User blog comment:PsijicThief/ESO Business Model/@comment-5558140-20130819213429/@comment-7153552-20130820143558

I don't know how many MMOs you've played, or how much you keep up with the industry, Equillibrium, but World of Warcraft is losing customers by the crap-loads (that's an official measurement on the "holly hell, that's big" system). After people leave WoW, they seek out new MMOs to play and find that the majority of them on the market right now aren't Pay to Play. Defiance and Guild Wars are Buy to Play with a microtransaction system. Star Trek Online and Neverwinter Online (by Cryptic and Perfect Worlds, the people that brought us Torchlight) are both Free to Play with microtransactions (MTs). And these MTs aren't game breaking in any of those four games. If you build a cash shop with decent items (not amazing, decent) then you'll make your money. World of Tanks is another that comes to mind as Free to Play, with microtransactions, but you don't have to spend a dime. The key to making F2P and B2P models work is finding things people want to spend money on. Not to mention the outcry of fans saying that if the game is on a subscription they simply won't play. You have a ton of people used to certain things and they aren't going to give that up easily.