EA announced earlier today that SWTOR is going free-to-play! It’s caused a lot of hand-wringing in the MMO community, with people instantly declaring this the death knell of the subscription MMO. Frankly, it’s irritating me.
Why has it seemingly been decided that yes, the payment model is the problem with modern MMOs? I don’t get it. We seem to be ignoring the other obvious options for modern MMO design flaws:
- Stop expecting every MMO to be a 15 million player behemoth. WoW was a fluke. Don’t give your development a budget that requires even 5 million subscribers to be a success.
- Stop orienting new MMOs to the most casual of casual players, because they are fickle and will just migrate to the next big thing. That’s fine with a box game, but if you want a stable, faithful community then it’s time to again acknowledge stable, faithful players.
- Stop just trying to make a “better WoW”. Even Guild Wars 2 just seems to have sat down and said “how can we improve on WoW?”. Like, forget WoW! Figure out what you think would be legitimately fun in an MMO, and make that.
If someone made a, say, space sandbox with a goal of having 150,000 subscribers and an active community, my money says it would be successful. The payment model is not the flaw in modern MMOs, but big distributors sure would like us to think it is.
PS: Suddenly yesterday’s podcast on the free-to-play genre seems pretty prescient!
Herding Cats is the blog of Liore, known in the real world as Jessica Cook. She writes mostly about MMOs and RPGs, and believes in 
The payment model does inform and influence the design, though. That’s true of any business model. Subs beget grind and addiction, microtransactions beget annoyance/convenience, and box purchases beget limited continued support. As a consumer, you have to pick your poison, as a dev, you have to make a great game and hope the money guys don’t mess it up.
Still, with any MMO, you’re right, more modest expectations would be a good idea. There just isn’t room in the market for giant, expensive gambles on success. Not any more.
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Hmm, good point about payment model affecting design!
It was NOT the $15 per month that made me quit SWTOR. It was not being able to play the character that I had made except to do the same daily quests over and over again. If they were to implement the mentoring/sidekicking options to let me enjoy ALL of the created content and not just a couple of planets I’d still give them my money monthly. But, making it free-to-play without giving access to playable content sure won’t bring me back.
Right, I totally agree. The reasons I quit SWTOR had nothing to do with the payment model, and going F2P does not affect my decision to play it or not in the slightest.
I don’t think any of us truly gives a toss about the payment model as long as we feel excited about a title and feel that we get to play it at good value. I certainly don’t care and it’s not the issue I have with some of the games (even if payment model influences some design aspects).
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