Pay to Play Discussion

[Razor Blade]

Pfft, I hate how no one tells you if their game is pay-to-play or not. Looks interesting though.

-420

[snapback]33403[/snapback]

Offcourse the game is pay2play i mean wich game (besides GW and some others) ain't pay2play.
Nowadays almost every MMORPG that comes is pay2play.

[420]

Offcourse the game is pay2play i mean wich game (besides GW and some others) ain't pay2play.
Nowadays almost every MMORPG that comes is pay2play.

[snapback]33404[/snapback]

Well, until they understand that many potential customers will either pay for the game or pay to play it, but not both, they will be missing out on a major part of the market.

-420

[Razor Blade]

Well, until they understand that many potential customers will either pay for the game or pay to play it, but not both, they will be missing out on a major part of the market.

-420

[snapback]33405[/snapback]

that's not true i mean for example L2, WoW you need to purchase them both and you need to pay to play it still the games are a major success especially WoW is a major Succes and has the most subcribers + is the most played MMORPG over the world, so you can't actually say they are missing a major part of the market.

[Mo]

Last I checked WoW is a free download.  Or you can buy a 14 or so trial version for $2.

[Tyrael]

ye but its the trial client and its like 1gb while the retail its about 3gb and its about 20 euros to buy it here, i wouldnt mind the pay2play if they would accept my credit card lol not like im gonna get another credit card just to pay games >_>

[Soul Sojourner]

that's not true i mean for example L2, WoW you need to purchase them both and you need to pay to play it still the games are a major success especially WoW is a major Succes and has the most subcribers + is the most played MMORPG over the world, so you can't actually say they are missing a major part of the market.

Last I checked WoW is a free download.  Or you can buy a 14 or so trial version for $2.

[snapback]33407[/snapback]

Actually, Razor, L2 is also a free download.

And I quite agree, 420.

[Razor Blade]

Actually, Razor, L2 is also a free download.

And I quite agree, 420.

[snapback]33409[/snapback]

True L2 is a free download yeah i forgot, WoW however isn't free to download like tyrael084 said it's only the 10 days trial you download while the retail version is 5gig big yeah and it's 15â?¬ here (approx $10 or so) but when it came out it was around 50â?¬ (approx $45) as will Vanguard be i presume...

[Mo]

True L2 is a free download yeah i forgot, WoW however isn't free to download like tyrael084 said it's only the 10 days trial you download while the retail version is 5gig big yeah and it's 15â?¬ here (approx $10 or so) but when it came out it was around 50â?¬ (approx $45) as will Vanguard be i presume...

[snapback]33410[/snapback]

Ok so this is how i understand it.  WoW trial is a free download (I know cause I've played it), that gives you about 10 days of playing.  After which you can upgrade to a paying account of 15 euros or whatever per month then you have access to the entire game. Still there is no retail package to buy.  In any event the WoW expansion is coming out next week or so, that will something which you'd have to purchase retail.

Bottom line, let's say you only have to pay 15 euro a month to play, it still becomes very expensive if you're playing for over a year.  A game needs to be absolutely excellent in every regard for me to pay that kind of money every month.  I've played WoW and even though it's good it doesn't qualify, in my mind, as excellent.

[Soul Sojourner]

Seconded. Though I tend to dislike MMORPG's usually anyway, if one were "excellent" maybe it wouldn't have the flaws that make me dislike them.

[Razor Blade]

this is a nice explanation why pay2play

Why you have to pay a subscription fee for massively multiplayer online game.

On "Pay To Play" Or, MMORPG Business Models 101
I keep seeing this question recur. Here we go, guys, more than you ever wanted to know about what costs what, and why you have to pay a subscription fee for massively multiplayer online games...

Once upon a time there were muds (massively multiplayer text-based online RPGs), and they were free. And it was good. They ran on university computers like PDP-11s and early Unix workstations. They usually ran out of student, grad student, or even professor's accounts, and sometimes they were sponsored by the university's comp sci department or some such. The people who ran them did so out of the goodness of their hearts, and often put in many many hours a week. In the geek world of those days, that was good--it even looked good to other geeks when you put it on your resume. Why isn't the world still this way? Ah, the good old days...

Fast forward--muds now often run on mudhosting services, where they pay a site provider for disk space and bandwidth. Many muds are abandoning the original licenses the software originally had, because the licenses precluded making a profit in any way. Muds selling t-shirts, doing fund drives, and even charging has become common. Over in another part of the Internet, some siblings of muds have become commercial. Running on online services most of you don't remember once existed, with names like The Source and GEnie and QuantumLink, these other games charged users. By the hour. Like, over $10 an hour. Seriously. Per-minute charges, in some cases.

Then you get to the present day. What happened? Well, some execs decided to launch a major massively multiplayer game at a flat monthly fee. And now everyone does the same.
How did all of this happen? The answer is simple. The basic building blocks of the Internet, which used to be fairly freely passed around a small community of hardcore computer scientists, have become commodified. These days you'd be hard pressed to find a university that would sponsor a mud and let it run on its Unix machines with unlimited processor, hard drive, and bandwidth usage. Heck, bandwidth is scarce enough that some time ago, Australia banned muds. From the entire continent. I kid you not.

Here's what the big costs are in running an MMORPG:

�· Development. This is, literally, millions of dollars. I Figure a largish team (larger than is common for a standalone game) for longer than a standard standalone game development cycle. On top of that, some of the people on the team that you have to assemble are rare in the games industry--DBAs and fault-tolerant network designers and mission critical system administrators. (Us designers usually come a bit cheaper. )

�· Deploying the servers. This can also be millions of dollars, believe it or not. For one thing, the boxes needed tend to be pricier than the kind you probably have at home, because you want lots of redundancy, the ability to hot-swap parts out, all that jazz. You're writing to disk constantly, you need a hefty RAID array, tape backups, etc.

Those are your initial investments. Oh--forgot, there's the standard costs involved with getting a game into your hands in the first place (packaging, the monies charged by distributors, the monies charged by stores to put your product on a shelf--did you know they charge publishers for that?)... but we can skip all that for now, since it isn't applicable to the monthly fee.

Now, if you are successful, you can make back your initial investment off of box sales and off of the first few months of monthly fees. Notice that already the monthly fee starts to matter.

Now we get into the meat of the matter--ongoing costs.
Assuming you live in the US, you are likely paying someone around $20 for the privilege of tying up some wires or phone lines and using up some bandwidth. In normal usage, you're not using it all that much--odds are that even if you have a cable modem or ISDN, that you're not doing bandwidth-intensive stuff all the time. In fact, if you DO have cable, I suggest you go check right now and see that your user agreement probably prohibits you from doing bandwidth intensive things all the time. In my area, my cable provider says "you can't run a dedicated FPS server on your cable modem," for example.

That's what you get for 20 bucks.

Playing an MMO is probably one of the most bandwidth intensive things you do on a regular basis. It's like downloading a large file, the entire time that you are playing. The key here is that the bandwidth is sustained bandwidth, not "bursty" the way that most things you do on the Net are, like web browsing. ISPs don't like sustained bandwidth, because it means they can support fewer people. They rely on the burstiness to squeeze more people onto the limited capacity of the wires.

Why does this matter to us? Well, simple logic. Let's say that you at your end are using 1k of bandwidth every second while playing our game. That means that we at our end are also using 1k a second receiving what you are doing and sending back what you see. But for you, that's $20 and you're worried about one guy. For us, it's a lot less than $20 a head, but we have to pay for the bandwidth usage of everyone playing the game.

That right there wipes out a significant fraction of your monthly fee.

Then there are hardware issues. You have to pay someone--actually, many someones--(and these guys don't come cheap) to make sure that the network stays running. Do backups, monitor things, fix whatever goes wrong. These poor guys wear pagers and are on call 24/7. Plus, depending on your setup, these boxes may not be at your office. They may be at co-location facilities. And that means you're paying monthly fees for rack space and for guys there who sit at that facility and make sure all the blinky lights stay on.

That's only a small drop in the bucket of the people costs though. There's an expectation of customer service too. I'll be up front and say that as an industry, we're still figuring that part out. But we already know that it's really really expensive! After all, you can't just go hire a bunch of kids fresh from flipping burgers, train 'em in the game and the customer service tools, and pay them minimum wage. They'll be lousy customer service reps. real customer service people have a multitude of skills, and cost a lot more than minimum wage. You can train people to be real customer service people, of course, but then you have to pay them real money, too. So support eats up another huge portion of the monthly fee...

What else? Ongoing development. There's a development team that stays on the game after it finishes. They fix bugs that crop up, and they also add new content. This is an ongoing thing, and it can be quite a large amount of people--not as many as it took to make the game in the first place, but a significant fraction.
[

[By the way, just to address the issue--some companies have promised to never charge for an add-on or expansion. We are not making that promise, and I'll tell you why. Making large content additions can require extra team members, which incurs extra cost, of course. But also, having a new box on the shelf means that new people join the game. It's very hard to keep a year-old game on the shelf in this industry (in fact, it only happens for fairly rare hits) but it's an absolute necessity for an online game, whose lifespan is measured in multiple years. It's hard to afford ongoing marketing out of the monthly fee, and it's almost impossible to get press (which drives awareness for drawing in new people) or media attention without a new box. So you make a new box because it comes with these things--which cost money, of course, but then the new box sales help pay for it.]]

There are other miscellaneous costs going in there. Consider the fact that if you call a support guy in-game once and keep him tied up for an hour, you just burned up all the monthly profit we make off of your subscription fee. Actually, you probably burned up quite a bit more than that. We have a direct incentive to reduce the amount of bugs and make the game as easy and trouble-free as possible, because the more you need to call, the more it costs us, and the less money we make...

When all is said and done, if there's no ongoing costs, there's no massively multiplayer game. If you decided not to have a monthly fee, you would lose money before you even launched the game, and never make it back.

Yes, there are online games that have tried other revenue streams. Some matchmaker services have used ad revenue to support the cost. Of course, being matchmakers means that they don't actually run the game--they just pair you and your opponents up, so they don't have servers, customer support people, or bandwidth cost (except for the lobby). But notice that even most of the matchmaker services are gone now...

When all is said and done, the subscription fee is a necessity for this type of game. However, it didn't have to be a flat monthly fee. It could have been hourly, the way that it was for a decade and a half of online gaming. But fortunately, that all changed a few years back. It used to be that online gamers regularly paid hundreds of dollars a month to play their favorite MMOs.

Personally, I think we're lucky to pay what we do these days.
I don't know when we'll announce the subscription fee for SWG (probably not for a very long time) but I'm sure it'll be reasonable. Look at it this way--last movie I went to see in the theater, with the popcorn & soft drink, cost me lots more than the typical monthly fee. And it only lasted two hours. And it sucked.

The second part Advertising

What about advertising?

I should have covered advertising, sorry.
In a nutshell, ads don't make money for hardly anyone anywhere on the Internet. Countless businesses have crashed and burned over the last few years discovering that. Pretty much all those matchmaking services I mentioned relied on ads, and well, they're not here anymore.

It takes a very large, very high traffic site to make serious money on ads. And the costs I described are serious money.

"What percentage of our monthly fee goes to bandwidth, to server maintenance, to customer service drastically varies depending on how many people are playing/paying. The costs you mentioned, which are admittedly high, are partially fixed...So while stating that the maintenance costs are high, whether it takes a fair chunk out of everyone's monthly fee or not is dependent on how many people are sharing the cost of the maintenance."

You're right that some costs are fixed and some scale. For example, bandwidth costs scale directly with the number of players (the more players, them more bandwidth used, period) whereas rack space costs, server hardware, etc, go up only with the acquisition of enough players to merit a new server.

Other costs, such as the dev team size, are determined in large part by factors other than playerbase size.

Other costs go up at a rate faster than playerbase growth--customer service is a good example. The more players you get, you get even more customer service calls than you would expect. This is because the larger audience you get, the more you penetrate into a market less savvy about computers--and because each new person has umpteen people to possibly offend.

I can tell you that merely increasing the playerbase does not, as you suggest, reduce the costs per head, by itself. Not enough, at any rate. There's always other costs that crop up.

The single biggest things that reduce costs are actually careful design, even more careful implementation, diligent maintenance, and assiduous customer service. This is because careful design and implementation can greatly reduce the bandwidth costs and the customer aservice expenses, and the latter two can also reduce the customer service expenses.

"I've played many mmporgs (eq, ac, uo) and all of them (uo being the least severe) are a bunch of money hungry b@stards. Lets say the initial sales of an MMPORG are a million copies over a span of 2 months, lets say they charge a very meager $40 a copy.. Thats $40 million.. now you tell me... how does it cost even a fraction of that to develop a game?"

Your figures are way off, but that's understandable, since few people outside the industry actually know how the numbers work. There's a great article on Gamecenter which describes how it works.

There's less than 30 games that have ever sold a million copies. You'd recognize every single name (and a substantial amount of the list is from our friends at Blizzard ) A game that sells a half million is a huge hit. In fact, a game that sells lifetime 250,000 is doing really, really well. The vast majority of games released do not break 50,000 units, and the vast majority of games released do not make back the money it cost to make them. To my knowledge, only two MMOs have ever sold over 300,000. [[Update: this is now 3, and I'm only counting Western MMOs here.]]

A $40 box on the shelf has so many hidden costs it's not funny. Between the distributor's cut, the shelf stocking fees, the cost of goods, etc, that box likely only makes the publisher $15-20. And if the publisher isn't also the developer, then the developer gets even less than that. To get on the shelves at the end of the aisles at a Best Buy or similar store costs tens of thousands of dollars each month, which comes out of the publisher's pocket.

In practice, many companies view the risks of doing an MMO, which has a much higher upfront cost, plus huge ongoing costs, to be too risky. This despite the fact that making money off of standalone games is a massive roll of the dice (one estimate had over 7,000 games published last year, with only around the first 700 actually making any profit). MMOs with subscription fees provide sustained revenue month after month, but at a much lower profit margin than what you'd get for a hit title that sold the same number of units. Companies that have proven expertise in landing titles in the top ten may very well view creating a top ten title as a lower risk (financially speaking) than making an MMO despite the "guaranteed" income an MMO provides. I once did a detailed breakdown on why that is in a newsgroup post in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, which you can probably find with a search on Deja.com.

Now, I'm not saying that we're not in this to make money. Of course we are. But we're also in it for love of the genre--we do this because MMO is our passion. Because lemme tell ya, it's a lot easier in many ways to go do something else.

"Is it better business in the long run to try to squeeze out profits in the short term, or to build an extremely loyal customer base by treating them fairly... and trade them up to games as they come out?"

I'll say it flatly: these games could not be run, period, at all, if there were no fee. In fact, many in the industry believe that the current monthly fees are too low (check the editorials over at www.happypuppy.com, under Biting the Hand, for an example, or click here and here for part two.) because they don't provide enough margin for sufficient customer service.

Battle.net is, as you say, a complete tangent. It derives its revenues from ads, as you say, but also incurs significantly less costs. There's additional information regarding the costs there and how they handled that expense that I am privy to but which I suspect they wouldn't want me sharing... suffice it to say, it's a bad, bad example for comparison on many levels.

I can't disclose the true costs for running these games because keeping those costs down is one of the key competitive advantages one company has over another.

You state that
...even given a proficient level of CS, any significant addition of content in EQ necessitates buying an expansion to foot the bill of development of that content(much as the original $50 cost of the "Box" pays for initial development... as an aside, I'll let you know that I footed this bill twice as you forced me to buy Kunark as well instead of providing it adequately as an expansion) obviously our month subscription pays for maintenance... not any "Live" features...

I did go into why release expansion boxes rather than just give away that content. Yes, you do get Live features with your monthly fee. But doing something as large as a Kunark does take more funding.

You cite
TV is free, radio is free, Icebox.com etc is free, newspapers lost money on the 50 cents they charge you and make it up on advertising revenue.

I don't know whether Icebox.com is making money, but I do know that the huge dot.com shakeout you're seeing now owes itself in large part to the fact that advertising-supported businesses on the Internet are dying left and right. It is not proving to be a viable business model for the vast majority of sites--much less for a game.


Lots of historical notes on this one!

Since this post was written, I believe Icebox has folded. So has Gamecenter, so I don't know if the link above will work indefinitely.

Also since then, I have learned that it's a completely false rumor that Australia banned muds. It never happened.

The reference to "Kunark" is to EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark, the first expansion pack for EverQuest.

QuantumLink became AOL, which is now AOL Time Warner, of course.

Google.com bought Deja.com so you'll have to search for old newsgroup posts that way.

[Soul Sojourner]

If you look at it, these guys are making a profit, and no small profit at that. With their monthly charge they make more than enough to cover their investment, and do NOT need to charge people to buy the game as well.

420 said: "either pay for the game or pay to play it, but not both" and I agree, but he did not say there was anything wrong with pay to play, or paying for the game, just that they would likely get more customers when the customers don't need to do BOTH. He even italicized the "or" how nice of him. They still make a profit if they offer the game up for download, and then they don't even have to pay for packaging, shipping, or getting it on dvd's/cd's or the price to put it in stores. They do not need to charge to buy the game as well as monthly fees, it should be one or the other, both is ridiculous, and both will likely lose them potential customers.

[Razor Blade]

Ok so this is how i understand it.  WoW trial is a free download (I know cause I've played it), that gives you about 10 days of playing.  After which you can upgrade to a paying account of 15 euros or whatever per month then you have access to the entire game.

BTW i forgot to mention here when you upgrade to a paying account after the 10 days free trial you will still need to buy the game cuz you need the cd-key...

[420]

BTW i forgot to mention here when you upgrade to a paying account after the 10 days free trial you will still need to buy the game cuz you need the cd-key...

[snapback]33423[/snapback]

Ouch!

Guild Wars is a good example of a game that you pay for once but don't pay to play monthly. People that want the expansions buy them while those of us that just have the original game still benefit from all the updates: stash now available in guild hall, crafting item expansion in stash, new item upgrades, along with all the standard bug fixes and game balances.

Most of the MMORPG industry thinks they can have their cake and eat it too. Despite the popularity of EQ, DAoC and WoW, it is a dead-end market. That's why the PC game market is dying off and the console market is so popular with developers. Consumers will only put up with being jacked around by a new marketing scam for so long before they rebel and move on to something better.

-420

[Mo]

Ouch!

Guild Wars is a good example of a game that you pay for once but don't pay to play monthly. People that want the expansions buy them while those of us that just have the original game still benefit from all the updates: stash now available in guild hall, crafting item expansion in stash, new item upgrades, along with all the standard bug fixes and game balances.

Most of the MMORPG industry thinks they can have their cake and eat it too. Despite the popularity of EQ, DAoC and WoW, it is a dead-end market. That's why the PC game market is dying off and the console market is so popular with developers. Consumers will only put up with being jacked around by a new marketing scam for so long before they rebel and move on to something better.

-420

[snapback]33426[/snapback]

Problem is, how can you afford to maintain a mmorpg without making it pay2play? The bandwidth costs alone most be enormous.  I'm not sure how Anet does it.  GW can't be making so much profit.  Or maybe it just doesn't take all that much bandwidth to support thousands of players in these games, they aren't uploading videos after all.  Dunno, I'd don't have enough info to make a good guess about it. Meh I'm tired.

[Soul Sojourner]

I say the hell with MMORPG's to begin with goddammit, these things are so fucking repetitive and become so boring... argh. They need to get off their asses and make me some well-done RPG games with a nice storyline and shit, befo' I pop a cap in their ass. I was kidding about the last part, just felt like doing a little rap/gangster talk to act stupid.

Anyway, I'ma go play some AoE 1, haven't played this game in forever.

[Razor Blade]

Problem is, how can you afford to maintain a mmorpg without making it pay2play? The bandwidth costs alone most be enormous.  I'm not sure how Anet does it.  GW can't be making so much profit.  Or maybe it just doesn't take all that much bandwidth to support thousands of players in these games, they aren't uploading videos after all.  Dunno, I'd don't have enough info to make a good guess about it. Meh I'm tired.

[snapback]33427[/snapback]

ehm...you do know that Anet has some pay2play games so they probably gain from that and put it in the support of GW i think...

@420

I totally aggree with you about GW it was my first MMORPG that I play(ed) and I still play the game I also have Factions and Nightfall the game still is intresting and fun to play one thing that I love at GW is the missions and that it has a storyline it's a shame that other MMORPG's don't have that but in the end GW still owns and cudos to the Anet crew they still have time to organize events and such good work!

@Hellmasterhell

why don't you like MMORPG's i mean I love them for the only reason cuz of the people in them you can socialize, make fun, party and explore dungeons or new areas etc...I mean it's really fun maybe you should try out GW it does have a good and intresting storyline...

[420]

I love at GW is the missions and that it has a storyline it's a shame that other MMORPG's don't have that but in the end GW still owns and cudos to the Anet crew they still have time to organize events and such good work!

[snapback]33432[/snapback]

OK, now I'm confused. What exactly does WoW and those other MMORPGs offer if not new missions and storylines? I was under the impression that the pay-to-play games were that way because the companies were constantly adding new content that your monthly fees were paying for.

Fuck a WoW expansion, after the thousands (millions?) of dollars pumped into WoW, Blizzard owes its fans a free expansion. The only requirment should be that you just continue to pay-to-play.

I mean, that is the whole point right? If games like Diablo 2 (back in the day) and GW can constantly add new content without charging a monthly fee, then pay-to-play should be offering something above and beyond that. There should be new content every month, otherwise your money is just being wasted.

Diablo 2 is a perfect example of a game that is hosted by the company's servers, only charges you once for the game (and expansion) and, up until late last year even, adds new game fixes, balances, items, and new "world events". Not to mention the new ladder system they started, with unique ladder-only items and rune words, a good five years after the game was released.

It's hard for me to justify Blizzard's decission to go pay-to-play after the success of Diablo 2. People will still be playing Diablo 2 long after the last person decides they have wasted enough money on WoW.

-420

[Razor Blade]

OK, now I'm confused. What exactly does WoW and those other MMORPGs offer if not new missions and storylines? I was under the impression that the pay-to-play games were that way because the companies were constantly adding new content that your monthly fees were paying for.

no, no, no lol WoW, L2, Cabal, Archlord all MMORPG's they don't offer missions these games are made most for grinding and completing quests, Blizzards adds content like fixes, bug patches, improvement for the classes and new quests it is even said that WoW can't be completed the game never ends check wikipedia if you don't believe me. The same goes for every other MMORPG (except GW)

Fuck a WoW expansion, after the thousands (millions?) of dollars pumped into WoW, Blizzard owes its fans a free expansion. The only requirment should be that you just continue to pay-to-play.

True.
But you have to understand Blizzard is a company and what is the most number one goal of company? it's profit, profit and once again PROFIT! and the means to get that profit for this they have created WoW.
i'm not saying that it's right what they are doing but that's how the world works now a days...sad but true...

I mean, that is the whole point right? If games like Diablo 2 (back in the day) and GW can constantly add new content without charging a monthly fee, then pay-to-play should be offering something above and beyond that. There should be new content every month, otherwise your money is just being wasted.
Diablo 2 is a perfect example of a game that is hosted by the company's servers, only charges you once for the game (and expansion) and, up until late last year even, adds new game fixes, balances, items, and new "world events". Not to mention the new ladder system they started, with unique ladder-only items and rune words, a good five years after the game was released.

No comment here

It's hard for me to justify Blizzard's decission to go pay-to-play after the success of Diablo 2. People will still be playing Diablo 2 long after the last person decides they have wasted enough money on WoW.

The sad part is no one will find their money wasted on WoW, WoW now exists almost 2 years i think and how many people play it?? A LOT, I know alot of addicts to WoW too, people who I go with to school, friends etc...

-420

[snapback]33434[/snapback]

[Soul Sojourner]

I don't like MMORPG's because all you do is run around and kill shit, do a few side deals, go back out and sit there killing shit again. It's boring as fuck, and far too repetitive, as well as a little too competitive. At least, for my tastes anyhow. And then you have little to look forward to but doing it again, you look at a regular RPG you look forward to revealing the rest of the story, you're playing a role and you are deep into it, MMORPG's have not been able to offer me that, I don't see the role anywhere, your just a random player amongst a bunch of players, and storylines... heh... yeah right, if you call those storylines... And then there's these quests... oh god... Hey, why don't you go out and kill some more monsters over and over and over again, like you just got done doing, except this time you have to kill a certain number of a particular monster until you gain enough quest items. Come on! *shakes head*

no, no, no lol WoW, L2, Cabal, Archlord all MMORPG's they don't offer missions these games are made most for grinding and completing quests, Blizzards adds content like fixes, bug patches, improvement for the classes and new quests it is even said that WoW can't be completed the game never ends check wikipedia if you don't believe me. The same goes for every other MMORPG (except GW)

Hey, explain to me the difference between quests and missions real quick, will ya?

True.
But you have to understand Blizzard is a company and what is the most number one goal of company? it's profit, profit and once again PROFIT! and the means to get that profit for this they have created WoW.
i'm not saying that it's right what they are doing but that's how the world works now a days...sad but true...

So you agree after all then?

The sad part is no one will find their money wasted on WoW, WoW now exists almost 2 years i think and how many people play it?? A LOT, I know alot of addicts to WoW too, people who I go with to school, friends etc...

I know alot of people who found it a waste of money. I think it's a waste of money.

[Mo]

Well the most fun I've ever had in an mmorpg was in a NWN server called Toril Online.  I guess you'd have to remove the first "m" in mmorpg because it wasn't massive in the sense that WoW is massive.  There was never more then 20-30 players online at a time.  The game took place in the city of Waterdeep.  Players would do quests like they do in WoW, by running around the city and surroundings, Undermountain, the Underdark and high level quests in the Abyss.  The whole thing was designed completely by one person and play was totally free.  The thing that made it the most fun was that people were actually really role playing, and a real community of characters was created.  WoW and the like are more hack and slash and pretty graphics then real rpg content.

[Mo]

I totally aggree with you about GW it was my first MMORPG that I play(ed) and I still play the game I also have Factions and Nightfall the game still is intresting and fun to play one thing that I love at GW is the missions and that it has a storyline it's a shame that other MMORPG's don't have that but in the end GW still owns and cudos to the Anet crew they still have time to organize events and such good work!

[snapback]33432[/snapback]

I've recently gotten back into GW.  I purchased Nightfall last month and have been playing that pretty regularly. The best thing about this expansion (which is geared more towards PvE than Factions was) is the addition of Heroes.  Heroes are basically fully customizable NPCs (Super henchmen, if you will) that you can take with you in your party.  You can change their stats and skills, weapons, customize their armor and change their secondary profession.  You can give them orders on the battlefield and even micromanage them so much as to direct them when to use a certain skill and who to target.  In any event they are much smarter and better than regular henchmen.  You can bring 3 of them with you at a time.  Dunkin and I just last night completed every quest in FoW with us and 6 Heroes, yes they can come with you to FoW and every other place in GW, which does away with the most annoying part of the game for me which was finding 8 player parties.

More reasonably priced than Factions was when it came out (if you remember, Faction's price pissed me off something horrible), I recommend Nightfall to  those who have GW.  Whether you want to play alone, I finished it with heroes and henchmen exclusively, except for the odd mission or two that Elessar came with (thanks!) or play with others.  It's lots of fun and the new professions - Dervish and Paragon are pretty neat.  Actually I didn't really finish Nightfall, as their are Elite Missions are areas - Domain of Anguish - which I have yet to play.  I just rushed through the storyline so I can get the end-game green sword for Ribs

[420]

I'd play GW more but you never respond when I message you in-game Mo!

I'm up for FoW and UW runs whenever, (if you don't mind a non-expansion noob tagging along). Elessar tells me that neither expansion has skill quests (ie side quests that give you skills as a reward). That was my favorite part of GW, I just don't see buying the expansion if there isn't any way to gain skills through questing.

Can you stil get Elite skill by caping them from bosses or do you have to buy those too?

-420

[Mo]

I'd play GW more but you never respond when I message you in-game Mo!

I'm up for FoW and UW runs whenever, (if you don't mind a non-expansion noob tagging along). Elessar tells me that neither expansion has skill quests (ie side quests that give you skills as a reward). That was my favorite part of GW, I just don't see buying the expansion if there isn't any way to gain skills through questing.

Can you stil get Elite skill by caping them from bosses or do you have to buy those too?

-420

[snapback]33442[/snapback]

lol I never see you msg me.  He's right there aren't specific skills as rewards.  They changed that system and now people offer "Sunspear promotion points" or "Lightbringer promotion points" as rewards.  Basically, after a certain number of promotion points attained in either Sunspear or Lightbringer, you level up your rank in one of those fields and also you gain a hero skill point.  Afterwards you go to a hero skill trainer in the various towns and spend those points on skills, unlocking them for you and your heroes.  You also get to wear these titles under your name in-game which is kinda cool.  I'm a Tyrian Pathfinder, meaning I've explored 90% of Tyria.  They have different titles for all manner of things.

Yes you can still cap skills from bosses.  Also changing your secondary profession is super easy now.  Basically all you have to do is Ascend and say I'd like to change it to this.

[Razor Blade]

I don't like MMORPG's because all you do is run around and kill shit, do a few side deals, go back out and sit there killing shit again. It's boring as fuck, and far too repetitive, as well as a little too competitive. At least, for my tastes anyhow. And then you have little to look forward to but doing it again, you look at a regular RPG you look forward to revealing the rest of the story, you're playing a role and you are deep into it, MMORPG's have not been able to offer me that, I don't see the role anywhere, your just a random player amongst a bunch of players, and storylines... heh... yeah right, if you call those storylines... And then there's these quests... oh god... Hey, why don't you go out and kill some more monsters over and over and over again, like you just got done doing, except this time you have to kill a certain number of a particular monster until you gain enough quest items. Come on! *shakes head*
Hey, explain to me the difference between quests and missions real quick, will ya?
I know alot of people who found it a waste of money. I think it's a waste of money.

[snapback]33438[/snapback]

Well first off GW isn't really much about quests at all and GW doesn't absolutly give quests like hey go kill 10 monsters and come back GW is really about missions.
Now missions are like elite quests in missions you have to team up with players (or you can use henchies wtv you wan't) and complete the mission.
Completing the mission gives you offcourse a hell of a load XP and it let's you see some cool and nice cinematics in wich the story unfolds really cool to watch!

Second off No I don't aggree with Blizzard i'm just making my point that Blizzard is a company who concetrates on profit (wich is normal for a company) and i'm making a point that in the world we live in that you need money to survive AND entertain yourself and it is how the world works in this modern day.
I'm also making a point that Blizzard is ripping people off with their pay2play WoW and purchasing the WoW for playing it etc...

Third off
I also have friends who don't wan't to pay2play etc but other people who are hooked on WoW or who just love WoW they are the ones who think that WoW is worth the money etc...

[Mo]

Third off
I also have friends who don't wan't to pay2play etc but other people who are hooked on WoW or who just love WoW they are the ones who think that WoW is worth the money etc...

[snapback]33446[/snapback]

Same here.  I have friends addicted to it also.  Here's my main problem with WoW pay2play.   It's a fixed monthly cost.  Meaning that if I play 20 hours one month and 10 hours the next month, I am paying the same amount even though I've used half as much of the product.  They could make the argument that it's the same structure as say cable tv or cellular phone, but in the case of cable tv they have no way of gaging how much you use and in the case of cellular phones they offer pay as you go and in some instances rollover mins.  However, in both cable and cellular and almost all services they do offer a wide variety of different options to customize the service to best fit your specific needs.  WoW doesn't offer this.  It's one price for all no matter how much you play.  That sucks, especially for the casual gamer like me. It benefits the hardcore gamers with no lives.  If Blizzard sold WoW in slots of time, say 10 hours for so and so dollars then I'd give it another look. Of course those 10 hours should not have an expiry date!

It all comes down to the bottom line  As it always does.  A recurring fixed revenue stream from a subscribed client base is much more attractive to share holders and investors than non-recurring sales bases approach.  In short, they are ripping gamers off left right and center.  Blizzard mentions that they have a world wide subscribed player base of 7.5 million players.  At $15 a month this base generates a cool $112.5 million a month!  The best selling PC video game according to Wikipedia is The Sims with 16 million sales.  Assume $50 a sale that puts sales for The Sims at $800 million.  WoW was release in 2004, but let's just take 2007 as an example.  If Blizzard keeps their 7.5 million users stable for 2007 they will generate $1.35 BILLION in 2007.  Remember I'm not counting the past 2 years of monthly revenues, just this one year of 2007.  Eat your heart out Sims.  Blizzard has a monstrous cash cow on their hands here.  Expect them to milk it to the bone.

Anet is not gonna come close to Blizzard in terms of dollars with GW vs. WoW.  That's sad considering I am very impressed with the day to day development of GW.  They have great people working on that game (kinda like the Anti-Obsidian) but they aren't getting nearly as paid off as Blizzard is.  GW is already on their second expansion, WoW is releasing their first expansion later this month
Considering the amount of money coming in there should be way more content coming to WoW than one expansion every 2.5 years....

[Soul Sojourner]

Well first off GW isn't really much about quests at all and GW doesn't absolutly give quests like hey go kill 10 monsters and come back GW is really about missions.
Now missions are like elite quests in missions you have to team up with players (or you can use henchies wtv you wan't) and complete the mission.
Completing the mission gives you offcourse a hell of a load XP and it let's you see some cool and nice cinematics in wich the story unfolds really cool to watch!

Second off No I don't aggree with Blizzard i'm just making my point that Blizzard is a company who concetrates on profit (wich is normal for a company) and i'm making a point that in the world we live in that you need money to survive AND entertain yourself and it is how the world works in this modern day.
I'm also making a point that Blizzard is ripping people off with their pay2play WoW and purchasing the WoW for playing it etc...

Third off
I also have friends who don't wan't to pay2play etc but other people who are hooked on WoW or who just love WoW they are the ones who think that WoW is worth the money etc...

[snapback]33446[/snapback]

So, basically they are quests. Not the same as most MMORPG quests, but the same damn thing as a quest anyhow. As for the way those quests/missions are done, it's still unappealing to me. I like single player RPG's, or MMO shooters, and other shit, but I just don't like MMORPG's, I've played quite a few, and the whole set-up is just pretty unappealing to me. The only one I played, that I enjoyed, was EQ, and it may have been only because I didn't get to play it for very long, which is likely the case as most of them are fun to me for only a short while.

I didn't say you did, I said you were essentially agreeing with US, not THEM. That's what I meant anyhow. =)

There's always going to be those that do, or have alot of cash and don't care, or whatever, what's your point? I was simply disproving your statement when you said:

The sad part is no one will find their money wasted on WoW

[Razor Blade]

So, basically they are quests. Not the same as most MMORPG quests, but the same damn thing as a quest anyhow. As for the way those quests/missions are done, it's still unappealing to me. I like single player RPG's, or MMO shooters, and other shit, but I just don't like MMORPG's, I've played quite a few, and the whole set-up is just pretty unappealing to me. The only one I played, that I enjoyed, was EQ, and it may have been only because I didn't get to play it for very long, which is likely the case as most of them are fun to me for only a short while.

[snapback]33449[/snapback]

lol in a single player RPG you also have to fulfill quests, it's not that I wan't you to play GW or smt don't get me wrong but the way you say quests in MMORPG's and shit I don't like that, but even in good RPG games you also have to fullfill quests to finish the game and everything so it's quite the same...

[420]

I'd like to remake a point that was made way back when the Guild Wars was first posted about on this forum. The people that founded A.net were Blizzard employees that worked on Diablo and Diablo 2 and left because they didn't like the pay-to-play idea of WoW.

I sense they have something to prove and they are proving it right now.

-420

[Soul Sojourner]

[snapback]33449[/snapback]

lol in a single player RPG you also have to fulfill quests, it's not that I wan't you to play GW or smt don't get me wrong but the way you say quests in MMORPG's and shit I don't like that, but even in good RPG games you also have to fullfill quests to finish the game and everything so it's quite the same...

[snapback]33450[/snapback]

Just in case you didn't catch it, I didn't say I didn't like quests, or that regular RPG's don't have them, just that I don't like the usual shitty quests for MMORPG's, and that quests and missions are essentially the same concept. Different style quests, make for a different style game, so it's quite different.

[Xen]

Theres always gonna be the "Take this potion to mister fuck head over by the alchemist shop and bring back his cash" type quests. Lineage has an abundance of them, but there are some realy engauging ones aswell.

They do however need to think beyond the take item a to point b.