Is "free" a good or a bad thing?

Even in some of the MMORPGs without item mall, the most powerful players are tend to be spending money purchasing in game currency from gold farmers. It is the life of MMORPGs today. The grinding nature caused the hardship for obtaining high end gears, and many lazy players would rather take the shortcut to get there instead of work their butts off through grinding. Sure many of the players who paid for items/gold are not very skillful but the skillful part can be changed through more PvP... grinding doesn't really improve the PvP skills, but rather PvE skills which uses entirely different tactics in most games.

 

A lot of F2P games like Team Fortress 2, Tera Online, Path Of Exile, League of Legends, Loadout etc. are incredibly fair in terms of microtransactions. Almost everything is either cosmetical or gives you a slight boost, but never gives a direct advantage to the paying player. I'd say if it's done right then it is incredibly good, letting people play it with no consequences and pay for it if they get invested and want to show their love for the game.

 

The only good and totally free MMOs out there, in my opinion, are those that implement the business model of Guild Wars. You spend money once, and the game is yours forever. No hidden limitations, no need to pay a dime on anything and all the updates and future content is free also. Star Trek Online also has a nice system, in that you can earn in game currency, which you can then transform into real money and buy from the microtransaction shop. No need to spend a dime on that game either. There are others too but most of what is seen as F2P nowadays does not work at all. Just take a look at Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

It used to be that you would get what you paid for. If it was free, it was low quality. This is not the case anymore. Although I subscribed to games in the past, I never liked having to continually pay to keep up a subscription especially at times when I rarely played (that interval of time between completing the content and the next expansion). I like the model where my account is free, but I can pay for extended content, more character slots, other classes etc. One thing about the model I don't like is the ability for some players to pay to bypass building their characters (but that is just a personal pet peeve).

 

Usually free to play MMO's are pay to win but there are some good free ones. For example RIFT or Tera Online. The rest of them are all about 'Buy this item if you want to reach level 10 faster.' or 'Get these gems for only 9.99 if you want to beat your friends in PvP.' That shouldn't be the spirit of an MMO. You should work hard for your items and your gear in general.

 

I think free is a good thing. While many times the games are riddled with in app purchases and very shady marketing and ads, they can be fun with good communities.

 

I only play free to play mmorpgs I do not believe in spending money on a game. I think pay to play games are bad, I believe they encourage people to spend money unnecessarily. I wish that free mmorpgs would not require you to purchase any items, I guess that is my only complaint, I hate getting a quest that requires to purchase something with real money. I am not going to spend real money on a game.

 

Someone put this microtransaction thing very well. He said "imagine if money could make Mario jump higher."
To this day I have not bought a single item from an item shop, and I never will. If the game is free it's free, if I have to pay for the game (one time fee!) and I judge it to be worth the money then I buy it.

But never will I do this microtransaction or subscription fee stuff. It shouldn't be in games.

 

It depends. Some games can do the free to play thing very well. For example, I am a huge fan of Path of Exile. They are free to play, and supported by donations and microtransactions. The catch is that NONE of the microtranactions are anything more than cosmetic improvements to your character. There's no "pay to win" element, so therefore the game is still completely free. It's a very effective model.

 

Honestly I think that it is a case that you can't say for certain that a free game is not as good as a pay to play game it is completely objective to the person/s in question.

 

After my experience, there's no real free MMORPG. Every "free" game has got micro transactions, otherwise it wouldn't work. But, other than that, I wouldn't say that all are low quality. Examples: Metin2, League of Legends (okay, it's actually a MOBA, but you get the point)

 

I think it has a lot to what kind of player you are if your like me and just want to play a game and not have to pay for it monthly and don't care about the cash shop then F2P is the best way to go, but if you plan on spending money then your better off paying a monthly fee for something better.

 

Exactly, I am of the opinion that those pay to play games are really only there for people with a lot of time on their hands and are willing to put the time in for it, however I am not capable of that so personally I enjoy playing the free to play games more than anything else.

 

This is true. The so called free 2 play model actually makes more money than subscription-based and purchase-installer business model due to the presence of premium items available in cash shops. Some people like to horde stuff especially when there is a sale or if a limited edition cash shop item has been released.

But let's also take into account that game publishers are not charitable institutions....these are business establishments. They pay salaries to their employees who have their own personal needs just like we do. They are humans too, after all. Just how will a business operate without resources to keep it going? (-_-)

 

That is a very fair point, I have actually found that people playing the free to play games do on average tend to spend more in game than those who play those pay to play games, for instance my brother plays eve online and warframe, he has spent more money playing warframe than he has playing eve, due to the fact he renews his eve subscription by using the in-game currency "Isk" and ends up paying for the new blueprints and such with real money for warframe.

 

I feel like free MMORPG's are a bad thing. The security will definitely be lower because they are not pulling in all kinds of money to pay for it, Also the customer support tends to be terrible for free games.

 

I agree on the standpoint of the customer service being quite poor in some free to play MMO's, however generally speaking whilst the game may be free to play the amount of micro-transactions that people make on these games could quite easily outweigh that of a subscription based MMO.

 

I prefer P2P over F2P. Reason being, games like WoW has consistent weekly patches. There is also a well maintained support system and extensive in-game moderation process. Blizzard works like a proper company with every department of the company on full. Where as games like Guild Wars 2 have a fantastic initial investment, but little consistent updates. That's how they are able to keep their games F2P after you buy the game.

I don't like free games much. I play one that is micro-transaction based, but support is normally unresponsive. When I pay the $15/month for WoW, I am getting more than just the subscription to the game. I'm getting a full service.

 

Free is always good! The reason why game developers make Free to play games is because they sell items within those games for cash. I myself actually never buy these items.

 

F2P almost always comes with a catch of needing to "Pay to win" in order to get the best stuff. Either that, or spend an insane amount of time farming all the items. 2 games that come to mind are LoL and Hearthstone. I can only imagine how long it would take to farm all the champions/skins and everything. Hearthstone is the same way with basically only getting to open 1 pack every few days with completing the quests and the marginal gold you get from winning 3 games in play mode.