GamersFirst welcomes World of Warcraft to 'the free-to-play revolution'

@Puremallace

RIFT isn't the only reason why WoW is losing those numbers. I am leaving WoW...but I am not going to be playing RFT. In fact I think RIFT's dirction currnetly is getting too close to emulating many the problems I find with WoW. And I am unlikely the only one who feels that way.

As for this unllimited free trail...it seems directed at potential new players. And not at attracting the old players back. Similar to Blizz recent veteran promotion thingy for getting the veterans' freinds to try WoW for free....an extended version of RAF. Perhaps they had nothing to offer to the players that left. /shrug

@Puremallace

My opinion imho it is that this expansion is not that good (or at least not until now) and the players showed their opinion by leaving the game. If you look at amazon.com and look at the previous 2 expansions they are 4 stars but with cata it is 3 stars and when you look at the comments the most "valued" are the ones with 1 star and if you read them there is a trend there. I know some one will make an argument for Cata, I am just mentioning what I have been able to see.

Now with RIFT I think it is way better than AION because it is not a grind fest and has more content outside of PvP (WAR). It is a good game and it shows it. I think they will be in the market for a long time. I think that the next WoW killer will be Blizzard, not SWTOR, GW2 or anything else that may be coming down the pipeline (I am not saying that they are bad games, I am just saying that they will not be WOW killers).

I hope that Blizzard is able to bounce back, because believe it or not they set the standard for this market, they release good products and it is a good company (I measure them for what they have done so far). No one in this market ever thought that they could have a player base of 11 million. That says something, no other game has achieved that and this game is 6 years old (ok Cata is WOW 2.0) but still the game is 6 or 7 years old.

@Utakata

You are right, they want to bring in new players, but guess what in order to adquire the game they need to buy WOW (Vanilla), TBC, WOTLK and Cata... what on itself is at lest 100 USD. I am just saying that it is kind of expensive in the start up cost to play a game.

The old players will come back with a new patch (I do not know anything about 4.2 if it's good or bad) or a new expansion.

@Tempes Magus

Ideally, subscription would include all content available in the game and F2P would be the same thing pared down, with certain things like zone access, quest chains, or certain customization options needing to be purchased beforehand. Subscribing in a F2P game should be indistinguishable from a traditional subscription model. I shouldn't have to deal with any advertisements or locked content if I make the jump to subscription.

@Tempes Magus
Damnit, my reply went to the wrong person:

Your points are shortsighted and misinformed in many ways.
"1) You can't pay less if you play less, even if for reasons outside your control."
You're already talking about a fee so small (15$/mo) that it's on par with eating dinner out one night in the month, or seeing one movie, or getting 3 cups of coffe over an entire month. Realistically you only have to play for the same amount of time it takes you to do any of those things to receive the same cost/benefit value. Given that the longest you're going to do any of these other things is 3 hours if you're being generous... that means you only have to play for 3 hours in the month to get your money's worth. If you didn't play for 3 hours. Put your account on hold for the month.

"2) Companies can't really make more money by developing more and better content, unless they add a cash shop that only really works in F2P."

You know what happens when you play a F2P game? They slow the exp and/or drops unless you pay. They don't allow you to get tons of content... unless you pay. They block off whole classes or areas of the game... unless you pay. They WITHHOLD THE GAME unless you pay! That's the whole concept of the payment scheme. How is that helping you as a consumer receive more content? Any MMO, subscription or F2P will develop content to keep you coming back. The former encourages you to try this new content.. the later will withhold it from you until you pay again.

"It also truncates the amount of players that will even try the game, let alone keep playing, because a subscription requires a strong commitment for something that is meant to be fun and shouldn't be an obligation."
Apparently you've never tried a trial account for any MMO. They almost all have this after they've been out for a month or so. Some even go so far as to make the first X levels free, but then you have to subscribe. This is really a non-point.

"3) It's too easy to set it and forget it and not even notice how expensive such behavior is, or how bad an idea it is to pay for a year ahead of time in which you may change your mind early."
I've already explained how this is not as expensive as people make it out to be, but if you make the decision to pay for a year's subscription and then quit right away, that's your own fault for bad planning. The same could be said about paying for the bundle packs that most F2P games provide and then not using them because you quit before you used them all up. Again, not really a point against either subscription model.

You want to know what free to play does to games? It makes games fall into these two things:
1. You don't pay anything but it takes forever to do anything, get anywhere (if you even can without paying)... meaning that you are choosing investing a lot of your time vs. your money.

2. You pay out the ass to get the stuff they want you to get to speed things back to the pace they really should be at and now the game feels much better... the pacing is right where it should be, the drops are coming, whatever bonuses you paid for are now making the game feel less grind'y and much more like it's fun.
However you're now spending at least the same amount you would if you were in a Subscription system if not MORE for all the damn "connivence" items like res scrolls or warp portals or whatever the game may have. You've chosen that your time is more valuable than your money.

So what do you get in this situation? People with more money, get farther, have more fun, get better advantages, and overall just get what the game SHOULD be. Rich people win. Rich people get to play the real game and have fun while the other people sit around and grind away trying to catch up. You know what that reminds me a lot of? Real life. Why would I want to mimic that in my game?

Now you may be thinking I'm just one of those people that subs to wow and raids 24/7 but I'm not. I spend a lot of money in their item shop, voluntarily, for items that have no impact on the gameplay. I pay my subscription and I raid one night a week, maybe 2 if my plans on the weekend fall through. I'm just not eager to see other people spend 100$/month in the game get way past me because it's chump change to them.

@Tempes Magus DIng! Ding! Ding!

/Agree tempes.

You win the fight. :D

@Tempes Magus

The point isn't that Blizzard isn't making more money (I'm honestly not sure about that, I'd like to see reports/numbers if I could find them) it's about the arrogance. This guy is a jack ass.

@Tempes Magus

Except that your basing your entire argument around a fact which you haven't proved and haven't referenced, might have a little to do with the fact that it's incorrect.

I could easily say I can't find the article but I seem to remember hearing that TOR will start WW3 due to its shear epicness and then proceed to make some claim based around it.

It had nothing to do with more players paying less, the reason F2P makes money is because less players pay more.
Just look at the Eve scandal that happened recently one of their items on the cash shop was a monocle that cost $70 52 players bought it, they were also selling more than monocles there were shirts and other cosmetic items a lot of them selling for more than their real world equivalents and people bought them. But back to the monocle $70 is almost enough to buy 5 months of game time but let's round it down to 4 months. In 1 week 52 people payed the equivalent of what 208 players would pay in a month with a pure subscription model, assuming that the monocle was the only thing they bought.

Now these are just cosmetic items with no in-game benefit, add in some in game benefit like faster leveling a temporary buff more bag slots etc. and people will be more inclined to buy them.

With F2p you also end up paying for other features to improve your gameplay experience which should never have been broken in the first place, you want to level at an acceptable pace, hand over $10.
Oh you think this piece of armor looks horrible, the colorscheme makes your eye's bleed you say? Well we are now selling dyes at the Item Shop for $2 each

Just to get the same experience that you would in a Subscription model you would easily end up paying $15 a month anyways if not more