Never spent a cent on your F2P game? Congratulations, you're a hare!

I've noticed that whenever an F2P game is criticised as having somewhat evil monetisation strategies, someone will invariably pop up and say, 'I've never spent any money on this game, and I am so leet! You can totally play for free!'

...or at least, for very little!

*Nugget peers at her 2 Forsaken World accounts, with a grand total of US$301 spent in the course of more than 3 years.*

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeees.... BUT!

That doesn't make you (or me!) a good little underdog, sticking it to The Man... or whatever the mentality seems to be in most F2P communities I've been a part of.

What that makes us is rabbits.

Or more accurately, mechanical hares.

Modern greyhound racing has its origins in coursing.[1] The first recorded attempt at racing greyhounds on a straight track was made beside the Welsh Harp reservoir, Hendon in 1876, but this experiment did not develop. The industry emerged in its recognizable modern form, featuring circular or oval tracks, with the invention of the mechanical or artificial hare in 1912 by Owen Patrick Smith.

- Wikipedia, the source of all truth! >.>

And the truth is, we're not only not sticking it to The Man, we're actively working FOR him. And we're well worth the 'pay' of our status, and our loot.

Because we run along in front of all the other, newer players who go... wait... if I just work a little bit more, I too can be...!

But it's a rigged game, because a lot of the time, these newer players fail to see the rest of the underlying structure that made us rabbits what we are.

We got in early. We're old players. Who've been playing a long time. We were able to cash in on booms in the economy which are no longer present in a mature game. So even though we didn't spend anything (or spent barely anything)... if you want to match a rabbit today, as a new player... Pay up.

Or sit there wondering why 'these other guys could farm it but I can't'. Then give up. Or pay up. XD

For example, if a newbie wanted to match my toons in Forsaken World today, they wouldn't be able to 'just farm' it all. I'd say at a guesstimate, the combination of both my accounts, if a newbie started playing this week and wanted to be at my power level within that week... conservatively, they'd have to drop about US$4,000 on the game.

That's crazy. But you know, the existence of the rabbits, bounding ahead... if they can run that fast and never get tired... surely I should be able to, too? *chase* *puff* *pant*  *chase* *puff* *pant*

...Ugh! Chasing is hard! I'll pay just a little bit to make things just a little easier.

Congratulations! The F2P game has another new customer, and another potential whale. ;)

Suggest an MMO to a nugget! Preferably subscription-based, not F2P/P2W.

A nugget is currently poking around for a new MMO, due to certain major economic changes PWE made to Forsaken World.

There's a whole lot of complexity around it, but what it boils down to for me, is that I can no longer live off my in-game investments while spending real money on luxuries. Not just that, but newer toons without in-game investments now have real trouble (for the first time since the game was launched) building up enough capital to acquire investments. One of the reasons FW has lasted so long for me is I loved that every dollar I spent on FW felt like a 'treat yourself' vs a 'pay us for basic amenities'. That's gone now.

And soooooo... I'm in the market for a new MMO. Preferably subscription-based, because I don't want to think about money in-game, for a while. I do not believe that F2P games are in any way inferior to, or of a lower quality than subscription-based ones. However, in order to play an F2P game sanely, without turning into a whale, you need to know how much every single thing you do is worth in RL cash. That kinda kills some of the happy escapism, and adds a bit of a DoT effect to the nugget's limited Willpower bar. And for someone with horrible altitis, F2P games change alts from happy new bundles of exploration to costly happy new bundles of exploration.

So for now, I would really prefer a subscription-based MMO, so I don't have to think about stuff like that for a while.

Unfortunately, when I went looking for a subscription MMO, and not a F2P one, I found, to my horror, that the thing I feared 2 years ago has now come to pass.

Everyone has gone F2P, with the exception of WoW. I won't go back to WoW, because I don't like the person I turn into when I play WoW. In a WoW context, I turn into this extremely mercenary creature, who really only ranks and assesses people by how useful they are to her. WoW is the only MMO I've played where I haven't made a single friend, or met someone who could have (given more time) become a friend. So - WoW is out.

I don't want EVE, cause space doesn't do it for me, and neither does open-world PvP. The latter, though, I'm willing to accept if the premise is attractive enough. ATitD was great when I tried it, but really not for me. Sad fact - I'd rather kill than build things. ;)

Which leaves me, really, with no subscription-based MMOs at all. HALP!

MMOs nugget has tried
There are a few missing from the Pinterest board, as I've been too sluggy to add them.

  • Guild Wars 2
    Box purchase and CS based on F2P principles. Broke my heart, don't bother.
  • Guild Wars
    Box purchase. Ah, ArenaNet, I used to love you so much, believe in you even more.
  • Furcadia
    Free. I wish furries were my thing.
  • Runes of Magic
    F2P. Boring.
  • Glitch
    Dead from not doing F2P right. I would have paid a subs to keep it alive if they had asked. I'm sure many other Glitches would have, as well. They never asked.
  • Jade Dynasty
    Rapacious F2P. Wuxia styled, hilarious storylines, but the sheer grind and willpower cost to NOT spend got to me in the end. Also, I still resent them for that $20 mount I had to buy to access my midlevel content...
  • Heroes of Three Kingdoms
    Dead F2P. Closed by PWE after testing some concepts that made their fully-fledged way into Forsaken World.
  • Rift
    F2P, formerly subs. I really wanted to like this game. Trion loves its community the way ArenaNet used to. But the game is simply lacking on every level, from art, to sound, to combat. Does do dynamic events really, really well though.
  • City of Heroes
    Killed by NCsoft, formerly subs. Wouldn't really have interested me anyway. I don't care if it had one of the most advanced character creation screens for its day, if every option is ugly.
  • Pirates of the Burning Sea
    F2P. Fascinating... but F2P, which defeats the point of this whole post!
  • Forsaken World
    F2P. The reason for this post in the first place.
  • Chronicles of Spellborn
    Dead, formerly F2P, then ?free?. Killed itself just as I was getting to know it.
  • Lineage II
    F2P, formerly subs. Beautiful indoors, beautiful character models, hideous outdoors. The last was a deal breaker for me.
  • Aion
    F2P, formerly subs. Took hours to download and install, only to find that my bombshell vixen of a toon walked like a chicken. Deleted in 5ish minutes.
  • Dungeons & Dragons Online
    Pay-for-content-unlocks. Fugly. Really smooth, but so ugly I uninstalled 10 minutes after installing.
  • Atlantica Online
    F2P. Can wield a party, much like GW. Horribly ugly, but interesting. But it's F2P!
  • Allods
    F2P. Tried recently to get back into Allods. Unfortunately, GPotato has implemented a ridiculously stupid authentication system, and after the Nth time of being told my password was incorrect, even though I'd just sent a password reset, AND reset it, AND was able to log into the Gpotato site itself, I gave up. All Gpotato games fall under this group now.
  • A Tale in the Desert
    Subs (I think). Great game, if you like building more than killing. I like killing more than building.
  • World of Warcraft
    Subscription with a growing cash shop. I don't like the person WoW turns me into, and I don't like their systems.
  • Tera Online
    F2P, formerly subs. Best combat I've ever seen. Beautiful art, great sound. So why it's not really 'sticky' for me, I don't know.
  • Neverwinter
    F2P. Feels like a cheap rip-off of Tera. As far as I can see, everything Neverwinter does, Tera does better.
  • Age of Wushu
    Paid 'VIP' status. Extremely promising, love the artwork, love the combat. Unfortunately, it's trying for an EVE-style economy, and from what I could see before I stopped logging in - it isn't working. At all.
  • Lord of the Rings Online
    Pay-for-content-unlocks (I think). Couldn't install on 2 computers now. Can't be bothered to troubleshoot.


F2P Pricing Models & Preying on Decision Fatigue - NYT via NorthTemple

“Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain.”
via northtemple.com

Yes, yes, not all F2P models are evil.

But of those that are (even the amazingly beautiful luscious evil that is PWE's Forsaken World), I suspect a lot of them depend on decision fatigue pushing people to buy impulsively without calculating the costs, whether in-game or in actual cash.

It would also explain why I simply can't understand some of the Auction House prices in Forsaken World - where I've seen people selling stuff for half of what it's worth in actual currency, if you were to convert actual to FW's currency.

...people are tired, impulsive, don't want to do the math (gated through 4 currencies), and they want money NAO. So they buy a high-priced item and undersell it, because they honestly don't know it's worth / are too tired to think through its conversion.

I have personally worked out these numbers for some in-game acquaintances when telling them to buy/sell higher/lower, and they simply don't want to listen. That's too much work! Games should be fun! Let me spend my moneh how I want! Fairynuff.

I don't mean to imply I'm immune to this too. In FW, converting currencies (through all 4 gates) has become second nature for me. But in the other PWE games I've played, decision fatigue from constantly WATCHING myself (can't do this can't do that) contributed hugely to my dropping the titles.

...PWE are like the evil marketing gods the evilmarketingbits of nugget want to grow up to be.

And I Thought Spending US$4,000 on a Virtual Pet Was Bad...

I Jaden (that 1 gold piece in the image) is 1 USD. Yup.

500USD mounts.

And that 999USD item? It's one-use. For ONE piece of gear. Ayup!

...worship PWE's rapacity!

The best part being - the lotteries (0.50USD each) associated with each of the 500USD mounts.

The legendary Fire Phoenix, once only found in the depths of the Bonus Shop, can now be yours through the use of the Phoenix Fruit pack!

So no matter what players do (short of not buying at all), PWE rakes in the cash. Absolutely brilliant.

Allods? *point* *laff* NOOBZ!

This is how it's done. *shudder*

P.S. Perfect World Entertainment's 2010 First Quarter results here. They've really got something going.