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I've played Star Trek Online for 7 years. I've never stayed more than 3 months in any subscription game. The same excuse of keeping new content is often made for games that you pay a high price up front for. Then they usually don't release any new content or just some very mediocre content because they already have your money. F2P games release more new content, in my experience, than subscription games. WoW has been out for 12 years. It has released only six updates. It is subscription. STO is F2P. It has been out for 7 years and released 19 updates.

Someone else, but to be honest, if a thread isn't locked then there should be no expiration on posting to it. That's the point of locking and pruning. Free-to-Play is simply any game that you do not have to invest money into to play. You might need to in order to experience more, but it's optional. It's like a coupon for free French fries. It doesn't mean that you'll get the burger and soda without paying.

A subscription is pretty much equivalent to a cellphone contract. You're locking into the carrier and can't go anywhere else. That's what I'm talking about. Most sub games offer longer "contracts" at a lower rate and this locks a person into that one game. You don't want to play anything else because you feel you're wasting money. In a F2P game, I can play as many games as I wish with no worry that I'm losing anything by taking a week off from one. Now you don't do that with cellphones. You pay as you go (F2P) and leave and go to another carrier when you want and you aren't losing money. That was my analogy. WoW has a shop with mounts, pets, helmets, and even a level boost to 100. Is that not pay-to-win on top of a sub? WoW succeeded because it was the first really large professional MMORPG. It has lost millions of subscribers since but still remains top simply due to its numbers. Eve Online's system of earning ISK in the game to pay for a sub is highly unrealistic. It is nearly impossible to earn enough credits to buy the card for gametime. Only people who have already put years into the game and are in a large corporation may be able to do it. No new player is going to come close. I know people running bot mining programs that mine 24/7 and still don't earn enough. I know a lot of "F2P" games pretty much require you buy something to get the good stuff, but STO does not require a penny for anything. All content is open to free players and anything a money-spending player can get, a free player can get as well. It will just take longer. STO has been around for 7 years and is still strong. World of Tanks and World of Warships is another example of good F2P models. Spending money doesn't buy you anything better, it just speeds up the process. DU can choose whatever path they wish; it is their game, but facts are that the F2P model makes the most money for companies and this is why it is vastly more popular. As I said before, you have to do it right. I often joke of making a Tic-Tac-Toe MMO that is F2P: Everyone gets two X's and two O's for free, but you have to purchase additional ones in the shop. That's a bit like some of the F2P games, but I think it's unfair to lump them all into the same category. And to be honest, a lot of games fail not because the game is bad or the business model is bad, but simply because the community is bad. I can't count how many games I've started and the community were such jerks that, instead of trying to help new players, they flame them for asking questions. These people don't seem to realize it is in their own best interest to be nice to others and help the player base grow, but a lot of people are turned off by it and quit. And, BTW, I've been in the automotive electronics industry for over 35 years and mobile phones were not that expensive. In fact, most high-end cellphones are twice as much. Mobile phones were about $200. Cellphones were never free or even cheap. Those "free" phones were $300 or more cost to the dealers and were given away only with a contract because that's how the money was made. This isn't happening anymore.

Please explain how a subscription model is any less Pay-2-Win than a F2P model. Every subscription game I've seen has a shop that sells advantages. There are good F2P models and bad ones. I don't like seeing all games get trashed with some bad ones. For instance, STO is F2P and there is not a single item in the game that cannot be obtained while playing for free. Sure, you can purchase items that allow you to get more faster, but that's what any optional purchase does. Very few subscription games succeed and will just turn F2P within a year or so if they don't fail completely. Then it is harder to stay afloat because the model wasn't geared toward F2P from the beginning, so they struggle with balance. I hope this game succeeds, it looks pretty good from my telescope view. But when the dust settles, it's the game's quality and not the business model that decides its fate. I also remember when all cellular phone plans were subscription based. I'm glad I'll never have to deal with those again.

Quoted the wrong post. Need to make that more evident!

In what universe did you dream up that statement? Free-2-Play happens be the top money-making business model in gaming, period. Do some research. All you need to do is look at all the games that started out as subscription but went to F2P. You ever heard of a F2P game changing to subscription? Why don't you tell the World of Tanks devs that F2P doesn't make money? The facts are, most of the games that began as subscription fail and most of the ones that were designed from ground up as F2P succeed. WoW and EvE are about the only really successful subscription games and this is mainly because they are in a niche market.

Where is the evidence that those ships were not built in the game? There is no way to determine this from a video. I could show you a video of a sandwich. Could you tell whether I made it or not?

I don't think a business model has anything to do with the quality of a game. I know many very good free-to-play games that are also very successful making money and I know subscription games that suck. Some of those still make money but they suck, like WoW and EvE. Guild Wars 2 is buy once to play and it's great. I think the quality of the game itself and "how" its business model is designed is what makes or breaks a game. I think game shops (or premium) that give advantages invisible to others, such as more xp, credits, etc. is not regarded by most as unfair like physical items (mounts, armor, weapons, etc.) are. If you are one of the players that feel everything should be free and people spending money in a game are cheating and it's unfair, then you were probably voting for Bernie, so I have no help for you.

The weird thing is, I can sign in only from my phone. It does not allow me to from a PC. It says username or password is incorrect, but I know they are correct. So, sorry about the multiple posting in one thread, but that's why I hate posting in forums from a mobile device. [EDIT] Actually, I figured it out. I had forgotten they have this silly requirement of having at least six characters in your username so I was forgetting that I had to add underscores to my name. And this is what the email you get looks like. No indication of Dual Universe:

I didn't get any errors, I'm just saying the email has nothing about the game mentioned. They need to identify it.

I wouldn't mind a subscription but I think it should be less than $10 a month. Make it back from increased numbers of subs.

I wouldn't mind a subscription but I think it should be less than $10 a month. Make it back from increased numbers of subs.

I wouldn't mind a subscription but I think it should be less than $10 a month. Make it back from increased numbers of subs.

One thing I would suggest is to identify the game that the email wants to subscribe you to. There is no mention of it and only "Novaquark". I nearly deleted it as SPAM until I went back to the website to identify that it was connected to this game.