User blog comment:Ikabite/The Elder Scrolls Online: P2P or F2P?/@comment-68.45.85.240-20130124003356/@comment-68.45.85.240-20130124215544

F2P is still a new industry. Most of the F2Ps that have come out recently are not P2W. People think F2Ps are P2W because the most known (the oldest) F2Ps had poor balance. Just off the top of my head I can think of BLR, Hawken, LoL, Tribes, PoE, Smite, Q:L, PS2, and Warframe. That doesn't even include the tons of high quality F2Ps currently in development like Warface, PSO, DP, etc.

People like to defend subscription based games simply because they like defending their favorite developers, but it's a fact that there is literally no reason for subscription based games to exist anymore. The development costs and maintenance costs can be made up nearly instantly for popular MMOs.