Old Republic Admits New Reality, Becomes Free-to-Play -- So Yes, This is the End of New Subscription-Only MMOs

Basically to no one's surprise who's been following the game industry closely, the developers of the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO finally announced it's going free-to-play and freemium, with subscriptions becoming an optional option for full content access:

“Players want flexibility and choice. The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe,” said Matthew Bromberg, GM of BioWare Austin.

No kidding. This solidifies my sense that the Old Republic is the end of subscription-based MMOs. I'm willing to predict World of Warcraft introduces a freemium option in the next year or two, with the only hold-outs being legacy, niche MMOs like Eve Online (though I wouldn't bet on that one either). The wonder is it took EA and Bioware so long to admit that freemium was the new reality -- Lum the Mad was talking about what a bad idea subscriptions were last year.

By the way, despite the caption above, HBO is successful with a subscription model not only because it's more popular than the most popular MMOs, with around 29 million subscribers, but because those subscribers are trapped in a captive market totally unlike MMOs.

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Comments

[Ezra]

Saying the end of "subscription-only" is a lot different than saying the end of "subscription-based" as you did in your earlier posts on the topic.

The end of "subscription-only" I don't think is much a point of contention. Every MMO I've ever known has had varying amounts of free access periods. Whether it was open beta, trial keys, buddy passes, promotional weekends, return offers, etc., free and then subscribe has always been an element of MMOs.

This newer model though of permanently free with heavy restrictions and level caps, and then subscribe for the full game does seem to be becoming standard, but the death of "subscription-only" MMOs means new life for "subscription-based" MMOs so long as the subscription model isn't actually abandoned.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Welcome to the latest chapter of Cash Shop Online!

Here are the basics of Cash Shop Online. You've got tons and tons of user accounts. 75-99% of them want everything for nothing. They'll eat your bandwidth, camp the spawns, lie, cheat and steal, and annoy the hell out of your paying customers. But geez louise, isn't it good that the place is so BUSY???

Now you're going to have to retool your design. In a subscription MMO, you try to make the game world as compelling as possible to retain players -- your goal is excellence.

But Cash Shop Online is different kettle of fish, my friend. The name of the game is SELL, SELL, SELL! Don't worry about the game world: to be honest, you want your players spending as little time there as possible. Bandwidth, you know. But that small percentage of players that's keeping you from bankruptcy? Your number one priority has gone from making games to making crap that those players want to BUY!

Focus in tight on stripping it all down to a Skinner box where the rats press the bar and you drop them a little dry green pellet. Mmmmm, tasty!

If you do it right, you can be just like Zynga! Well, I mean classic Zynga, not the current Zynga that is posting massive losses and demonstrating the lethal flaws in the F2P model. No, no, no, ignore the dying man behind the curtain! Everybody says F2P is the future! And if everybody is jumping off the bridge in a disasterous mass suicide, you don't want to be left out!

Do you? Are you a designer with a shred of integrity? Becasue integrity is soooooo nineteenth century, dearheart.

[Brookston Holiday]

Strange that the battlefield series is moving in the opposite direction towards subscription based gaming.