay2win, pay2haveshinies or pay2havealternativeshinies.
 
B2P can follow the same, as can P2P.
 
Sorry but it's not JUST F2P that has the risk of a shitty payment model and shitty cash shop. Or have you people been ignoring WoW's cash shop???
 
GW2 has the Gem store. Now unfortunately that game has a ton of great stuff on its store and not enough available to achieve through in-game means. If Carbine adopted a similar system, I would like to see them have achievable in-game items, costumes and other nice stuff and an array of other unique items on the store.
 
GW2 did it nicely during the times of Super Adventure Box. They had a ton of items available to players who did the content (sadly not perma-content) AND they had beatboxes to purchase, as well as other unique stuff on their store! This would be a system I could live with in Wildstar. As long as there is nothing being taken away from the core game to implement a store, I don't mind. Sub-fee, retail price or none. I don't mind whichever route they take. I do care about the method they use to get there.
 
This prejudice most of you seem to have against F2P is more telling of your inability to formulate a coherent thought than of evidence of a well-deserved opinion.	
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So congrats. You and Mr. Olhen seem to be making the same mistake. Feel free to squeeeee if you're inclined to worship game developers as people who can do no wrong. Then please--feel free to call him and ask him to do some datamining that would actually tease apart microtransactions and F2P. I would love to see some actual numbers that would resolve the issue--I'm happy to be proven wrong by data that accounts for obvious sources of error and controls for alternative interpretations.
 
And speaking of data, let's move on to the single piece of actual new data that you brought to the table: the statement, from SWTOR, that SWTOR's average monthly revenue has doubled since the game went F2P. 
 
The money quote from the article you linked is this: "The really interesting thing that's happening inside the game right now is monthly average revenue for the game has more than doubled since we introduced the free-to-play option."
 
Sounds compelling, right? I mean, sure, it's technically possible that something else could have happened in the same time window that would boost revenue, but c'mon. What are the odds, right?
 
The odds are 100%. The quote is from an article dated May 9, 2013, explicitly noting that the discussion of game finances took place that same week. Rise of the Hutt Cartel, the first major expansion pack for SWTOR, was released April 14, 2013. I have no doubt that "what's happening inside the game right now" is that the "average monthly revenue" boosts substantially right after the release of the new expansion. I don't really think it IS that interesting, it's absolutely what I would expect to happen regardless of the business model. If you release a new expansion and revenues don't go up that month, you're dead in the water.  F2P's got nothing to do with that.
 
What I do think is really interesting is that the wording put forward by the SWTOR staff is very specifically only applicable to that time window right around the expansion pack's release and then breathlessly put forward to the press. Monthly revenues are up! RIGHT NOW!
 
Sounds like you got suckered by some spin to me. Don't feel bad. It looks like the journalist who wrote the piece did, too.
 
Not being a sucker, I cross-check for confounding variables. I don't just assume that my interpretation of data is correct if the thing I'm measuring is only tangentially related to the thing that I actually want to know about. You may recall that perhaps 12 hours ago in our conversation I posited that SWTOR might have survived because of bug fixes and new content? I don't see how you rule out that this is the real explanation for that really interesting fact so breathlessly lauded as the unambiguous PROOF that F2P is awesome.
 
Soooooo... no, actually, I don't think that your arguments would survive a peer review process for a professional research journal--at least, not one that was any good.
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the biggest problem PvP had was that they made a business model that actively encouraged people to P2W. 
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The $8 is not running costs to support a player, it's marketing costs to acquire a player. The marketing costs are made up after a few months, with the number of months required differing per game depending on the monthly revenue per player.   Right after stating this amount, the article immediately says that F2P is growing audiences for MMOs.  The "$8 a month" statement is just warning companies to appropriately budget for their marketing expenses as it will take a bit of time to make that money back. It doesn't say those players aren't worth acquiring -- it says exactly the opposite.
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What they didn't say in that article is that the revenues that come in from F2P outweigh the costs incurred by F2P.
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SWTOR went F2P in Late 2012; ROTHC came out in Mid 2013. Revenues doubled well before ROTHC was even mentioned let alone went live. Your argument is thus invalid.
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To know whether F2P makes any profit at all
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I look forward to 3 things in regards to the near future of Wildstar:
 
1) Drop 3.  This will give people a reason to run dungeons so I don't have to queue 40 minutes to play a pug dungeon.
2) Drop 4.  This will give people a reason to play any of the content since the new loot will be available.
3) F2P.  Yes, that's right, I'm looking forward to it.  It will bring a large amount of people to the game and may be the thing that saves Wildstar.  I know that we will lose a few people, but I think that we will gain more people than we lose.  I hope we gain more people than we even have totoal today.
 
I know it isn't popular, but I think free to play could be this games second third, whatever chance we are currently on, chance to succeed.	
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The direct way to measure revenues is this: Is the game still running?   
 
It simply flies in the face of logic to believe that publishers would implement systems that somehow "do not make any profit".  If you don't make a profit, the game closes. Most MMOs games currently running are some flavor of F2P. How is that possible if F2P doesn't "make any profit at all"? 
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			Having played GW, GW2, WoW, Rift, and now Wildstar.  I will say I spent the most money on GW2, way way too much money.  It's just too darn easy to buy the gems. An you really want that new thing on the gem store.  I'd rather just pay the 15 dollars a month. 	
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The idea that F2P doesn't make a profit is the most inane thing I've seen in this thread, and that's quite the accomplishment. No company keeps a product line that doesn't make a profit for long.
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I don't think it's a coincidence that games maintain subs once they're mature--they're the well-polished and well-maintained gameplay experience we all want. I don't think it's a coincidence when a game launches big with lots of clear signs that it was rushed out the door, it then starts failing hard. 
 
What I do think is that blaming the business model for a game's massive losses following a premature release is absurd. That's not players leaving because they're not willing to pay for a game, that's players leaving because they're being asked to pay for something that wasn't ready to be put on the shelf. Games that launch before they're ready undeniably start bleeding out. They'll retain--and to a lesser extent, recover--subs by actually doing the polishing and updating and additions that they should have been doing from the start. This game hasn't even gotten to that point yet, so cries of "F2P might save us!" are really premature.
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But there are definitely NOT hundreds of thousands of subs. 
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Are you saying the devs are lying? Hundreds of thousands comes from Carbine; it's not an imaginary number.
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			Freemium and B2P are just F2P lite models, like low-calorie poison. The F2P bubble is going to pop soon and y'all don't want Wildstar to be standing on it when it does. The sub model is doing fine. WS just needs a free trial up to level 15 so that folk can see how great the game is without a boxprice investment. Let people get a look at housing and they'll pay their way in.	
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Are you saying the devs are lying? Hundreds of thousands comes from Carbine; it's not an imaginary number.
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They're massaging the truth, which is typical and necessary in a situation like this and in no way a sin or crime.  Those numbers are "active" subscribers, which includes a ton of players who bought six month or year long subs or are sustaining their subs on CREDD but not actually playing. 
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You have zero proof of this. And in fact:
 
 
contradicts your claim. Source.
 
That you're actually conspiracy-izing Gaffney's leaving (which was due to some very terrible and very real personal struggles) tells me just how whacko your perception and theories are. If you're going to try and support your points, at least do it without making stuff up.
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It's not a matter of "blaming" the subs for any of this, more a matter of "The game needs to buy itself some time to rework some key issues so it can be sustainable by ANY model -- how can Wildstar buy time?"  All the answers to that involve getting more people playing the game despite its fundamental issues. 
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That source doesn't contradict his point at all.  It points to the loose definition that must be used by Mike D. to define "active players".
If I had a dollar for every executive that "stepped down for personal reasons" that didn't really step down for those reasons, I'd be very well off.  No need to call the guy a whacko for thinking that this executive level employee stepping down might not truly be for the publicly given reason.
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Gaffney shared in very explicit detail why he was stepping down. Perhaps you weren't around to read it. If you had, you would not be belittling his reasons.
 
I'm also not sure how much more "we have X number of active players" could get any more clear (aside from a more exact number). Maytree claimed they weren't actually counting active players. I linked a source that specifically uses the phrase "active players".
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I agree with Maytree here, sorry.  I know how easy it is to define terms that benefit your message, as well as how often it is done.  "Active players" could simply be defined here as active subscriptions.  I wouldn't agree that active players = active subscriptions but it is one way to make your numbers look more favorable.  This isn't anything new, and as Maytree pointed out, it's not something that makes them bad for doing.
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As this is a sub-based game, you have to have a subscription in order to be an active player.
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As this is a sub-based game, you have to have a subscription in order to be an active player. There is literally no other way to be an "active player" (and yes, playing on CREDD counts as paying a sub). The only other way to possibly interpret "there are X number of active players" is that they are excluding a certain additional number of players who maintain subscriptions but don't log in. And if that's the case... it's actually the opposite of what y'all are arguing.
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you really do need to start questioning their use "hundreds of thousands" and definition of "active".
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The definition of "active" is "subscribing". That is pretty clear. They've also talked about certain aspects of the game's design making concurrency an issue in the past.
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C'mon, man. Evidence is the central tenet of being able to prove something. If you don't have evidence beyond "well, here's what I felt like when I was playing", stop trying to pretend that you do. 
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			welp with all these long winded essays being written, im sure there is one thing we can ALL agree on, Wildstar should NOT go F2P in any form.GG everyone lets all go home	
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The definition of "active" is "subscribing". That is pretty clear. They've also talked about certain aspects of the game's design making concurrency an issue in the past.
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Open up the early / mid 2012 EA quarterlies; see drop from 1.7 m subs at launch to below 1m, see slow earnings from SWTOR (where?)
 
Open up the late 2012 early 2013 EA quarterlies: see major player and earnings boost (where?) (after F2P in Nov. 2012, but before the release of ROTHC in April 2013)
 
Keep in mind that fiscal years =/= calendar years and be sure you're checking the proper date ranges... 
 
There ya go.
 
EDIT: for reference, here are some examples of the verbage in the quarterly conference calls from EA on SWTOR before F2P, this one from July 2012, before F2P
 
Now here's a quote from January of 2013; well before ROTHC but also after the F2P transition:
 
Now heres a quote from the EA CFO from the May 7th quarterly (just a few days after the release of ROTHC; which was not yet included in analyses)
 
Yup, ROTHC saved SWTOR long before it was even released... must be that starwars jedi magic...
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welp with all these long winded essays being written, im sure there is one thing we can ALL agree on, Wildstar should NOT go F2P in any form.
 
GG everyone lets all go home
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Still looking for that big F2P-related earnings boost, Naz. It has never been a question that F2P brings in more players. The question has always been whether it brings in more revenues. That information isn't in these files anywhere I can see. Feel free to identify where I missed it with a file name and a page number.
 
 
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So here's some data on some games other than SWTOR.
 
LOTRO & DDO: from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32322/Turbine_Lord_of_the_Rings_Online_Revenues_Tripled_As_FreeToPlay_Game.php
 
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Turbine's massively-multiplayer Lord of the Rings Online is bringing in three times as much revenue as a free-to-play title than it did as a subscription-based title, the company has revealed.
 
Turbine Director of Communications Adam Mersky mentioned the revenue increase in an interview with the TenTonHammer podcast, where he compared the results to those for Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online. That title saw revenue increase 500 percent shortly after it went free-to-play in 2009.
 
In the same TenTonHammer podcast, Executive Producer Kate Paiz also pointed out that the free-to-play revenue model has increased the player population and level of activity in the game world. 
 
[....] "It's really about letting players make their choices about how they play. People are like 'I own my choices. You give me the power and I'll decide if you're cool enough for me.'"
 
Lord of the Rings Online switched to a free-to-play model last September, after launching in April 2007 as a $50 disc with a $15 monthly subscription.
 
Just one month later, revenues for the title had already doubled, Paiz said in a GDC Online panel, and that increasing revenue trend has apparently continued since.
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It turns out that if I poke a hole in your response, repeating it again in a bigger font does not make it right.
 
You've said you could prove it. It's pretty clear that what you have to show, you've shown. I cordially disagree. What you can prove is that SWTOR's management sings the praises of F2P at the same time they misidentify item shop purchases as F2P.
 
Thanks for playing, though.
 
Edit: I did forget to add one point to this: The other thing you can prove is that no matter how much a company can summarize their product's performance without using any variant of the phrase "earnings are up"--much less any actually numbers showing that earnings are up--some people will insist that they did.	
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It turns out that if I poke a hole in your response, repeating it again in a bigger font does not make it right.
 
You've said you could prove it. It's pretty clear that what you have to show, you've shown. I cordially disagree. What you can prove is that SWTOR's management sings the praises of F2P at the same time they misidentify item shop purchases as F2P.
 
Thanks for playing, though.
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Yasfan arguing for "hard numbers" that no one short of an EA exec is going to be able to give is disingenuous at best and flat out totally biased in reality. You also dodged the post about how there were hard number percentages from LOTRO and EQ.
 
I was in SWTOR both in the sub only model and after FTP and without even needing to see revenue numbers I can claim that numbers of unique people playing the game shot up tremendously after the FTP conversion and the gambling boxes were going off in the fleet like slot machines.
 
So you can fool yourself as much as you want and put your fingers in your ears and say lalalalala but reality doesn't seem to line up with your arguments that other major AAA games aren't making more money now as FTP then when they are sub only.
 
Personal note: I like and tend to play sub based games only and am not a total fan of FTP, but I can see and respect its place in the market and will not demonize it for no apparent reason other than straight up bias like you are doing here.	
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Subs do not drive the F2P microtransaction system in SWTOR. Microtransactions were the staple of the F2P system implemented in SWTOR; just because subscribers CAN use the system doesn't stop it from being a F2P system; likewise, there are only a large number of subs now because the F2P system allowed them to try the game, and enjoy it enough to sub (which is verified in EA's reports). 
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			I will never play again if this goes f2p, i hate f2p community and hate microtransactions. 	
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Actually I would beg to differ with this statement, the majority of stuff bought from the Cartel Market can't even be used by the F2P or Pref status players. The cred cap makes buying and selling crates and hypercrates through the Cartel Market iffy at best for F2P and Pref players as anything over a certain amount of cred gets put in escrow and you have to pay to get those creds out. The majority of folks I knew who were buying items from Cartel Market with the exception of unlocks were Subs. 
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Yasfan arguing for "hard numbers" that no one short of an EA exec is going to be able to give is disingenuous at best and flat out totally biased in reality. You also dodged the post about how there were hard number percentages from LOTRO and EQ.
 
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I've spent the last two days slowly and deliberately walking Nazryn through what he claims his evidence says, and what it actually says, and what we can conclude from what it actually says. His response to me at this point is to tell me I'm blind in a large point font, while insisting that as simple a thing as "Are revenues actually up?" can be definitively answered by the fact that over the course of a year, the verbiage used to describe a game's performance goes from "disappointing" to "solid".
 
 
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Actually I would beg to differ with this statement, the majority of stuff bought from the Cartel Market can't even be used by the F2P or Pref status players. The cred cap makes buying and selling crates and hypercrates through the Cartel Market iffy at best for F2P and Pref players as anything over a certain amount of cred gets put in escrow and you have to pay to get those creds out. The majority of folks I knew who were buying items from Cartel Market with the exception of unlocks were Subs. 
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*Grabs popcorn and shares it*
 
In reality there is pros and cons of F2P(or any business model) and yes it is good to have this wide discussion(It brings us closer as a community). The bottom line is what happens, happens. NCSoft has claim on this game and it is their choice what they want to do with it. Sure I seems like it would be best to try out other ideas before going FTP(or even shutting it down), but I honestly I haven't had any experience of NCSoft listening to their community, and to some degree why would they? They are a business and go for the highest sales.	
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The general disconnect between the supporters and opposition of f2p/microtransactions: definition of a successful game. I am not interested in making NCSoft even more corporate millions of profit. I am interested in supporting a game studio and a game that shows someone actually plays it in there, and is pouring their heart and soul into it. Subscriptions should be more than enough to keep a small studio afloat. What the corporate publisher wants and expects on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms. One I have no intention of supporting ever again.
 
What "saves" a game is good content that delivers and a good community for the MMO aspect.
 
"f2p" microtransactions business model can go die in a very slow fire.	
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it has actually been an interesting debate to follow.  So long as its not a blind emotional declaration of hate/love F2P model I've personally found it both interesting and educational.  (looks at work load piling up while playing hooky reading WS forums).
 
My personal position (partially as a development from reading this thread) is that F2P has helped a number of games, but it has also been abused by studios to gouge players with MTs.  If a publisher makes a concerted effort not to abuse the customer, but provide value through whatever revenue model they follow, then I'll support it without bias regardless if its P2P, F2P, or B2P.  Granted, I prefer P2P sub based models, but I've seen all 3 major business models land on either side of the fence of treating their customers right.  I know that's me not being very committed to any one camp, but like I said I support the model that gives its customers the best experience for that product without personal bias.  I also think that while this debate has been very interesting, in the final hour whatever fine essays our fellow forum members post, ultimately NCSoft has shown me that they do what they want, without concern of what's said on forums  I don't say that in a attempt to shut down discussion, only that IMHO thats the reality all of us will have to deal with. 	
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The general disconnect between the supporters and opposition of f2p/microtransactions: definition of a successful game. I am not interested in making NCSoft even more corporate millions of profit. I am interested in supporting a game studio and a game that shows someone actually plays it in there, and is pouring their heart and soul into it. Subscriptions should be more than enough to keep a small studio afloat. What the corporate publisher wants and expects on the other hand, is a whole other can of worms. One I have no intention of supporting ever again.
 
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My 2 cents.
If it comes down to the choice of change model OR shutdown, Id like a model change.
I worry that this thread and others like it might say to the power that be, yes, shut down, we wont support free to play.
 
Lets face if, if drop 3/4 arent incredibly game changing, something else is going to have to give, and id rather not see W* go the way of CoH and TR.
Which we know is a posiibilty if the people with the plug in their hand get the wrong idea.	
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What I do think is that blaming the business model for a game's massive losses following a premature release is absurd. That's not players leaving because they're not willing to pay for a game, that's players leaving because they're being asked to pay for something that wasn't ready to be put on the shelf. Games that launch before they're ready undeniably start bleeding out. They'll retain--and to a lesser extent, recover--subs by actually doing the polishing and updating and additions that they should have been doing from the start. This game hasn't even gotten to that point yet, so cries of "F2P might save us!" are really premature.
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Freemium and B2P are just F2P lite models, like low-calorie poison. The F2P bubble is going to pop soon and y'all don't want Wildstar to be standing on it when it does. The sub model is doing fine. WS just needs a free trial up to level 15 so that folk can see how great the game is without a boxprice investment. Let people get a look at housing and they'll pay their way in.
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Dropping the box price would probably be a good idea as well. $15 is a much lower barrier to entry than $60. But I defenitely agree on the trial as well.
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It's not the box price that's the main barrier (although dropping the price couldn't hurt). All the servers of any new game are absolutely packed during the first week of launch, so a lot of people are buying the game. The main barrier is keeping people paying when there are so many games out there that offer a F2P option. For people who are going to be putting an immense amount of time into the game, a subscription model (and CREDD, for WildStar) are fine. With CREDD prices rising, people have to spend more time farming in order to purchase CREDD, but if they're willing to put in the time doing that, that's not an issue.
 
The problem is when a game can't attract enough people to spend enough time in the game to justify paying a subscription month after month, and the revenue flow dwindles to a point where the game becomes unsustainable - and WildStar isn't out of the woods yet. Megaservers are the first step, but if the combination of megaservers and the upcoming drops aren't enough to maintain a healthy revenue stream, Carbine's back is going to be up against the wall. The megaservers have brought people back, and new players into the game, but Drop 3 is going to be the thing that determines if people stick around (hopefully it'll be enough to tide people waiting for itemization changes over until the next drop).
 
In any case, if Carbine wants to offer free trials, that absolutely has to be done with Drop 3 - it can't be done after waiting to see what the effects of Drop 3 (or 4) are. If all of that is enough to draw enough subscribers into the game, then they've probably passed the hump. If not, they're going to have to switch to a subscription-optional payment model. No amount of voting on our part is going to change that.
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What "saves" a game is good content that delivers and a good community for the MMO aspect.
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That may be what makes a game good. It does not however always pay to keep the servers running.
 
NCSoft will either make it's projected profit margins or else they'll shut the game down. If things get bad enough, they'll likely try a hybrid F2P system first, but make no mistake no amount of dev love for the game will keep it running if the bottom line isn't good enough.
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basically i read your post as "people want a free game over a good game"
 
i love all the talk about the ncsoft/carbine relation ship like we are all business experts, just like the talk about why carbine should system X and bug Y fixed because we are all Programming experts, or why implementation of whatever wont work because we are all Experts in game developing. there are way to many experts on the internet,
 
this thread needs to get closed because it has devolved so far from any sort of "feed back" leave the business to carbine and ncsoft, why dont we just focus on playing the game and making it better(the only thing we can do)
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Why have forums at all then? We should all trust the higher powers that be and just play the game, who cares about feedback of any sort eh?
 
/facepalm
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you did not see my point, my point is not to care about something that we have NO info on, we have no clue how well wildstar is or should be doing at this point. the feed back forums are not here for us to weigh in on how carbine should run their business.
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We have lots of info on it. My guild alone hit about 480 active accounts at release, we couldn't let any alts into the guild because we could barely keep under the 500 person cap on guilds with just active mains in the first week of June.
 
By July 1st that number was still 400+ active logging in people.
By August 1st it was around 300+
By September 1st it was 180ish.
Now there are less than 100 that log in at least once a week, 40-50ish who log in every day or every other day.
 
I doubt my story is any different than other large guilds since release who have had to recruit and pull from the remnants of other guilds to fill their rosters. Some of the bigger fanboys on this thread will say this "dip" is no different for any AAA MMO. I beg to differ, quite loudly, as I have played pretty much every AAA MMO since EQ1 released and this is the worst drop in numbers I have ever seen personally in the 15 years of MMO gaming I have played to date.
 
So for you to say we don't have any input on how they can right the ship to avoid going FTP like other (and frankly currently better games) MMO's like TERA and RIFT and SWTOR is foolish and childish. If you don't want to participate by all means, but don't say the thread has no meaning and we should all just shut up.
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basically i read your post as "people want a free game over a good game"
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you did not see my point, my point is not to care about something that we have NO info on
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