Originally Posted by vieric
I still don't understand why everyone just assumes it will never recover without even trying first, what am I missing here?
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You are missing the facts.
I told you guys several times already that its not as simple as just making it cost no money.
First of all, the engine would need an overhaul. The 9 year thing showed pretty clearly whats going on: Lots of people crashed or had terrible FPS, even tho the game is 9 years old and we all should have 358073258725 FPS with our rigs these days.
Not to mention all the folks who couldnt even get the game to launch.
Then, the obvious problem that PS1 had all the time: Cheaters. We all should remember the Barcode folks, but those are just the obvious ones. There were Tons of ROF/COF hackers around. The game would need not just a pretty heavy change in how it handles stuff on the client, but also a few dedicated GMs to monitor and ban cheaters.
And that stuff costs money. So the game cant just go F2P without ever wanting any cash from anyone. SOE is still a business, if the game doesnt earn them a dime but costs quite a bunch of cash, then theres a problem.
Means they have to come up with a way to make cash out of a F2P PS1. Now think hard: What exactly could they sell for cash that requires no constant dedicated staff? Exactly: Nothing. PS1 has nothing that it could sell. So you would need to put stuff in, like camos, vehicle cosmetics and what not. But heres the next problem: The game doesnt support that stuff. Means even more changes to the very core of the game and the engine need to be made in order for F2P to work.
All that work on a 9+ year old engine with apparently extremly terrible documentation, and lacking tools.
And about the whole "try it first" thing: We already did. It was the 9 year annvisary. In light of PS2s annoucment and upcoming beta, PS1 got players again. Thanks to Noble from AT and a whole bunch of Outfits and players, the game lid up quite a bit. Thanks to SOE giving us a free month, the game went crazy for the weekend. But what happend then? It went quiet again rather quickly, with pops dropping from 6 full poplocks for each faction to just one, even tho the free month was still going!
PS1 is gone folks, its over. Put down your rose tinted glasses and realize that the glory days of us doing Galdrops on Dagda, Andvari or whatever other base, hour long genholds and crazy tower fights are just gone. They are gone for several years now, and only PS2s announcment and the 9 year annvisary gave us a quick blast of the past. And thats the only thing we will ever get: A yearly blast of the past.