P2P model is lame and will be gone in next couple of years its just ridiculous to pay for games. Even if its mmorpg. When everthing inlectual property is free = games,movies and music ( torrents ). People just need to realise until they stop been used like a toilet paper for fat fags from ncsoft and that freezard or w/e. Things wont change. Imo p2p must die for good ,  F2P is the future!

Ultimately, the answer lies in what the customers pay for.

Paying for a truly balanced and well made game? or simply for ingame superiority and bragging rights?

Do you play for personal enjoyment, or solely to 'defeat' others?

Now you can see the difference between subscriptions and item malls

Tupid thing cut off most my post so, here is a link to an article that will about put this blog to rest:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/world-of-warcraft-s-astounding-numbers/1355608

P2P has been the dominant force in MMO's for the last 12 years I have been playing them. I do not really see it changing anytime soon. Fact is F2P is not really free and if people do not spend any money on them they will not survive. So all those people who brag they do not pay anything to play, your are the ones who will eventually kill F2P. Those companies will not make those games if they do not earn a profit. No ones gonna spend that kind of time and production cost and just give it away.

Fact is ROM is second rate compared to pretty much any of the major MMO's that are P2P. The graphics are bad, the translation is bad, the class system is nothing to write home about, you can hardly function end game without the cash shop, and the dungeons are poorly scripted. Ultima Online which is over 10 years old is a more complete gaming experience.

To all of the people who enjoy F2P more power to you, but it is not now and never will be the future. Yes while F2P are profitable, they do not get the same kind of production and polish that P2P games do. Mainly becuase the profit margins are much lower. RoM does not have near the staff of EQ2, LotRO, L2, or even SWG. Most F2P lack content, customization and most of all customer support. Generally the communities are poor. A bunch children or young adults that need to learn a little maturity.They also tend to be packed with rude elitist prics  It amazes me how badly the community of DDO has dropped into the toilet since it opened up witha  F2P option. I know a lot of people who only play P2P becuase they cannot stand F2P communities.

There is almost never end game content other then PvP in a F2P. Besids if you have the money, do you really want to play some crappy chinese or Korean grindfest? Personally I prefer quality Korean or North American MMO's. Europeans do not tend to release their games in NA so I h

And RoM is no threat for blizzard at all. Everyone that played Wow and goes to Rom. Will come back soon after

More people play P2P for sure. Most of them play wow so that about 12million players.

 I think you're jumping the gun a little to say that WoW released an expansion just because of RoM. They're releasing expansion like that because otherwise people would get bored with the same repetitive scripted raids every week.

f2p games will be the future.. and when i i say that i mean it will be the main stream products but games that are p2p will be very popular but only if there are great p2p games and arn't a lot going to be p2p in the first place. Else if p2p be mainstream less people will play on each game. cause you can't epect a player to play several p2p game right?

Part3:.... sorry need to read the 2 post below first

To make it short, in my eyes players and publishers going for P2P games are the winners, and players and publishers going for F2P are on the looser side.

I also started playing MMOs with F2P games, and i never thought that the quality of these games were bad. I even spent like 2000EURO on Perfect World MY. Until i tried out P2P...... Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, and now AION, I began to understand why there are so many ppl who are willing to pay like 15bucks a month just to play that games.

sorry for the bad english and long post XD

or having a wide fanbase already like WAR and WOW due to former PC games, or that the game is based on a well known lore like the Lord of the Rings Online. So, these games that are P2P have their reasons to be P2P, and ppl playing it agree to play for that reason

So how about games that went P2P first and then became F2P?? Like Spellborn or DDO. In my eyes they just simply failed in attracting the players. Spellborn has graphics that are OK, and a reason that makes it different from the market was the gameplay.  In  case of DDO, their strength was that they had a large fanbase due to their Board games and PC games. But both games failed to attract enough players, so that there was no other choice than going F2P later. So, normally going P2P first and then go F2P later means that game failed against the other competitors of the market. ( of course it is a bit different if the game goes F2P like 4 or 5 years after launch) RF Online and Archlord are also members of this list. Good enough to play for free, but not worth to play by paying for it.

So now lets talk about the games that go F2P right from the beginning. Why they go F2P?? I am pretty sure it is because THEY KNOW (developer,publisher) that they have no chance against other games if they go P2P. Lets pick up RoM for example. We all know RoM became a big success. But would it have been such a big success too, if it went P2P that time?? I am sure NO.I am pretty sure that more than 90% of the players wouldnt spend a penny for the game if it would be P2P. Coz if you gonna spend money for P2P games there are enough games on the market that you would prefere to RoM. Sure the dualclass system is something unique, but with the outdated graphics, it wont be enough to keep ppl paying for the game. Same with the most other MMOs that are F2P. They had never any chance of going P2P, even if they wanted.

To make it short, in my eyes players and publishers going for P2P game

Games gonna be P2P if the publisher is sure of it that the game will become a great success. In other words, games that gonna be F2P right from the start, are games the publisher thinks that game wont be able to attract enough ppl if they go P2P.

I think every publisher sure wants to go for P2P if posssible. Imagine there is a P2P game and a F2P game, both with 500k players. For P2P, if the monthly fee would be 15bucks, it will be an income of 500000 x 15 = 7,5M a month.  In a F2P it is a bit different coz most of the players dont even spend a penny for it, and others pay a lot. So lets say, 90% of the players are playing the game for free, the rest, 10% of the players are spending an average of 50bucks a month, then its 500000 x 0,1 x 50 =2,5M     Sure, these are just fictive numbers, but i guess that the reallity isnt that far of it.  And with more income it is possible to have a better support for players, to have enough servers ready to play lagfree, and money to develop new add-ons or even the next gen MMO. For the community it means LESS ( i dont say there arent any) players that try to destroy their own game that they are paying for, so all in all, a community that complains less than a F2P community.  So however, in my eyes, for the players and publishers, P2P is the better option, if you can afford it.

Sure, if you are someone who cant even afford the 15bucks a month for a P2P game, that makes F2P games something great for you. But thats because they dont have any other choice than to play F2P. I think it is the same if you see it from the publishers side. If they have the CHOICE, they would all go P2P. What i mean with choice is, the chance to attract enough players, even if the game goes P2P. For that you need to be something special in the market, like having 1 of the best graphics in the current MMO market ( like AION,  or TERA and C9 whats also gonna be P2P), or having a wide fanbase al

Could you imagine the future being only P2P, just imagine all the non-gamers there would be.

I don't spend a single bit of money in f2ps, yes, the Cash Shops are laden with baits, but I'm not going to fall to it, I can have a good gaming experience ANYWHERE as long as the community is good. So the argument "you actually spend more on f2p than p2p doesn't always apply.

Of course, before the massive flame war that's going to set this page on fire, just like to say everybody have a favourite type of game, just because he said ROM is threatening WOW is his own opinion, no need to flame him for it.

Still, personally like f2p more until I get a decent job to let the p2p lot hog all the money directly from my bank account ;)

 RoM is absolutely no threat to WoW

as for PW and JD a.k.a zhu xian its almost same, only different background, I know ppl who spend more then 3k usd in year in f2p so I believe that f2p are better for mmo company's and ppl can expect more pvp and ppl for party coz everyone can play 

DDO is awesome I am playing it atm ^_^

You forget to mention spellborn its f2p also