Maplestory is probably one of the best MMORPG's of current gen i think. Its just a total relief to know that i dont have to pay a subscription next month and if and when i do choose to put money into the game - i get rewarded for it.

I wouldnt be surprised if Blizzard tried this model out very soon.

Lateralus63

What these people don't seem to get is that not everything in the game is free. If it is, you have ads instead to pay for the server costs.

Although my general experience is that games with a subscription offer more quality and service than those that are generally free.
Then again, WoW is the same grindfest after the levelcap as any free MMO.

Nirual

@MartinSWE: [www.gamasutra.com]

I actually used to like MapleStory quite a bit. It just got boring as hell around level 50 for my ice mage since it was just endless grinding against things that were either super boring to fight or pointless to fight since they weren't weak to ice.

NinjaMarion

Games like Warrock of Cabal in which players who pay money have such a big advantage... it's just unfair. That's the reason why I don't play these kind of games anymore. But two of my friends do play Wr and you just clearly see how people with better sniper and etc have and adv. against other players. Even if it can be comprehended through skill, sometimes it is not enough.^^

Schabrak

People still ask the Linden Lab CEO (soon-to-be Chairman of the Board) how his company makes money when Second Life is free to play, even though the website has economy links showing how much virtual land is being sold.

You'd be amazed how many people are willing to ask easy questions that could have been answered by using the product.

DaveKap

I enjoyed a good portion of Maple Story. But to comment on the free to play model. I've enjoyed a number of free to play games at this point, Cabal, FFF, MS, and of course Kotaku turned me on to a recent one Manga Fighter.

I'm not sure if it takes a certain amount of foreign dedication to pass the bottleneck in these games but I know I've never been able to push myself towards the finish line. Cabal for instance slows a fair bit around level 60, quests worth less exp and less quests as well, and alot more grinding required to level. Then FFF where the bottleneck rests firmly 1 level above the PVP mark when you either get pk'd and accept it or get camped and quit the game altogether.

As for Maple Story... I guess there's only so many ninja stars I can throw before the grind and the music makes me fall asleep right here in my chair. Bright colors and minimal movement on screen and I'm out like a light lol.

Oh and of course, final words, Cash Shop.

Hah.

chungo

The link doesn't work.

MartinSWE

@Schabrak: No you are right the link seems broken.

Witzbold

I think the link is going to nowhere. Or is it just me and this new style...

Schabrak

There are a few cool free to play games out there: Gunz The Duel being my personal fave, and Warrock kicked ass as well. I could see myself dropping a few dollars on items and abilities to say, give a certain flavour to a clan. Imagine all of us using a special magnum we bought? That would be kinda cool and seperate us from your everyday player.

Otacon91

God damn I hate MapleStory. I used to play for a good 2 years until some guy from Taiwan hacked me and Nexon won't gimme my account back. Mother****ers >_>

Kikouken

Maple Story sucks. but i do play me some Ijji games once in a while.

hun_nomin

I played MS too till I got my 360 when GeOW came out now I want to know why I wasted my time on a game I can't really finish.

PogiJet

well time to start playing Maple Story again bye FLyFF 4 now

Ruisu

Its all about Gunbound. That shit was SO cash. Of course, it was a lagfest and hackers galore.

Altima NEO

I'm sticking (pun intended) with Kingdom of Loathing for my "free to play MMORPG." I don't know why that game held more interest for me than any other (e.g. RO, MS, etc.)...

Lyner

Free-to-Play is a terrible system.
What's the point of using your time to get items when other people can just pay to get the items?
It's even worse when we are talking about Maple Story, probably the most grindyfest grind MMORPG to ever be released - top on the fact that it is terrible.
Why do you think there is a Pick Two system for MMOs? Because all the free ones are junk and if you are going to pay for it, why the heck wouldn't you get an actual good game instead?

lolgumshoe

Free-to-Play is a terrible system.

What's the point of using your time to get items when other people can just pay to get the items?

It's even worse when we are talking about Maple Story, probably the most grindyfest grind MMORPG to ever be released - top on the fact that it is terrible.

Why do you think there is a Pick Two system for MMOs? Because all the free ones are junk and if you are going to pay for it, why the heck wouldn't you get an actual good game instead?

lolgumshoe

linky broky

Slashlen

Yeah, I've done the Maple Story thing. It's fun, sorta. I mean, if you don't mind doing the same thing over and over for the entire game. The only thing that'd keep me playing was all my friends and aquaintances that were on.
Kingdom of Loathing was the only free to play MMO that I sincerely enjoyed.

Channing

Sauerbraten FTW!

dslsd64

I don't think anyone posted the actual link yet, did they?

[www.gamasutra.com]

Pikadrew

NPC

@lolgumshoe:
True that, Maple story is absolutely awfull. If you think games like Lineage 2 has a tough grind, don't even think about Maple Story. Grinding is not only important, its virtually the only gameplay element..

Nico8332

I played Maple Story for a good while and made a 'friend' who pretty much had two big level accounts and told me about things in the game that would cost money.

So effin' ridiculous.

toastydoom

SpartanQ77

@Schabrak: I think that is a core part of the draw for some people. Not saying that it is fair or anything. Just that there is a segment of the market that is willing to pay money to have an advantage in-game. Many examples of this in FPS and MMO (and even consoles back in the day with gameshark, it doesn't have to be an advantage against other people).

In free to play games, I feel that the money you are paying to buy stuff in-game isn't just for having the item in and by itself. Part of the item's value is that other people don't have it. (I hope that made sense)

tnx3

@Ruisu: a friend tried to get me to play FlyFF and i only could stand it for a month or so. But for some odd reason when i'm playing a pay MMO i can't sit down and play a Free one for too long. Tried going back to Archlord, Dungeon Runners, Hellgate, etc oh well once I quit WoW again maybe I can handle em

Bleentastic sees bandwagon and jumps

Let's not forget the best free MMORPG ever:

[www.progressquest.com]

mjemirzian

I haven't seen much games that have honestly done it right. At this moment in time, I haven't seen one that can sustain itself, be prominent and widely regarded across the board as a solid title overall.

The problem is, game developers and publishers are to afraid to flood resources into something they are scared about.. Asides from the money, there is also a creative aspect that may be comprimised (how will the game survive? By selling in game items, gold, or publish advertising.. And in return, how does this hurt gameplay/mechanics).

I personally find Guild Wars to be a close solution. With part 2 going into persistent worlds, it should be interesting as to how it compares and holds up to the heavyweights with subscription systems in place (regarding MMO's).

Of course, I know Guild Wars isn't the best of examples since you do pay for a subscription.. But Nexon games aren't exactly the cream of the crop either. Yes, they do have a profitable business model, but as we can tell, there is a very defined landscape in what you can do with the graphics, story, gameplay that is too limited right now.

The system needs to evolve, and I believe that it will take a large publisher to plunge funds into trying something grand with marketing power to test it out.

This isn't to knocn the success the Nexon has had with Maple Story.. As it's undeniably huge, but just a realistic look at the limitations of the system right now, both gameplay wise, through mass appeal (breaking the mold to truly hit the critical mass), and even just from a production value standpoint.

Another good example of a free game: Gunbound, Albatross 18/Pangya Golf (Super Swing Golf on the Wii).

mr_dimsum

A common misconception about MMOs is that they are a level playing field. This is completely false. Whoever has more time to play will always get ahead. The f2p business model embraces this fact rather than trying to deny it. You can try to believe the illusion but that doesn't stop the sites that sell gold and items for subscription games.

It is easy to criticize this system and demand that it evolve without any real insight in how the business model works. In some ways, it is far more difficult to run an f2p game than a traditional subscription based game. If nobody likes the game enough to spend money on it, the f2p game would quickly die.

Velops

No

Malvolio the Magician

I've played a handful of "free-to-play" MMOs (and why not, they're FREE), but thus far every single one I've played falls into the same problem...
the "cash store" mechanic sucks ass.
I'm not saying it's a horrible idea in premise. I'm not saying it's not fair, or unbalances the game, etc.

I'm saying it's like anything else that's advertised as "FREE!", too good to be true. In all the games I've played, yes, you can advance your character, get new gear and items, and have a good old time playing the game. But most of the really cool stuff can ONLY be purchased with real money. There's no way to get that item through playing the game, and it can't be purchased with in-game currency. And if that wasn't enough, most of the time the items "expire" after 30 days or so, like digital milk.

Even worse, though, it the fact that in most of these game "premium items" aren't separated from the regular chaff, so you'll browse through an inventory for 5 minutes, find something you like, only to realize it'll cost you 2 bucks a month to have that item.

Most of the rest of the statements about free-to-play games are double-edged. Yes, they're cheaply made, but that also means they fit into a lot of unique niches, like the Golf MMO. Not as much quality as WOW or COH, but it's also FREE. It's free, unless you want a haircut, or some decent armor that doesn't make you look like a tool. Then it's $2.

So, it's not really a "free-to-play" game. It's micro-transaction and ad-supported. And that market has a lot of potential, but until they find a way to better manage the bitter resentment most of us have to micro-transactions, I'll stick with the $15 a month model when I need my MMO fix.

Insomnia Bob

Wired wrote a fantastic article on this topic last month. It's long, but it's well worth the read: [www.wired.com]

Benjo

Free 2 Play MMOs are pretty common around here in the Asia Pacific region. It ties in to the fact that the biggest market for online games are young adults or teenagers, but they don't have credit cards to subscribe. So they buy prepaid cards for either subscription or to buy 'points' to buy items and extend their subscription.

The Free 2 Play model also works because most gamers around here don't want to fork out money for something that they are unsure of its quality, so the F2P system is attractive because they don't have to spend any money to evaluate the game. Sure most of them are grindfests and most people will give up after killing the same wolf for an hour. But for every 10 people who stop playing, at least 1 or 2 players will still play on and want to improve their character. These are the market of gamers that MMO companies thrive on.

I won't say that the subscription payment model is dead, but unless the IP is a very strong brand like World of Warcraft and is more or less guaranteed to make money, F2P at least allow developers to test the waters. By making a game F2P, it would attract a lot of players which some may eventually turn into paying customers. It's a better proposition than charging players straight up, especially when you're not WoW or Lord of the Rings Online.

FatCatLim

The reason "free to play" games don't work is because in order to have all the best gear you have to PAY REAL MONEY. Which is complete bullshit. Also..they're usually really boring and the gameplay is rarely thought out very well.

failbit

Nexon is horrible, absolutely and utterly stupid. I have quit maple story when I saw their new ads (the ads of two guys apparently slapping each other with a fish because it's free and they can) Oh gawd, When I saw this ad, I was like "Wtf I'm doing? I'm 16 for god's sake and playing a game which a 3 year old kid would be ashamed of. Jesus Christ."

TroHax

@failbit: Oh they do work actually. As mentioned before, the F2P model is popular among MMORPGs here in Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific. There are easily over 10 F2P MMORPGs around here. If F2P "don't work" as you say, then why would local game publishers adopt this model?

@TroHax: Contrary to what you may think of Nexon, they're very, very smart. Maple Story is still horribly popular among younger players and the game is available in up to 13 countries.

FatCatLim

"Nexon's expansion to the 360 and the DS."

Whaaaaaaaa?

Americo

I enjoyed MS.. but when you are actually willing to fork over money they screw you with their horrible TOS and equally bad customer service. I spent quite a bit of money on their 2x experience items (15 bucks a month) only to have their game down frequently or unable to log on due to server upgrades when my 2x exp really counted. The way I saw it they screwed me out of 3-4 bucks out of my 15... when I complained to customer service all I received was a form email. When I complained about the form email I got another form email. Screw them. Free to play is an excellent model if you have a good game but if your customer service blows then so does your game.

sandoze

Because I can and it's "FREE" D<

My brother Spent 250$+ Just to keep up with his friends in that game!!!

M4r1o24

I lost all faith in Nexon when their string of GM's for the game "Dark Ages" were utterly incompetent. Among the exploits of the past GM's they were caught abusing powers, found to be ignoring their job and the game community at large for weeks at a time, and one was caught "cybering and having real life encounters" with other players that held high in-game ranks.

Of course, this was Nexon USA and not their parent company of Nexon Korea.

DashTheHand

maple story is fun to play, as are most of the other Nexon games, though the real catch is that all though the games are free to play, they suffer from poor GM presence (read as non-existent), as well as the fact that for certain games (ex. Mabinogi) only pretend to be free, as you have to pay to be able to do the storyline quest. FtP is a great busniess model, as people will pay more for extras, when they think that they don't have to. It just needs to be done right, (aka treat the game community as if it were a PtP game, and offer the same support), after all, they are makeing the same amount of money off of it, if not more.

fawrh

@DashTheHand: Wee!

I don't remember any scandal like that from Dark Ages, but I'm not necessarily doubting it happened.

I think it's fun to look at the changes in Nexon's games. From the David Kennerly era, in Dark Ages, we had basically a large social experiment. It was an experiment in a player-base being able to manage itself, to govern itself.

*chuckles* Anonymous players, self-governing themselves, playing a virtual popularity contest to run for government. It was a bit of a mess. But it was fun to see Kennerly, seed the game with hardcore roleplayers, who attempted to constrain the playerbase with required roleplaying laws.

It's unfortunate though, for those of us that really enjoy roleplaying, as Nexon, and all graphical mmos, don't really enforce roleplaying rules now-adays, and it's far more about getting as many subscribers/players as possible, by selling your game to the lowest common denominator.

Rookerith

I'll go ahead and put my neck out here. I'm currently working for Aeria Games, a North American company that runs F2P games, including MMOs. Since I didn't have much familiarity with MMOs, and since I wanted to get a greater understanding of the F2P business model and the communities that sprung up around these games, I decided to start playing one; I chose Dream of Mirror online.

The game has an unusually-inventive classing/sub-classing system that lets you switch to any number of jobs on one character, which reminds me a lot of the FF series' job system, so that does hold my attention a lot better than being forced to run a single class would. If I'm not feelin' the mage action, I can go to town, switch to my martial artist job and grab the appropriate armor from my bank, then go out and tackle the game like that.

The biggest issue, from my perspective as a mostly-console gamer, is the amount of grinding for grinding's sake you have to do. I'm used to having some end to direct my battling toward, so I never really feel like "cheating," but when the difference in "cheating" is simply spending a half-hour soloing monsters and two hours soloing monsters, I wouldn't feel any guilt at cutting down those times. Repetitiveness seems to be one of the biggest balance problems of all MMOs, from what I've seen.

I can at least vouch for the Cash Shop / Item Mall in Dream of Mirror: all the "armor" sold is costume armor; you don't actually buy gameplay-based equipment through the cash shop (I think it'd totally de-balance the game for players who didn't use the CS and drive a lot of them away). The shop DOES sell badges that boost EXP and drop percentages, so you CAN pay to get ahead, which is the nature of the F2P beast. I'd love to get my hands on one of those, just to reduce the grind. I do think Dream of Mirror is a fun game; I just don't want to spend as much time fighting toward no particular end.

Also, I've been paying attention to the in-game economy and was surprised when I discovered that many Cash Shop items could be sold by players at their in-game stalls and bought by other players for in-game money. This mechanic allows cash shop buyers to accrue money without having to fight or harvest materials or what-have-you, but it also allows non-cash-shop players to reliably obtain cash shop items. Ultimately, I think it's a cool setup. The amount of money one gets from selling CS items tends to be used to buy...other CS items from other players' stalls. Thus far, I've made all my money in-game (sometimes through grinding, more often through materials harvesting / crafting and selling that stuff in my shop), and it's always been enough to get what I need. Dunno if I'll ever take the Cash Shop plunge; we'll see what the future holds.

F2P MMOs are a fast-growing segment of online business, and I really do think that there are a lot of people of all age groups who, like myself, balk at the idea of paying a monthly subscription fee because they know that their gaming time per month can be so random. I could sink 40 hours into a game one month, and have maybe 7 hours of gaming time the next month. The "free" aspect of "Free-to-Play" mostly represents a level of perceived player control. "I only ever have to spend as much on this game as I want to spend." The difference between that and charging even one dollar to download the client software would be huge, I think.

So, in summary, I think the F2P model has a lot of promise, but their greatest hurdle is to have more relevant content so people don't have to bust the chops of the same squirrel for three hours to gain a level. People generally enjoy challenging themselves if there's an objective, but I think most MMO cheating stems from the simple desire to save time; i.e., look at how many hours you WOULDN'T have to kill flying squirrels if you hacked your account. I think there's something big to be gained by the first company who can release an F2P MMO that either A) gets rid of a lot of the repetitiousness, or B) makes it fun enough so that we don't care. I'd love to see an F2P game with an action-based battle system; maybe something like a cross between Secret of Mana and the Tales series. Something where I could use my controller and remain engaged because the outcome depended on my actual input.

There's a lot of grief about grindfests, and I share in that grief, but right now, we're at a stage where we're seeing a lot of Asian MMOs come over wholesale, and North American players have different play-styles, goals, and attention spans than those games are built for, so the success they can enjoy may be limited. I'm sure that eventually, there'll be a free-to-play MMO that fits with North Americans' play style, and when that game is made, it'll probably be pretty cool.

tenken

As long as an F2P game ends up nothing like that Knight Online POS, then it's a good model

avisotin

well lets think about it this way. if these games COST money to even begin to play, that effectively eliminates 90% of the population.

most people play the game to test it out, and then decide if they wish to play. also, when it is pay to play, people worry about accounts being charged, credit card issues, accounts being stolen (still in f2p, but its more tolerable cause you didnt "lose" any money) and cdkeys being used or stolen

so thats my twocents, a PRIME example of a FAIL is granado espada, they charged money for the game AND monthly, talk about a load of fail

ibleedgreen