In Defense of the Subscription-Based MMO

When the dragon appears, we charge out of the gates and into the blinding snow.  A horde of names and robes and armor surge north, ready to destroy the malicious creature for its XP.  There's no goofing around, nobody jumping up and down like an idiot.  There's no immersion breaking screen names like "xXPwnN00bsXx", no teenage boys awkwardly trying to gain the approval of their peers by spamming chat with hate and slurs.  It's just us - the serious players and the mobs.  The mobs don't stand a chance, because the players are working as a team.

It just flows like that.  Nobody needs to point it out or ask for it to happen.  We're all on the same wavelength.  As one of the few healers around, I look for players taking a lot of damage, and I hone in on an archer.  They're dealing a lot of damage, but they're also taking a lot, and it's not because they're being foolish.  It's just a hard fight.  I keep them in my sights, healing as needed, and they take time out of the busy, dangerous battle to thank me.  After our horde triumphantly slays the dragon, we disperse.  Most will remain together, headed south as a set of teams to look for more events to grind.  The archer I looked after asks if they can follow me south, joining me to grind those events.  We don't talk all that much, but when we do, there's grammar and politeness.  I log off that night with a new friend on my list, and so it goes.

It's Final Fantasy XIV.  It's a good MMO, one I wouldn't describe as absolutely stellar in every single department, but it is absolutely a high-quality game all around, not least because it is a subscription based MMO.

Since free-to-play (F2P) MMO's really started to gain ground here in the west a few years ago, a debate has raged online between F2P fans and supporters of traditional, subscription-based MMO's.  Each has its merits, of course.  The F2P MMO gives players complete freedom over how and when they play the game.  Nobody is locked into a cycle.  Nobody feels forced to get their money's worth by logging a certain number of hours of playtime.  And most of all for the budget gamer, it's free.  Players with a little bit of cash can spend their money a la carte, buying features they like, whenever they like, and avoiding features they don't care about.  But it's all optional.

The first problem I've begun to notice with this camp is that they tend to expect every MMO to be free-to-play.  When Zenimax Online announced that Elder Scrolls Online would follow a traditional subscription-based model, riots broke out across the Elder Scrolls fandom.  The F2P model had become so popular (I would say pervasive) that fans felt entitled to it, expecting that any new MMO would follow the now-normalized F2P model.  Some players, like myself, avoided purchasing the game outright because of the fear that free-to-play was inevitable, and that money spent on purchasing the game would be wasted.  It's proof that even among subscription-based fans, there's a sense of inevitability.  'If a game isn't already F2P, it will go that way' is the assumption.  F2P gamers are a growing segment of MMO players, and if the numbers are any indication, it's the way the market is going.

But wait.  Why would anyone want to actually pay for their game when they could get it for free?  There's actually more reasons than one might realize.

Nickel-and-Diming.  Free-to-play games have to fund themselves somehow, and microtransactions become their lifeline.  Even before you log in, the game's Steam page is giving you popups about the monstrous new saberwolfcatbluewhale-eater that can swim through air and drink liquid magma, and it's on sale for one thousand crystalgems but only for a limited time!  Look, it comes in the color of your ex spouse's heart with infrared stripes!  Gotta have it!  Then you get into the game.  If the game is like Guild Wars 2, you might find your mailbox filled up with potions, buffs, debuffs, xp boosters, and other limited time junk, forcing you to buy extra bank space if you want to keep it, because the game has already thrown seven craptons of items at you and filled up your existing space.  And everywhere, there's ads for this item or that service.  Nobody likes ads, and they're coming at you all the time.

It's absurdly crowded.  You put a half hour into customizing your character just the way you want him/her, and you spawn into the starting area, just to find no less than fifty other level 1's, wearing exactly the same thing as you.  They have ridiculous names with symbols and numbers and "xX" all intermingled.  Some are standing catatonically in water up to their knees like patients in a psych hospital, and others are running up to you and harassing you as you're trying to get your bearings.  Others are acting like crowds of hyper thirteen year olds at a mall on a Friday night.  If the ludicrous amount of people lurking at every turn don't kill your immersion, then they're certainly slowing your game to a crawl with server lag (which is probably killing your immersion).

Quality.  F2P games are often rightly accused of having an overall lack of quality.  Whether they're cheap, shoddy games with universally hated pay-to-win systems, or well-funded, critically acclaimed titles, something gets lost when the game goes free to play.  If you ask most Lord of the Rings Online fans that played the game from the first or second expansion, for instance, they're likely to tell you that something changed for the worst when the game abandoned subscriptions.  The layout got cluttered, messy, and cheap.  Graphics quality declined.  Or it may be something more imperceptible...something just feels dirty and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but you know it's there.  And it's staring you in the face every time you log in.

To be fair, subscription-based MMO's have their share of problems, too.  Almost every game does.  And most subscription MMO's are crowded at some point, especially right at launch.  But those games eventually settle into a nice rhythm, the server is adjusted to handle the traffic, and everyone ends up happy.  There are certainly no ads inside the game itself, there's no real-money ingame store, the items you receive in your mail from NPC's are manageable, and nobody's charging you real money for extra bank space.  There's no pay-to-win mechanic, either.

Making your service totally free opens it up to everyone, and if nobody spent anything on it, then they've lost nothing by trolling or being annoying or acting stupid.  On the average, the community in subscription games is typically a little more helpful, a little more cohesive, and a little more seriously invested in the game (causing most people to put at least some thought into name and presentation).

If you're a bar/pub patron, you'll know that there are a lot of dives, and a few swanky upscale bars.  There's a good reason for this.  Some people want to unwind in a smoke-filled dive to the sound of clacking pool tables, loud jukeboxes, and sleazy people looking for a good time.  Some customers want a cleaner, classier experience, and they're willing to pay a little more for it.  To each their own.  But the idea is that everyone's got an option that fits their lifestyle.  That's why free-to-play can't become the entire future of online gaming.  Not everyone likes sleazy bars, and not everyone likes free MMO's, either.

Many of us play games to relax.  We want to invest a few hours doing what we love, and free-to-play MMO's are simply too sketchy to become the entire future.  Serious gamers will always want a more serious experience, and so there must always be a premium option.  If that option becomes unavailable, the future of the MMORPG is bleak indeed.