14 DAY TRIAL // Two big massively multiplayer online role-playing games are making their way to next-gen consoles in the near future, and both of them require players to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to play.
The first one will be released for the PlayStation 4 on April 14, Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, with the second one being the highly anticipated The Elder Scrolls Online from ZeniMax Online Studios, scheduled to land on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sometime in June 2014.
Paying a subscription fee in order to play a game might put off some first-time gamers, so Community Project Manager Hergen Thaens of Square Enix Europe tries to explain what players can expect from Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn in exchange for their monthly payment, in a post on PSBlog.
In a nutshell, these massively multiplayer online role-playing games offer a world that constantly evolves and expands over the course of their lifetime, offering players an experience similar to buying DLC for regular titles and usually higher quality and better balanced content than most free-to-play games.
Players will not require a PlayStation Plus subscription in order to play Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, only the MMO's monthly subscription fee.
Thaens points out that the main difference between standard single-player games and MMOs is that the latter category is fundamentally different, as its constituents are designed to run for years, as opposed to the couple dozen hours most single-player titles offer.
This way, an FFXIV: A realm Reborn subscription fee guarantees players regular content updates throughout the entire lifetime of the game, and the latest such update, Through the Maelstrom, is cited as an example.
FFXIV Patch 2.2: Through the Maelstrom alone added a slew of content to the original game. Its main features are two main scenario quest lines that continue the game's story arc, two new raids, player housing, new dungeons and the introduction of dungeon Hard Modes, new primals for players to fight, with an Extreme Mode difficulty for veteran players, PvP combat, treasure hunts, new factions with daily quests, and tons of optimizations and other content.
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has another beta phase scheduled from April 4 to April 7, and players who will take part in it will be able to carry all their characters and progression over into the final game, which Square Enix will launch on April 14.
It's certainly going to be interesting to see how well these MMOs will be able to perform with the monthly subscription fee business model on next-gen consoles, and whether this could be the start of a trend.