Don't read my post if you're an F2P fanatic, it'll just tick you off.



Reasons why I'm excited:

... Do I even have any? I mean, sure, the population will grow, but it will only be filled with entitled little brats who can't pay for a game to play it, and will expect everything to be handed to them on a golden platter (not just silver!).

Reasons why I'm seriously considering just finding a new game to play:

First and foremost, the biggest thing that's pushing me away is the entire concept of F2P. It used to be that video games were made like a book, and were just so good you bought them in order to play them, and would happily throw more money at the developers to keep making good games like that. Lately, developers are turning into sleazy little wallet-humping asshats, rather than actual game developers, and came up with the whole scam of "F2P" and "DLC."

Wildstar is going to have DLC in the form of paid content (it's on the FAQ) and expansions. Way back when, game developers would release a game that was fully-fleshed out and completed, and people would play them for years on end (can you say hello to any games from the 80s-early 00s?) just because they were that great a game. Nowadays, before the game is even half done, the developers start scheming and planning on how to cut things out of the game in order to milk you, and end up releasing a game that obviously has some issues and missing content. Then, some variable amount of time later, they'll "reveal" this shiny new feature they'll add to the game, but you have to pay them for all their hard work imagining and creating this "new" feature. After they cut out parts of a game and sell it to you separately, they act like they're doing you this huge favor, and it's just disgusting that people actually buy into it.

Then, on the other side of the coin, we have "F2P." 10 years ago, F2P was not even a concept, let along the standard business model. Most games were B2P with no cash shop (Diablo and such), or P2P (WoW and the like). Sure, there were games out there with cash shops in them, but they were generally frowned upon as the scam they are, and people played the games that didn't exist just to inhale your money (I mean, they wanted your money, but they cared about making a quality game as well). Eventually, as games became more popular, more people started to play them. At first, this wasn't a bad thing, but after a while, we had an invasion of sorts; the "gamers" we know as casuals started playing. These are the people who, honestly, shouldn't really be playing games. In most of the P2P games that existed at the time, these were the people who wouldn't put in the effort to get that shiny piece of armor, or that pretty mount, or even learn the class they were playing! Those few games with cash shops in them promised them all kinds of gear with no effort, costumes that didn't have to be farmed, super cool mounts and boosts to make them more powerful -- all for money, which meant no effort or time commitment! Now we have a new wave of "F2P" games that are widely accepted as standard, but have several major flaws in a gamer's eye (of course, the casuals love them because they can play dress-up without having to play the game); the biggest issue is that, since the developers make money off of the casuals who don't really want to play any content, the majority of development time goes into the cash shop, making pretty costumes and sparkly ponies to ride around on. Sure, the devs know that they make a bit of money off of gamers too, so they throw a bone every now and then, but it's an old, dirty bone that really isn't what you would expect from a large, experienced company. They also know that gamers would rather work for things they don't have, and won't necessarily throw money at things, so they make it "possible" to earn cash shop currency, but it takes such a ridiculously long amount of time that it breaks most gamers and makes them just throw money at the company, even if they don't really want to.

So, why do I not like F2P? It entirely shifts the focus of the company from making a good, quality game that keeps people coming back, to devising ways to make people want to throw money at the crap shop. The majority of dev focus is on the cash shop (where their money comes from), and while the casual invaders are happy, gamers are spurned and lose the quality of content they love.

Why do I not like DLC? In the same spirit as F2P, it makes the development team into a money-hungry parasite who tries to find every viable bit of content they can cut in order to make you pay more for what should arguably have been in the game from the start, and then they act like they're doing you a favor in the end.

Other reasons I'm not excited about "F2P"

Influx of trolls, spammers and every kind of filth that lives on the internet.
Walled-off content.
The game made so miserable that you just HAVE to pay in order to enjoy yourself.
Dev focus being on cash shop rather than quality content.
More infrequent content updates (someone who worked on GW2 said that they had quotas for the crapshop, and would literally just drop content in order to meet it)
People acting like F2P is such a *cupcake*ing Godsend and savior, toting their "Holier-than-thou" attitude about it everywhere.
Nerfing of content for casual invaders.
The spurning of gamers in favor of milking whales.
The fact that, once Wildstar goes F2P, it's just another game to cross off the list.

Musings of a "troll" who misses the way games used to be:

I started playing Wildstar because it had potential; all the F2P games out these days are just garbage, and even console games are dropping quality like it's going out of style, but some games stood out. Wildstar had a dev team that I felt actually cared about the game, and wanted it to succeed... then NCsoft came in and started firing people left and right, rushing the game out the door, and all kinds of chaos ensued. The game was too hard for most people to play, so they ended up quitting. So NCsoft got rid of the people who wanted a hard game, and then mandated that the game be made more invader-friendly. When that failed, as the game was still way too hard and actually required people to go out and play the game, NCsoft decided to just go full on milking mode, and converted the game to F2P. Now, the game will be nothing more than another dress-up simulator that kinda sorta has something else to do. Content will never be the focus of the game anymore, and the overall quality will plummet for anything that isn't infested with "casuals."

Games just aren't made for gamers anymore. I don't pretend like they are, because they really aren't. You don't have deep, engaging content anymore - that was removed in favor of quantity over quality. The infestation doesn't care about the lore, or how immersed you become, they just want instant gratification and the feeling that they accomplished something. But hey, that's where the money is, so all the new companies are founded on that ideal, and the old companies are dying off, being replaced by newer CEO's and employees who are fine with twisting the legacies they were never a part of. It's like watching something you love so much just slowly dying a painful death -- it's heart-breaking, really. : /

So, congratulations "casuals," you infested another game/company and drove them to break the game for you. A month or so after F2P, you'll move on to the next field and eat all the crops, and then the next, and then the next... always hungry, always eating.

I dream of the day a pesticide is invented (AKA, a good, quality game and company that doesn't focus 100% on milking people and sets a precedent for others to follow)... though I don't have much, if any, hope left.