Another, more in-depth response from Yoshi-P regarding F2PFollow

A quick look over at the FFXIV beta forums tells me all some people really want is a HD FFXI makeover anyway.

Only enough in Japan to have warranted releasing the last xpac on it. NA never saw it.

I like Yoshi-P's response, except in the case of Rift. He almost has it right with regards to the investors in that situation. For a long time they held a really high subscription rate - well relative to WoW and XI anyway - but mismanagement of the game itself caused them to have to go F2P. It was a great game for a long time and then they sunk their best resources into that joint venture with Syfy which is a novelty at best, and the top guys all jumped ship when they saw the writing on the wall.

SWTOR is kind of a similar situation. BioWare was a company that had vision and really cared about making a magnificent gaming experience. Then EA.

That is all.

Why does he explain why Star Wars and RIFT didn't start as F2P, as if he knows the inner workings of the companies behind them?

He doesn't even acknowledge that plenty of games do start off with F2P models from the beginning, and some of those games have been hugely popular and profitable (certainly more popular and profitable than FFXIV ever was).

The only thing that's going to annoy me is if they add a Cash Shop+P2P and the anti-F2P people defend it. Because that would literally be the F2P model but with a subscription on top. I know that World of Warcraft does it (and Yoshi-P even compares to Blizzard in OP's quote) and Yoshi-P wants his game to be like WoW.

FilthMcNasty:

Well, it's quite simple. If you take into account (among others) the pricing differences of FF XIV:ARR and a B2P or F2P game (GW2 comes to mind with its $59.99 price-tag), a player can easily buy the standard edition of ARR and sub for a couple of months before he decides whether to keep this long-term.

Remember that the game does indeed offer 30 days free with every purchase. So - In my mind, it's very easy to ascertain whether you want to be involved with something for the medium term or want to just get the POS uninstalled and move on with your life.

SWTOR, since you mentioned it, and I wrote about it earlier in this thread, was a prime example of corporate incompetence. From design choices (They were heralding the "mass PVP" features only to suffer from an engine which had no capability of rendering >10-20 characters on the screen properly, without all players suffering FPS on the single digits), to project management (Even major features which included the Legacy System or new content were delayed to infinity. I just found out that it's an 18 months game and paid character transfers only now (!) will make their appearance) to obvious attempts to cut costs from day 1 (You would expect a response from an in-game ticket to take less than 10 days, for a simple item restoration or something, right? Yeah, me too. Or bugs being left unfixed for weeks upon weeks? Yeah....), I could go on and on and on in 3000 words about why a subscription to this monstrosity was not justified.

And although not an avid SW fan, I very much liked the concept of playing a "futuristic" MMO, where even the transportation system or mounts were hovercrafts. Talk about awesome.

There's this, then:

F2P and B2P and P2P are all valid revenue models for a game. Whether a game can "pull off" an option of these properly, is largely dependent on game design and content.

There are games which are F2P-oriented from the beginning, but alienate players by offering "pay to win" avenues, where the richest douchebag emptying the cash shop dominates the game.

There are games which have tried the B2P model and remained relatively decent, GW2 comes to mind, but even them could not cater to the needs of a large percentage of players, who left the game and did not come back. (PvE players, and PVP players who wished RvR / WvW to be more meaningful than a gimmick)

There are games which have a community passionate enough about the game to continue P2P. EVE Online is a prime example, and of course WOW, which could easily profit from F2P more than anyone else. But why change to a F2P model when P2P works for you as a company? That's the whole spirit of the debate.

And if FF XIV's developers and SE continue listening and responding to feedback, they have all the potential in the world to do great. Not maintain 3,000,000 subscriptions, no, but at the very least create a game which will have a successful presence in three (! - PC, PS3, PS4 in 2014) platforms.

I think they are up to the task, mainly because Yoshida is an MMO gamer himself, and not a random manager having loads of "brilliant ideas to bring in more money". The first rule of an MMO is: If it has no content, nobody will stick around with it, and I'm pretty sure they know that all too well.