So Many Asian MMORPGs So Few Western Ones
The free to play MMORPG space seems to be crowded with Chinese MMORPGs and Korean MMORPGs. There are easily 200+ free to play MMOs available, but only a handful of them can be considered ‘Western’. This gap exists because micro-transaction based games have always been big in Asia, while ‘premium’ or ‘subscription’ based games have been big here in the West. This divide has existed because of the disparity of income between the East and West. Game developers in Asia needed to make money, but couldn’t charge upfront for their games or even require a subscription as people were generally poorer. In the West though, that wasn’t a problem. That was in the past though, today – the East has enjoyed rapid economic growth, but it seems like the free to play business model has stuck.
Grand Fantasia Gameplay – A Typical Korean MMORPG
Games like MapleStory, Ragnarok Online and Dragon Oath are now popular both in the East and the West. There’s no doubt that Asian game developers make up a big chunk of the entire micro-transaction market, but are there some Western games out there? Well, yes. Electronic Arts just began entering the space last year with the release of Battlefield Heroes and BattleForge – both extremely ‘high quality’ free to play Micro-transaction supported titles. Earlier in 2010 they also released Lord of Ultima – a browser based strategy MMO that aims to compete with Evony and Jagex’s War of Legends. So it seems like more and more Western developers are entering the space, but they’re still a minority in this growing market. Even Sony released their own free to play game last year – Free Realms. Since released the game has enjoyed some success, as it has over 5 million players worldwide now.
Battlefield Heroes – One of EA’s First Free to Play Games
I feel that free to play will become bigger and bigger here in the West, which will force more traditional game developers like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Sega to start embracing the change rather than ignoring it, which is what they’ve been doing for the most part.
What do you guys think? Will Western game developers keep ignoring the growing popularity of free to play? Or will more and more developers jump on the bandwagon?
By, Omer Altay
April 13, 2010
#
To be completely honest, I hope you’re wrong.
I never liked the free-to-play model. Blame it on my spike’ish tendencies — when I take something on, I play to win, and unlike the subscription model, where everyone enjoys a level playing field, free-to-play gives a significant advantage to people who are willing to spend more money. This becomes painfully obvious in a game like Granado Espada, for instance, where sure, I could spend months farming Bahamar for snail skins to make one Serpent Series weapon, or I could drop $60+ in the cash shop, sell off the premium items and just buy the weapon in a matter of hours — and that’s exactly what competitive players will do, which means that if I want to stand a chance in the Colony Wars, that’s exactly what I have to do. If I equipped just one team this way, assuming nobody in the team duel wields (a naive assumption), I’d have spent $180 already. Suddenly WoW doesn’t seem so expensive.
Free to play might have appealed to me in my younger days, when I did not have a credit card and when my parents would have refused to let me use theirs, but as an adult, all the f2p means is that I’m going to end up footing the bill so other people can play for free. I’ll take a subscription model any day.
April 13, 2010
#1
Omer i must say that i completely agree with you ! Western game developers should consider advancing to the f2p “pay” model but as always they probably wont
Thank you for the post !
~Damian
April 13, 2010
#2
goo Korea!!!!! wooooooo Blade &Soul wooooooooooo
April 13, 2010
#3
Yeah I think it would be awesome if nintendo/sony/microsoft all had f2p or p2p mmos. It would be fun to try em al and they’d be competing like crazy xD
March 29, 2012
#4
I have never liked the looting system in asian games, that is what really annoys me the most.
Also, I don’t like how everyone is trying to make games more realistic without backing it up with the proper graphics, that’s why I like wow which is more cartoonish.
The sh*t that cover most of your screen, the trade system in some games where you don’t have an auction house and the huge cities that are unbelievably hard to figure out and the steep learning curve in asian games are annoying aswell.
Oh yeah, the speech bubbles are often ugly as hell and doesn’t fit into the rest of the game.
April 13, 2010
#5
isn’t Grand fantasia made by Japanese?
April 14, 2010
#6
Tired of the asian crap being passed off as games to be honest wish the western game companies would step there game up . Getting crappy games that asians have been playing for years then get bored of it and send there crap to the us is seriously beginning to piss me off .
April 14, 2010
#7
I think the F2P model is definitely the way to go. I also think the best example of this type is Perfect World, for these reasons;
1) The cash shop doesn’t sell weapons or armor.
2) Cash shop currency can be bought from in-game currency.
3) Both previous reasons also disallow certain ppl from setting up websites and selling game currency as everything is interlinked.
For the reasons stated above in the example i believe this is the way to go and it also shows how far behind in creativity the west really is as old eastern games are considered revolutionary on this side of the world.
April 14, 2010
#8
one thing about a lot of Asian MMOs to play them you really have to be ok with a lot of grinding and big social structures. it seems ot me like the Asian developers are more concerned with social game play than with other things within they’re games. Now in some games this is less apparent like Grand Fantasia. it takes some of the grind out leaving a game with wonderful graphics and a cool social structure. Another thing you really have to like anime/manga to play, since a lot of asian games seem to be Anime oriented. (im cool with that) so if that is where the west game-play market is headed i would be happy to see less grind yet still keeping that big social oriented game-play i see in Asian MMOs. Cash shops can be both good and bad, the good being items with no time limits, and less armor & weapons but things like costume items and xp potions and things like that; an example of a bad cash shop is Maplestory’s 90% of the items in they’re shop is overpriced and expire after 90 days.
April 18, 2010
#9
Sooner or later, games like World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Aion will become free to play. Such as Dungeons and Dragons.
April 26, 2010
#10
I really like the western’s f2p model, I’m an Asian myself, and all MMO’s that is made by our country is using the cash shop system, there are two things that I can assure that is wrong with cash shop system/Paid Currency/IRL cash points, is it’s International availability. In our country, the cash shop system works right, why? because the game servers are specifically designed for our country (we also welcome foreigners by the way), not to mention the prepaid cards are cheap and is widely available nationwide. (MMO games that isn’t International isn’t affected by this)
Also another thing wrong with MMORPG’s that has the cash shop system is that it reduces the value of the current in game currency (Common example that we can throw here is gold), Unlike MMORPG’s here.. where it offers both Gold and “Paid Currency”, Players tend to sell there “Paid Curreny” to the gold currency, therefore making it cheap.. (Only MMORPG’s with Paid Currency/IRL cash points are affected by this.)
July 4, 2010
#11
I personally like the p2p games more over the f2p games with micro-transactions. I played both free-to-play and pay-to-play games before and I find that the field is more leveled in the pay-to-play games since they don’t have the cash shops most free-to-play games do, like for example, I have played Maplestory for a while back in the days and I struggled to keep in par with the people who are spending literally hundreds of dollars to buy the exp scrolls, pets to pick up the stuff they don’t, gach tickets, etc.. Then, they get a way higher level than me even if our online times are the same, while having better equips, and more gold then me which really ruins the game. Then those micro-transaction will add up to numbers that will be far more larger than the flat 15$/month or even the one time pay like Guild Wars and some people might not even notice. On the contrary, pay-to-play games make the players start out the same, and end the same, but, some players will end out worse the others but then thats just because the player sucks or something like that.
July 12, 2010
#12
I totally agree that p2p is better than f2p, in p2p you get to play end content PVP and PVE competitively without actually spending a ton of money, just pay your subscription and be the best that you can.. if you suck so badly and need a cash shop to have fun in the game, you should seriously consider retiring from the game and starting “comptetitive” solitaire…
July 16, 2010
#13
Amberdark, Actually p2p monthly subscriptions adds-up.. so in the longer run.. it costs you a lot of money.
October 21, 2010
#14
I am very sick and tired of asian mmos. The highly exaggerated graphics, the uninteresting and unbelieveable stories, the outrageous characters, the RMT (which seems to be acceptable to the asian cultures) and last but not least, players ability to buy themselves into uber gear. It’s BS and I am not buying it.
March 29, 2012
#15
I have never liked the looting system in asian games, that is what really annoy me the most.
Also, I don’t like how everyone is trying to make games more realistic without backing it up with the proper graphics, that’s why I like wow which is more cartoonish.
The sh*t that cover most of your screen, the trade system in some games where you don’t have an auction house and the huge cities that are unbelievably hard to figure out and the steep learning curve in asian games are annoying aswell.
Oh yeah, the speech bubbles are often ugly as hell and doesn’t fit into the rest of the game.
March 29, 2012
#16
Unlike Omer I also hate the quest system where you have a giant arrow above your head or you’re able to just click and name and go to their location, sad how people aren’t able to think for themself even a little bit.
March 29, 2012
#17
Click THE name*