Unless I missed it there was never any great outcry from non-paying members for free access to the membership jobs. The membership jobs were all combat ones except for blacksmith, and the combat jobs all play very similar. Ninja is much like Wizard and Archer, while Brawler is very much like Warrior and Medic. The new soccer job I guess is different and perhaps they have some more different jobs on the way. There was hope that as new jobs were added, older membership jobs might be moved to the free section, something that I believe was even mentioned by the devs, at least as something that they might consider.

What SOE has done is completely change the very nature of the game. I will give them credit for at least not screwing over characters made prior to November 1st. But by effectively making sure there will be no more new “free” players, it is now effectively a subscription game, as I seriously doubt many people (adults or kids) will hang around as “free” players buying cash shop items when they can’t go higher than the start of 5 on anything other than Pet Trainer and Card Duelist.

They already made a lot of us with memberships mad by nerfing things left and right, with promises to revisit some of the changes which made the game into a grind and the crafting a net loss, some quests crazy hard, etc… but of course they never did. From the friends I had in game to watching the forums, it looked like many not only canceled their membership, but left entirely. The servers which used to all be fairly busy are now mostly empty, aside from holiday events. There seem to be bursts of new players now and then and few old timers (at least on the forums).

The strange thing is, at least of the people I knew, that the non-membership players seemed to be actually spending more money, as they were after adventure job cash shop outfits, pets and glow shards for their Ninja and Brawler gear. I went with the membership and then was going to spend about $5 every month or two on cash shop items. Considering I’m paying only $11.67 a month for Aion (not counting the cost of buying the initial box), Free Realms doesn’t seem like a very good value now. If they had kept the game casual and fun like it was at first, that would have been different. But why grind for hours with little to show for it in FR when that same time spent in most other games actually gets you something in return. Nerfing the amount of gold you get in FR really sucked most of the fun out of it, as they left the high prices for end game stuff at the same level.

But I guess SOE is only interested in rich kids that will spend a bundle of their parent’s money for a few months and then move on. Perhaps the original business plan wasn’t working, but totally ignoring the player base you already have, even driving them off, then changing the very nature of the game doesn’t seem like a good idea. Perhaps the new plan will work, I don’t know. I’ll just spend a few minutes each day trying to finish my collections or perhaps do a quest now and then, at least until they eventually kick non-members off entirely.

“Creative Director Laralyn McWilliams insists this was a change players asked for.”
which Tipa responded with, “Was there really a great outcry from Free Realms players to make the game not be free any more?”

I think you’re misinterpreting what McWilliams is saying. To me it appears McWilliams is saying the players wanted to be able to experience ALL of the jobs (classes) as, IIRC, up until this point in time players who did NOT subscribe could not experience ALL of the jobs, i.e., there were several jobs that you could only access IF you subscribed.

What Sony did was open up ALL of the jobs to ALL players but they added a level cap to the non-paying players.

In WoW terms this would be like giving a Vanilla WoW player access to Blood Elves and Dranei but only letting them play to level 10. They already do something similar to this with their Trial Account; for 2 weeks you can play any Vanilla race/class but only to level 20. Wizard 101 gives you access to all Schools while limiting you to level 10 (you’re also restricted to certain streets within Wizard City). In DDO you can advance to level 4 (IIRC) but then need to find leveling sigils to get further into the game (unless you buy them from the DDO Store). You also cannot access certain content unless you buy the packets from the Store.

IMO Sony didn’t change Free Realms to a subscription-only game because it never was a true Free 2 Play game; like W101 it’s always been a subscription game which still allowed non-paying Players to have limited access to the game’s content. What Sony did was change the content that was accessible to non-paying players. They can now access ALL jobs, something they could not previously do, but the upper levels quests to which they previously had access are now off limits.

What the non-paying Players were asking for was access to ALL Jobs. Sony heard their cry and granted their wish, but at what cost? Be careful what you wish for, or you just might get it.

I have heard from insiders the D&D Online now makes MORE money from its F2P model than it did with subscriptions. So what’s the difference? Marketing to adults, who have spare cash? People probably are much better at saying “no” to their kids than to themselves.

Shame such a fun little game has been ruined.