Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why do so many people want free MMORPGs?
Zindaihas
Member UncommonPosts: 3,662
Remember the old saying, "you get what you pay for?" I mean I know it would be great if we didn't have to work for a living and could spend our entire lives playing MMO's, but the developers need to eat too.
I agree that devs have a responsibility to do the best they can and put out a good product that is worth our hard earned dollars, to expect them to work for free is just asking too much.
Comments
I can answer why I would want a free mmorpg.
It's hardly about the money, it's because I feel all MMORPG's are so restricted. Free games have more freedom and can be more daring when it comes to challenges and so forth. MMORPG's have to follow a fine line, a line which can be crossed by any person, neither should you suffer for being unintelligent, noir being too smart.
Also, MMORPG's are so effected by it's "customers". The ones who PAY for the game. So all those forums ... are for the better and for the worse to me. Everything changes so fast and I'm slightly getting tired of living in a world which isn't the same any day. Not that new stuff is bad bud the things that simply change.
Playing free online games are totally different from MMORPG's in my opinion. Silkroad Online has a very different feeling to it than any big mmorpg. It's faster, it's different. And more simple.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Zindaihas wrote:
I agree that devs have a responsibility to do the best they can and put out a good product that is worth our hard earned dollars, to expect them to work for free is just asking too much.
um... not everyone that makes games does it for a living....
There are quite a few programmers and artists that just enjoy making really cool stuff. This is the basis of most mod communities in FPS and RTS circles. This is the reason that people are still playing Neverwinter Nights. Some of us have a deep down love of games, and don't want to be chained to a workstation in some game factory to be burnt out and cast aside.
Currently, there are a number of open-source, hobby and indie devs that are making (or modifying) some really cool stuff. I'm currently very deeply addicted to Tremulous, an open-source Quake 3 mod. Other free games of note would be:
Glest An RTS that's been in developement for quite awhile. I'm hoping that they get multiplayer implemented soon.
Sauerbraten/ Cube 2 This isn't really a game. It's an open-source game egine that was created for ease of use over visual flair. They're currently working on an RPG with it.
Dink Smallwood Yeah, this is an old one. However, this game has quite a following and an active mod community.
UFO: Alien Invasion A full 3D remake of XCom!!! I absolutely LOVED XCom back in the day and this game is pretty close to the original with none of the flaws thereof.
Alien Arena 2006 This is an overhaul of Quake 2 that feels like a quirky version of Unreal Tournament... with martians...
Egoboo It's an action RPG along the lines of Zelda. I can't be anymore specific than that....
And bunches of classic games have been done by hobby devs as well.
I've currently abandoned commercial games since they lack originality and a genuine affection for gaming. This doesn't suprise me though. Just how much can you love games when you work 16+ hours a day, seven days a week, as one assembly worker out of a hundred and have no real input or understanding of the project beyond your particular task? I'd rather play games made by creative people that enjoy making games and are grateful for the time that they spend making games.
BTW, Computer gaming history 101: The first computer games were made by students and distributed freely. Muds, the spiritual ancestors of todays MMORPGs, were free and freely modified and there are still people playing Muds to this day.
perhaps all the people lookin for free games right now are like myself... just waiting around for the next big games to arrive and want a cheap filler.
Because game prices (in all genres) keeping increasing but the quality and originality of most games keeps decreasing. Why are rehashing of old ideas worth a $50 box and a $15 monthly fee? IMO they generally are not. More and more are coming to that opion also I believe.
Even creative well done games are often not worth their fees due to lack of uptime and developers changing them to copy other more successful games.
Meh, the MMO market is in a sad state at present.
Because they can't get their parent's to pay for a subscription to a normal MMOG and they don't seem to be resourceful enough to get a job to pay the paltry $15 a month to buy a gamecard. Hope that answers your question.
I like free MMORPG's. I also like free food... free sex is nice to, when you can get it without someone pressing charges.... ok not so much but you get the idea.
I dont mid paying for things (not sex), I'm just tired of paying a premium price for total shit, so from now on, its gonna have to work the other way around... I have to see hte product is premium BEFORE I pay the price.
The large majority of any free MMOG are these players, and in terms of the community that they bring, you get what you pay for.
Most supposedly free games are not free.
Some charge for the initial game or download. Many have online stores which sell in-game advantages and a lot of gamers pay for those.
I see no difference between the freedom found in a P2P MMOG vs a supposedly free MMOG, someone needs to prove that with specific examples. I find supposedly free games to be of inferior quality. I certainly would not pay for them.
Th/en can you explain the WoW community at $15 a month? The PSO community at $10 a month? Or why MxO which as far as gameplay isn't very well done and cost $15 a month but trumps the community in almost every other game on the market?
Cost has proven little relation to community nor quality of a game.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Originally posted by Vyava
Because game prices (in all genres) keeping increasing but the quality and originality of most games keeps decreasing. Why are rehashing of old ideas worth a $50 box and a $15 monthly fee? IMO they generally are not. More and more are coming to that opion also I believe.
Even creative well done games are often not worth their fees due to lack of uptime and developers changing them to copy other more successful games.
Meh, the MMO market is in a sad state at present.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Ah, I like your response the best so far and find it somewhat persuasive. Classic law of supply and demand. Perhaps the dev community will learn a valuable lesson if the demand for their products drops and more and more people turn to the less well known stuff. If that happens, then I can buy your arguement. But, for the good games (if there ever are any again) that everyone loves to play, I have no problem being charged for it in order to keep the game alive and improving. You shouldn't get something for nothing.
My reason is that its good way to combat cheats & farmers - see my post here
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/82366
u can VOTE on it here!!
Th/en can you explain the WoW community at $15 a month? The PSO community at $10 a month? Or why MxO which as far as gameplay isn't very well done and cost $15 a month but trumps the community in almost every other game on the market?
Cost has proven little relation to community nor quality of a game.
This would be an argument if you provided examples of free MMOGs of any appreciable size which didnt have a horrible community. As it is, youre arguing that paid MMOGs can ALSO have horrible communities, which in no way disproves the fact that free MMOGs are filled almost to a man with people who should drink paint thinner.
The AO free server community is much nicer and more helpful than the average WoW server. The same can be said about Dofus. There, now lets read your statement again...not proper nor nice and you thrive in P2P <shocked and amazed>.
Being free has no correlation to the number of people not worth associating with on a server. Never has never will.
The AO free server community is much nicer and more helpful than the average WoW server. The same can be said about Dofus. There, now lets read your statement again...not proper nor nice and you thrive in P2P <shocked and amazed>.
Being free has no correlation to the number of people not worth associating with on a server. Never has never will.
Admittedly I know little about AO, but hadnt really associated it with a community of appreciable size. At the best its a game on life support (I'd actually thought it closed, but apparently not).
As for Dofus, the community there is at the VERY best marginally better then runescapes. If thats the best example that you can come up with, your standards are FAR lower then mine. That is definately a game that you get what you pay for in the community department. 'teehee im a gurl wit boobiez giv me stuffz' is not what I want to hear... constantly.... while playing a MMOG. I merely wish that most of the Dofus community be badly maimed instead of killed, unlike the runescape community (god help the browser-based MMOG gamers if I ever find a magic lamp with some sort of genie).
The reason people want free MMORPG's is because it's hard to socially be accepted by other people when you tell them you spend 15 a month every darn month to play a darn game.
Haha, that and there's a lot of people who just simply don't want credit cards and don't want to bother with going to the store every month to play a game.
That and you include the harsh reality of how much high speed internet costs already on top of it all you're looking at a cost for a game that is a staggering 175 or so every year you continue to play it.
175 bucks, and is it really worth that much? Does it seem like you get your 175 bucks in game fun factor?
AO is doing quite well, and expansion is even coming out this fall. As far as Dofus, same rule applies to most of life, don't play on the english server and yes most of the french gamers speak english...and it isn't a browser MMO you sure you played Dofus?
Simple reason:
Because the fee based MMORPG's have, rather than improving, over the years actually gotten worse. It's widely agreed that UO (a 10 year old MMORPG) has better gameplay than almost any other MMORPG on the market. It also had better PVP than the vast majority of them as well.
So why on earth would I want to pay some company $15 a month when all they're doing is re-hashing the same features of games that have been out 6+ years (and generally do it worse than the original games) ??? I'm sorry, I just don't see why I should waste my money on a product that's sub-par. If game companies keep throwing garbage out just to make a buck eventually that market will dry up.
By the way, you're deluding yourself if you honestly think the lack of a monthly fee means the Devs would be working for free. box sales more than make up for the cost of developing a game if the game sells enough quantity. Guild Wars made over 60 million dollars ($US) in it's first year after release. There aren't many fee based MMO's that can make that claim besides WoW. Matter of fact I can't think of any.... Guild Wars devs get paid just fine... or do you really think Arena Net's development team is working for free?
The bottom line is simple:
Now that there are several very decent to high quality games out there that charge no monthly fee anyone who wants to charge a monthly fee is going to have to start upping the ante'. Because as people realize that they can get nearly the same quality of game for less than 1/4 the price they will continue to move to free to play MMORPG's.
Just as an example:
The math explains it better than my words possibly could.
So if you play an MMO for 2+ years it's insane to pay a monthly fee for it unless the quality is 8x that of the free game
In my opinion.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
This is a lame arguement. I make more than enough to pay any fee they like. Hell I used to pay $6/hr back in the 90's to play NWN on AOL and MPBT on GeNIE. Then I payed an hourly fee for M59 as well...
The bottom line is that UO is still the best MMORPG ever made and it's 10 years old. I expect companies to IMPROVE on that quality... not degrade it. And given the fact that there are free MMO's out there that are equal to (and in many cases better than) the "Fee based" ones which one do you think it makes more sense to play?
You keep sinking your $200 a year into a fee based MMO and I'll continue to play the free one that costs me nothing more than the original box cover and gives me almost as good (if not better) gameplay as the one you're playing. We'll see who's happier in the end
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
Sorry, that's not true. Most people I play Guild Wars with are in the 30+ crowd.
Most people I play AO with are in the 30+ crowd
Almost everyone I play UO with (one of those 'not to be talked about shards') is in the 30+ crowd.
ALL of us CAN afford monthly fees. All of us agree that there aren't any games out right now that are enough BETTER than the free games to be worth subscribing to.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Sig image Pending
Still in: A couple Betas
I just get the feeling someone is selling me baked air or something when I have to pay monthly for playing a game (any game). It would have to be the most incredible game on the planet, before I start paying for it on a regular basis.
I would love to play a free mmo. But besides Guild Wars there are no valuable free options.
Even if a game has no monthly fee it should have:
*Content, and new content released.
*Good gameplay.
*Fun.
*Production values.
*Nice graphics.
*Nice sound and music.
*A nice friendly and mature playerbase.
*A community that is monitored by the devs, and stuff done by the devs to keep it healthy.
*Developers that care.
*Working server, up 24/7.
*No cheating tolerated. Bots, hacks and so on should be banned asap.
So far I haven't found any game that can offer this. Except Guild Wars to a certain extent. But even Guild Wars has it's issues. Specially the community. You know what the first sentence i read in the Guild Wars chat was? "Wanna touch my boobs?" Great eh? Last night when I logged of Faction there was a swedish guy screaming out sexual insults to everyone in general.
Stuff like this seems to trouble all free mmo's and the devs don't really care. I have seen official screenshots of free mmo where you can see stuff like this.
That is why I pay for my mmo's, except Guild Wars.
like another person posted in another thread - are you getting your money's worth every 3 months when you get your *free* content? is it equal to an expansion? i mean you just spent three months in the same old content, so is this new stuff worth the $45-60 that you'll be spending to play this new content over the next three months?
OR would you rather take that $45-60 and just get a whole new game to play for the next 3 months? rinse, repeat.
i think it's not so much that it's the money being spent, i think it's part of "am i getting my money's worth"?
i know there's a few games that i'll re-up my sub on, AFTER they've had *free content updates*, just to see what the new stuff is like. when looked at from the *is it equal to an expansion* point of view, pretty much - it's not.
you could say issue 7 for COx is about equal to an expansion IF it had only taken 3 months. since it took 8 months, no, it wasn't equal to an expansion and that content certainly wasn't worth 8 months of subs waiting to try out to me. BUT, i didn't have to re-up my sub to try it out, they gave a free weekend pass (three or four days total actually). so kudos there!
same with wow and their every 3 month content updates. except for DM, everything has been yet another raid dungeon. personally i find raiding to be mindnumbingly boring dummied down garbage (after you've beat a boss the first time, they pretty much hit farmable status, so all the newness is now gone). so for me, none of these updates have been worth 3 months of my doing the same old junk over and again.
as far as free content updates go, i'd rate COx higher. every issue they give you new powersets (which, if you don't play, means you can make an entirely new character type using new powersets exclusively or mixing/match new with old), an entire new zone (with new badges, new (humanoid) mobs, new places to explore). every new wow update, you get a new raid dungeon with new stuff in it and um, one of the 9 classes gets it's talent tree redone so it doesn't suck as bad.
now, if it's a game that's been around a while and i haven't played it, then it might be worth a few month's subs just to see the sights and what the game offers. then again, it might be craptastic for me before the trial is even over.
people don't like to pay for what they consider an inferior product. wow did us all a favor, they got a lot more people interested in these games. that means lots more of these games will be coming out. which in turn means more competition for the subs. now, who will get the subs? people that offer boring garbage, or people that offer something that is fun?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?