SOE webcast fielding your DCUO F2P questions tonight

@dudes
heh, well the good news is if they are having a tier system were people can still pay a subscription for more access, your lifetime will just qualify you for that and you should experience no change.

F2P MMOs usually make more cash tan P2P simply because most people are obsessed enough with their epen to abuse the cash shop over and over and over.

So basically, it's gonna cost more to remain competitive on DCUO after the F2P conversion.

@Phone Guy There were strong rumours it would be, but I don't think any of them were started by SOE.

@Phone Guy
Yes it was, up until the 2nd release date after SOE pulled the plug and continued development for another few months.

When playing the game it is obviously F2P, because the level of content is about half of your average single player game. 15 hours to max level, then the same 8 missions over and over, but you could only do a few once a week, so great if you only have 5-7 hours a week, but boring, and instantly a waste of money if you like to play 3-5 hours a day.

I'll go back to DCUO if the "free" content covers everything through 30, 3 raids for each mentor, and all the current armor sets in the game. The only thing i don't want free is hard light.

I would still be playing DCUO if it was F2P or only cost me the old Runescape fee 5$/mo.

It will be interesting to see how they handle F2P because the biggest purchases XP and $$ boosts, are useless in DCUO, and Mission arcs need to advance the character higher which takes the game out of F2P and into the market of Pay to Advance, you cant survive on fanboy money forever.

Then again, you can only do so much when you fire 200 people because you games are so sub-par, you can't pay the rent.

@Lateris
Yup.

@madcartoonist
I doubt it will ever happen. The PS3 and PC don't even get billed from the same company...no way they can get past the legal hurdles to play on the same server.

@Yellowdancer

The stupid thing is though, both those companies are part of Sony :(

@SFGamer69

That's a given with the F2P conversions, they attempt to make it as difficult as possible so you're forced to put up $$$ rather than just putting things in the cash shop people will want.

@SFGamer69 two things:
1. You don't have to buy sodas and repair at the same time. Get one or the other as you start to reach your cap and you will be fine. There is a vendor for both at the beginning of every group instance.
2. This is why I don't like the "Free-ites", because free is never free enough for them. For the kingly sum of _nothing_ you can make any character, get any piece of gear, fight in any arena, and see every instance that someone who played through update 4 could. If you really needed more than that without paying anything, you are beyond "checking out the game" and well into leeching house guest.

@Furdinand

That's cool but half the problem is lack of players, an MMO without players isn't fun, when an MMO isn't fun subs drop off and people are less inclined to do microtransactions. At the same time making the free level of play too restrictive tends to prevent player numbers increasing and staying increased and doesn't really encourage people to get attached enough to want to fork over $$$....I mean look at Allods and how it was prohibitively restrictive and had to be reviewed since no one was sticking around, guarantee the same will happen and the anti-soe vibe probably make it sooner than later.

@Protoavis DCUO doesn't lack players. I can log on any night an heal any instance I decide I want to do that night and I am doing it on the server that has a third of the population of the US PS3 server. Going free to play in the way that they are is a huge gift SOE is giving to the gaming community. Anyone who gets to the point where the restrictions as outlined are to onerous to continue needs to put some skin in the game. If you've played a toon to a full set of Tier 3 armor you should know whether of not DCUO is something you want to pay for. The advantage of having a player simply being in the game only goes so far, at some point people have to pay.

@Furdinand

A gift? That implies it's generosity out of their hearts....which it clearly isn't. It's about them attempting to generate more revenue due entirely to the fact of how low their sub numbers have become.

@Protoavis It can be both generosity and greed. With the change coming so soon, the plan must have been started before they knew what the results of the Megaservers and DLC would be. They could be doing it because because they want to increase their playerbase no matter how high it currently is.