Ask Massively: Spore is too darn hard edition

As I mentioned last week, it was my birthday, which meant presents, which included Spore. Yes, I know, the game isn't exactly new, but I didn't own it for precisely the reasons I've been discovering of late — the game is too hard. Not the mechanics, but the idea of having a nearly infinite canvas to draw upon. I have to make one town hall! I can make hundreds! I could make subtle variations on the same theme! I'm really ill-equipped for this sort of thing, which is why I've managed to hold off on buying Minecraft.

But this isn't a column about my crippling addiction to customization — no, this is Ask Massively, where you ask questions and we provide you something that looks convincingly like an answer. We had a number of questions from last week, so much that we're stretching some of them into next week, but you can still feel free to ask us more in the comments or via ask@massively.com.

Lanswor asked: Why don't more games go free-to-play when so many games have made more money that way?

If free-to-play were really a license to print money, then yes, it would make sense for every game to just make the change. But it isn't. We've been seeing some high-profile games change to the model successfully, but from a business standpoint, it's really a risky maneuver. Not only are you no longer collecting money from all of your players, but you're essentially losing money on some of them — the ones playing and using up bandwidth without paying a dime.

One of the subtle things that's easy to miss is that the two big free-to-play success stories

— Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online — still maintain a subscription option. You just don't lose access to the game if you stop subscribing for a little while, and you don't have the initial box sale to overcome. Plus, you're freed from the usual time limit of a free trial; you're able to play as much or as little of the game as you want before subscribing. The other biggest title usually touted for the free-to-play cause is Guild Wars, which for a long time released a new full-priced game every so often along with its cash shop — yes, you could play for free, but every year you were dropping a fair chunk of change.

None of these facts is a mark against the games in question, but they do mean that free-to-play by itself doesn't necessarily mean instant success. It's one of many business options, and while more companies are considering it, the overall success rate is a tad mixed.

Also, there's the simple fact that we have to limit how many games Beau can cover at once. The man can only do so much.

Valdamar asked: We all know how important our first MMO was and how it was the foundation for our opinions of all the MMOs that followed. What was the very first MMO that each Massively staffer played? Do you still play it sometimes? If not, what made you quit?

Both Valdamar and Jeromai asked some great questions of the whole staff, and we're still getting those responses together. (My excuse, as always, is that I was too drunk for a couple days to remember whose face is on the penny.) So the answers to those questions should be in next week. Until then, though, our MMOrigins series from back in the day did feature answers to the question about our first games, but it's over a year out of date now.

Zach Adams asked: I'm going to have nightmares about Carnage in C-Minor now, aren't I?

It beats nightmares about Forbidden Fruit.

Looking for some advice on which class is best for soloing in Aion? Not sure who this Raph Koster fellow is? Curious about the release date of NCsoft's newest MMO? You've come to the right place! No one knows MMOs like we do. If there's anything you'd like to know about the MMO genre or the site itself, Ask Massively is here to help every Thursday afternoon. Just ask!