General Discussion

Paying for expansions is crap, EQ only had pay expansions because it didn't make sense to download huge patches on 56k so they were pretty much forced to make CD's for expansions.  WoW is just making expansions cause they're greedy.

Monthly fee I guess I don't really care, however I wish the MMO's would do something more like $0.15 an hour, that way you could sign up to more then one game at once and not feel like you're not getting your moneys worth and if you did only play one game and played a lot it would still only be around $15-25 a month.

Recurring revenues after a game's release is the only way to ensure funding for future development of and additions to the game.  Subscriptions is the best method.  It ensures equality and a fair playing field for players to compete.  The other option is the *cough* evil *cough* cash shop.  The only reason why you are beginning to see some traction in switching from subscription models to F2P is because F2P is really smoke in mirrors for the real demon gaming companies want to unleash in the cash shop.  They have seen that many hardcore players are willing to spend large sums of money to gain advantages in online games.  Even less hardcore players are willing to do the same when the expenses come in small increments.  Gaming companies have also seen the rise of the secondary market for ingame currency and want to take back that piece of the pie. 

If you want MMOs to turn into whoever is willing to spend the most money wins, then keep pushing F2P over subscriptions.

F2P (cashshop) games have their niche - i.e. children (no credit cards)... it allows developers to put out 2nd rate grind games with relatively small development costs and still make money

i absolutely loathe the concept of monthly fee + micro-transaction (Aion anyone?)... might as well play Perfect World and save yourself the monthly fee

many ppl would happily pay $25 / month for what they would percieve to be a quality game... unfortunately this means different things to every single one of them. However, i believe Euro / US developers will continue to persist with the monthly fee model for the forseeable future - so no - its time hasnt passed

BUT X-pacs "really grind my gears", you buy the friggin game, pay monthly friggin subs, then the greedy phuks expect you to buy the friggin game again (the expansion) to continue playing - ARRRGH! - new content should be added via patching IMO... coz thats what we've been paying for

And its about time a developer/publisher went down the digital distribution route on a new release... mining minerals, transpotring them to be refined, refining and transporting them to made into disks, transporting them to be printed, then distributing them worldwide to retail outlets is a MASSIVE waste of money / resources. I would really respect a company that went solely the download route to distributing its MMO. (like the F2P MMOs have been doing all along)

PS - GW is a MMORPG (mediumsized multiplayer online RPG)

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Originally posted by Rekindle

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Originally posted by deviliscious

That is just the thing .. I am paying for junk updates with these monthly fees.. If they would actually give me content I want then i wouldn't mind paying for it. In these updates how often do they give new skills? I mean instead of giving more of the same ol same ol like dungeons and npc junk make the game more exciting with truely new content .. adding to the map , adding more quests, all of that is npc involved activities rather than something truely for the players enjoyment. Like adding siege wars to games, battle of the minds, in game court to punish players .. no they are too lazy for that they only want to give the bare minimum with these updates .. is why i am finding such a hard time finding one that keeps my attention. In these games there simply isn't enough variety in what you can do.

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This post is speaks very closely to my original post.
There is no big problem with paying a monthly fee, I guess...but WHERE IS THE VALUE?
All you people who think that making an online game automatically means its pay to play are partially responsible for the propuslion of the craptastic wave of games we have recently.
Is paying $15 a month really worth it anymore? Maybe for some. But for some of us who have been wathcing and playing in this genre for 10 years its clear that that $15 that is received each month goes straight to the bank.
when the time comes to give me soemthing fresh and new - i have to pay again.
Pay to play in most mainstream games is a scam. I'm basically playing $15 a month for access to my record table in a database and some bandwidth. I dont pay this money to enjoy new content.

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I had to chime in here with a hearty, "me too". Successful games don't introduce anything really new except in expansions. Subscriptions are merely pocketed. What it takes to run an MMO? Not a whole lot. Servers can be bought for $5000, bandwidth for $100/mo or so, perhaps give it a spot on a server which will cost a little extra. GMs and support staff are more expensive, and can be contracted out to avoid some waste.

WoW's updates were misleading. While they added new dungeons, and even battlegrounds, this was all stuff that had been mostly finished at release, and they took their time polishing it up for release to make it _look_ like they were doing something with that subcription money. Many people, through the use of some tools, were able to visit these dungeons way before they were actually released. There was a lot missing, but it goes to show that the dungeons were in development when the game was released.

Eve Online is the only game I know that offers significant content updates without charging for them, which is a good step in the right direction.

Originally posted by xauss

F2P (cashshop) games have their niche - i.e. children (no credit cards)... it allows developers to put out 2nd rate grind games with relatively small development costs and still make money

i absolutely loathe the concept of monthly fee + micro-transaction (Aion anyone?)... might as well play Perfect World and save yourself the monthly fee

many ppl would happily pay $25 / month for what they would percieve to be a quality game... unfortunately this means different things to every single one of them. However, i believe Euro / US developers will continue to persist with the monthly fee model for the forseeable future - so no - its time hasnt passed

BUT X-pacs "really grind my gears", you buy the friggin game, pay monthly friggin subs, then the greedy phuks expect you to buy the friggin game again (the expansion) to continue playing - ARRRGH! - new content should be added via patching IMO... coz thats what we've been paying for

And its about time a developer/publisher went down the digital distribution route on a new release... mining minerals, transpotring them to be refined, refining and transporting them to made into disks, transporting them to be printed, then distributing them worldwide to retail outlets is a MASSIVE waste of money / resources. I would really respect a company that went solely the download route to distributing its MMO. (like the F2P MMOs have been doing all along)

 

PS - GW is a MMORPG (mediumsized multiplayer online RPG)

Come to think of it, I can't think of any game that has a monthly fee AND a micro transaction scheme at the same time.

Originally posted by xauss

BUT X-pacs "really grind my gears", you buy the friggin game, pay monthly friggin subs, then the greedy phuks expect you to buy the friggin game again (the expansion) to continue playing - ARRRGH! - new content should be added via patching IMO... coz thats what we've been paying for

Yeah! those expansions should be given free cause we are already paying monthly fee's! D*** they should be thinking about that! What if their subscriber don't buy their expansions, they will surely loose a lot. next time they release expansions and they want us to buy them again lets agree not to buy them anymore!

Originally posted by Rekindle

Some of you are going to call me crazy but I think we've all gone nuts paying $15 a month for a game.

If games like Guild Wars and other f2p (or one time fee) games can survive without monthly subs they all can survive without monthly sub.

There was a time when mmorpgs were a unique service and I could kinda understand a monlthy fee. Now, the value and quality of the pay to play games simply isnt there.

I now think monthly fees are a scam.  Devs spend a few years developing a game, granted. But once the game is released and you pay your $60 for the game where is the value in the monthly fee?  New content is few and far between, the games are released in crappy states yet we're expected to pay? (well im not because i dont) .

 

So in the last 10 years we've seen stagnation in the quality of games and no change to the monthly sub concept.  Couple that with the fact there is very little in new content added to games and I almost think its silly to pay for a game each month.  We simply do this because its an online game and thats how we've been programmed. 

These developers have it made- sell a boxed game, recoup dev costs and then rake in $$ each month for content that never gets updated except when you release an expansion but then charge for that too.  Sit back and take a good look at the game you play and ask yourself where the value is in spending money each month for it.

I have never played guild wars so i can't comment on how that game plays out or is funded.

However MMO games are or should be about longevity.How would a game developer account for it's games costs?you mention the developement time,ok ya i agree the $60 can cover it.But after that who pays for the servers? the staff to monitor them? the staff of GM's?i have seen games use free GM's and it's a total joke.Who would fund game updates?updates are often needed to keep the botting programs and cheat programs in check and to fix problems that may arise in programming or the game functions for at least a short time.An MMO could last a long time if it is any good ,so how would they decide on there total cost over several years?unless you would be satisfied with no updates or new content ever?

IMO it just isn't feasable for an MMO game and it's staff to survive off one time sales and no money coming in for the duration of the games stay.What happens to there staff?UNREAL and it's tech survived alot of costs because there game was designed to run on players servers of no cost to epic games or the unreal team.They also make alot of money through the developement of there game engines.I don't think MMO developers can survive like this ,for a simple reason that there game engines are not high tech because massive multiplayer  games can't handle the graphic or internet lag from so many players if they make use of cutting edge game engines.Unreal/QUAKE these kinda games can,so they don't need any long lasting funds from a mnthly sub.

Myself i don't mind the 15 dollar fee what so ever.I guarantee most people WASTE more money than that on very trivial things[newspaper/cigarettes/junk food/magazines].I guess another example would be to say "Why the heck do i have to pay another 100 dollars a mnth to watch my TV i paid 3000 dollars to buy ?"

BTW it will get worse before it gets better,because as of now MANY devs are looking at adopting  ITEM malls.Item mall games are just horrible in there design.They don't design item mall games on the intent of everyone playing for free...lol.