I tried to determine what exactly all the definitions were for online game business models. Turns out, it's quite a horrible confusing mess.
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Originally Posted by drEaPer
Yep, and before it just had a different naming: Demo, Trial, Shareware with restricted access to content and functions.
Unlike World of Warcraft, Eve Online etc. you do not have to pay 60 bucks after a 14day trial and transfer 15 bucks a month to continue playing.
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A time limited trial is what is now called Freemium and is not 'Free To Play'.
World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and DIablo III (when it's released in a few days) are all now on what Blizzard call 'Free to Play' and they have changed the trial from time limited to level capped and character restrictions. Blizzard has to call them free to play, as a it sounds better than Freemium as that implies there is a cost later on. It's sad, but in order to compete on a level playing field, they all have to call their games 'Free to Play' even if they aren't.
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Originally Posted by drEaPer
-F2P was generally accepted by gamers before it was called F2P, it was called "demo". The purpose of a demo was to get an impression and to decide if you want to buy the game. Of course Demos featured the more attractive stuff, and were visually appealing to lure you to buy the main game. F2P does the same.
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I'm sorry to quote you again drEaPer, I'm not picking on you, but you just provided the best quotable material.
This is where things start to get confused. Free to Play is claimed by some to mean literally free to play the game, even if the game costs money to buy. Some Guildwars fans claim that Guildwars is 'Free to Play' as there is no subscription fee, even though you still have to purchase the initial game (and every expansion pack to date). Other places define Free to Play as a game where you don't have to pay a subsription (which leaves the issue of initial price hanging in the air). OK, I'm going off topic with this, but the point is, it's a term that doesn't really mean anything, as it hasn't been strictly defined and there are no rules governing it. It's like saying a mobile phone contract has unliited texts, yet there is in fact a fair usage (limited) quota of 300 texts, or having unlimited download quota on your broadband even though it has a fair usage (limited) quota. You can say it's unlimited all you want and a lot of people will get taken in by it, but it's not unlimited.
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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Not at all. All I'm saying is if you have to pay to get the fullest benefit, then no matter how you twist it it's not really free.
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There are ways of making micro transactions in the game that do not affect actual gameply. For example, you could charge someone a dollar to allow them to customise their sub with an emblem. This doesn't affect gameplay, but is something people would possibly do. Of course there are ways to really screw up the gameplay balance as well and therein lies the difficulty.
Do we know yet what form the micro transcactions will take?
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Originally Posted by Ducimus
1. Browser based. Really? I didn't buy a beefy rig to play flash or java games in a web browser.
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NOTE: That's quoted from another thread.
Unity (a game / 3D application development platform) recently released a version that could cross complie to Flash 11 and I have to say the results were pretty nifty. Here's an Adobe presentation featuring Unreal 3 cross compiled into Flash 11:
I'm quite indifferent to SHO, as I long ago gave up on all hope that Ubisoft would ever fix SH4 or SH5. I think that a lot of the angst here is a sense of injustice that Ubisoft are making another game when they haven't finished the last two in the series. It's almost as if the feeling is that there should be an authority that can go round saying 'Now listen here, you didn't finish your last two games in the franchise, so you can't start a new one before you finish those other two'. Just like talking to a child who never finishes anything.
I think I wrote more than I was going to. Sorry to bore you all.