…and yes, the market is being saturated with this sort of move, so it’s not as splashy as it once was. That’s a *good* thing, as it shows the market is maturing.

So they went with a partial F2P model known as a Fremium. They did not go all the way over. And likely there are good reason for not doing so.

Switching business models is risky. Turbine showed it could be pulled off, but SWG’s NGE conversely showed that changing things too radically mid-stream results in a lot of upset customers. Given that they changed an existing subscription game over to a “free to play” business model what they did makes sense in allowing people who were happy paying a subscription to continue doing so.

I’ve been studying the free-to-play business model for a long time, as far back as 2000. But, when I relaunched Meridian 59 I didn’t use the business model. Why? Because the existing audience was used to subscriptions so I stuck with it. Which is probably one (small) reason why Near Death Studios doesn’t exist today.

No resoundingly successful subscription based MMO has gone F2P.

Unfortunately, few games have “resoundingly successful”. Despite there being dozens of MMOs out there now, I can count on one hand the number of games I’d categorize as “resoundingly successful”. Of course, when you are “resoundingly successful” then you have a motivation not to kill the goose laying the golden eggs. A game that is successful but not a market leader will still want to increase revenues.

So, you have the compelling business argument for Turbine: 500% revenues. Let’s say you and a friend make $50,000 doing the same job at the same company. Your friend moves to a new company and makes $250,000 there doing pretty much the same work. What are you going to do? As a business, you don’t have the option to say, “$50k is enough for me!” (Even if LotRO “only” increased to $150,000 in this metaphor, that’s still a lot more than it started with.)

As for triple A’s taking 3 to 5 years to develop, which ones are we talking about here? SW:TOR?

Okay, let’s use SWtOR as an example. Gordon Walton joined Bioware Austin in 2005, so let’s mark that as the beginning of development. DDO went free to play in 2009. That means there were 4 years of development done on SWtOR before free-to-play became a topic in western games. (A few years before that we saw Korean games bring the business model to the U.S., primarily with Maple Story, but most people in the game industry didn’t take it seriously at the time, even if I gave a talk about the business model at the same Austin Game Devleper’s Conference where Min Kim from Nexon talked about the stupid amounts of money Maple Story was making in the U.S.)

So, what were Bioware’s options in 2010 when the free-to-play model was proven successful? Haphazardly slap on the free-to-play business model after developing 4 years based on assumptions of having a subscription business model? Scrap 4 years of development and start almost from scratch to build the business model in? No, they did the rational thing: continue on with a subscription business model that has been the basic assumption of all design decisions. Now, they might believe subscriptions are still superior, but even if they did think the free-to-play model was better they would be risking a lot of work to change now. (Although, given this is an EA project with the Bioware name on it, and with the success of the sparklepony in WoW, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of item shop in the game to some degree.)

Anyway, a game that started development in 2010 will have seen the success that DDO and LotRO had with the new business model and will be willing to copy it. Therefore, assuming we’re talking about a traditional AAA MMO project that will take 3-5 years to develop, we won’t see an MMO project launch with a free-to-play business model developed at the core of the game for another 2-4 years.

We’ll see if this bears out. Given that I’m actively working on an MMO project with a startup, you can probably guess why I’m making the prediction I am.

As for triple A’s taking 3 to 5 years to develop, which ones are we talking about here? SW:TOR? Tera? Those games are coming to the end of their development cycle. They’re not planning to go F2P as far anyone is aware. This is where the credibility of your prediction falls flat. Thus I think this is wishful thinking on your part. Sorry.

I doubt they where pulling in a substancial return. Thus with the success of DDO’s switch, put them on the chpping block for F2P considerations.

From the rumors I’ve heard, LotRO was doing fairly well before. But, when you change the business model of one of your games and see a 500% increase in revenues, and thus you have experience in transitioning to the new business model from an old one, it makes prudent business sense to do the same thing to your other game. Even if they’re “only” making 300% revenues instead of 500%. Unless you live in some world where making whole multiples of your revenue is somehow bad unless you’re desparate, I guess?

As for your prediction, it begs the question why don’t they do it now?

Because AAA MMOs take 3-5 years to make, and free-to-play has only been “hot” for about a year now. That means any game designed from the ground-up to be free-to-play is, at best, 2-4 years from launch. And that’s why I said we’d see one “in the next few years” instead of “soon”.

As for your prediction, it begs the question why don’t they do it now? I suspect there is some resistance, due to the subscription model, when the game is doing well, still gives them a guarantee return and likely a higher profit margin. The issue becomes when the game doesn’t do as well, then switching to a back up plan makes sense instead of pulling the plug on it. And that plan, the Fremium gives them both subcription or micro-transactions…thus it’s not an entirely a switch over. Since it quite likely many “triple A” gaming companies don’t entirely trust F2P’s as a business alternative. And I think that’s a good thing.

In Wrath, Blizzard basically gave people free boosts via gear in every new content patch, they didn’t really nerf the raids themselves to extinction until the end of the expansion. And heroics were quick and easy, and raid PUGs were common so more casual players could pick up 25 man gear to use in their own 10 man raids. And the first tier of raiding, before the gear boosts set in, was actually fairly easy.

So while the hardcore did complain at the start (and fwiw, Undying was never really an easy achievement), the more casual raiders had plenty to do.

In Cataclysm, the model seems to be that hardcore players can have their fun. Anyone less so is going to be bored or frustrated for 6 months. They can stay if they want, but ‘their’ content won’t be there yet.

And as for committed casual raiders who have been working their way through the content at their own pace? They’re being dragged forcibly onto the next tier whether they were ready or not.

I suspect DDO’s transition was as you describe, a “why not?” maneuver to see what happens to an underperforming game. When DDO’s revenue increased five-fold, I think they made an informed decision to change LotRO’s business model. LotRO’s revenues tripled. Of course, Turbine has been pushing the cash shop harder on LotRO than they did in DDO. (Of course, the real business question is how much profits went up, but I suspect the costs of developing content didn’t go up enough to make the profits lower.)

The development pace of MMOs has slowed down, but I anticipate that we’ll see a top-tier MMO launched with a free-to-play business model in the next few years. This is a good thing, because it’ll allow for games to be developed that don’t have to topple WoW in order to be a rousing success financially.

What I’m hearing you and some of your commenters saying is, “we want it challenging, but if we know it’s going to get easier, we’ll just wait.”

Does that make sense? You’re only going to tackle challenging content if you don’t know if, or when it’s going to get nerfed? And then complain about the nerfs and how in the “old days” it was so much more fun?

The whole nature of MMO’s is that content gets easier with time, experience, gaining levels, skill, etc.

“I just think it sends a message to casual raiders, saying, “Don’t bother with a WoW expansion until the first content patch because the raids and instances won’t be tuned for you.” And that’s kind of weird.”

It’s not wierd. I like it. Gives me plenty of time to level up, gear up, run the challenging heroics as if they were progression raids. Walk into a raid or two, kill trash, and be amazed that players can actually defeat the content, then work on it seriously when its nerfed, and actually get some kills.

It’s a great strategy. And Wrath successfully used that strategy, but with gear instead of nerfs until the ICC nerfs.

What they DID listen to, is that getting epics through facepalm, obligatory random heroic runs was not popular. We want gear to be more epic and difficult to obtain, but raids to still be gradually accessible for casuals.

Seriously, are you guys even playing the game?

Historically, older raids have always gradually been nerfed into the ground over time. It’s usually been a more gradual process but people should hardly be suprised by it.

Secondly, the raids are over seven months old by the time these nerfs come in and let’s be honest here, If you haven’t progressed significantly on them by this point, even casually, you were probably never going to do it.

The main difference being that in the current iteration of WoW, this process doesn’t lead you to have to raid the first half of Molten Core forever and ever.