Massively Overthinking: How much does gross monetization really affect your MMO play decisions?

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had several MMORPG tiffs over pay-to-win claims in our games. DC Universe Online just straight up added paid currency. Albion Online is just selling skill gain now. They stood out to me because for the most part, MMO studios are pretty careful about this stuff in the modern era, since western players will pick up torches and pitchforks over egregiously greedy monetization, especially anything that smacks of pay-to-win.

Or will they? When Lord of the Rings Online omitted a character booster from its recent expansion preorder, players got so mad at the lack of something inarguably pay-to-win that they made a fuss on the forums until SSG relented and put the boosters back in!

I realize the MMORPG community is big and wide and not a monolith, but we can still debate it, as we are wont to do here in Massively Overthinking. How much does an MMO’s monetization really affect your MMO play? Is it more about new games, or are you more likely to give older games a pass when they slip in P2W? Are there certain types of monetization that you’ll let slide or put your foot down? Or are you just fine with how it’s all working as long as you, personally, can ignore it and keep playing without engaging with the ick stuff? How much does gross monetization really affect your MMO play decisions?

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I’m definitely more likely to let old games slide and pass on new games. Look, if a brand-new MMO is going wild with cash shop crappies and gold-digging from the start, I see no reason to have much faith in its business model. That just looks like a temport, like a game designed to grab as much cash as possible before abandoning the players. Even if it’s not intentionally that, it’s likely to be that. It doesn’t convince me that the studio takes the genre seriously or respects its fans.

But older, midsize MMORPGs? Yeah, I’ll let it slide. I might side-eye the likes of Albion Online and DCUO because it makes me wonder about what’s going on behind the scenes, but for something like LOTRO, I just can’t be arsed to raise a fuss. The game is too small, the devs too few, the studio too underfunded, and it really isn’t going to affect me whatsoever if somebody boosts his 15th hobbit to level 140.

Course, I really don’t have much of a problem with character boosters to begin with. Lockboxes make me much, much angrier than most pay-to-win, and I don’t like them even in the games I love. And MMOs genuinely built around lockboxes, like gacha games? Forget it. Hard pass.

But overall, I’m with Justin on this one: Pick the right monetization battles to spend your energy on. Some of these games just deserve an eye-roll, not a melt-down.

Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I play a lot of P2W games, so it doesn’t really bug me. As a casual player for these titles, I spend money only on outfits or the monthly packs that are basically subscriptions. I don’t ever see myself to buying into the schemes either because for the most part, the big games like Throne and Liberty or Black Desert Online have systems established to make the game fun and rewarding for low spenders. On the flip side, those who are spending money on these games are in leadership roles in the biggest and most powerful guilds, so things are balanced out in that sense.

What’s most important to me is that my favorite games still run with a fair monetization system. I don’t usually get pushed out of those P2W schemes because I already know that I’m not the target for that!

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Looking at a game’s monetization in totality can definitely determine whether I’ll be interested in digging into a new MMO, but that’s mostly something I keep in the back of my mind as a red flag until after I’ve had some time actually playing. After then, the cash shop offerings factor in fully on whether I’ll keep going.

To that point, there aren’t a huge number of monetization features that I’ll see in a game that will push me away completely except for one: gacha. I actually feel like this is worse than lockboxes in a way in that it’s far more obviously gambling than any other kind of MMO monetization scheme out there. Especially since it’s all but thrust into your face most of the time. Lockboxes might be prevalent, but they feel ignorable or just provided, where gacha is forced down your throat.

So yeah, I suppose that if a game is fun enough, I can mostly ignore the icky. I might feel a bit guilty in doing so, especially if enjoying that game is apparently a sin to the wider genre and the latest dagger stabbing the great Caesar of How Great Things Were, but I also would prefer to choose joy than join the horde that hates gaming forever.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Honestly, I can ignore and/or live with most MMO monetization formats as long as the game is good and the monetization isn’t intrusive, annoying, or blatantly pay-to-win. If a business model greatly segregates a playerbase, I too take issue with that.

But I think we’re often so unnecessarily harsh to studios over trying to make money that we don’t discern between the gross and non-gross practices and lump them all into a pile for us to sit on top and have a temper tantrum. Devs gotta eat, and money keeps the servers online. So make allowances for monetization as much as possible and pick your rant battles carefully.

Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I can pretty much ignore the pay-to-ruin (autocorrect put ruin instead of win, and I’m going to let it stay!) monetization schemes that developers put together. At this point I so often play solo or nearly solo that what other players are doing doesn’t bother me a bunch.

In a game like Albion Online, I would at least be wary about any sort of purchasing of skills – mostly just because other players literally kill you when you’re running from zone to zone sometimes. But in games like Starbourne, it’s a real scam. I ignored the one time I played through the game because of how nostalgic I was for that format, but it was actually awful there. I’m seeing some of the same garbage in the new Age of Empires Mobile too. Paying to speed up building and development. It’s a lot like Clash of Clans but worse.

Overall, I can ignore it, especially cosmetics, but some like the ones I mentioned above are kind of game-stoppers for me.

Tyler Edwards (blog): As I’ve said before, I believe “pay to win” is a meaningless concept in a genre with no win state and numerous ways to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I think what people are really concerned about when they say something like that is reaching a point where it’s impossible to play the game on any meaningful level without constantly feeding in cash. But the only games where I’ve seen that truly be the case are subscription games like World of Warcraft, where you literally can’t keep playing if you stop paying.

Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!