Spending Wisely in MMORPGs: F2P or P2P?  

Posted by Irie Rastafari in

Are you a hardcore gamer who prefers free to play MMORPG? Or the one who thinks subscription fees for MMORPGs are long term investments? There is no doubt that the F2P (Free to Play) MMORPG’s market is growing rapidly compared to P2P (Pay to Play) MMORPGs today. Given that scenario, gamers are enjoying the option whether to go P2P or F2P given the wide range of choices from free, to pay to play mmos.


F2P games nowadays are not the typical “good for a free game” but rather highly competitive like any other P2P games in the market. They offer games with no subscription fees and can be played anytime which is a good marketing strategy to compete with P2P MMORPGs.


Being a free game, getting the desired number of players is not a problem for F2P publishers. All they need to do is to make the game interesting and fix any bugs and exploits as soon as possible to maintain the quantity of their subscribers. F2P developers/publishers earn profit by selling virtual items through an item mall or offering premium subscriptions (X2 experience/drop rate etc.) for a specific time, but still, it is not required to pay to be able to play the game.


The main issue in F2P is the balance of the game, it is common that some financially well-off players will dish out several hundred bucks just to get strong and pawn other players in the game, which really suck for a normal gamer or for some “wise-spender” in the F2P world. Also, Free MMORPGs are prone to spammers and scammers; anyone can join and create a new account making an annoying and negative impact to the F2P world. But none the less, it is still free; anyone can still experience a decent MMORPG without the subscription fee.


On the other hand, P2P MMORPGs that requires a weekly/monthly subscription before one can play are having a hard time going up against the less expensive F2P games. The pressure is so intense that they need to come up with READ MORE

This entry was posted on May 28, 2009 at Thursday, May 28, 2009 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

2 comments

Anonymous  

Sad part is that there's only a handful of wise spenders playing MMORPGs.

June 2, 2009 at 7:06 AM

There is a meme which goes around on 4chan's /v/ (video games) board:

1. Free
2. MMO
3. Good

PICK TWO

Generally this is true- F2P is typically full of more casual, immature players, while P2P has more serious gamers. A lot of free MMOs are also churned out regularly without any decent production values or support or attention paid towards gameplay, and you end up with another boring grind. An MMO which fits all three of those qualities is incredibly rare.

July 4, 2009 at 11:50 PM

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