Going against the sentiment here. It's a good idea. The current Pay to Play model is just plain bad. Just becuase something works doesn't mean it's good or works well. As it is the design of internet gaming is in it's infancy. These MMO are only a foray into the larger world of internet gaming.
This is a case as we shift from Pay2Play to Free2Pay we are going to end up with the upstream gamer complaining. This is coming from the ego. The thing is P2P is flawed game publishing. It's stupid and ultimatly limits the game life time, profit and user base. The length of negative value to P2P could write a thesus. I'm not going too. I'm not even going to go into great detail about psychology.
Why is P2P bad. Simple becuase people can spend $40-60 on the software play the 1 month free. Then never play again unless they continue to pay. In one month based on the the rate of designed progress the average consumer will only see a fraction of the base game. Where as most games you can hae beat and played most of the content. So why is paying for the potential to see content a good thing when you purchased the software. The fact that most people put up with(including myself) is a testement of how society has become passive.
Why reward Time investment when the people who can't invest massive amount of time, but still pay the same amount be punished. yes mr casual downstream is being punished becase s/he won't abondon family. People who pay should be rewarded regardless of time investment. It's money that allows for the content to exist. So if Mr Downstream can pay more to "catch up" to his other friends let him. This has the benefit of not being ostrasized. Yes people who cannot devote time get exiled from upper end content that they are playing for. How many people have been to Black Temple? and how many times does a guild not help out low geared members because they don't want to run instance X anymore.
The other benefit of this model is that you can always play whenever you want. You can always be chatting with your guild. So when new content does come out like new planet Tatooine 24-a1h4 whatever the guildmates can talk cajole and tempt the others to pay. This leaves incentive for people to keep the game installed. Where as players who don't feel like playing P2P will likely just uninstall the game. This model keeps people coming back, which means exposure time.
The gaming market is far bigger than the 11 million Blizzard has. It is also more attrative to gamers who don't want pay monthly fees. This model can access a far bigger market and ultimetly leave the players more exposure time to keep on playing to keep on paying.
The only downside effect is ego. The upstream players won't feel as rewarded. Though I suspect all the developers need to do is keep the cooler gear for the time investiment players.
Anyways bigger post that I wanted.
Squilliam: On Vgcharts its a commonly accepted practice to twist the bounds of plausibility in order to support your argument or agenda so I think its pretty cool that this gives me the precedent to say whatever I damn well please.
