Wall Street Journal examines SOE's and Turbine's switch to free-to-play
by Rubi Bayer 
Jul 30th 2010 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Dungeons and Dragons Online, EverQuest II, Lord of the Rings Online, MMO industry, News items, Free-to-play
The feature story in the paper's weekly Digital Media section is entitled "First, Give Away the Game," and focuses heavily on some of the recent free-to-play announcements from high-profile MMO developers. Warner Brothers President Martin Tremblay spoke to the WSJ regarding DDO's dramatic turnaround last year as well. "The game was almost dead," said Tremblay, saying that DDO is now "very healthy" financially, thanks to the switch to free-to-play. He stated that the change was "a big reason" for the decision to acquire Turbine, and the reason Warner Brothers plans to follow the business model for other games. "This is the way we believe customers want to consume games in the future."
It's an interesting look at the growth of microtransactions and the F2P model in the Western market. The full story can be read on the Wall Street Journal's Digital Network.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Wisdomandlore said on 11:35AM 7-30-2010
You would think the Wall Street Journal could hire some copy editors to proofread this stuff. Otherwise a very uninformative article. The only interesting tidbit is the hint that whatever new MMO Turbine is working on will be F2P. That puts a dent in the theory that it will be a console title. I just don't think the industry is ready for a F2P console MMO.
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Tempes Magus said on 3:23PM 7-30-2010
LMAO
Console games have always been F2P before they had mmos so it is actually more shocking that any would have a subscription.
Consoles are the perfect market for F2P.
I, for one, am looking forward to more F2P titles, but with a model closer to that of Guild Wars. DDO, LOTRO and especially EQ2 have too many "required" purchases which Guild Wars does not have.
I would rather pay for the boxes and expansions and have fewer artificially gated parts of the game.
They would get more money too.
Graill said on 11:39PM 7-30-2010
@Tempes Magus
Consoles have NOT always been F2P before MMO's. Investigate before posting something like this.
Consoles are the most itemized gaming platform around, in terms of time, players, access, access time and simply a huge monetization list that would span a couple pages, you can then throw recent MMO's on top of that.
consoles have always had to pay for online access since their internet access began, through accounts (every single account costs) and pay by time for shooters/non mmo games., there are quite a few recent articles on the subject and what the console makers did/are going to do, console folks do not like it.
Lateris said on 11:58AM 7-30-2010
I have a new name for F2P. It is called F2FU which stands for Free To Farm You. :)
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Sarr said on 4:07PM 7-30-2010
Well, I spend much less in DDO than I spent in WoW. Honestly. And have much more fun.
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Lateris said on 4:23PM 7-30-2010
Sorry - I am kidding and should not be so bratty with my post. That is good to hear.
Sarr said on 8:11PM 7-30-2010
No problem Lateris, I just wanted to tell the truth for people considering DDO : ).
JoeH42 said on 4:49PM 7-30-2010
What made me really appreciate DDO's system was that if I just paid $15 for a month's subscription not only did I get full access to everything for a month but I also got a bunch of Turbine points. Now that I haven't been playing the game as much I've let my subscription lapse and can use those Turbine points to pay for any adventure packs or things like that that I want to. So I think getting a reasonable amount of points for being VIP each month was a real deciding factor, at least for me.
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Liltawen said on 7:52PM 7-30-2010
This is interesting. If you subscribe for $15 you get access to everything; then if you let your subscription lapse and go back to F2P do you still have access to everything or do you have to re-buy it all in the store?
Sarr said on 8:09PM 7-30-2010
@Liltawen
Let's start with this: 1/3 of DDO's quests is free.
You have to buy Adventure Packs, but you can afford it - VIP subscription gives you 500 TP, which is average price for good Adventure Pack (usually 4+ long quests, explorable area, sometimes a raid). But let's not compare typical MMO quests with DDO's - here they're all whole stories, have own terrains and are much longer.
Plus, there are frequent promotions of Adv. Packs and VIP subscription too. You can get 1000TP for a month of VIP sometimes, which is double the normal. 5K of TP and you have most of the game's Adventure Packs, for every server and every character - forever. So you don't need to be VIP anymore to play them.
Graill said on 11:45PM 7-30-2010
It is good to see the real business world state in very even tones nothing is free and pose the questions to the gamemakers as to why they use the F2P moniker. What did the game manufacturers hope to acomplish? Common sense ruled the replies to that article. I will wait for the rebuttal.
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David said on 12:17AM 8-14-2010
I played WOW for several months when I was laid off a while back. When I went back to work I simply couldn't play the game as much as I would have liked. So paying $15. a month while not unreasonable wasn't worth it to me. I feel like if you don't play everyday your wasting your money. Along comes DDO and I love it. Its free and I can play when I have the time. Suddenly the game is working around my schedule instead of the other way around. I only pay for what I want and having to do with out certain items has actually made me a better player and given me a more rewarding experience. so to summarize:
1. f2p good because you don't pay when you don't play
2. you build skill when you work with less.
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