Wargaming acquired TA IP.

F2P doesn't work for RTS and never will...
Age of Empires Online (shutdown)
Command & Conquer: Generals 2 (cancelled)
End of Nations (cancelled)

Battleforge was too legit to quit, until it was shut-down.

So I seriously question the idea that F2P can't work for RTS games, especially when we had it before hand with demos.

EDIT: also, I don't understand why AOE:O counts as being a failed attempt, when it actually did work very well.

AOE online was a great model for free to play. You didn't need to do all the stupid pay stuff if you didn't want. You could just play the game through as a campaign for free or you could purchase the skirmish pack for a small amount and play multiplayer.

The bad side of it is that once it shutdown the game is gone forever.

Yet it was a financial failure. People indeed played the free part a bit and then just stopped.

Very true. I wonder what a good model for a free to play RTS would be?

Probably a staged access to the game, i.e. you get access to 3 or 4 campaign missions and a couple of skirmish maps to play against the AI. The full campaign would be a upgrade pack, multiplayer would be a upgrade pack, maps would be in packs, extra units would be pack.s And perhaps most importantly ongoing patching would require some kind of payment, maybe once every 6 months to get 6 months worth of patching... Anyway just some ideas....

yes, and that again wouldnt make it f2p, it would be a "demo" and the full game, like it was before f2p showed up.

f2p only makes sense if people see an advantage by paying, and in an rts its difficult to do this, without unbalancing the matchs themselves.

The other option is doing loads of factions that are aesthetically unique, and slightly different (like AoE2's unique units or something, mostly clone faction with a few uniques) then make some subset of the factions available from week to week for free, and you can pay to permanently unlock a faction you like. Maybe a hero unit or one of your basic squads is different, and maybe one of your big game ender units.

Company of heroes: online aswell

Honestly i'm not sure it really could be done. For any F2P model to work it actually needs people to spend money on things which means the game needs monetizable mechanics. With an MMO or things like that there's already the mechanics expected for the gameplay. With an RTS in order for it to actually survive you'd have to artificially monetize game mechanics which players in general just don't like.

Basically, for a F2P RTS I can't really think of a way it could be set up that would both be considered "good" for players and still make money.

Am I the only one who thinks that they will/would screw up TA 2 and PA will/would still be better? Huh.

Screwing up sup com 2 ... I can live with that.

Screw up TA 2?

Pitchforks.
Molotovs.
Abrams.

We should get NASA to...build...Halleys?

yeah I think not many will hop on that bandwagon.
If you look at my older posts, I was of that opinion.

now I'm not so sure.

All I know is that I won't be able to help myself from being very harsh in my appreciation of TA2 if it doesn't feature planets as maps like PA.

I don't understand why people start to question a potential TA2 without it even being announced.
Though it kinda explains why not many TA-like games have been financially viable. The hardcore fans of them seem to tend to swear loyalty to a single version and go spread hatred towards the others.

I know the words I chose are a bit drastic and over the top, but the general direction really seems to be true

I don't even believe there will be a TA2

One can hope. I mean there is a pretty rich company that bought the rights on TA and bought up the studio that made SupCom:FA, including hiring chris taylor, whose name was pretty visible on TA.

@cola_colin, you were on the cnc podcast

you agree that it's pretty darn heavily hinted right?

I can't remember the whole thing anymore. But if I were wargaming I would tend to actually do something with the IP I bought for a few hundred K $

@cola_colin so would I, there you go.

Aye, I'd hope so as well, but considering the negativity towards F2P (RTS F2P games especially), wargaming, and CT's post-FA projects, I seriously doubt wargaming would risk it.
Atari didn't do anything with the IP either, you know.