I wish Yeli would stfu.

*Yerli

I don't know the details of the models for those games but the thing is that if the paying part only is about superficial stuff like hats and costumes, then that will not bring signifcant revenue to the publishers. Team Fortress 2, Dota and League of Legends were relatively cheap mods or multiplayer extensions that didn't cost $60 to begin with.

Yes, we will see a few decent indie games try the F2P model and in these games when you pay for some useless item it basically works as a form of "thank you" from the player to the developer (kinda like all that PC software was free back in the 90's and then a few moral individuals actually paid for it, I don't remember the name used for it) and that's great. I don't have any problems with that.

But that form of F2P is not what we are talking about. We are talking about AAA games, games with big budgets. To get those big budgets you need revenue flows and gamers will only pay for features in the game that benefit the gameplay.

The inherent problem to F2P is that the publishers must make money through some method and the temptation is big to make as much as possible. That is achieved by giving the player incentives and that's where pay to win comes in. Players don't spend big bucks on hats and costumes, they spend big bucks to win. The vast majority of F2P games have that problem.

These games definitely didn't cost $50MM to make when they were released, but their quality has grown and resources been put into the game over time. It's a different sort of development spend for these titles. If you take AAA games and change nothing about them or their development, but simply slap on F2P models, no it won't work. That's why no one's doing it, and why Crytek says they're still trying to figure it out.

You keep mentioning that consumers won't spend a lot on cosmetic items, and only splurge on spending to win. That may be true for a minority, but for overall profit that's not been a more successful method in any instances. People spend a lot on cosmetic items. Maybe not you, but the average consumer clearly does. LoL and TF2 rake in a lot of money, especially LoL.

The first AAA F2P play games are comming soon with things like Planetside 2, and the devs have said that there won't be pay to win. We will see how it plays out but I doubt that they will go the pay to win model. Infact I can't actually think of a successful competitive F2P game that is pay to win. Pay to win is only realy big in things like farmvill, outside of Asia anyway.

League of Legends doesn't offer any microtransactions that give players an unfair advantage in the game. And yet it is one of the most successful games arround right now, with revenue of 65 million in 2011. And the game is still growing picking up another 10 million accounts in the last year.

World of Tanks
LOTR Online
Battlefield Heroes
Heroes of Newerth
Tribes

+ a myriad of Asian MMORPGs

Haven't played world of tanks

LOTRO isn't really a competitive game it just has some PvP arenas where you don't even play your character

BF Heroes is prety terrible I admit, tho I wouldn't call it successful

nether HoN or Tribes is really pay to win in the traditional sense, I don't consider faster unlocks pay to win. I would consider pay to win something like having the most powerful weapons pay only or the ability to buy stat boosts that you can't earn ingame. 

Yes, there are different levels of pay to win, and the definitions vary.

When I say pay to win I want to describe the phenomenon where by paying you get an advantage withinin the game in regards to gameplay in some form. Stuff that simply makes the experience smoother and easier. It could be an advantage in relation to other players but it can also be an advantage in your individual progress but when I said Pay to win I didn't just mean getting higher on the PvP leader boards. You could say that "winning" is not just achieved by beating other human players, "winning" is also beating tasks in the game.

I don't think we will see having the most powerful weapons be pay only. People get too upset with that and publishers aren't that stupid. That's not what I am talking about. Microtransactions are much smarter than that.

Faster unlocks is milder but still it's pay to win. It's not paying to become the absolute top dog but it certainly is paying to become competitive faster, and the time released by paying you can use to become competitive.

As an example, I recently saw that you could pay around 50 Euros to unlock all the weapons and vehicles in BF3. For me it was very tempting and I would sure buy those unlocks if I decided to jump into BF3 as it takes a very long time to unlock all that stuff by just playing. Clearly this would save me from not getting an embarrassing K/D ratio. (Yes I know BF3 is not F2P but the principle is the same).

In Asia aparently there that kind of thing as ok.

I think all multiplayer games from big pubs will be some form of pay to win in the future by that definition. The only real difference (excluding graphics and moment to moment gameplay) between BF3 and Tribes is that you have to pay $60 to get BF3 and a singleplayer campaign that no one wanted or liked. And frankly I would rather have F2P games where people can pay to unlock things quicker than to have the playerbase split by payed map packs like most payed games.

And if Crytech can find a way of delivering a AAA singleplayer experiance in a F2P game I will certainly play that even if they offer payed cheats that I wouldn't want anyway plus some ads between missions. The constant stream of new content inherent in a F2P game is nice as well.