Pay To Play Mmorpgs
esuna
Rock Bottom Join Date: 2003-04-03 Member: 15175Members, Constellation
Rock Bottom Join Date: 2003-04-03 Member: 15175Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">are they worth it?</div> After talking to one of my workmates on the train on my way home, he brought up the fact he was on the SW: Galaxies beta test. So after chatting about how cool it is and how great the features will be when finished he brought up the fact that it's going to be "pay to play". This has now totally put me off bothering to buy it.
I mean, doing some +VERY+ basic and nonsense maths, i worked out what a scam it all is.
Lets keep things basic and say 100,000 buy the game.
So 100,000 x £40 is £4,000,000. That's just the cost of buying the game.
Then lets say that the subscription is £5 per month.
So every single month they make £500,000.
Also, lets say that theoretically they keep all 100,000 of the gamers interested for 6 months by releasing new mods and patches.
6 x £500,000 = £3,000,000.
Where the hell do they get off sapping us consumers for millions of our hard earned cash for a single game when you can turn around and get at least as much fun and longevity out of any of these non-"pay to play" games?
Look at it this way, if SWG lasted as long as HL (5 years) with a dedicated following, based on the +VERY+ simple maths above, we're talking £30,000,000 out of us gamers. What a rip off.
[EDIT] I forgot the point, anyway. Do any of you think that it is "right" to do this. Is it right to make us pay monthly amounts to play a game we've already paid for. Cause let's look at it logically, a title like SWG is +definately+ going to get into profit purely based on off-the-shelf sales. Is it necissary to generate such a vast amount of revenue after your initial purchase? [/EDIT]
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:red'>Disclaimer: Yes i KNOW all the facts above are fictional, all numbers are purely there as an example. So don't crucify me for that.</span></span>
I mean, doing some +VERY+ basic and nonsense maths, i worked out what a scam it all is.
Lets keep things basic and say 100,000 buy the game.
So 100,000 x £40 is £4,000,000. That's just the cost of buying the game.
Then lets say that the subscription is £5 per month.
So every single month they make £500,000.
Also, lets say that theoretically they keep all 100,000 of the gamers interested for 6 months by releasing new mods and patches.
6 x £500,000 = £3,000,000.
Where the hell do they get off sapping us consumers for millions of our hard earned cash for a single game when you can turn around and get at least as much fun and longevity out of any of these non-"pay to play" games?
Look at it this way, if SWG lasted as long as HL (5 years) with a dedicated following, based on the +VERY+ simple maths above, we're talking £30,000,000 out of us gamers. What a rip off.
[EDIT] I forgot the point, anyway. Do any of you think that it is "right" to do this. Is it right to make us pay monthly amounts to play a game we've already paid for. Cause let's look at it logically, a title like SWG is +definately+ going to get into profit purely based on off-the-shelf sales. Is it necissary to generate such a vast amount of revenue after your initial purchase? [/EDIT]
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'><span style='color:red'>Disclaimer: Yes i KNOW all the facts above are fictional, all numbers are purely there as an example. So don't crucify me for that.</span></span>
Comments
Also, it is well worth paying IMO. They keep you entertained for long enough. You pay £5 for the cinema, films are about 2hours.
£5 for 2hours of entertainment
How about £10 for 1 month of entertainment?
Also, it is well worth paying IMO. They keep you entertained for long enough. You pay £5 for the cinema, films are about 2hours.
£5 for 2hours of entertainment
How about £10 for 1 month of entertainment? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ignore the £5 part, i did say it was a fictional number, and from what i've heard it's closer £10.
But anyway, i +do+ accept the fact that you can get more out of a 1 month subscription to a MMORPG, but you've also got to buy the game. So on the £10 figure, that's £50 for a month of entertainment.
I'd rather pick up a stand-alone game (akin to what halflife is, online multiplayer, single player, etc) for £30-£40 and play that for months online. At least there's none of the extra bills.
Also another thing i forgot to put into my post. A +VAST+ number of gamers are kids, and as a result of that, they don't have credit cards. By making a game strictly pay-to-play, you're cutting out a great number of potential buyers and essentially crippling yourself. Which is one thing i don't see.
But i guess my real beef is the amount it costs to subscribe. I'm pretty confident that at something stupid like £1 per month they could +still+ generate a profit, and not isolate so many gamers purely because of the high monthly cost.
If you release the ability to run a server, that negates a lot of money for running servers and so on, and will also give gamers a lot more choice (can't remember what MMORPG it was, but i paid the subscription and had the absolute worst lag ALWAYS, so consequently unsubscribed).
I wish they'd spend a second thinking about what their customers want, not their f**king bank balances.
But i'll continue.
Speed2Dave, i have to totally agree with you there. Even i would consider playing a game that had no initial investment, but a monthly subscription. If it sucks, you cancel the subscription, you've lost nothing. You can't play it anymore, but who cares. You delete it, it's gone. You've not got that £40 looming over you for bothering to pay for the new Ultima Online or Acheron's Call.
But i'll continue.
Speed2Dave, i have to totally agree with you there. Even i would consider playing a game that had no initial investment, but a monthly subscription. If it sucks, you cancel the subscription, you've lost nothing. You can't play it anymore, but who cares. You delete it, it's gone. You've not got that £40 looming over you for bothering to pay for the new Ultima Online or Acheron's Call. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
actually, that's a smart scheme as well. Since you spent the 40 pounds in order to buy the game in the first place, you feel "forced" to play it for a few months, to "get your money's worth," all the time losing more and more money. When you finally get bored with the game (they probably hope after 3 months), you don't want to risk losing your character, so you keep paying, and they keep getting richer from an unhappy gamer.
Sadly, there are true stories about people who pay to play evercrack merely because they've had a character on for 4 months and feel "compelled" to keep trying to level them up.
[edit] Choose a life with other kinds of addictive products, or none at all.[/edit]
I'm much the same way - I'd love to get into at least one big MMORPG, but I dread the $50 cost up-front for a fancy box and a CD. And the first thing you'll probably end up doing is to patch the game to the latest version - in other words, what you just paid $50 for is already outdated.
I wouldn't even mind paying $15US/mo, as long as I can <i>continually</i> enjoy it. Once the connection starts to become excessively laggy, the servers start getting overcrowded, and/or the game itself becomes utterly unbalanced, <i>that</i> is when I start to feel ripped off. I'd be paying the same price as when I <i>enjoyed</i> the game, but I'd be getting a lower-quality product now.
Oh, and btw: I was a gleeful participant in EverCrack a few years ago (for the first six months it was out), and honestly could not continue playing the game once the subscribers started pouring in. Same cost, but the servers became very laggy and the game became very unbalanced very quickly. It has still left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth for anything with the "MMO-" tag on the game genre.
[<i>edit1</i>] typos, grammatical errors....
I +love+ The Holy Trilogy so i'm probably going to end up paying for this, but at the moment i'm going to wait until the patches implementing space travel and also self-pilotable vehicles, among other things. I'm not looking forward to the affect on my bank balance (since it's verging on nil at present), but i'd rather there were a better way than this.
It seems like they're just travelling around breaking peoples knees and then sending them the medical bill.
You should be lucky you get a fancy box at all. In England ALL games now come in DVD cases.
I miss the days of big cardboard boxes with lovely artwork and a nice big manual.
It gets me out of the house for a few hours, there's, food, drink, women,
and maybe some on-screen explosions. (All worth £5 in my opinion).
As for Star Wars games..... i'm waiting for Jedi Academy. I was a huge
fan of Jedi Outcast, completed it on the PC and play it on and off with
my step brother (very good with that Lightsaber for his age!).
I've never payed to play a game online, so I have to stay neutral on
weather its worth coughing up the cash for.
who am I kidding, I would just waste them...
PCGamer ran their "State of the Online Union", so many choices, everybody is jumping on this band wagon.
You'd probably be surprised at the cost. While I don't know first-hand numbers, I can only imagine that some servers will transfer upwards of 150gb <i>per day</i> on each server.
Think about it - let's say you play for two hours a day. In those two hours, there's a good bit of information being sent to and from your computer to the game server(s). Let's use a half-reasonable number like 100kb/min. That much is being transferred per minute, which equates into approximately 12mb for your two-hour session (<i><u>note</u>: computer techies will probably give a different value due to the 1024 thing.. keep in mind that this is just an <b>example</b></i> <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
IIRC, there are usually a large number of people on each server at any given time. Let's use a nice, even number like 1000. And let's assume they all play for two hours each.
(1000 people) x (12mb per session) = 12gb of traffic per two-hour block
You can fit twelve two-hour sessions into a day, so multiply the above value by 12, and voila - <b>144gb of traffic <i>per day</i></b>!!! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
This is also <i>per server</i>. It's been a while since I've played EverCrack, but there were 15+ servers available at that time. Many of the servers had about 1000 players active at a time, and some were around the 750+ mark. I can only imagine that the more recent games have <i>at least</i> that many servers available.
Obviously, this data is pure speculation on my part. I really have no idea how much data each user will send/receive per minute, but 100kb sounds like a reasonable number (~1.3k/s). I'm also not using the true "1 kb = 1024 b" in my calculations. And I am also assuming the server is handling 1000 players at a time for the full 24 hours. Despite these shaky values, they're still reasonable estimates.
Bandwidth is expensive. If each server uses 150gb of bandwidth per day, that gets <i>very</i> expensive.
And this is before the cost of equipment capable of handling 1000 players simultaneously. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
<a href='http://www.project-entropia.com/default.asp' target='_blank'>Project Entropia</a>
it is a 'free' mmorpg, ie free DL, no monthly charges... but the only reliable way of getting $$ (PEDs) is by putting RL $ into the game.
for a brief over view of how that works:
1USD = 10 PED
My gun (it is future) costs .03 ped to fire, takes about 5 shots to kill, so thats ~ 15 cents to kill a beastie, I then get some where from .03-.50 (or more if you get lucky) back from a kill. You WILL loose PEDs on these hunting sprees.
Another example is this:
to mine for minerals you need about 40 PED starting equip (I think less actualy) and one use 1PED bombs that you use for sismic readings.
I generaly buy about 3 bombs and I will generaly break even (I think this has been luck on my part)
So, 10 USD will start you off and give you enugh PEDs to play around for around a month (with some leway for mess ups in spending). I am not sure how much $$ I will end up putting in per month (though I swear it will be less then 12 USD, which is the going rate for MMORPGS now)
Oh, and as a warning, here seem to be some serious bugs in PE right now so It mightr be unplayable for you (It is for me).
How ever the coolest thing about this is that b/c there is no monthly fee, you drop your cash in and the only thing that is going to be ussing that is your ACTUAL time spent gaming <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
oh and a quick run down for any one who is really interested:
1) You will have to put $$ into play (there is a place to get free PED but you will not get enugh to have a good time)
2) Almost every thing decays (so you gotta pay PED to repair it), the only things that dont are cloathes, scopes, and laser sights
3) if you need more help head on over to<a href='http://entropia-pioneers.kicks-****.org/phpBB2/portal.php' target='_blank'>Entropia Pioneres THIS LINK WONT WORK</a>
DOH here is the full link incase that dosn't work:
<a href='http://entropia-pioneers.kicks-a$$.org/phpBB2/portal.php' target='_blank'>http://entropia-pioneers.kicks-a$...pBB2/portal.php</a> note that is not kick a$$ but a s s
EP is a society over there that I hang out at.
4) Don't Beg, it just aint cool <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
yah, sorry for long post <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
PS My general view is that 10+ a month is NOT worth it <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I nearly failed my a-levels due to lost notes thanks to Ultima Online.
The matrix online = Bye bye me, I will lose perception of reality <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I used to play Anarchy Online. It's a very fun game, great customer service. $30 US for the Booster Pack + Original game + 1 free month of service, $10 US a month after that. For the price of one new game you get two to three months of AO... a good deal, especially as Neverwinter Nights ($60 US when I bought it) only lasted me about three weeks. The only reason I don't play now is because I didn't have the time for it during school, and right now I'm trying to get my friends into it again.
Don't knock it 'till you've tried it.
Now, how many of you have gotten to the high end game in an MMORPG?
well yeah... of course thats why they work. Isint that why you do?
Lets say you use cable internet to connect thats like $40. The MMORPG company has to do the same for a good connection. Since they are pretty much buying in bulk though they can get something like a OC12 and share the cost with a bunch of people.
Personally I hate MMORPGs I played EverQuest for more then I would like to admit. It's not because you have to pay for it. Its because you play because otherwise your character will not be "uber" (thats right the EQ community still uses that word)
Now, how many of you have gotten to the high end game in an MMORPG? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I had 2 characters with maximum level on EQ
Now, how many of you have gotten to the high end game in an MMORPG? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I had 2 characters with maximum level on EQ <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I played EQ for the first six months or so it was out, and had three characters in the level 30-35 range. While that's not quite the end-game levels, it still took many moons to get to that point, and was enough for me to get very frustrated when I started getting killed constantly due to lag.
Getting PK'ed by a tweaked level-3 kid in a kingdom's worth of "rare" equipment kinda sucked too. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
the plan I believe, is night elves, I havent heard anything about the high elves yet.
[everquest, asherons call, world of warcraft, planescape, blah blah blah] - and not just the official website, but reviews, interviews, screenies, what it actually IS, etc
and whats a good MMORPG that as soon as youve bought the actual game, you dont have to pay monthly fees? anybody know of any of those? like, how does everquest work, etc?
thanks