As I’ve mentioned in my previous articles, the free MMORPG industry is growing by leaps and bounds every year. New MMORPGs and MMO games are being released on an almost weekly basis here in the United States. Games like MapleStory and Scions of Fate each have over 70 million players worldwide; that’s right, EACH game has over 70 Million players, while the most well known MMORPG, World of Warcraft, has only 10 million users. Of course this isn’t exactly a fair comparison as World of Warcraft has a monthly fee while the two games I mentioned don’t, but even so, it would be silly to call the free MMORPG genre small. With such an incredible amount of popularity you would imagine that free MMORPGs would get a lot more attention by the main stream gaming networks, but they don’t.
Networks like G4 almost completely ignore the free MMORPG genre. It’s as if they don’t even acknowledge its existence. There aren’t any major print magazines that follow free MMORPGs either, except for maybe a specialty publication with little circulation. Let us analyze the free MMORPG market for a bit. There literally hundreds of free online MMORPGs out in the US market already with countless games currently in closed beta. Nexon’s MapleStory game in the United States alone makes over $30 million a year and it is expected to increase in 2008. With big publishers like Outspark, Netgame, AeriaGames and Gpotato releasing new games almost every month, the industry is poised to continue growing.
The only MMORPG that gets any attention at all in traditional gaming magazines and outlets is World of Warcraft. We’ve heard a lot of buzz around Age of Conan as well, but it’s still a pay to play game. With the incredible growth of free MMORPGs I wouldn’t be surprised if the pay to play genre was completely eliminated in the next 10 years. There really are no successful pay to play MMORPGs out there anymore due to fierce competition. Previously popular pay to play MMORPGs like Ultima Online and Everquest are losing subscribers each and every day. Gamers are flocking over to free to play MMORPGs. The only real pay to play game that’s performing well is World of Warcraft, and that phenomenon can’t last forever. Think about it; would Facebook be as popular as it is today if it required a monthly fee to access? Of course not! Facebook is free to use for consumers because the company can make money through advertisements and selling Facebook gifts [The little images you can send your friends for usually a dollar]. If you look at in free MMORPG terms the Facebook gifts are like cash shop items. They allow the company to make money off a free product or service. I can’t see pay to play business models still being around in 10 years, as there are already so many free to play games out there today and there will only be more in the future.
nicely done, couldn’t have said it better..
nice
Very nicely put and I couldn’t agree with you better. Figure it this way though as far as wow profits, at 15 dollars a month times 10million ppl, that yearly profit comes a gross amount. FTP mmos, yes you are right about the numbers that play them but you gotta realize alot of those ppl that play are botters and farmers. If we got rid of those type of idiots that play these games there would be more ppl playing.
Very true situation, and well put.
Simple and understanding. Nice job.
I never thought of this, and couldn’t agree more… Though there are strong and a wealthy bunch of p2p players/supporters. F2P MMORPG will probably take over. I’ll be laughing at my kids when I grow up when they mention that they cant ever imagine a p2p game…
P2P may earn more money, but with cash shops and such I alone spent $80 a month on some cash shop games. They aren’t too poor either… with nice affordable addicting items in the cash shop, they’re pretty rich…
We’ll never know, we’ll never know…..
Great blog, but Beckett Massive online Gamer is all about the ftp with alot of PTP. I even saw alot of there advertisements for Aeria games and outsparks. I was like wow holy crap. I noticed the major decline in P2P games. Eq1,Eq2, WOW, Vangaurd, AOC, DAOC, AOC, and so on are all leaving these games for Perfect world and Rohan online. I myself am multi playing MMOS, like La Tale, WOW and Warhammer. I love these games and when I get the mood to frag I play S4. I know G4 doesnt advertise, but who cares about that crappy ass sell out show. I am going to be developing a magazine for this genre exclusively. This magazine will be on shelves this time next year. Beckett only releases 1 magazine every 2 months. I want my readers to be in depth and on top of the now. I will refuse to do any P2P titles, they will be banned from my readers. I hope I didnt bore you guys with this.
PS. I am looking for talent, I am an artist and my fiance is the columnist, I need 4 more artists and 6 more columnist, email me at bremstone55@hotmail.com.
Trust me this isnt a joke. Laters MMOHUB Time to crack out on warhammer.