Ask MMOBomb: Is Free to Play The Way for Gamers?

is there any way to transform F2P cast into a true podcast? i'd like to be able to listen to it while i'm on the go!

F2P is not the way to go for any game. Simply because this turns the publishers into money hungry pigs and don't care about the game or players and will do anything to rake in the money for little effort. Take for instance Nexon and GamersFirst, Nexon provides cash shop items for a average price, some cost too much, but they introduced 2 currencies, Prepaid NX and Credit NX. Credit NX comes by paying with a credit card, and items bought with it are non-tradeable, yet over half the stuff NX sells can only be bought with Prepaid NX. Prepaid NX is gotten by charging with a prepaid card which some of us know is a way for companies to charge tax and skim off the top.

G1 not only provides few updates, but has possibly one of the worst customer service and they also have constant problems. G1 charges extreme amounts of money for permanent cash shop items and they employ cheap tactics to get as much money as possible. They release new items and people buy it, only to have a sale of the same item 2 days later.

Honestly, I'd prefer if a game was B2P with all content available off the bat. I'd pay for new content only. This way we know the company can only make money by providing service and not by being sleazy in selling virtual items for absurd amounts of money.

Well I agree free to play is not free to play but the companies have to earn . Suppose you are a person who hasnt been able to get a job , you make a game . You would not want to give it away free . Every one needs to earn and living . Ya but I hate those games which put restrictions on going further without paying . It varies from game to game . I have mixed feelings for current f2p games lol.

i have a question 4 u
is there any way to communicate with a company that makes f2p games and talk to them cuz i have an idea for a awesome game but i don't know how
and buy the way keep up the good work man i love MMOBOMB

Thanks for another Show.

Drakensang , Suprised you never metioned this as a browser based game for a D3 style game.

As for the relationship question. You know..I have been gaming everyday for a long long long time.
Been in atleast 50 good guilds over this time and i have seen guild members login everyday at the same time as each other, Play 7 day's a week with each other until they both log out, Even though some of these couple's have lived Ocean's apart,You cannot deny that there is some sort of love or felling's that have grown between these people.

With that , I say Yes, If they end up roll playing in thier gaming world, the bond grow's even more.

Do i recommend people looking for love or a relationship here, No.. for the point's Magicman has stated, But it doe's happen alot.


I'd rather Pay a sub than F2p or B2P, GW2 really p'd me off after my account got hacked.. If it was subbed i would have got all my items back and not some lame excuse of we don't have the means of restoring anything missing !

Peace

Inflictious

Magicman,
Whats your opinion on the "First comment?"

Most people in game care what there players look like Im guessing. I do so IMO I think cash shops should be all cosmetic items. Like dyes and cool outfits. They should throw travel luxuries in there too like cool mounts and awesome flying mounts. Maybe make the only way to get a flying mount is by paying. Oh, and character pets would be good in there. Nothing that will effect the gameplay. To me I think kind of scammy for lack of a better word how these F2P cash shops run.

Would like to trade a planetside 2 beta key for a firefall beta key. Send me a pm on here to let me know.

The bottom line is that every game's aim is to make money. So whether the game is free to play, buy to play, or has a monthly fee, sooner or later you're going to end up digging in your wallet and giving the developers your money so I think it's kind of silly to try to avoid it. In reality, when you play a F2P game without buying extra stuff, you only waste more of your time and you get access to less of the game, so it's kind of comparable to a trial version of a game. They just don't call it "trial version" so you'll play the game. Runescape is a perfect example of this - they constantly market themselves as the world's largest F2P MMORPG but once you play the game, you realize you only have access about 20% ( if that ) of the game's content so it's no different than playing WoW's trial ( you get about 10-20% of that game's content as well ).

My problem with the current state of the buy to play model is the fact that more often than not developers hold content back and then release bits and pieces of it as DLC. You(Magicman) gave Skyrim as an example, which right now has 2 pieces of DLC which adds $25($20 for Dawnguard, $5 for Hearthfire) on top of the $60 initial price tag, and there's most likely going to be more released. Borderlands 2 I think is even worse as they're letting people pre-purchase content that has barely if not at all entered the design phase of the development process with their Season Pass. They're charging $30 for supposedly $40 worth of future content when we don't even have a idea of the quality of said content. They've also stated they'll be releasing DLC outside of the Season Pass. So when all is said and done you could be paying well over $100 for a game where they may have only added a few extra dollars of content.

I just picked those two as recent examples as this practice has been going on for a while now and seems to be getting worse and worse. This has pushed a fair number or gamers to wait 1 to 2 years after a game's release to even consider purchasing the game, waiting for that Game of the Year/Ultimate Super Awesome Mega Collection.

You can say this has been going on since expansion packs were put out for games but those expansions usually came out 6 months to a year or more after a game's release and more often than not included enough content to justify the cost, sometimes being a completely new game built off the current game's mechanics.

free to play sux ballz unless its the model that is used by APB relaoded and global agenda in which paying players get no advantage apart from higher exp / drop rate
games like rose online / flyff and domo and any like it with "upgrade protection" in cash shop , are cheap peices of crap with terrible gameplay run by greedy beaches that have no pvp value because unless you spend a fortune on cash shop to upgrade safetly then your just pk victim Xtreme .
and being a victim is never ever fun .
free to play games with upgrade protection need to just die already
for real peices of trash polluting the gaming world with there shabby presence .

Magicman your lens during the video kept focusing and losing focus. try to fix that, it would help. great videos and answers btw

oh, and having a relationship in game with someone you dont even know is just weird and creepy someone even asked that lol Was he thinking that he because married another character or something in game hes now officially in a relationship with that person? lol

If you have cash, go here pls and give this dude money. Watch the vid/
http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/

F2P games are not really free to play. There trials because wants you get to a certain level if you dont pay any money the game will be such a pain in the ass it wont be any fun. With no bag space or bank slots or what they like to do is make it so you cant equip your good armor without paying. Technically you can play most of the games for free but it will be such a pain to do anything its not enjoyable and yes, I have tried pretty much all of them. I cant think of one thats a halfway popular game I have not tried ( Aion is an exception though)

in-game marriage for me has never meant anything. I have been married and had my spouse in my house blah-blah-blah. Maybe its just me, but it is not real.

Nice show as always. :)