Andy Chalk said:
Cryptic's MMOs should have been F2P from the beginning, really. The gameplay is quite grindy and shallow on all accounts, while at the same time holding your hand quite tightly so as to remove any of the challenge. I played both
Champions and
Star Trek Online, and both use a similar formula. It's well-suited to the free-to-play model, but not worth a subscription.
Companies have gotten away with charging subscriptions for these shallow games purely because of the other MMOs that have come before. It was up to the earliest, like
Ultima, to get people over the initial, "Pay
monthly for a game? No way!" reaction. Now that ground has been sufficiently broken, there's not as much pressure on developers to ensure a game is actually worth being perpetually purchased by its players. People are used to paying, so they'll keep paying.
Since F2P has gained popularity, thanks to our overseas neighbors, that sort of laziness is no longer rewarded. It will also mean that niche MMOs will be marginalized, since the idea of F2P is mass appeal--you want people choosing to buy each little bit of pay content, so each bit has to be carefully crafted to maximize the cost-benefit ratio. We'll see how this works out for Cryptic, as their games ride the border between mainstream (with the IPs) and niche (with the way they are implemented).