In Retrospect: Subscription Fees are Gone.. and the Decline of the Traditional MMORPG

[stellvia]

I'm not so sure these days. The really casual crowd seems content migrating over to being fleeced by crappy mobile games made by one guy in a basement in a weekend. The regular casual crowd has no allegiance, and will just hop from F2P to F2P paying nothing or only a little money before coming bored and moving on.

The cash shop route I dislike, because it's constantly putting the spectre of real life/money in your face, instead of just enjoying the game. And there is far more incentive for the developers to keep spitting out new cash shop items, than to focus on the actual game, content, and improving it. As F2P, the potential market is so large, they could go years with just cycling through newbies buying a few cosmetics then moving on.

Hell, that is the exact business model of Aeria Games and whatever their parent company is in Korea that shits out those terrible cookie-cutter grindfests every 1.5 years as the previous one is burning down.

[Repefe]

I'm not so sure these days. The really casual crowd seems content migrating over to being fleeced by crappy mobile games made by one guy in a basement in a weekend. The regular casual crowd has no allegiance, and will just hop from F2P to F2P paying nothing or only a little money before coming bored and moving on.

Or they moved on to play MOBAs, online FPS games, etc. It's not like MMOs are the only solid online gaming options these days.