Earlier today, Kirith Kodachi wrote at the Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah:
With the Dungeons and Dragons Online going to a Free-To-Play model with microtransactions and premium memberships as the method of making money, and with a lot of commentators saying that the traditional 15 dollar a month subscription is going to be obsolete in the future, I wonder how Eve could become a microtransaction based game.
I can see existing account services like character transfers and avatar changes remaining but they would be low money makers I suspect.
Perhaps some customization options like more character avatar upgrades or perhaps custom ship skins. Could the player community agree to some ships being available in a microtransation store?
Maybe allowing players to buy Loyalty Points in bulk. They can use the LPs to buy from the Loyalty Point Stores items not available to be built from blueprints and then turn around and sell them on the market for ISK to get whatever they want.
Do we allow certain ship classes to be available only through LP stores?
Perhaps once Incarna arrives (that is the new code name for Walking In Stations / Ambulation) there will be hordes more opportunities for a microtransaction store (although while typing this post I really became enamoured with selling Loyalty Points… seems like a good wedge point for the concept in the player base).
Comments? Discussion?
I, personally, think that the move to the Microtransaction model would be a very bad thing for EVE Online. There are several reasons behind this, not the least being the effects on the economy, the player base, and continued support of the game from CCP.
First of all, the whole business model behind the Microtransaction MMO market is accessability and impulse buying. Basically you make the game free so that tons of people sign up, and hopefully before they get bored and move on X% will spend $Y on +1 broadswords so that you can pay the bills for the server farm, and then A% will stay on for the long run and buy $B worth of Armor of Doom so that you can pay for the Porsche. If you’re really lucky, you can get the extra options too! O.o
The effects this could have on EVE are many, but the most obvious one is the fact that some part of the game will be exclusive content. The most logical thing would be to make this Faction ships 
and mods,which would probably happen, but remember the “Accessible” portion of our formula. The Faction ships equate to the Armor Of Doom, so what is a +1 Broadsword? That’s right: maybe it’s the Merlin frigate, or 200mm autocannons. It’s going to be T1 ships and equipment because if a player has to play for two months or more before they have the skills to operate the exclusive content, you’re throwing out money because most of your X% buyers have already left the game. The other side of the accessability coin, of course, is the fact that EVE is NOT accessable to casual gamers. To enable the game for Microtransaction market, it will have to be dumbed down.
Now what about all those extra noobs running around. It’s okay, they’re going to learn the game and be productive, knowledgable members of the community. Well, maybe 10%? The rest will leave, and be replaced by another wave of noobs. I’m a noob, so don’t get me wrong, but will space be overcrowded with 13 year old girls doing the teddy bear courier missions over and over? Will their portraits look like this?
Okay, moving on to a more concrete issue, what about the economy? The higher number of new players will drive up costs for basic equipment? They will sell all of their ore and loot without checking the prices and drive all of the averages through the basement? The limitation of some portions of the game to exclusive content will also drive a wedge into the middle of the market that I, admittedly, do not have the economics education to even be able to fathom.
Then we have the issue of CCP’s bank account. We can all sit back right now and say “hey, great, I can play for free!” But what about the next expansion? What about fixing Jita lag? What about updating graphics and sounds? Who pays for this? Right now, we do. Look at your monthly subscription like you’re paying taxes and CCP is the government. Sure, they’re making a buck, but they have to feed their families, too. I’m sure that a LOT of the money that they get from us goes BACK into the game to make it better. And updates stopping is just a short-term effect. The long term effect of this would be the end of the world (no, really, it would be).
So here’s my foresight on the world of EVE as a microtransactioned F2P game: Space flooded with noobs who have no idea what their doing, half of them being 13 year old girls because the game has been made to look like this one over here to attract that lucradive market that have “daddy please can I have it” eyes. The economy of New Eden crumbles into a shambles of what it once was and we find ourselves dishing out 5 dollars/pounds/euros/marks/yen to buy a Merlin from some gypsy NPC station trader. CCP pays the bills, sure, but they can’t release the “Walking to the Fridge for Zydrine Wine” expansion, fix Jita lag (local is at 4000 by now, BTW), or update the graphics. All of this pisses off long-time players, who leave. Server consolidation then sets in as the population continues to dip and finally New Eden gets sucked into the black hole of forgotten digital code.
I, for one, don’t mind paying a little scratch for some entertainment. I figured out a bit ago, and if you play the average 2.5 hours per day and have two paid accounts, you’re paying about $0.35 American per hour to play EVE. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that folks! Cheers!
abaddor