There are always exceptions. Guild Wars has a lifetime subscription type model. You pay for it and that is it. However, there are still frequent patches and events.
Actually guildwars has a "no subscription fee" model. You pay for the game itself, and that's it. The lifetime subs are a fee of a few hundred dollars on top of the price of the game itself. Totally different.
Good article and I would agree with most of it but Jon is way to hard on pre-orders imho. Never in a million years would i pre-order a non MMO game for the simple reason in that 99% of the time you will have no problem getting the game from either a brick and mortar store or via a digital download.
A pre-order for a MMO that offers beta access makes perfect sence to me as you get to try the game before shelling out the full price to see if you like it. If its not to your taste then no big deal as you have only droped a few quid and if you like it you are probley going to have a few items as a bonus starting off
Lifetime subscriptions are nothing more than a gamble tho and apart from LOTRO I dont know of any MMO where the lifetime subscription has ever paid off.
It is a good thing for Cryptic that they offered lifetimes for STO or their would be nobody left on their servers. Dont know what cryptic is going to do when the lifetimers money runs out--probably go F2P
I agree all you have said about this but ive never bought into pre-order or lifetime sub and im playing online sinds '99.
Longest game ive followed and my most anticipate game is untill now Darkfall from 2003 untill launch 2009 but not went for pre-order so had to wait a little before i could play even tho iwas a longtime follwer fan huge fan.
I dont need lifetime sub 15 euro's a months is np for me so no need.
Btw if i buy a game without checking and its dissapointing i would never whine afterwards, MY OWN FAULT right:)
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
The worst tactic companies do to lifetime subscribers is change the game to F2P a few months after release. Never have I heard of a bigger slap to the face than that. Imagine shelling out a few hundred bucks for a game that becomes "free" and then having to pay more money to use the item mall.
I am sorry, but I find this a hilarious concept in relation to any company running an MMO.
My experience with Everquest, WoW and a host of other MMOs is that there is little indication that they care 2 cents about individual subscriptions. I have never seen a game company react positively to anyone who has said "change this or I will cancel my subscription". However I have seen plenty of times when the person has received a Customer Service version of "sorry your leaving, don't let the door hit you on the way out".
Really?
Well here's two concrete examples for you.
Fallen Earth's odd half FPS / half point-click-select game design with weapons being vastly superior to mutations is not what they originally planned. Mutations were "toned down" (i.e. nerfed) before they even made it into alpha testing because the loudest forum bunnies seemed to be a guns'n'ammo crowd. That was one of several key decisions that ultimately drove the game off course.
Champions Online - a mess of a game - recently hinted via a mod post that an upcoming update would be a paid expansion pack. In previous discussions on this topic the devs always avoided answering this question. They have a full monthly subscription + some serious (i.e. non-fluff) MTs. Their predecessor, CoH, has a fully monthly subscription + fluff MTs + many years of free, big content updates.
The player response to the idea of a paid expansion was reported to be quite vehement. Cryptic backed down and announced it would be a free content update.
So I think you're wrong. Very, very, very wrong on this score.
There are now so many MMOs on the market that there's real competition amongst developers for a limited (though growing) number of players.
And I'll give you a third possible example.
You may recall that about 6 to 9 months ago mmo sites (eg. this one) started writing LOTS of articles telling us we the players were rigid and inflexible and needed to embrace new payment models. We were told that the regular subscription model was inadequate. This was.... curious since the subscription mmo market was showing excellent growth at the time, bucking the trend of the GFC.
What was really happening was SOE was flirting with alternate payment models with Free Realms - something that didn't work so well for them with eg. their laying off 5% of their staff soon after launch - and Cryptic were also getting "innovative" (i.e. trying to milk players from every orifice). In Cryptic's case we know that there was a HUGE bonus attached to the sale of Cryptic to Infogrames based on profits by 2011. So we know what their incentive was...
And SOE, when asked about DCUO's payment model, openly adopted a "wait and see" policy in reference to CO but hinted that shopping mall MTs were likely.
Responses to these "innovative" payment models were generally negative and CO bombed (though for more reasons than just their payment model). Aion, with a straight subscription model, did rather well. SOE haved backed away from their earlier payment plans for DCUO and other big MMOs in development have since happily announced they'll be using a plain old boring subscription (only) model.
So yes, I think Jon Wood was right to talk of "power of the customer" here.
Rule number Three : TRY the frakkin' game before buying it!
This Rule is flawed
Most companies dont have a Free Trial til a few months/years after release.
So how would you "try a game before you buy it" if there is no free trial?
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
First, this looks like it was written in a haste and with far to much emotion.
I agree that pre-orders are mostly bad, especially the beta invites for pre-orders. Where I have been living the past 16 years I have had to pre order just to get a copy of anything since the stores around here never order enough copies of anything and I have lived in an area that is heavily populated with mulptiple stores, about 5 just within a 10 minute driving distance, and an area that had a population of 3,000 maybe with 2 stores within 60 miles. So yes I really like pre-orders because otherwise I would be waiting weeks to get a game I want to play; that and D2D are fail and I like to have hard copies and manuals.
I won't comment on lifetime subscriptions since I don't consider them.
Rule number Three : TRY the frakkin' game before buying it!
This Rule is flawed
Most companies dont have a Free Trial til a few months/years after release.
So how would you "try a game before you buy it" if there is no free trial?
By ignoring his rule #1 and pre-ordering the game so that you can get into the open beta and see what the game is like during the open beta phase. Once again, pre-ordering a game does not mean pre-paying for it; most places that sell games allow you to cancel the pre-order (though some have a time limit to do so from what I understand, generally allowing you to cancel right up until the end of open beta), and you only need to put $5 or $10 down to get the pre-order.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I must confess that I haven't read all the comments so far, so this might have already been said, but..
I think it's important to distinguish between pre-ordering a retail release from a games shop, an pre-ordering an indie title direct from the developer.
In the case of the former, you will only have to put down a minimal amount of money (maybe $5 or $10), and even if you don't go through with the purchase, you should at least be able to use that as credit on another purchase.
That happened to me with WAR: pre-ordered the collector's edition from EBGames because it looked so promising pre-release, laid down my $10, got into the beta, was very worried at what I saw, watched it get worse and worse with every patch as release approached, and then cancelled my pre-order after playing a couple of days of the headstart weekend.
I was actually perfectly willing to write off the $10 as a good investment, since it saved me spending a LOT more money. But no, EBGames said, sure, you can that as credit. It ended up going towards paying for Wrath of the Lich King.
But when I see indie developers calling for pre-orders - actually, paying for the game up-front, not just laying down a small deposit - and you know that if it all crashes and burns there's not much chance of you getting your money back.. well, I think you'd have to be crazy. No matter HOW good the game sounds from forum hype and developer diaries.
Lifetime subscriptions are of course cash inflows that allow for a game's sudden advancement that may provide for increased subscriptions. That is exactly what the builders probram at Cornered Rat Software's Battleground Europe game did. I , however believe in a continouos cash flow model of monthly subscriptions that allow the lights to stay on and the server bill to be paid.
In 90 pecent of mmporgs the main game comes out and then there is nothing until a new release or upgrade shows up. Case in point Planetcide which has a deep pocketed base sponsor. In this scenario you get gameplay that is interesting and top notch but then you have to buy the next upgrade or suffer the consequences. They use the game to set you up for another fast buck. The subscriptions pay for the server not the developement.
At small games like Warbirds, Aces High and Battleground Europe you get the opposite using steady cash flow. You get a small dev team that cannot create sudden and dramatic increases in game play to they put in a continuous stream of improvements. You get the feeling that the breakthrough is just around the corner but it is like a rainbow. You just see the end move gold pot to the next hill not this one. You get to see interesting scenery on the way and interesting game play with deep valleys and high peaks but you never ever get there.
I bought 2 lifetime subscriptions to LOTRO when it was released. One for me and one for my wife. We still play.
It was one of the best decisions I've made. We've saved $652 and counting. That's nothing to sneeze at.
I definitely do not agree with Jon's assumption that games with lifetime subscriptions do not update their games. LOTRO has had tons of updates over the last 3 years. They have multiple festivals each year where new, unique mini-games are available, not to mention 2 full expansions and tons of smaller book updates.
Also Guild Wars is another game where they don't even charge a subscription, they get all of their money from the box sales, there isn't even an option to subscribe, yet they have had a lot of free updates since the initial release.
Consider yourself more lucky than smart, especially if you bought those 2 subs w/o ever playing the game.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This is one of the best articles I've seen on this site. It is so true.
No pre-orders, I wait until people have played the game and give me some feed-back, or a trial test it.
And NEVER will I EVER buy another life-time subscription. Yes, I did it once, but I didn't get my value out of it, and the only other game I even considered a life time sub to, was STO ... am I so glad I didn't!!!!!
I've gotten heartless about this anymore ... pre-orders and 6 months subs are just the developer's way of getting you to pay for their development. No, they don't get the money till it actually ships, but they accquire funding based on the pre-orders out there.
I'm starting to take the 6 month rule with MMOs ... don't even bother looking at the PR hype, or what the game play is really like ... until its released and people are in the end game.
BTW, I guess I should thank all of you who are willing to plop down their hard earned cash to help these developers develop their games, and then letting me know how crappy most of them are.
One of these days players will learn to stop their subscription to crappy, unfinished, bug-ridden games ... and Developers will learn they'll go broke if that's what they put out.
I'm another LOTRO lifetimer that has to chime in. While I agree it's foolish to buy a LTS for a game sight unseen, I got into the LOTRO open beta (no cost), tried the game for several weeks, found I loved it, and pre-ordered. I purchased the LTS and have been happily playing ever since. They have regularly, released free content updates and 2 paid expansions. They have also on occasion, given special freebies to Founders (pre-order LTS). Turbine has (imo) been pretty good about listening and responding to community wants and needs. So I have been very happy with Turbine and my LTS and have never regretted the purchase.
They also continue to receive revenue through me by the many friend subcriptions they have gotten through my recommedations to friends. If they keep me happy as a lifetimer, then I continue to recommend LOTRO to people and continue to purchase expansions as they come out.
Completely agree! LOTRO is the only MMO that I have convinced my wife to play - now she plays it more than I do!
I'd have gotten a lifetime sub to DDO also, if there had been one. With the current scandal at DDO, I guess I'm glad I couldn't.
I wish more games offered Lifetime subs! As a casual player with very limited time most months, I can't justify paying monthly subs to more than one game. When I do have time - mostly Jul/Aug - I tend to burn out on the one game and pick up trials for other games. If I like the other ones, I would rather buy Lifetime subs - and thereby take the "must play to justify price" pressure off - than sub monthly. If a game stays going for 3+ years, i feel that I've gotten my money's worth from the LS - in terms of actual hours played, i probably haven't, but in terms of having the option to play anytime, I have. Kind of like stock options - I can use 'em if I want or not.
Edit: I pre-ordered LOTRO also based on playing in the open beta month and loved it! DDO was such crap in OB that I didn't PO or even buy the game until 6 months later. I ALWAYS try before I buy - especially with games [even if I have to play a pirated version first!]
The only game I ever pre-ordered was Guild Wars Factions. I dunno, I guess Im just easy to please, but I never bought a mmo I didnt like, and even on single player games, I can count with the fingers of one hand the ones I didnt enjoy.
I'll totally pre-order TOR for example if I have the chance, same with WoD. I know my tastes pretty well, and if I look at a game, even if its in development, and I think Im going to like it, chances are I will.
I think when it comes to mmorpgs, the fun begins with you. Its true in my case.
Same here; I preordered Guild Wars after a lot of research and I wasn't disappointed. I haven't preordered any other MMO before or since, oddly....none of them gave me the "this will be worth it vibe." Five years later and I still play GW every now and then, it was well worth it...heh, I still have the official Guild Wars headset!
I may be an overt optimist but I see no reason a buyer shouldn't expect a game company to produce a finished product. The reality may not be such, but the expectation should always be there....and when a game manages to disappoint everyone so profoundly (STO, for example) then hopefully people will learn to be more careful.
I do occasionally preorder console games, though. Sometimes its something I want and I know finding it will be difficult (I live in a smaller city, so it's entirely possible to miss out on a game for several weeks if you don't reserve a copy...such as MW2, for example). However, I think anyone who gets a lifetime subscription is not playing with a full deck....unless you analyze the cost to value ratio of your purchase (will you play this game for a longer period of time than the cost of your lifetime subscription, relative to paying for the same period monthly?) and are psychic enough to predict that if you pay $200 now you'll save another $400 over the game's lifetime....well, heck, I still am baffled, since I can't imagine any game on the market that will offer that much long-term entertainment, be worth it, and still have a marketing team think lifetime sub models are a good idea.
Put another way, if I see a game offering a lifetime sub model, what I am reading between the lines is, "Our game is not worth two years of play, but maybe we can get lucky and sucker some diehard fans in to forking over more than they would if they played for 3-6 months and quit." Another way of thinking of it is: what game has absorbed more time than any other on the market, and which itself does not offer lifetime subs because it would not be cost-effective for the company, when they KNOW they can get you to pay for many years? Yes, WoW it is!
I preorder a lot of games since I had to wait 2 weeks for SWG:JTL. I did not get it after work on launch day.
Not getting a Lifetime subscription is a good advice. I almost bought the STO Lifetime. I am a StarTrek fan I read a lot of interviews and articles and everything sounded very good. But this game is so bad and so far away from what was promised (Exploration is a joke, Episodic Content is just another word for "boring quest"). Buying the STO Lifetime could have been the worst game related decision in my life.
I love playing MMOs, and hate paying for them. I'm a casual player, I play every once and awhile, and I'd rather not pay a monthly if I don't play it every month. I went for the LOTRO STL because I had played for almost a year and a half in closed beta, and loved it. I still love LOTRO today, even though it's been weeks since the last time I logged.
Bottom line:
Don't Pre-order a game you havn't played, that doesn't make sense. Play the open beta, demo, whatever, and make your own decision.
BTW, I've got the LT sub, I've been playing since release.
$300 (for LT) / $15 (monthly) = 20 months of game bought.
I never have to pay again! I love the game, and Turbine is updating the game faster than I can play the content.
You put it harshly on the lifetimers. I'd put it equally harshly on the companies offering lifetime. Cheap lifetime is a clear sign that the company doesn't really care for long-term retention but rather for short term money injection. There are only 4 games in MMORPG history with lifetime: Lotro, Hellgate, CO, and STO. Look at lotro, started strong, still shows the same x-fire ranking -> the amount of updates dropped down horribly. Now they have to rely on paid expansions, as most of their customers are already lifetimers (like free to play players in DDo terms - as shown on multiple polls on official forums).
It's like a Guild Wars model. You pay 200$ up front. Recieve no free-updates, and then pay for each additional content update called miniexpansion packs. This is Lotro's business model since Moria.
Turbine is no better than Cryptic. Asheron's Call 2 is still one of the biggest fiasco's in the gaming history. Releasing a paid expansion claiming everything is great, and then three months announce to shut down all servers without any SORT of compensations to its playerbase was the worst blow a company could ever do to its community (ever worse than NGE).
not true at all.
when Turbine mentioned that sub number had been slowly growing...they also mentioned that lifetime subs accounted for less then 10% of total subs globally.
now if you are just going by forum posters..then ya it seems like most customers are lifers...but then again...going by forum posts you would think that 99% of lotro player do pvmp too....
Comments
Actually guildwars has a "no subscription fee" model. You pay for the game itself, and that's it. The lifetime subs are a fee of a few hundred dollars on top of the price of the game itself. Totally different.
Good article and I would agree with most of it but Jon is way to hard on pre-orders imho. Never in a million years would i pre-order a non MMO game for the simple reason in that 99% of the time you will have no problem getting the game from either a brick and mortar store or via a digital download.
A pre-order for a MMO that offers beta access makes perfect sence to me as you get to try the game before shelling out the full price to see if you like it. If its not to your taste then no big deal as you have only droped a few quid and if you like it you are probley going to have a few items as a bonus starting off
Lifetime subscriptions are nothing more than a gamble tho and apart from LOTRO I dont know of any MMO where the lifetime subscription has ever paid off.
It is a good thing for Cryptic that they offered lifetimes for STO or their would be nobody left on their servers. Dont know what cryptic is going to do when the lifetimers money runs out--probably go F2P
I agree all you have said about this but ive never bought into pre-order or lifetime sub and im playing online sinds '99.
Longest game ive followed and my most anticipate game is untill now Darkfall from 2003 untill launch 2009 but not went for pre-order so had to wait a little before i could play even tho iwas a longtime follwer fan huge fan.
I dont need lifetime sub 15 euro's a months is np for me so no need.
Btw if i buy a game without checking and its dissapointing i would never whine afterwards, MY OWN FAULT right:)
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
The four rules of the Game Club:
Rule number One : never preorder.
Rule number Two : never life-sub.
Rule number Three : TRY the frakkin' game before buying it!
Rule number Four : all of the above.
The worst tactic companies do to lifetime subscribers is change the game to F2P a few months after release. Never have I heard of a bigger slap to the face than that. Imagine shelling out a few hundred bucks for a game that becomes "free" and then having to pay more money to use the item mall.
Really?
Well here's two concrete examples for you.
Fallen Earth's odd half FPS / half point-click-select game design with weapons being vastly superior to mutations is not what they originally planned. Mutations were "toned down" (i.e. nerfed) before they even made it into alpha testing because the loudest forum bunnies seemed to be a guns'n'ammo crowd. That was one of several key decisions that ultimately drove the game off course.
Champions Online - a mess of a game - recently hinted via a mod post that an upcoming update would be a paid expansion pack. In previous discussions on this topic the devs always avoided answering this question. They have a full monthly subscription + some serious (i.e. non-fluff) MTs. Their predecessor, CoH, has a fully monthly subscription + fluff MTs + many years of free, big content updates.
The player response to the idea of a paid expansion was reported to be quite vehement. Cryptic backed down and announced it would be a free content update.
So I think you're wrong. Very, very, very wrong on this score.
There are now so many MMOs on the market that there's real competition amongst developers for a limited (though growing) number of players.
And I'll give you a third possible example.
You may recall that about 6 to 9 months ago mmo sites (eg. this one) started writing LOTS of articles telling us we the players were rigid and inflexible and needed to embrace new payment models. We were told that the regular subscription model was inadequate. This was.... curious since the subscription mmo market was showing excellent growth at the time, bucking the trend of the GFC.
What was really happening was SOE was flirting with alternate payment models with Free Realms - something that didn't work so well for them with eg. their laying off 5% of their staff soon after launch - and Cryptic were also getting "innovative" (i.e. trying to milk players from every orifice). In Cryptic's case we know that there was a HUGE bonus attached to the sale of Cryptic to Infogrames based on profits by 2011. So we know what their incentive was...
And SOE, when asked about DCUO's payment model, openly adopted a "wait and see" policy in reference to CO but hinted that shopping mall MTs were likely.
Responses to these "innovative" payment models were generally negative and CO bombed (though for more reasons than just their payment model). Aion, with a straight subscription model, did rather well. SOE haved backed away from their earlier payment plans for DCUO and other big MMOs in development have since happily announced they'll be using a plain old boring subscription (only) model.
So yes, I think Jon Wood was right to talk of "power of the customer" here.
This Rule is flawed
Most companies dont have a Free Trial til a few months/years after release.
So how would you "try a game before you buy it" if there is no free trial?
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
First, this looks like it was written in a haste and with far to much emotion.
I agree that pre-orders are mostly bad, especially the beta invites for pre-orders. Where I have been living the past 16 years I have had to pre order just to get a copy of anything since the stores around here never order enough copies of anything and I have lived in an area that is heavily populated with mulptiple stores, about 5 just within a 10 minute driving distance, and an area that had a population of 3,000 maybe with 2 stores within 60 miles. So yes I really like pre-orders because otherwise I would be waiting weeks to get a game I want to play; that and D2D are fail and I like to have hard copies and manuals.
I won't comment on lifetime subscriptions since I don't consider them.
By ignoring his rule #1 and pre-ordering the game so that you can get into the open beta and see what the game is like during the open beta phase. Once again, pre-ordering a game does not mean pre-paying for it; most places that sell games allow you to cancel the pre-order (though some have a time limit to do so from what I understand, generally allowing you to cancel right up until the end of open beta), and you only need to put $5 or $10 down to get the pre-order.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I must confess that I haven't read all the comments so far, so this might have already been said, but..
I think it's important to distinguish between pre-ordering a retail release from a games shop, an pre-ordering an indie title direct from the developer.
In the case of the former, you will only have to put down a minimal amount of money (maybe $5 or $10), and even if you don't go through with the purchase, you should at least be able to use that as credit on another purchase.
That happened to me with WAR: pre-ordered the collector's edition from EBGames because it looked so promising pre-release, laid down my $10, got into the beta, was very worried at what I saw, watched it get worse and worse with every patch as release approached, and then cancelled my pre-order after playing a couple of days of the headstart weekend.
I was actually perfectly willing to write off the $10 as a good investment, since it saved me spending a LOT more money. But no, EBGames said, sure, you can that as credit. It ended up going towards paying for Wrath of the Lich King.
But when I see indie developers calling for pre-orders - actually, paying for the game up-front, not just laying down a small deposit - and you know that if it all crashes and burns there's not much chance of you getting your money back.. well, I think you'd have to be crazy. No matter HOW good the game sounds from forum hype and developer diaries.
Lifetime subscriptions are of course cash inflows that allow for a game's sudden advancement that may provide for increased subscriptions. That is exactly what the builders probram at Cornered Rat Software's Battleground Europe game did. I , however believe in a continouos cash flow model of monthly subscriptions that allow the lights to stay on and the server bill to be paid.
In 90 pecent of mmporgs the main game comes out and then there is nothing until a new release or upgrade shows up. Case in point Planetcide which has a deep pocketed base sponsor. In this scenario you get gameplay that is interesting and top notch but then you have to buy the next upgrade or suffer the consequences. They use the game to set you up for another fast buck. The subscriptions pay for the server not the developement.
At small games like Warbirds, Aces High and Battleground Europe you get the opposite using steady cash flow. You get a small dev team that cannot create sudden and dramatic increases in game play to they put in a continuous stream of improvements. You get the feeling that the breakthrough is just around the corner but it is like a rainbow. You just see the end move gold pot to the next hill not this one. You get to see interesting scenery on the way and interesting game play with deep valleys and high peaks but you never ever get there.
So I dont know what is more evil.
Consider yourself more lucky than smart, especially if you bought those 2 subs w/o ever playing the game.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
This is one of the best articles I've seen on this site. It is so true.
No pre-orders, I wait until people have played the game and give me some feed-back, or a trial test it.
And NEVER will I EVER buy another life-time subscription. Yes, I did it once, but I didn't get my value out of it, and the only other game I even considered a life time sub to, was STO ... am I so glad I didn't!!!!!
I've gotten heartless about this anymore ... pre-orders and 6 months subs are just the developer's way of getting you to pay for their development. No, they don't get the money till it actually ships, but they accquire funding based on the pre-orders out there.
I'm starting to take the 6 month rule with MMOs ... don't even bother looking at the PR hype, or what the game play is really like ... until its released and people are in the end game.
BTW, I guess I should thank all of you who are willing to plop down their hard earned cash to help these developers develop their games, and then letting me know how crappy most of them are.
One of these days players will learn to stop their subscription to crappy, unfinished, bug-ridden games ... and Developers will learn they'll go broke if that's what they put out.
Completely agree! LOTRO is the only MMO that I have convinced my wife to play - now she plays it more than I do!
I'd have gotten a lifetime sub to DDO also, if there had been one. With the current scandal at DDO, I guess I'm glad I couldn't.
I wish more games offered Lifetime subs! As a casual player with very limited time most months, I can't justify paying monthly subs to more than one game. When I do have time - mostly Jul/Aug - I tend to burn out on the one game and pick up trials for other games. If I like the other ones, I would rather buy Lifetime subs - and thereby take the "must play to justify price" pressure off - than sub monthly. If a game stays going for 3+ years, i feel that I've gotten my money's worth from the LS - in terms of actual hours played, i probably haven't, but in terms of having the option to play anytime, I have. Kind of like stock options - I can use 'em if I want or not.
Edit: I pre-ordered LOTRO also based on playing in the open beta month and loved it! DDO was such crap in OB that I didn't PO or even buy the game until 6 months later. I ALWAYS try before I buy - especially with games [even if I have to play a pirated version first!]
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Same here; I preordered Guild Wars after a lot of research and I wasn't disappointed. I haven't preordered any other MMO before or since, oddly....none of them gave me the "this will be worth it vibe." Five years later and I still play GW every now and then, it was well worth it...heh, I still have the official Guild Wars headset!
I may be an overt optimist but I see no reason a buyer shouldn't expect a game company to produce a finished product. The reality may not be such, but the expectation should always be there....and when a game manages to disappoint everyone so profoundly (STO, for example) then hopefully people will learn to be more careful.
I do occasionally preorder console games, though. Sometimes its something I want and I know finding it will be difficult (I live in a smaller city, so it's entirely possible to miss out on a game for several weeks if you don't reserve a copy...such as MW2, for example). However, I think anyone who gets a lifetime subscription is not playing with a full deck....unless you analyze the cost to value ratio of your purchase (will you play this game for a longer period of time than the cost of your lifetime subscription, relative to paying for the same period monthly?) and are psychic enough to predict that if you pay $200 now you'll save another $400 over the game's lifetime....well, heck, I still am baffled, since I can't imagine any game on the market that will offer that much long-term entertainment, be worth it, and still have a marketing team think lifetime sub models are a good idea.
Put another way, if I see a game offering a lifetime sub model, what I am reading between the lines is, "Our game is not worth two years of play, but maybe we can get lucky and sucker some diehard fans in to forking over more than they would if they played for 3-6 months and quit." Another way of thinking of it is: what game has absorbed more time than any other on the market, and which itself does not offer lifetime subs because it would not be cost-effective for the company, when they KNOW they can get you to pay for many years? Yes, WoW it is!
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
I preorder a lot of games since I had to wait 2 weeks for SWG:JTL. I did not get it after work on launch day.
Not getting a Lifetime subscription is a good advice. I almost bought the STO Lifetime. I am a StarTrek fan I read a lot of interviews and articles and everything sounded very good. But this game is so bad and so far away from what was promised (Exploration is a joke, Episodic Content is just another word for "boring quest"). Buying the STO Lifetime could have been the worst game related decision in my life.
Another LOTRO LTer here,
I love playing MMOs, and hate paying for them. I'm a casual player, I play every once and awhile, and I'd rather not pay a monthly if I don't play it every month. I went for the LOTRO STL because I had played for almost a year and a half in closed beta, and loved it. I still love LOTRO today, even though it's been weeks since the last time I logged.
Bottom line:
Don't Pre-order a game you havn't played, that doesn't make sense. Play the open beta, demo, whatever, and make your own decision.
BTW, I've got the LT sub, I've been playing since release.
$300 (for LT) / $15 (monthly) = 20 months of game bought.
I never have to pay again! I love the game, and Turbine is updating the game faster than I can play the content.
Thats my 2 cents.
not true at all.
when Turbine mentioned that sub number had been slowly growing...they also mentioned that lifetime subs accounted for less then 10% of total subs globally.
now if you are just going by forum posters..then ya it seems like most customers are lifers...but then again...going by forum posts you would think that 99% of lotro player do pvmp too....
LOL...and we all know that isnt so.
8^)
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The reviewer has a mishapen head
Which means his opinion is skewed
...Aldous.MF'n.Huxley