[Malorn]

Originally Posted by BorisBlade

Agreed, everytime i see free to play, I get turned off and lose interest.

The free to play crap is total bs, cause its not really free. You get nickel and dimed to death, and its usually pay to win.

That's the fear most of us have, but that fear is only real if you can trade money for in-game power. There are many ways to make free to play work without selling power. If power isnt' being sold then what is being sold is vanity and convenience (time-savers).

F2P in general is very good because it brings in a lot more players and if the paying/subscription model offers enough value some of those will switch over and pay. We the players get a larger player base and thus a thriving game while SOE gets more money in the long run due to the thriving game. DDO is a great example of this.

Smed has clearly stated that they will not sell power. Taking him at his word, the F2P model could work very well.

Remember Fodderside? When they did that program allowing players to play up to like BR 6 or something like that for free and try out the game? It brought in a huge influx of players and revitalized Planetside. Those were all people who were hesitant on paying for a game but were willing to try it out. If we had that refined, got the hacking concerns sorted, and allowed players to go much higher than BR6 (but it might take them longer than a paying customer), then we'd likely retain such players and keep the game thriving.

Most FPS games out on the market are also buy-once, play forever, so PS is in an odd position of straddling two different genres with very different expectations.

As long as they don't sell power it could work out very well. Lot of people are willing to trade money for time or so they can be a unique slowflake.