I despise the new pay-to-play online models. Similarly bad is when you buy the game online and then they make you spend the game's price again or more in order to see all the content.
I bought Final Fantasy: My Life As A King online for the Wii, and it was a fun game. It's basically kind of like the ActRaiser building modes, minus the combat, but you send out parties of adventurers to fight for you. It was enjoyable - until I realized that while the game cost about fifteen bucks, in order to access advanced content you have to pay for each race, dungeon, or building. In order to see the full game you have to spend an extra twenty-five bucks. It makes me mad because it's aimed at kids, and the kids will either shriek until their parents buy them the rest of the content, or else end up feeling like crap because they're too poor to afford the full game. The later game really kind of sucks unless you shell out for the new buildings and dungeons at the very least. If you don't, by the end of the game it's obvious that you're intended to be rather hobbled and have an un-fun time unless you buy some of the "optional content". You CAN beat the game without shelling out, but it's clearly a second-class experience.
I finished it anyway without buying anything extra, so screw them.
IMO game mechanics where you can buy your way to success suck, we were talking about that a bit with the WoW Death Knights. One of the best things about old-school games is that, mostly, everyone who puts in a quarter or presses START on an old NES game gets the same starting experience, and there used to be an expectation that that was intentional. Games where you are DELIBERATELY DESIGNED to suck until you buy your way to success are even worse, and there are a lot, lot, lot of those lately. Apparently China's biggest MMO is almost completely a buy-your-way-to-the-top experience, they even call the players who twink out ridiculously with pay-to-play gear a special name - "renminbi gamers", after the Chinese currency.
Oh, well. At least plenty of game developers still recognize that, unlike life, a game experience is something where you CAN give everyone the same chance when you start out. I more or less avoid anything that smacks of buying your way to the best player experience in the gaming world, and I expect that's not going to change. To me, once you start running your game like an airline, you've lost something precious.
