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The era of the subscription-based online game has well and truly ended in 2012. It had a good run, really. Fifteen years is quite a long time for anything to stay static in the land of gaming.
Ultima Online introduced the idea back in 1997, when those of us who had internet access were mostly still on dial-up and got booted off of AOL whenever anyone called the house. In 1999, EverQuest came along, drawing in fans and addicts and making the idea popular. It would take another five years before World of Warcraft, launched in 2004, would take the MMORPG mainstream. When Mr. T is hawking your online game in TV commercials that even your grandparents think are kind of funny, you've hit the jackpot of cultural relevance.
World of Warcraft remains the undisputed king of the "traditional" monthly subscription MMOG, yet even its dominance is waning. Blizzard's most recently quarterly numbers put the subscriber base around the nine million mark, a significant decline from the plateau of 10-12 million they held steady at for several years.
Other games in the Western, big-budget MMO space have long since gone free-to-play. All of Sony Online Entertainment's titles, including EverQuest and its successor, EverQuest II, are now without a subscription fee. City of Heroes and Lord of the Rings Online haven't required a monthly charge in several years. DC Universe Online saw a 700% jump in revenue when it became free. And years before the others converted to free games, Guild Wars had already formed a devoted fan base without ever requiring a monthly fee.
Then of course there are the browser-based games: while generally still less well-regarded among American audiences, they boast participant figures that even World of Warcraft in its heyday could barely dream of. RuneScape, in its decade online, has gone well past the 200 million player mark.
So why, then, does the specter of a decade long gone still hover over otherwise-good games and prevent them from being successful?
Star Wars: The Old Republic, launched by BioWare at the end of last year, and The Secret World, brought online by Funcom this summer, both looked to be promising games. The former uses the setting from Knights of the Old Republic, which to this day is still lauded by its many fans. BioWare's story-driven, dialogue-driven style of play, as made popular in KOTOR as well as in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, was an immediate draw, and SW:TOR sold well over a million copies right out of the gate.
Unfortunately, the subscribers didn't stay. By the beginning of this summer, there were fewer than a million remaining, and BioWare Austin had been hit hard by waves of layoffs. In July, EA gave the impression of caving in, and announced that the game would go free to play this November.
The Secret World, meanwhile, hoped to be an entirely different sort of game. It dispensed entirely with common tropes like leveling or set classes, and instead hoped for a more free-form experience set in a modern-day Earth. Despite provocative storytelling and regular content updates, though, Funcom has not been able to attract the required subscribers to their venture. This week, they laid off half their staff.
Every positive post or tweet about either of those games has generally been met with a wall of, "It looks interesting, but I'll wait until it's free to play."
Players, and potential players, aren't stupid. As every previous big-budget MMORPG, with the exception of World of Warcraft, has inevitably gone to a free-to-play model, they will wait on the sidelines until their new game of choice follows suit. The audience has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: unwilling to pick up a game until it has gone free-to-play, a game must then go free-to-play to gain those players. MMORPGs are also now faced with the simple fact that competition has driven down prices. As players can dabble in so many without paying a flat fee, there are other places to go.
There will not be another license to print money like World of Warcraft was. The audience is done paying up-front for the box and continuing to pay a third as much again each month thereafter for continued access. Persistent multiplayer environments are not the novelty they once were, and the subscription model now feels like the antiquated relic of a time gone by. The Secret World is certain eventually to follow in the footsteps of SW:TOR and nearly every other MMORPG before it, and go free-to-play if it wishes its audience to grow.
The games themselves are getting better, and more varied, than ever. They aren't all traditional fantasy RPGs anymore; some are shootersrs, and others are exploring all kinds of environments and play. But the one thing that almost all the new online games have in common is that they will not require a monthly fee.
The subscription model is dead. Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World
* Except for that hat. And that horse. And that house...
Republished with permission. Kate Cox is a contributing editor at Kotaku.
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User Comments: 44
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Maybe one in 10,000 decides he likes being abused and subscribes. (Of course, EVE would still have long since shut down if it had an EA or other big publisher breathing down its neck - 150K subscribers is pathetic).
You seem to really dislike EVE for some reason.
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OMG Please go check your history...Meridian 59 by 3DO was the first suprscription based 3D MMO..UO Came along shortly after....BTW Hiya Moongazer and all my other old friends on server 105 that I've forgotten since it has been way to long and way to many crappy mmo's out there free or not.. I had high hopes for SWTOR....what can I say another fail atleast I didn't spend years in a game to have them " FILL IN THE BLANK"...I don't know if 3DO was still owned by EA at the time but if it was then you would have to credit EA for being part of the first real MMO I guess I could see the author not wanting to give them any props lol Have a good day all...
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Eww then again EA owned UO to Gawd just can't get away from them lol
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Without replying the 3rd comment nailed it on the head hands down. UO was the first mmo I played, and I played beta in like 1995 or 96(still have original beta cd lol) back then that was without a doubt the best experiece I have had from any MMO for a long time.I still remember the terror when a moongate opened up in a dungeon(Say Covetous) and like 10 ppl came through and just smacked and looted you dry.It was prtetty crazy to the point u could at one stage camp outside somones house and kill them for thier key and loot their house until they fixed it and made keys soulbound. Rogues/thieves were actually just tha, theyt stole from you and annoyed the hell out off you and they wernt just some mock up dps garbage that alot of mmos now churn out. UO you kill shit, kill ppl, steal from people, cause havoc and if u wernt into that you could kill other stuff craft and stuff like that....
Basically I have played WoW, Vanguard, DDO, AOC,Darkfall, GW, Rift, Secret World and GW2 and I still think back to the good timesand horrific times in UO that game nailed it.
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I guess it depends on the game and how they do it. I play Team Fortress 2 and have enjoyed it and I can choose to pay for some items at a reasonable cost or not and earn them through playing time. In either case, it's a fun game with no major imbalances. I tried Lord of Ultima and found that the path to winning really required you to pay with no way around it. They desgined LoU so initially you could play for free however once you figure out the path to becoming LoU you soon realize that you can't do it without paying since the imbalances are extreme for paying vs free players.
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The paid MMO method is dead? Are you one of those people who get on the WoW General Forums and say that X game is going to kill WoW every time a new X game is released? What an incompetent statement to make that paid MMOs are dead. Free to play games are not free. It's a diversionary marketing tactic, for which you (the author of this article) have apparently fallen.
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Also a Fan Base helps these subscription games. If the players didnt fork over the cash, they wouldnt have a game. I point EVERYONE to the article on AOL. They stopped offering internet access but still rake in a ton of cash from ppl who still havent cancelled their AOL internet access service. Kinda the same thing here. There are a lot of players out there who continue to pay for a game even if they are not playing it. Sometimes its forgetfulness, sometimes its just they want the option to play it anytime without having to reactivate their account. Either way, there will always be a revenue stream to the subscription games.
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Zilpha said:
Also a Fan Base helps these subscription games. If the players didnt fork over the cash, they wouldnt have a game. I point EVERYONE to the article on AOL. They stopped offering internet access but still rake in a ton of cash from ppl who still havent cancelled their AOL internet access service. quote]I think this more a lack of awareness regarding how the internet works than anything. Yes it brings them profits, but I doubt it's because anyone is really so loyal to AOL that they can't bear to lose their subscription.
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I doubt that that's actually the case.
I also hope that it's not. It would be the end of one of my most cherished pastimes.
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I've tried a few F2P games, but never liked any enough to actually stay and play. EVE may have a small player base, but it's the best internet spaceship game in the business, and I don't mind paying my $15.00 a month for access to their servers and all of their content.
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spydercanopus said:
Pay to play: Dead
Pay to win: Dying
Pay once: Winning
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Pay to play: DeadAs much as I would like to agree with you, paying once does not cover the cost of keeping servers on-line. However if they want my help they will have to give more virtual items for my money.
Pay to win: Dying
Pay once: Winning
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Pay to play: DeadAs much as I would like to agree with you, paying once does not cover the cost of keeping servers on-line. However if they want my help they will have to give more virtual items for my money.
Pay to win: Dying
Pay once: Winning
It completely depends on what sort of stuff they are selling. If it is detrimental to your own gameplay that sucks. If it is mostly cosmetic and level shortcuts then I say "so what?"
If people are so worried that they can't get anywhere with F2P than spend the $15 micro transaction a month and be a winna
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If it is detrimental to your own gameplay that sucks. If it is mostly cosmetic and level shortcuts then I say "so what?"Whether or not the items are detrimental to game play or cosmetic is irrelevant, they are still virtual items and each virtual item shouldn't cost any more than a soda from the nearest super market.
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Whether or not the items are detrimental to game play or cosmetic is irrelevant, they are still virtual items and each virtual item shouldn't cost any more than a soda from the nearest super market.
Well that simply comes down to a agree to disagree scenario. if someone gets a fancy hat or an experience boost by paying for it... well it is no skin off my back.
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I think runescape had a great model back in the day 5 bucks a month for all the extra content was really worth it, In theory u could still play without the subscription but leveling up things would be so slow and horrible. Now there going the way of many microtransaction but so far they have all been cosmetic stuff and nothing to really give a player the upper hand because they paid to win
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DanUK said:
I like the idea of free to play.. have just started playing GW2 which looks so far like an excellent game. Will be hard to get me to go back to a pay monthly game after this to be honest. Have also been playing the Planetside 2 beta and fully intend to be all over that on release.
I wouldnt say that the pay monthly model is dead though - I think SWToR is dying not because you have to pay for it (imo people will pay if its good) but the end game PvP content completely sucked. Me and a load of my Aion buddies (another game that went F2P recently) were all loving the levelling experience of SW and the PvE was brilliant but as soon as we got to end game and saw there wasn't really any good PvP we dropped it. A real shame as that game had a lot of potential.
As far as The Secret World goes ... I tried the beta and I thought it sucked.
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Eve online is quite expensive to play. I have 2 accounts, I pay for one and Plex the other.
In EVE you can buy a "Plex" with in game money. (30 days playtime)
People can buy Plexs using a Credit card, and sell it to other players in game. Players that earn lots of in game cash can buy plex's instead of paying the subscription fee.
Where as other people who maybe don't have much time to play, and just want to have lots of ISK to spend on expensive ships, can get out there credit card and buy some Plexs to sell.
CCP games, eves creator,They must make a fortune! But they do provide great support., and are developing free to play game DUST 514 for the PS3 right now, it ties into Eve online.
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Deagor said:
I find it strange how no one ever mentions EvE Online in these reports its a game that is sub based has been around since 2003 and still is is going strong - 1 or 2 hiccups, and is a game that I quite frankly dont see going F2P indeed it is a game that just plain would not work F2P I think why ppl aren't paying subs for MMO's anymore is because why play WoW when you can play 1 of the hundreds of clones out there for free and when your bored move to the next but EvE is unique and thats why people like me are willing to pay the money for it
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