Payment models in MMOs

Jotting down info on the payment models of many MMOs that I've played.

Generally, I prefer to play games that are subscriptions. I much rather pay a monthly subscription fee to access the game, rather than free to play or buy to play models. Subscription models give the company a stead supply of revenue, which in my experience leads to higher quality games with more content and fewer problems. I've played a variety of games with a variety of different payment models.

RuneScape

RS was mostly a subscription model, with an free to play mode that was not time gated, but severely content gated. Players could go between F2P and subscription whenever they chose, but if they were not actively paying a subscription, they did not get access to any of the "members" content, which included skills, items, gear, world areas, quests, etc. A "member" player who elected to discontinue their subscription could still log into the game to chat with friends or whatnot, but were mostly locked out of doing anything, even the free content, due to what they had lost access to by not subscribing.

To me, this is a great model - the F2P mode brought in tons and tons of players, who could treat that model as an unlimited trial. Despite the "members" part of the game making up a vast majority of the content, the F2P content still contained thousands of hours of playtime. Even now, the two versions of the game still employ this payment model, and boast huge player numbers.

LotRO

The Lord of the Rings Online was a subscription model for a long time, that included a requirement to purchase the game and a subscription. Basically, WoW's model. For years, LotRO held a smaller, but extremely loyal playerbase. They went to a hybrid F2P / P2P model eventually, which was similar to RuneScape's approach in some regards. LotRO locked classes, races, areas, and quests to different players depending on whether they were 100% F2P, 100% P2P, or were not paying a subscription but purchased individual account/character unlocks from the in-game store. This was the first in-game cash shop I ever worked with. Additionally, P2P players were given a stipend of monthly cash shop currency, which allowed them to purchase additional content. F2P players, like in RuneScape, got a non-time-restricted trial to the game. They could then elect to unlock additional additional content in one of three ways: (1) they could subscribe, (2) they could pay cash for content packs, or (3) use the cash shop currency directly, which could be gained by completing achievements in-game. This cash shop currency comes very frequently in small amounts, to the point where a 100% F2P player could actually unlock some content packs due to just playing the game. The drawback to paying for individual content packs was that they generally were more expensive than just subscribing while actively playing the game. The benefit to buying packs rather than subscribing was that subscribers only got access to the entire game's content (barring expansions, everyone had to buy those separately) for the duration of their subscription - a more F2P player who purchased, say, the Lone Lands content, would retain access regardless of subscription, while a P2P player would not be able to access the same content if their subscription ended.

For a while, this payment model was actually working pretty well. The beginning of what I deem to be "the decline" was the cash shop moving from just content unlocks and cosmetic stuff to selling stat-boosting (temporary and permanent) items, character auto-levels, a ton of cosmetic content not available elsewhere in the game, horses that moved faster than any other, etc. Screw that shit.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 rather famously boosts a buy-to-play model, where players purchased the game, and then had access to 100% of the game's content without any additional payments required like a subscription. The "cash shop" sold cosmetic things, but due to the game's ability to convert between normal "gold" and the cash shop currency, everything in the store could be obtained exclusively through playing the game and trading currencies. When the game released their expansions, players were required to purchase them separately, but as more expansion content came out, more of the game became available to those who just purchased the base game. Eventually, we saw the base game and some additional content become entirely F2P, while the "main" playerbase was in the B2P new expansion. Why? Because they were making enough money from the expanded cash shop. That shop went from purely cosmetic things to selling a ton of things not available or unlockable in-game. The cash shop started to see a vastly faster and regular content additions, while the normal game content waned. This obviously caught the attention of the playerbase, who are still pretty split over "the company needs to make money" and "the only updates this game gets are to get us to buy more shit." IMO the cash shop isn't as bad as LotRO's, and the lack of game content updates are more the fault of the company for over-promising and under-delivering multiple times.

EVE

EVE started as a subscription model, and stayed that way for many years. When they eventually opened up a F2P model, they separated "alpha" (F2P) and "omega" (P2P) modes between what a player could use in terms of ships, guns, armor, shields, skills, and activities. With how much characters' trained skills apply to their ability to do things in-game, this was another sort of unlimited-duration trial. As we've now seen time and time again, this started out fine. Existing and returning players could still log into the game without having a subscription to talk with their friends, although they wouldn't really be able to do much beyond that due to almost exclusively flying ships and using items that weren't available to F2P accounts. Unlike LotRO, EVE didn't have any ability to purchase content outside of the subscription/non-subscription model.

EVE's downfall was (unsurprisingly) corporate greed. EVE employed a rather unique training model for character skills: skills were unlocked through the purchase and usage of skillbooks, while skill points were obtained passively over time, regardless of how much the player spent in-game. Thus, the age of a character was directly proportional to their skills - the older the character, the more they could do. This attracted a largely older playerbase, as characters "advanced" the same between people who could pour 10 hours a day into the game, or 10 hours a week. The decline came when the developers introduced skill extractors, which enabled a player to remove skill points from one character who had trained them over time, and skill injectors, which allowed those skill points to be injected into another character. The hitch? These items were sold for actual cash. Thus, the game's long-standing notion of "older characters were more skilled" went out the window like a missile, as players newer to the game could just drop some cash and speed-train their characters. The company swore that this, like the rest of the game, was at the behest of the player economy - if no one payed cash for the extractors, filled them, and put them onto the in-game market, no one would be buying them. There would, at any time, be a limited supply of additional skill points, and players would determine the prices.

Well, that was bull, as there was already and item that could be purchased with cash and redeemed for in-game subscription time (like RuneScape's eventually addition of "bonds"). Thus, the price for these skill points could be linked to the price of the item to extract them, as well as the time that it took to train skill points, which happened at 2x speed on accounts with active subscriptions. What really pissed off the playerbase was some time later, when the company straight-up sold skill injectors with vast amounts of skill points straight from their cash shop, bypassing all of their earlier promises about the skill points coming from players and not just being pulled out of thin air.

FFXIV

FFXIV has always been P2P with a monthly subscription. There is a cash shop that contains mostly cosmetic items, emotes, no-stat gear, retainers, etc. The cash shop is never pushed on the players, which is really nice, and the game can be played without spending any additional money in the shop. That being said, the shop is quite expensive, and extensively used (and memed) by the playerbase.

MTG Arena

Like actual MTG: it's pay-to-win with a side of luck.

Titanfall 2

The cash shop is exclusively cosmetics, for a good price.

Destiny 2

B2P, with a cash shop that I think is just cosmetic.

Rainbow 6: Siege

B2P (or F2P?) with a cash shop that is mostly cosmetic, but also contains additional operators that are easier to get with cash, but can also be purchased with experience gained over the course of playing the game.

Overwatch

B2P/F2P, cosmetic shop. A little pushy, but lootboxes from playing the game should keep most people happy.