(04-01-2014, 03:36 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: Sorry, but the constant and unending "Korean MMOs are ALL grinders" bullshit that gets tossed around all over the internet just straight-up pisses me off. So much of it is based entirely on the reputation of the Lineage series and nothing else. It's stupid, it's uninformed, and it needs to stop. Like right now.
It especially pisses me off because it intrinsically excludes western MMOs for some unfathomable reason, despite the fact that western MMOs are pretty much exactly the same. It's absurd. Please don't do that.
Now, if you want to talk about business models... that's a whole 'nother ball of wax. There are plenty of arguments to be had both for and against subscription and F2P models. I do not believe for a second that one is intrinsically superior to the other. For that matter, I daresay that a lot of what determines a game's quality is completely irrelevant to the business model. If a game sucks, it'll suck regardless of whether or not it's subscription or F2P, and if a game's developer fails to give good support, how they get their funding is immaterial when their support is lackluster to begin with (just look at World of Warcraft for cryin' out loud, they get no content updates between expansions)!
A couple things about this, some that other people have touched on. Â I don't play any Korean MMOs, but I wasn't actually aware that the games I wasn't playing were Korean. Â I just haven't been impressed by them. Â I wasn't aware it was a cultural thing. Â However, having read through their endgame content guides, they do seem a lot "grindier" than I'm used to. Â Hell, western MMOs are damn near throwing new gear at you these days. Â WoW is literally giving you a roll on gear that works for your class and spec at this point instead of making you RNG completely for the entire party. Â It's one of the things I like about WoW nowadays as compared to the vanilla days. Â No ninja looting hunters.
Second, there is actually an economic disparity between F2P games and subscription games, namely their focus. Â A F2P game makes, generally, initial money off the sale of the game and then all the rest of their money is made on little microtransactions. Â It then behooves them, like facebook games, to get you hooked early and then make sure you find advancement difficult without the microtransactions. Â Then, you'll either leave (which they won't worry about, since the customer is just a financial liability at that point) or you'll spend money in their store, at which point they make sure you need to spend more money there.
I think the only possible way that would be mitigated is with in-game advertising, and people are already adblocking the free content on YouTube, which means few have any faith in that anymore. Â It might work if Blizzard does it, but it doesn't seem like it would work unless you could really make sure people were paying attention.
If you could, your game becomes like a subscription game, where the focus is to keep people playing the game as long as possible. Â That means walking a tightrope of not pissing them off enough to quit but keeping them fed with content that keeps them interested. Â So content is a lot more important.
Contrary to your assertion, World of Warcraft drops new areas, dungeons, and raids at least on every patch, which is every few months. Â In the last expansion, Mists of Pandaria, WoW players did get four further free patches that contained major content changes and advancements (you can argue about the relative merit of then having to pay again for the expansion, but they tend to make it worth the money).
I'd say WoW players aren't wont for content; after so long being the top dog via content drops, I'd say it's probably the most extensive MMO in the world. Â If anything, I'd say their biggest problem is that they're too extensive. Â Having to balance high end PVP and PVE, along with making all the deviations and distractions along the way relevant and interesting, means they're constantly having to fix things that cause problems elsewhere. Â I guess that's a better problem to have than "no-content".