Huh?

We will always be the dead star that orbits the WoW planet.

Actually, eve is free to play.
As long as you have/make enough isk to buy a plex a month.

I suspect that if it wasn't for this mechanism, subscriber nuMbers would be a fair bit lower.

Rift is a subscription based game, and I believe it's population is still rising. Thing is their are only so many people willing to pay a subscription to play a video game, thus limiting the overall growth potential for such games, which is probably why most MMOs seem to go the F2P route.

The biggest problem with free2play is that the IQ of the playerbase seems to go down dramatically and the idiocy in general chat goes up. Eve has so many players that kind of already like that here, but there are games where the change has been quite dramatic.

Its kind of like if you need to go to a public toilet. As public WC's go, you would rather use one that charges 10 pence or something insignificant instead of going to one that is completely free. Because that 10p is enough to keep the drug addicts, hobos and such from making a mess of the inside. The ones that you need to pay for are much cleaner inside.

nothing is free to play not even F2P if youplay a F2p game eventually you wiill pay just to pass a certain level cap or you will pay to use a certain powerfull item etc etc eventually you pay more than what you pay for a sub
Second F2p works fine on a MMO with 100 s of different serrvers
EvE is not, introducing F2P will create a unnbalance between people willi ng to pay for their toys and people who can't afford it or are not willing to pay for it

EDIT: To elaborate on that further, the mentality that WoW built up is that you're worthless until cap level. With the current skill system, it might encourage players not to play until they have all their skills up to par. Since time is free. But if players are paying for their time, it encourages them to make better use of it and get the experience they need to flourish.

CCP managed to kill the true sandbox as well as turn their game into pay to win (not as bad as other games) the moment plex hit the scene. Treating eve like a strict monthly sub game is simply misguided.

CCP managed to kill the true sandbox as well as turn their game into pay to win (not as bad as other games) the moment plex hit the scene. Treating eve like a strict monthly sub game is simply misguided.

Dark Age of Camelot I think has title on oldest.

This statement is so untrue as to not even be funny. As I already said in my earlier post, a skilled player will beat a well geared player ALL-DAY-LONG.

WWII Online is still sub

I know huge swathes of people that purchase plex to replace lost ships instead of farming or mining like players use to in the past... The options to invest real life cash to purchase a plex which is then used to obtain large amounts of in game currency is exactly pay to win, regardless of which way you want to spin it.

I know huge swathes of people that purchase plex to replace lost ships instead of farming or mining like players use to in the past... The options to invest real life cash to purchase a plex which is then used to obtain large amounts of in game currency is exactly pay to win, regardless of which way you want to spin it.

But they can more easily afford things like gol...faction ammo and expensive ships which they have no fear of losing because they can always drop more rl money for plex and buy a new one.

But they can more easily afford things like gol...faction ammo and expensive ships which they have no fear of losing because they can always drop more rl money for plex and buy a new one.

WWII online went free to play

Actually, eve is free to play.
As long as you have/make enough isk to buy a plex a month.

What you describe is bad free to play MMOs.

Good free to play games allow playing for free to be palpable while still giving plenty of reasons to pay some money. League of Legends, while not a true MMO, has this aspect down pat and that's one of the reasons why it is so popular today.

But they can't get anything that I cant by simply playing the game.

My point is that it's not "pay to win"
It's more like "pay extra to be slightly less inconvenienced"

Pay to save time. And when you do it, you are putting real money on the line.

Spoiled kids with rich parents are the exception, not the rule. Other rich people don't have a lot of time on their hands (Typically) so this is a good way to help them catch up.