General Discussion

I went to Indiana Jones last week.... ticket and snacks were just over 20.00.  I was there for just over 2 hours. Works out to about 10.00 an hour.

I pay 30.00 for a 60 day game card for WOW. I play about between 5 and 10 hours a week ( on the weekends mostly ) for a total over 2 months of 40 to 80 hours.  Thats 75 cents an hour or less.  I'm not sure about anyone else, but I think thats a fair price to pay for a decent game.  I don't feel pressured to play since its only 75 cents ( my kid takes more than that from my pockets for his piggy bank most nights.

I'll pay a fee as long as the games are worth it... 75 cents is a pretty good deal to me.... I'd hate to think what its worth to a hardcore gamer...  1 or 2 cents an hour, if that.  

well Guild Wars has no monthly fee and its a good game, it just has a bit too much instancing thats all, i think the pvp is better than almost every mmo mayby the best.

I think they made it instanced because that can make more exciting quest's in instanced areas like meeting a group of npc's in a field and proteting them from hoards of monsters, they cant do that in non instanced.

if they only use instancing in important quests for GW2 it will be awesome.

I wouldn't mind if GW2 was p2p, the only payment model i hate is item shop because they sell overpowered items that make pvp unfair and gambling items that have a % chance of upgrading your armor that can fail and waste your money.

Originally posted by wjrasmussen

 

Originally posted by Diamedes

Originally posted by Kordesh

Down with this thread. If you REALLY believe that a high quality MMO can operate without monthly fees, then you know nothing about how MMOs operate. Guild Wars, a game that classifies as an MMO in only the barest sense, can do what it does only because its entirely instanced and the overhead is incredibly small, and the only additional content is provided via expansion. Games with persistent non-instanced game worlds with constant updates cannot afford to run without a fee unless you bog the game down with advertising to an invasive and painful level, and even then I would say it's a stretch. Hellgate London is instanced but does throw out the occasional patch to non-subscribers, but even they need some advertising to keep that going.

The "free" MMO is a pipedream thought up by 13yr olds with no money who play games like Maplestory and go "WHY CAN'T ALL GAMES BE LIEK THIS!" Until developers and publishers can print money, it's not going to work unless you want an ad infested instanced mess, with few updates and low production values.

You sound like your just spouting off what MMO companies tell you about maintaining an MMO but don't really have a clue. An average WoW server has about 20,000 people on it, thats $300,000 a MONTH for 1 server, are you telling me it costs 300,000 to maintain a damn server? And I don't want to hear about expansions because you pay for them too. The only thing that would make monthly fees worth it would be if we actually got content on a regular basis and I haven't played a game that has done that yet.

Assuming your "facts" are true, do you really think that money is just for the server?  Does Betty the CFO's receptionist charge everyone who calls her boss or comes to meet her boss for a meeting? No, her salary comes from somewhere.  Same with the people who work on staff for coding, setting up test labs and the services they hire like adp and janitorial services.  That all costs money and some part of that $300.000.00 goes for that.  Buildings aren't free, electricity to run equipment isn't cheap and you also need to cool it down which is expensive.

 

Lets not even talk about all the taxes, social security matching, worker compenstation, unemployment insurance, medical coverage and so on and so forth.  Sure, that is all free.

 Dude I don't know where you go from talking about a high quality MMO needing a monthly fee to supporting an MMOs employees and their insurance, would you pay every game you've ever played a monthly fee to support their employees 401k?  All this thread is about is whether we should be getting charged to play or not, we pay for the game and the expansions so basically the monthly fee is used for server maintenance and content in the form of patches. I have no idea how much it actually costs to maintain a server but Im almost positive its a very small percentage of the monthly fee. That leaves content then, and I can only really use WoW as an example of that and I know most would agree you don't get your moneys worth for the 15 a month.

And its not the money, its the principle, if the government started charging us 15$ a month for the air we breathe would you pay it because its only 15 a month?

Originally posted by Diamedes

 

 

 

 Dude I don't know where you go from talking about a high quality MMO needing a monthly fee to supporting an MMOs employees and their insurance, would you pay every game you've ever played a monthly fee to support their employees 401k?  All this thread is about is whether we should be getting charged to play or not, we pay for the game and the expansions so basically the monthly fee is used for server maintenance and content in the form of patches. I have no idea how much it actually costs to maintain a server but Im almost positive its a very small percentage of the monthly fee. That leaves content then, and I can only really use WoW as an example of that and I know most would agree you don't get your moneys worth for the 15 a month.

And its not the money, its the principle, if the government started charging us 15$ a month for the air we breathe would you pay it because its only 15 a month?

Everything costs money and you have to pay for it one way or the other. Perhaps they should do what LOTRO did and charge $200 at the start and you never have to pay monthly fees again, or go the Asian route and use microtransactions and pay for in-game merchandise with real money.

It doesn't cost 150 million a month(10 mil x $15/mo) so what are we getting for that extra money, not much.

Originally posted by Diamedes

It doesn't cost 150 million a month(10 mil x $15/mo) so what are we getting for that extra money, not much.

blizzard is a business the rest is profit duh

Originally posted by Diamedes

It doesn't cost 150 million a month(10 mil x $15/mo) so what are we getting for that extra money, not much.

Well first thing they aren't getting that much. Maybe 3 million x $ 12/mo (factor in new subscriptions, multi-month subs, and subtract the China market as they only pay in time cards billed per min) A lot of money still, however Blizzard has to answer to Vivendi, and Vivendi has to answer to the shareholders. Are you getting your money's worth? Only you can decide that, and only you can hit the button to unsubscribe to the game. Online games have recurring costs and there has to be a mechanism for the companies to recoup the cost and make a profit.

Originally posted by Diamedes

It doesn't cost 150 million a month(10 mil x $15/mo) so what are we getting for that extra money, not much.

Ops! Go Fish!

Originally posted by Diamedes

It doesn't cost 150 million a month(10 mil x $15/mo) so what are we getting for that extra money, not much.