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[Leyic]

I want to make sure I'm understanding your argument. You're saying that a publisher will stick with a subscription model as long as they have enough revenue to pay their costs? And that only once there are too few subscribers to maintain sufficient revenue will the publisher switch to a F2P model to continue operating the game? Thereby implying the F2P model generates more revenue?

[andrea]

it sounds more like a desperate try to attract new players, which can indeed generate more money.

if it costed less, I would try it. this game looks interesting, from what I heard of it.

[forsaken1111]

If it helps any, I was able to create and log in with a character without paying a cent. I don't even know what the perks of becoming a paid account are, I've just been playing through the new citizen tasks.

[Sirian]

If it's still the same, free accounts have a limited but fair amount of time, and are locked out of some skills. I can't remember exactly though.

I love atitd but i just don't want to invest the time required to play it seriously. And i know that if i played it again, i would stop after a few months, burned out by the grind.

[andrea]

oh, there are free accaunts? nice. last time I looked, I couldn't find any information about it. I might try.

[Leyic]

The trial was only good for 24 hours of play time during T2.

[forsaken1111]

The trial was only good for 24 hours of play time during T2.

24 hours played time or 24 hours realtime from the moment you log in first?

[tootboot]

I want to make sure I'm understanding your argument. You're saying that a publisher will stick with a subscription model as long as they have enough revenue to pay their costs? And that only once there are too few subscribers to maintain sufficient revenue will the publisher switch to a F2P model to continue operating the game? Thereby implying the F2P model generates more revenue?

A F2P MMO generates more revenue than a failing P2P MMO is what I'm saying.  You get a burst of new players that keep subscribers from quitting, and at least some potential revenue from people who don't want to subscribe, instead of 0.  I really can't think of a case where an MMO went F2P when there were still very large numbers of people playing.  In the instance of TOR, a few months before the F2P I saw a lot of people complaining their servers were ghost towns.

The next step after that is closing down the servers, if even F2P becomes unsustainable.

WoW and EVE have always had large numbers of people willing to pay the sub fee so they've never had to go F2P.

[forsaken1111]

Although WoW has gone F2P up until level 20, which has helped them a great deal.

[Valid_Dark]

The trial was only good for 24 hours of play time during T2.

24 hours played time or 24 hours realtime from the moment you log in first?

I played in T4, and it was play time, but I don't think it was 24 hours.

[Leyic]

24 hours played time or 24 hours realtime from the moment you log in first?

Play time. I stretched my trial over a few weeks. There was even a timer somewhere letting me know how long I had left, probably on the same menu where you buy subscription time.

A F2P MMO generates more revenue than a failing P2P MMO is what I'm saying.  You get a burst of new players that keep subscribers from quitting, and at least some potential revenue from people who don't want to subscribe, instead of 0.  I really can't think of a case where an MMO went F2P when there were still very large numbers of people playing.  In the instance of TOR, a few months before the F2P I saw a lot of people complaining their servers were ghost towns.

The next step after that is closing down the servers, if even F2P becomes unsustainable.

WoW and EVE have always had large numbers of people willing to pay the sub fee so they've never had to go F2P.

The publisher is going to switch revenue models as soon as they think a different one can generate more than their current one. The switch to F2P has more to do with the demographics of the players gained and retained: If your current subscribers are unlikely to spend much on average, and you don't anticipate drawing a lot of new players with disposable income, you don't switch unless you're desperate. Otherwise, switching can make sense after the initial population rush dies down, even if the service is maintainable on subscriptions alone. In any case, the length of time one retains a subscription model isn't a great measure of success: Everquest went for a long time before switching with little sign of it failing. The switch likely had more to do with the research and data generated by all the previous AAA games that had switched, like LotRO, followed by Sony realizing how much more money they could pull in. Asheron's Call has been around about as long as Everquest, but has never switched off a subscription model. Would you say AC is more successful than EQ?

Also, there isn't a good way ATITD could go F2P without becoming P2W, since most of the challenges have to do with how much material wealth and/or time one has.

[tootboot]

In any case, the length of time one retains a subscription model isn't a great measure of success: Everquest went for a long time before switching with little sign of it failing. The switch likely had more to do with the research and data generated by all the previous AAA games that had switched, like LotRO, followed by Sony realizing how much more money they could pull in. Asheron's Call has been around about as long as Everquest, but has never switched off a subscription model. Would you say AC is more successful than EQ?

I don't really know what's going with either of those games since the last time I paid attention to them was the year 2000. 

I will say that they're probably a bit of a special case since they only use a trickle of data per player, and the server hardware has probably long since been virtualized.  It's possible the cost of keeping the servers up is so low that they remained profitable all these years with only a few thousand subs.