Disclaimer: You may have a whole new outlook after reading this article... this is everything the big corporate gaming companies don't want you to know, nor ever figure out!
For starters, for those who are asking, what the heck is F2P & P2P, let me break down the acronyms for you. F2P = Free To Play, while P2P = Pay To Play. Okay, I already know there's that tainted stereotype that floats around out there like a bad omen curse of, "OMGz... it's F2P, it MUST be crap, it must be junk, run away, run Forrest, RUN!". Let me first point out, nothing could be farther from the truth. Not so sure? Games that have gone either full or limited F2P in recent years, even months that come to mind are World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, ToonTown Online, Fallen Earth, DC Universe Online, even Star Trek Online is set to go F2P by year's end (2011). w00t! F2P is the new "in" thing yo... the hip trend now is to SAVE money, or at least not blow it all away, and in this entry, I'll fill you in on the little bits that not many really consider when going the P2P route... which in this wracked economy could really make you much happier on the other side of this madness!
Now, moving right along, how many people reading this, like to do what you see to the left? For those that do, stop reading, take all your life savings and money, stack it into a nice neat pile, douse it in gasoline, take a blow torch to it, and aptly sing Kumbaya. For those of you that like to enjoy things with your money, we roll into the first reason keeping in mind "dollars and sense". Now, using as an example, that most P2P subscriptions run roughly $15/month per sub, we'll use that as our base constant throughout the equations to follow. First of all, at $15/month, that breaks down to paying roughly $0.50 cents per day.
No, this isn't a Sally Struthers commercial to feed the homeless kids in a foreign country, that is in fact what you're paying to go pWN'ing the Lich King in IceCrown Citadel. Okay, so we've got 50 cents per day nailed down. But uh-ohz Batman, we have a small problem, unless you're a genre-holic that sticks to only one genre (also keeping in mind there's multiple pay games in each genre these days), and if you're like me and like to bounce around on multiple titles, it's like a bag of Lays potato chips, "Betcha' can't eat just one". (Okay, must put disclaimer here... should you ACTUALLY be *eating* your games instead of *playing* them, please stop reading now, and phone your local shrink, thank you and have a nice day...) Now, I digress, if you like multiple games, and hey who doesn't, there's plenty out there worth paying for. I can easily think of 10 games right now that I'd have no problem paying for if either:
a) I had a money-tree, or b) I could print money like these guys ------------------->
...Oh-Kayz... now that THAT crisis has been averted, where was I. Oh yes, hectic months. Saying you're busy for 3 weeks out of the month, and saying that playing for maybe 4 hours a day isn't TOO excessive, we'll say you get 5 days out of the month you can actually play... but, we'll have to say they're weekdays, because we all go to church on Sunday right? ------------>
I know, you're thinking, "WHAT!? You're mad whack!", but just follow me along here, and you'll get what I mean. First of all, the joys of a mortgage on a house, aren't they great? They're kind of like a car payment. You could make every payment on time, even earlier, right up to about 3 or 4 payments left, lose your job, crap happens, whatever, you can't make those payments, they take the house and/or car, all the money you've payed into them as well, and leave you with a "have a nice day chump". Guess what, sorry to break it to you, P2P games are the same way. You might want to think they're trying to make friendships, or too concerned with public relations to be cold and greedy... BZZZT, wrong, just like any other business, they're prime goal is to make money, and if you don't have it, guess what, you're not playing... too bad, so sad. If you have all LVL85 characters in WoW that you've been building and playing since the original release, and you can no longer afford to access them, guess what, they may as well be foreclosed on, cause you're locked out until you can give them the green they're looking for.
But you can come and go whenever you please, and don't have to worry about ending up locked out of your stuff because you couldn't keep paying the loansharks their green-wad. But anywho, on to my original point of this paragraph I was trying to make, as those awesome games come out, in the back of your mind, that "economic" and "financial" sense are biting and eating at you, saying, "yo f00! WTF you thinkin' holmes!? You've like sunk a thousand bucks easy into THIS game... how f00 would j00 need ta be to go to DAT game over 'der!?". In one aspect you'd be right, you mortgaged out your gaming experience and invested so much into the first game, that you're gaming experience is now underwater like an upside down mortgage, you'd be throwing away too much to move onto the better and most recent games... which is sad, because as those better games come out, they drop the property value of the game you're paying to play now, which kind of makes it even more upside down and underwater. Hence, why paying to play, is the same as mortgaging out your gaming experience! \m/,
!@#! LULZ! !@#!
Okay, so since typically none of us has a money-tree or the latest Counterfeiting DS, back to the math, bare with me, it'll start to make "cents" soon, ~WaKa WaKa~! *badumching* So anyways, we'll use 5 games as an example, any games really, just the simple fact of paying for 5 games works for this equation. Now using 5 as the number of games, times $15/month, (equals) $75/month. Hey, that's still not THAT bad right? Let's break that down a bit more shall we? 5 P2P games a month breaks down to $2.50/day on average. Say what? You could buy a gallon of milk everyday with that... (or put down a deposit on a gallon of gasoline... ROFL! *cough, cough*). Oh, but it gets better, let's start painting out hypothetical scenarios, this is where it really gets good. Say you have one of those crazy months, and who hasn't, where 3 weeks out of that month you're just non-stop busy. Overtime at work, death in the family, friends getting married, moving/changing locations, your cat won't stop attacking your feet... actually, that's not one on the list, give me a sec while I deal with Pandora.........
...Oh-Kayz... now that THAT crisis has been averted, where was I. Oh yes, hectic months. Saying you're busy for 3 weeks out of the month, and saying that playing for maybe 4 hours a day isn't TOO excessive, we'll say you get 5 days out of the month you can actually play... but, we'll have to say they're weekdays, because we all go to church on Sunday right? ------------>So, back to the math... MMM, M&Ms... *drool*... ERRR, math, right... so you game for 4 hours a day, for 5 days, but we won't say they're all in a row, because some might call that much, so we'll hypothetically say it's Monday the first week, Tuesday and Thursday the second week, Friday the third week, and Wednesday the fourth week... which FYI has absolutely nothing to do with the math equation... just needed to throw off the scent of being an overactive, excessive, game-a-holic. *innocent whistle* So anyways, 20 hours of gaming hypothetically in a really over-busy month, that's not even a full day. Guess what, you just got LESS than 50 cents worth of gaming in, and if you're paying again for 5 or so games, you may as well have just set $74.50 on FIRE.
To be perfectly honest *gets handy-dandy calculator*...
...for 20 hours worth of time, you only got 41.6 cents worth of gaming, and if you're paying for FIVE subscription-based games, you again may have well just burnt up 74 dollars and 58.4 cents! So one thing to point out, P2P makes you feel like you have to be obligated to block aside certain time each day, to successfully get your money's worth, hence, you pretty much become a slave to the game! (Where as in F2P, you can come and go, playing as casually or hardcore as you like without any worries at all.) Now, let's look at how much money you're blowing per year with game subscriptions. First we'll use the one game per month at $15 per month. That works out to be *handy-dandy calculator boop beep buzz* $180, and if you're paying for 5 subscriptions, that wracks up $900/year. $900!? Wow, for those who are managing to stay afloat in your mortgages, that's roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of a mortgage payment right there, or easily a car payment or two. Also, just to toss in, when I finally get to the second reason, it'll revolve heavily around mortgage metaphors, *hint, hint*. Think I'm just about done with reason one actually, except I will toss out a VERY painful fact for those who are die-hard World of Warcraft players. Considering WoW released November 23, 2004... did you know, that if you've been loyally paying for a WoW subscription every month from release until now (almost November 2011), you actually dished out $1,260 total +w/e you payed per each expansion as it came out + anything you've spent on cash items +those of you who were
(ROFL-copter) enough to actually buy gold from gold farmers. Can we say... uhm, CHA-CHING!? Q:)
Now, finally, on to the second reason... pretty much to get straight to the point, paying to play is just about identical to a mortgage on a house.
I know, you're thinking, "WHAT!? You're mad whack!", but just follow me along here, and you'll get what I mean. First of all, the joys of a mortgage on a house, aren't they great? They're kind of like a car payment. You could make every payment on time, even earlier, right up to about 3 or 4 payments left, lose your job, crap happens, whatever, you can't make those payments, they take the house and/or car, all the money you've payed into them as well, and leave you with a "have a nice day chump". Guess what, sorry to break it to you, P2P games are the same way. You might want to think they're trying to make friendships, or too concerned with public relations to be cold and greedy... BZZZT, wrong, just like any other business, they're prime goal is to make money, and if you don't have it, guess what, you're not playing... too bad, so sad. If you have all LVL85 characters in WoW that you've been building and playing since the original release, and you can no longer afford to access them, guess what, they may as well be foreclosed on, cause you're locked out until you can give them the green they're looking for.Now, another prime reason P2P may as well be like mortgaging your gaming experience. I'm sure there's a LARGE number of people that have payed that hefty sum I showed above, to be playing WoW since it's original release until now. Ever stop and think how much that hampers your future gaming experiences? What do I mean? Let's break this down into pieces. Awesome games like Rift, Guild Wars 2, Tera, and others are coming out. But oh no, you're "l33t", cause you've been a loyal WoW enthusiast from the beginning and have a full stack of LVL85s, maybe even multiple accounts filled to the brim with LVL85s. With tons of loot that's worth so much. Guess what, painful truth, you go from WoW to any other MMO or any other game on the planet, all that stuff may as well not mean a thing. And I'm not just trying to pick on WoW, they're just the biggest MMO right now, this applies to all P2P games. Which also wraps back to the paragraph before this... all that hard work, items earned, diligence spent, long nights burning the midnight oil... you can't pay, you lose it all... you're mortgaging your entire gaming experience! In F2P, yeah, might have trolls, mongers, and the "holy crap who let the dogs out!?"
But you can come and go whenever you please, and don't have to worry about ending up locked out of your stuff because you couldn't keep paying the loansharks their green-wad. But anywho, on to my original point of this paragraph I was trying to make, as those awesome games come out, in the back of your mind, that "economic" and "financial" sense are biting and eating at you, saying, "yo f00! WTF you thinkin' holmes!? You've like sunk a thousand bucks easy into THIS game... how f00 would j00 need ta be to go to DAT game over 'der!?". In one aspect you'd be right, you mortgaged out your gaming experience and invested so much into the first game, that you're gaming experience is now underwater like an upside down mortgage, you'd be throwing away too much to move onto the better and most recent games... which is sad, because as those better games come out, they drop the property value of the game you're paying to play now, which kind of makes it even more upside down and underwater. Hence, why paying to play, is the same as mortgaging out your gaming experience! \m/,
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