f2p rant Options

[=R6= Raile]

sooooo f2p is here

seemed like for months before it came out, everyone was talking about it. sounds really good right? I know of some people who said they were going to come and play when it became free.
Myself though, I was confused about how it all worked. I mean, I paid monthly for it. Was I going to stop paying? I thought I was the only one who was confused, but now I look back on it, and I am wondering why so many people were excited about it becoming f2p? I don't believe that I know anyone who was actually effected substantially by f2p.

Yes, I see that there is a positive. The servers all seemed to get upgraded. I mean, the game runs so f-ing smooth now. I love that. However, that's about it.
Some people say there are way more people playing. But here is the problem. The game is not free. It's like, a free demo. All these people who have come to play, are casual gamers. They won't be level 65's with multiple characters who play all the time. And really, you don't need more people to play the game except at the high levels. No one groups up at low levels anyway. If anything I've been effected negatively at low levels since now I have to queue to kill named bosses for quests, and loads of people are just stealing my ore.

Of course I do realize that Codemasters is probably making way more money. This might sound like it's not a positive for all of us, but it probably is. MMO's not named WOW usually don't last much longer than a couple of years. It is entirely possible that had this game not gone f2p, it could go bankrupt. Most of these games do and I don't know either way with this particular one, so I'd have to say it's safe to assume it needs to be making a shit ton of money.

Anyway I feel like I am no longer confused, but am I right? Am I wrong about any of this stuff?

[MonkeyFiend]

Agree to a point - although I've not had a chance to play much of F2P, I was in the beta and preview etc., True the more causual demo free players won't be toting multiple 65 char's but that's good in a way. In the older days getting groups for lower level stuff was easy - there were always people around. Gradually the game got bigger and people dispersed more, mostly into moria. Trying to get a group to do non epic full fellowship low level stuff these days became hard.

You could usually rely on helpful clan people coming along for the ride, but often on chars that are too high level, taking some of the challenge and hence fun out of the experience. The new Free players will essentially pad out the lower levels and those that like it will become paid members when they progress to the upper levels.

When I looked forward to some of the aspects of F2P, it wasn't actually the 'free players' part, it was often some of the changes lumped in with it, such as the scaled instances, wardrobes etc.,