They should take a leaf off of Sega's notebook.
Picture perfect example? Phantasy Star Online 2.
Whole game's free to play. Only things you pay for are possibly costumes, room accessories (if you want a room), or setting up your own store to auction off items. Even so, those can all be obtained randomly or through one of their many, many promotions.
That's one model of business... But it's also one that doesn't bring in a lot of revenue. It's good to attract new consumers, but it's bad for generating profit.
The only people that will spend money on a model like this, are people that are enthusiasts about the game, but when the game has only really come out, there aren't many enthusiasts. So the game takes a while to really start generating more revenue than what was put into it for development, plus monthly costs of maintaining staff, servers, etc...
But, it's a really good model to attract new costumers! People who have never heard about the game can try it out, see if they like it, and possibly bring more people in. But, that also increases server load, which overtime accumulates and forces the company to upgrade hardware, hire more personnel, set up new servers, and the costs go up...
They probably have this all figured out with algorithms for how many people are actually going to spend any money, how much money each will spend on average, etc...
But the most profitable & stable way, is the WoW way: monthly subscription. But that requires a rather large pre-existing fanbase. Which means you need a profitable title/franchise of game, and a company that's already well known for making good games, so people will jump in on the boat. They have it figured out exactly how much a gamer "costs" the company individually, and they charge above that, so they have a clear cut profit on every single person playing their game, plus added revenue from "special" stuff, etc...
What every game company wants to do, is get big enough, so that they can replicate the WoW miracle.
The problem with selling items to keep the revenue up, is that you have a pressure to release new content. Constantly. Otherwise the sales eventually drop, and the game stops making money. TF2 is a perfect example for this. Every other week, they're releasing new hats, new weapons, new everythings. Constant new content is released, and people buy them, and trade them, and the game makes money. But that can create balance issues, which in turn doesn't go well with the fanbase (especially when you disturb the balance between F2P players and P2P players.)
But on the other hand, if you don't give the people who pay *something* to differentiate them from the people who don't pay, then they won't be inclined to spend any more money on the game. So the game has to play on the psychology of their players. And they actually have people who are paid to do just that. They research their target market. They discover what they want, what's the turning point for balance for them, etc...
But eventually, releasing new content creates bloat, and bloat is bad for the game, too, because it detracts new players from joining in. There's so much stuff to get, they feel overwhelmed, and feel like they can't possibly reach the top. Unless you create the illusion that they can, either by scrapping earlier content, or by phasing it out of use, by making the newer stuff so much more useful that it effectively replaces the previous content. But that enrages the people that spent money on them!
So people come up with selling XP boosts, and other in-game advantages that aren't represented in the game as anything other than a one-time statistical boost to an aspect of your character. This differentiates P2P from F2P but disturbs the balance possibly more than just selling specific items that are obtainable normally through quests and other such in-game means. It avoids bloat, but exacerbates another problem, which is polarizing the community. Which is something you want to happen, but want to control, so that it doesn't create a divide between the two player bases, especially since it's the free one that's creating a game environment in which the paid players can flourish, most of the time.
It's a constant game of tug-of-war in the business model where you sell items and content for the player, whereas in a monthly subscription type business model, you avoid the issue altogether, and only have to please the community by keeping the game bug free, and releasing new content periodically that doesn't disturb the balance too much.
Basically, monthly subs avoid a hell of a lot of issues that are inherent in the other profitable F2P models. The other viable F2P model actually relies on server traffic to generate ad revenue, and sponsors for the game, and product sales that aren't directly related to the game itself. But that is only viable for games that don't require a rather large maintenance and/or didn't require a large enough upfront cost for development. This means simpler games, like most flash ones, and games that have older graphics, and games that are already obsolete or phased out. Like City of Heroes, Lineage 2, and a ton of other games that went F2P after being P2P for quite a while.
It's pretty hard to choose either model, and there's a ton of variations in between. SW:TOR is just a particularly bad example of polarizing the community too much, whereas WoW is a particularly good example of a successful monthly-pay subscription model.
Me? I'm a cheap bastard, so i prefer the business model that caters to me the most, which is the one used in many Airia games. What they sell is basically time. XP Boosts, gold boosts, and what have you... You spend money on the game to play the game for less time. It doesn't actually make sense to me, but there are many overachievers in the game world who just care about being the strongest, so i say, let them. It's free, you can do whatever the hell you want, stop playing any time, and the people who pay are relatively happy with their virtual achievements. But the company doen't profit too much from any given game... So that's why Airia Games have so much games being released and maintained. I fully expect them to bite the bullet any time soon, because it doesn't seem like a sustainable business model. Sooner or later, they'll have to can a bunch of games that aren't turning a profit anymore, and then the community won't be terribly happy with them.
