EVE subs are stagnant at best, this is no longer a growth title.

IThis community hates FTP revenue models yet their actions are very likely to cause the need to implement FTP.

Also League of Legends which is F2P is the most played online game and their revenue is massive. Hence why DOTA 2 is most likely becoming Valves most expensive and invested project ever etc.

Last I heard LoL had over 32 million players with more revenue than you quote.

Problem is of course if EVE can work an F2P model because of their game design with a single server but also the expenses for that kind of server.

So it might now be feasible, however, it could be something down the pipeline when too few people play the game to keep it alive for awhile longer.

Most likely they will make their next big MMO F2P or B2P or CCP and EVE will cover a certain niche? Hmm, in anyway, I appreciate this most interesting discussion that could easily just have been derailed because of the terrible OP.

Considering players are dumb enough to pay real money for ISK and purchase characters already I'd say it would do far better than most people would think.

There should be 200,000 players lagging this server up daily and causing queues to show me this is a popular game people enjoy, but that just isn't happening, even on the weekends and those are the facts, if this game was so awesome then why are their so many accounts just sitting about being unused?

You're wrong. You're so wrong that the Euro population is up 11% since the last patch, the US population is up 17% and the AUS TZ is up 45% (at an all time high in fact).

Of course, its easy to post good patch over patch numbers when your last patch was an epic failure, but this one's doing damn well. :)

-Liang

Sources:
- http://wp.me/p1WQ0O-4i
- http://bit.ly/z55dg6

the point is the chart is inaccurate due to age.

I am not saying its "really low", I am saying its lower than it could be and has been.

Switching to "free" to play won't help Eve increase the size of its player base because I and a lot of other players will quit in disgust.

And as someone else pointed out, if another space sim comes out that doesn't put you in a gold fish bowl like STO tried, EVE is in serious ****.

There's a lot of gamers who play free games because they don't have the money to actually subscribe. From a business sense they're not the people you want to attract under normal circumstances (not that there is anything wrong with them but they won't be putting much financially into your business).


However, in MMOs when an MMO is failing these people become more valuable to the business as they will help bolster the numbers and hopefully help keep the remaining subscribers.

Please explain to me then why 0.0 space in EVE Online isn't a warzone right now and there are entire regions of space being farmed for profit by huge alliances?

Wow increased income even tho it lost subs.

Microtransactions were introduced before I started playing in late '08.

Transactions under 20 bucks are microtransactions, unless you have more clout than Visa I consider their definition valid.

How is PLEX not MT?

You're not making sense. When I'm buying PLEX to sell for ISK, I am converting my dollars to in game currency. I'm not converting my dollars to someone else's subscription. Someone else converts their work hours to ISK, then converts that ISK to a subscription. The two are very different transactions involving the same item.

ISK that are "earned" through work hours are not micro transactions because they don't represent real money.

ISK that are "bought" through PLEX do represent real money, placing a real world value on the transactions which that ISK is used to fund.

Would you argue that all ISK represents NPC bounties, and thus everyone who conducts a transaction using ISK is a bother?

Does paying a subscription give me a certain amount of ISK? No it doesn't, so how on Earth would subscriptions count as MT? There is no direct exchange between currencies.

It means what it ******* means. Understand it or don't. Draw any conclusion you like.

This is how most micro transaction systems work: you make one real world transaction for a suitable sum (say, $30), which buys you some tokens: those tokens might be Turbine Points, Agenda Points or ISK. Then you use those tokens to make small purchases which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.

I It seems useful to add that a Microtransaction is independent of the game economy. Which a PLEX is not.

You're conflating the concepts of "micro transaction" and "item store". Here, I wrote two articles that might help people understand the difference:

1. What is a Microtransaction?
2. What is a Virtual Goods Store?

The NeX is a virtual goods store where some of the items might be considered micro-transactions, PLEX-for-ISK is another means of providing micro transactions which has existed longer than the NeX. Both systems offer transactions that are far larger than "micro" (e.g.: a titan is hardly a micro transaction).

PLEX are an ingame item they're an object that enter the virtual world via a redeem button. In other games you may get a purchase from the MT store delivered via the ingame mailbox. In the case of a PLEX or item from the MT store they are both items which are now in the virtual world which were not there before.

You could buy a PLEX or two (single PLEX is an expensive way to buy them) and use them to purchase a monocle from the shop for example.

The cost of the subscription is covered by another player as in the fact someone buys the PLEX for real currency from CCP, but what I was talking about is the cost being covered by CCPs pricing strategy.

Is that all you could come up with, a standard answer from someone that has nothing of any value to add to the discussion.