On the subject of Free-To-Play and MMOs

[AirHog71]

Originally Posted by CaptainDoggles

I'll tell you why not.

A "free to play" game means there's no barrier to registering a new account. That means if you get banned from the game for cheating, you just open a new account.

That means cheaters effectively cannot be banned since they can just register a new account and get right back in. IP bans don't work either if the person has a dynamic IP address (many residential ISPs do this).

So your only recourse is to hope the developers fix the bugs that allow cheats to happen.

Look at Maddox Games' track record: Do you think they will be releasing regular security updates? No.

A free2play game will be rife with cheating, with no way to stop it.

But that happens with a pay upfront games too. Look at Company of Heroes for example. The game can be picked up for $20, there's no subscription or no paid add-ons. People openly admit that if they get caught cheating, they simply buy a new licence.

It's naive to think people just buy 1 copy of game if their sole intention is to cheat.

Cheating is a fact of life for online gaming, there's nothing anyone can do about it. There are steps developers can take to kerb it but they'll never eliminate it no matter what model they follow.