The Lego Universe MMO shuts up shop on 31st January 2012, The Lego Group has announced
The company explained that despite "a large number of players in the free play zone" it had not converted a satisfactory number of users into paying subscribers.
As a result of the game's closure, Colorado-base developer Play Well Studios is also being shut down along with a marketing team in Denmark, resulting in the loss of 115 jobs. Lego is promising to help those affected find new employment.

Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Kate Paiz announced during a panel at GDC Online 2010 today that Turbine has done it again: Lord of the Rings Online has doubled its revenue and created over a million new accounts since going free-to-play early last month.

paid subscription to a hybrid microtransactions-based business model

Everything about your proposal is an abomination. No.

Not empty quoting this.

Sorry I don't want to tell my friends to play EVE then tell them they have to buy access to the system I'm in and buy access to the skills they need and oh wait they're gonna have to buy more access to use contracts then right? Screw the whole thing let's just make this Mabinogi.

:l

I would like to say that i will Continue playing EvE in the middle to long term though certain cosmetic restrictions are anoying.

I have played many MMO's and half of them have gone free 2 play with Micro-transactions.

With the world Economy as it is now is a good time to consider the following.

1) Micro-transactions have a wide scope of services

1a) EvE could go free 2 play , Example would mean smaller client download size. install content as required
If you have say only 1 character slot , and only the region of space for your race. Say can only fly around in amarr space since you chose that race. Buy from ingame store other space regions .

1b) Buy other services like character slots. and this could be expanded

1c) in-game store currency could be acquired through selling special loot items to NPC vendor , Real world currency , A 6 or 12 month subscriber would get X amount of in-game store currency per month.

2) The content which you might not want would be to walk around in space stations ,

3) Player owned space stations could have custom design interiors and exteriors based on the content bough from the in-game store through micro-transactions.

4) Going to the planets surface could also be extra content from the store.

Now is the time to work and perfect a micro-transaction system that works for EvE before EvE is just left with the addicts.
Else you end up with the following scenario

1) those who play eve are addicts

1a) the addicts will try and play for free buy exchanging ISK for game time

1b) Even if addicts have 2 out of 10 accounts funded by subscriptions and they do not buy ETC since they have enough ISK
Then who buys the ETC for the addicts to use to keep the other accounts running.

2) If the number of active accounts who are on a subscription fall below Y % of X % then CCP will need to rethink their payment options.


I have one example



Now you might not be interested in this MMO , but they failled to create the free 2 play properly and just limited it to a zone.
A better solution like Champions Online , DC Universe Online , Star Trek Online , Age of Conan online , Lord of the Rings online



Although LOTRO went F2P in Late Q3 / start of Q4 in 2010 .... you have to wonder what Free 2 play with a correct

that works for EvE would do not only to the number of unique players (not those with multiple characters and accounts) but also the revenue for CCP.

Final example is World of Tanks MMO from Wargaming.net and is doing very well for its self since it is completely free 2 play but has a prestiege "elite" mode which is only unlocked through gold currency which you can buy for real world money or by winning events.

This is all pure speculation but as i said above now is the time to develop a business subscription hybrid model using micro-transactions for EvE and do i need to remind everyone about the Italian and Greek Debt the countries have. The global finacial Pain will not go away for a few years maybe with us for the rest of this decade.

Supported and liked for the following reasons...

Eventually EvE will have to move towards F2P as this is the general trend of MMO's if CCP wishes to grow the population of EvE further. As more and more MMO's are released that are F2P, fewer and fewer people are going to take a risk playing EvE when they can go do something else for free. The reason current MMO's are going F2P is because they can make more money off of Microtransactions with a higher number of free subscribers playing the game than they did with a lower number of paid subscribers at $15 a month. It is as simple as that. These MMO's aren't going F2P because they failed like some people seem to think. That makes no sense at all. "Our game is failing and we can't afford to keep the servers up...so lets make it free.". Sorry...swing and a miss. They are going F2P because there is more money to be made in Microtransactions than in pure subscriptions.

If CCP wants to take EvE into a sort of F2P model like LotRO where you still have to pay a sub to do certain things and swing more heavily on cosmetic Microtransactions then Ifor one fully support them in that decision.

Around 20 million MMO players have grown up seeing nothing wrong with monthly subscriptions. They will not refuse to subscribe to another MMO in the future, so I don't see the danger of this market being too small for EVE's growth plans.

10 years or so, subscription-based models were all the rage, and we were told that pay once, play forever games were doomed and that we were to see playing games as a service forever more. It didn't happen. Even now, a major MMO like GW2 is poised to go the conventional way.
New models just open new (niche) markets, they will not replace everything else just because they are a current trend.

MT seriously hurt the integrity of EVE's virtual world. As such, they'll have to go.

Everything about your proposal is an abomination. No.

I would like to say that i will Continue playing EvE in the middle to long term though certain cosmetic restrictions are annoying.

I have played many MMO's and half of them have gone free 2 play with Micro-transactions.

1a) EvE could go free 2 play , Example would mean smaller client download size. install content as required

Everything about your proposal is an abomination. No.

LOTRO is a great example of a PvE persistent world which has succeeded by going F2P: it doesn't matter that some guy can buy gear twice as good as yours, because he's not trying to kill you with it.

Around 20 million MMO players have grown up seeing nothing wrong with monthly subscriptions. They will not refuse to subscribe to another MMO in the future, so I don't see the danger of this market being too small for EVE's growth plans.

10 years or so, subscription-based models were all the rage, and we were told that pay once, play forever games were doomed and that we were to see playing games as a service forever more. It didn't happen. Even now, a major MMO like GW2 is poised to go the conventional way.
New models just open new (niche) markets, they will not replace everything else just because they are a current trend.

MT seriously hurt the integrity of EVE's virtual world. As such, they'll have to go.

Sorry, but you don't seem to be getting this:
To a lot of players, the fact that other people are able to change the conditions of the world and their gameplay by RL means seriously damages the game world for them.