MMOs

[entrerix]

problem becomes people willing to accept monthly fees.

 

If everyone just said no we wont pay a monthly fee then the next wow would have no fee. I dont know about this server updating stuff, i use the internet all the time for gaming and I dont have to pay squat for monthly fees.

 

besides the whole - "they need the money for the servers" is utter garbage and you should be ashamed of yourself for falling for that.

 

How many times have people in the press and industry refferred to wow as a cash printing machine, or a license to print money?

 

those phrases mean that WoW is goddamn profitable as all hell, server costs be damned.

 

which means that your $15 a month is paying for a hell of a lot more than just the bare cost needed to make the game.

 

I dont begrudge blizzard, I wish I had been the guy who thought up their marketing strats

 

I DO however expect the people who buy it to at least own up to the fact that they are getting reamed every month because they have an urge for more drugs... er mmo and no expectation for fair treatment.

 

and if wow is all you play you're about as much a gamer as a "movie fan" who only watches Lord of the Rings over and over and over and has given up on other movies and so missed the dark knight and iron man.

 

ie not really a gamer

[Rosbjerg]

and if wow is all you play you're about as much a gamer as a "movie fan" who only watches Lord of the Rings over and over and over and has given up on other movies and so missed the dark knight and iron man.

 

ie not really a gamer

 

YEAH! because Iron Man and Dark Knight are the ONLY real movies!!

 

[kirottu]

I think people who complain about 15

[Gfted1]

and if wow is all you play you're about as much a gamer as a "movie fan" who only watches Lord of the Rings over and over and over and has given up on other movies and so missed the dark knight and iron man.

 

ie not really a gamer

 

 

Wow, just...wow. I guess its a good thing there are true gamers like you out there keeping the unwashed masses at bay.

 

Monthly payment has nothing to do with the fact I

[entrerix]

I make $5,500 a month and I wont pay the $15 based on principle.

 

and you seriously cannot pretend to be a fan of videogames as an entertainment or art form if you only play one game.

 

and obviously iron man and dark knight arent the only real movies - did you want me to write a list of every movie that came out since LOTR? I just picked two that most people would know as examples

Edited May 26, 2009 by entrerix

[SteveThaiBinh]

Anyone who plays computer/video games is a gamer, if they choose to define themselves as such.

 

Do MMOs have stories yet?

[kirottu]

Monthly payment has nothing to do with the fact I

[kirottu]

Do MMOs have stories yet?

 

Today I went to work. I saw a car with vanity plates. It said "gay-69". I smiled.

 

That

Edited May 26, 2009 by kirottu

[entrerix]

but I already said I played guild wars, which was sans fee.

 

And thats a neat story about your friend with "principles"... what exactly was he standing up for, because it sounds more like he had social issues than was taking a stand for something he believed in. And I hope that you weren't intimating that I have problems with women, because that couldn't be farther from the mark.

 

and no, I don't believe its proper for a party to overcharge, of course blizzard doesnt actually overcharge, because the market obviously bears it, but thats why of the few people I've met who really like WoW, most of them aren't really avid appreciators of the medium capable of recognizing the loss of value they are receiving for their dollar in comparison to someone who wants to experience more than one work.

 

I could pay 100 dollars to look at the mona lisa over and over again to the exclusion of all other paintings, or I could pay 100 to go into the louvre and see the entire museum and all the pieces therein. both are valid choices, but only one of these choices will really expand on your knowledge and experience, the other is just indulgence with no intent to learn beyond whats right in front of you.

[Gfted1]

I just that I don

[entrerix]

also this was the crux of my post which was ignored:

 

"besides the whole - "they need the money for the servers" is utter garbage and you should be ashamed of yourself for falling for that.

 

How many times have people in the press and industry refferred to wow as a cash printing machine, or a license to print money?

 

those phrases mean that WoW is goddamn profitable as all hell, server costs be damned.

 

which means that your $15 a month is paying for a hell of a lot more than just the bare cost needed to make the game.

 

I dont begrudge blizzard, I wish I had been the guy who thought up their marketing strats

 

I DO however expect the people who buy it to at least own up to the fact that they are getting reamed every month because they have an urge for more drugs... er mmo and no expectation for fair treatment."

 

this was all just intending to point out the problem with the argument that the 15 dollars is somehow "maintenance" fees that are providing you with some direct benefit - ie you've fallen for some slick salesmanship

 

(for the record I imagine some small percent of the 15 goes to maintenance)

[kirottu]

but I already said I played guild wars, which was sans fee.

 

"Also, please show me this free server where 80 hordes can fight 80 allys while hundreds of other players run around in other parts of the server."

 

I

Edited May 26, 2009 by kirottu

[Slowtrain]

Otoh, if people will pay it, you might as well charge it.

 

I'm kinda surprised Blizzard doesn't charge more. Even at $50 USD/month would they lose a lot of subscribers?

 

I'm sure they would lose some, but they can afford to lose a few if they raise rates from $15 to $50.

 

I mean people pay $10+ for a 90 minute movie at the theater. That's ridiculous to me. Compared to that a MMO at $50/month is a great deal.

Edited May 26, 2009 by CrashGirl

[Nightshape]

I make $5,500 a month and I wont pay the $15 based on principle.

 

and you seriously cannot pretend to be a fan of videogames as an entertainment or art form if you only play one game.

 

and obviously iron man and dark knight arent the only real movies - did you want me to write a list of every movie that came out since LOTR? I just picked two that most people would know as examples

 

You're overpaid and tight fisted!

 

www.givemoniestopoordevelopers.com

[entrerix]

"Haha, actually I was testing something, because intimating that you get your money from your mom made you say "I make $5 500 a month" and now this. I got two thumbs up for you, champ!"

 

?? I'm not sure I follow you here, you're choosing to ignore what I'm saying in favor of ascertaining the identity of my employer? Is this how they teach you to argue where you're from?

 

also nightshape: I hate to break it to you but I am extremely underpaid (I blame the current economy for discouraging people from spending money on their estate planning work right now).

 

I am tight fisted, by training and desire. I only spend money on things I think are worth the value as measured by entertainment and edification and necessity. I'm also getting close to purchasing my first home, and thats gonna set me back several hundred k.

Edited May 26, 2009 by entrerix

[entrerix]

hey crash, yeah I think we've discussed the value for dollar stuff in some other thread, I actually think the idea of spending 15 a month on entertainment is a fantastic bargain, my issue lies elsewhere...

 

sometimes people in general have a hard time with pointed or specific arguments, and choose instead to swing haymakers at the entire debate instead of selecting an actual statement with which to drive home a point.

 

this is what I deserve for arguing on the internet.... I need more work to do...

[Hurlshort]

Entrerix, you keep using WoW as your example, but WoW is an exception, not a rule. Most MMO's don't have the subscription numbers of WoW. They are lucky to pull in 100k users. So we multiply that by $15 a month, and we get about 1.5 million. Ok, still seems like a lot of money. But then you factor in that you have a full team of people that still need to work on the game. Non-MMO's secure funding, they release a title, and then the team moves on to another project. MMO's require a team to stay with the project long term.

 

So we get a couple programmers and artists at around 100k a year. Then we pay for the servers to be maintained, we pay for the admins, we pay for the fact that the game needs to be advertised continuously, well after release, and that 1.5 million a month gets smaller and smaller.

 

Guild Wars doesn't have the same server costs, but they did attempt to use a different model for an MMO style game. Their goal was to release a new expansion every 6 months, at $50 a pop. That's really not all that different than a monthly fee. But they weren't able to push out their products that fast, and so I remember reading that GW2 will be subscription based.

[Slowtrain]

this is what I deserve for arguing on the internet.... I need more work to do...

 

 

lol. I hear you.

 

It always sucks when one starts with a simple comment or observation, and BOOM! the next thing one knows, it's an argument.

 

It's like, wait, how the heck did I get involved in this?

[entrerix]

hurlshot, I get what you're saying about the non-successful MMO, and it actually proves my point further because they may ACTUALLY need the 15$ a month, unlike Wow which probably only needs about 2$ a month to maintain their servers, the rest is all profit (warning my numbers are mere speculation). and that profit is what I've been talking about, I've been saying that WoW is making a killing off of people by charging so much more than mere server upkeep -which is what people often claim to be what the monthly fee is for.

 

If company A said, hey guys we want to make an mmo with lots of content updates, but we've only got 1 million subscribers and we need 10 million a month to keep this bad boy going, plus we'd like to make some profit on the side for our next game development project, so we have to charge $15 a month to do that, and then three months later they have 10 million subscribers, and don't lower their fee... i'd start to feel like I had been duped into agreeing to way more than was needed.

[Hurlshort]

But these are businesses, they do expect to turn a profit. Companies only lower prices if it is a market necessity. They aren't going to lower it just because they sell like gangbusters.

 

And Blizzard has taken some of those profits and expanded tremendously, so it's not like they are just swimming around in a big vault of gold. They've released huge content patches for free fairly regularly.

 

I actually dislike the EQ2 model more, they release a full price expansion every 6 months, AND you still pay $15 a month.

 

LotR Online is my favorite, they pretty much release new content every 3-6 months regularly, and I'm only paying $10 a month. It never feels like I'm getting ripped off, the new content re-energizes me every time.

[Aristes]

I would rather play LotR online also. I don't feel I'm being ripped off when I pay for WoW, but it's just not all that interesting for me outside of visiting with family. I think gaming does facilitate social interactions because, while we'll get together for dungeons and whatnot, there's no way in Hell I'm going to talk for a couple hours just on the phone. Talking while questing still lets us converse about non-gaming stuff.

[Calax]

problem becomes people willing to accept monthly fees.

 

If everyone just said no we wont pay a monthly fee then the next wow would have no fee. I dont know about this server updating stuff, i use the internet all the time for gaming and I dont have to pay squat for monthly fees.

 

besides the whole - "they need the money for the servers" is utter garbage and you should be ashamed of yourself for falling for that.

Actually it's more of a "Gotta pay the people who make all that content we put out, PLUS the expansions, PLUS the bug fixes..."

 

Literally you have an entire development team dedicated to fixing bugs for the build CONSTANTLY. Basically Blizzard is running WoW as three seperate games: Current content, future content patches, Expansion content. If we were in a world you want, we'd pay for each and every content patch (say 10 bucks for a patch?) PLUS another 50 bucks for an Xpac, PLUS we'd have to deal with any and all imbalances and bugs we find.

How many times have people in the press and industry refferred to wow as a cash printing machine, or a license to print money?

 

those phrases mean that WoW is goddamn profitable as all hell, server costs be damned.

 

which means that your $15 a month is paying for a hell of a lot more than just the bare cost needed to make the game.

Same with the Wii and DS systems.. should it's price be dropped because they have profits?

I dont begrudge blizzard, I wish I had been the guy who thought up their marketing strats

 

I DO however expect the people who buy it to at least own up to the fact that they are getting reamed every month because they have an urge for more drugs... er mmo and no expectation for fair treatment.

 

and if wow is all you play you're about as much a gamer as a "movie fan" who only watches Lord of the Rings over and over and over and has given up on other movies and so missed the dark knight and iron man.

 

ie not really a gamer

Gamers are people who play games. I've found that with WoW I actually am able to CUT costs rather than expand them because I buy less other games that have worse support and varying degrees of quality.

 

The whole "monthly fee" malarky is old, and beaten to the point where you can't tell it used to be... anything. You probably pay more per month to buy a new game to keep you distracted until the NEXT game comes out.

 

All in all you have to justify it yourself, but one thing you should stop doing is using generalizations and stereotypes to make your point. You obviously don't understand the economic or community models for WoW, much less MMO's in general.

 

I guess you'd just like an MMO that came out and had one island... and in order to get to the other islands you had to pay a 1$ fee every time you crossed the border... in real money.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

...I remember reading that GW2 will be subscription based.

 

" Like the original Guild Wars, there will be no subscription fee for Guild Wars 2. You just buy the game and play it online without paying a monthly fee."

 

Edited May 27, 2009 by Deadly_Nightshade

[Killian Kalthorne]

Hmmm... I played Ultima Online back when it was first released, then a bit of Anarchy Online. Did a stint on Guild Wars and DDO as well. I didn't like them. My roommate is a big MMO freak. He got himself a lifetime membership to LotR Online and from what he has told me he has a maxed out level champion. He also spends part of his time as a chicken and he dual wielded fish for a guild/fellowship event type thing.

[Hurlshort]

" Like the original Guild Wars, there will be no subscription fee for Guild Wars 2. You just buy the game and play it online without paying a monthly fee."

 

 

Hmm, looked it up, and that seems to be true. They also seem to be offering a more persistent world, rather than just giant chat rooms and small group instances. Should be interesting.