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Paid Expansions slowly becoming a thing of the past....
Elnator
Member Posts: 6,077
Lineage II, EVE, DDO, Horizons (yah I know) and several upcoming games (Darkfall, HJ and several others) all use, or plan to use, a FREE EXPANSION pricing scheme...
Could it be that we're finally seeing the end to having to buy expansions for games we're already paying $180 a year to play?
Personally I hope so. I've pretty much decided that unless a game offers free expansions with your subscription I'm not going to bother with it.
Thoughts?
Could it be that we're finally seeing the end to having to buy expansions for games we're already paying $180 a year to play?
Personally I hope so. I've pretty much decided that unless a game offers free expansions with your subscription I'm not going to bother with it.
Thoughts?
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Comments
One could only hope Elnator. I personally can make no sense of why we need to pay for expansions when other companies have proven that should not have to. I won't go as far as not playing a game that has expansions you have to pay for, but I would definitely consider it a little more than another.
However, I feel that companies like SOE and EA/Mythic will continue to have expansions that you have to pay for, with SOE being the worst.
At very least, hopefully players will get better value for money when they buy expansions now that some games offer them for free.
Paid expansions mean you have boxes in stores and can pick up new customers. Games that do not have paid expansions tend to vanish from store shelves after a while and become inaccessible. An average gamer, someone who hasn’t been heavy into MMO’s is generally not going to pick up EVE or Lineage II because they don’t know they exist. If they see a box in their local game shop then maybe they will pick it up, but they are not like the people here who know what MMO’s are out there.
The other thing about paid expansions is that they direct content to the people that actually consume it. If you are charging a flat fee to everyone you end up charging people for the development of content they are never going to use.
The question really if you prefer to be charged for all the content they develop or only the bits that you want to use? Personally I would rather be charged for the pieces I use. The companies are in this to make a profit and they are going to charge for the content they develop in one fashion or another, so please don’t come back and say “I would prefer they not charge me at all”. They will charge you in some form or another, that’s how they stay in business.
It's better be hated for who you are, than loved for who you aren't.
This was actually how it was supposed to be all along. MMOs were supposed to make the concept of the expansion purchase a thing of the past...or at least that's what they told us.
Back in the day, on every FAQ, there was always the question, "Why should we pay for a subscription here where in other games we don't have to pay more?" The answer was always along the lines of, "Your subscription goes toward new content, new dungeons, new features, and ever expanding gameplay." Worded like that, a subscription wasn't so bad. By subscribing to the game, they made it sound like we actually got something for our $10-15 a month, almost like an expansion every month.
If they had said back then that the $15 would go straight into their pockets, to fund expansions at an extra price, and use the "perpetual development" mantra to justify nerfs and wholesale redesigns, we would have never jumped on as consumers. However, one of the good things about competition in this industry is that it causes the publishers to start focusing on the entertainment value per dollar again.
Still, I don't consider these things like Kali, CoH Issue #7, and those other publishes "expansions," per se. Its not my choice to opt in or not, and its supposed to be the sort of thing our sub fees should have paid for all along.
__________________________
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--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Tbh, I play the game if I like it, regardless of cost for expansions. People should stop shouting about cost all the time, things aren't free in life. Games almost cost more cash to produce than movies and that has to be paid for at one way or the other. If a game is really good and the expansions are actually worth it and not an obvious plot to make more money (ofcourse, it's ALWAYS meant to make money but there can be a balance in there) I really don't care if I have to pay for it or not.
If you don't like it you can always buy a normal game, play it till the end within 2 days, be bored with it and buy another title if you think that's a better option.
I think it only matters to the kids and students. I personally don't care whether i have to pay for expansions. Alot of people refuse to pay a monthly subscription. I'd pay $50 a month for my dream game
Make a difference!
I agree. But I am one of those students that doesn't have any money (no job right now) so I can pay for any games or anything. Yet if I did have a job I would subscribe to a game or two, I don't care if it costs anything.
People worry about money too much. Stop letting money control your lives. If your having fun playing then stop whining. Don't let money take you over.
The only game i have seen get ridiculous with expansions is EQ. Other games have sold expansions and the ones i have bought have usually been worth the money. I don't mind paying for expansions as long as it is a BONUS and not just stuff that should be included in a monthly update or fixes that should have happened ages ago. Asheron's Call has had 2 paid expansions in its long life, but they have had monthly content updates since the first month they went gold. I think that is the way to do it.
Also, I heard that WoW's expansion is gonna cost $50?! Give me a break! The original game cost $50! Now they are telling us that after they have made 700 trillion dollars in box sales and subscriptions they need another 50 x 6,700,000 dollars so they can release this expansion. Is the new expansion world gonna be as big as the current one? Are they gonna double the number of instances in the game?! Are they gonna double the amount of epic armor and weapons in the game?!! Are there gonna be twice the number of races and classes as before the expansion?!!!!!?!?!?!?!?! WoW was touted as a PvP game. Are they gonna make the PvP twice as exciting?!???!??!?!?!?!!!!!!
How can Blizzard justify charging as much for the expansion as they charged for the original game? I won't be buying it until the price drops. They should sell a Gold edition that has the original and the expansion together, but they should also just sell the expansion as a download to people who already have subscriptions. Anything else is just being greedy.
And IMO they shouldn't charge jack shit for current subscribers. They should just say, "Hey! You guys made us the most successful MMORPG ever. We are all multi-billionaires thanks to your hard earned money. To say thank you, we spent a few hundred thousand dollars or so and developed these cool new game features. I hope you enjoy them. Thank YOU" That's what they should fucking do.
Which FF Character Are You?
I agree with Kanhz on that. 50 bucks for the Burning crusade expansion is high way robbery. I have no problem to pay for expansion, according to the level of content that is added to the game. But when you start charging your expansion the same price then your original game, that's just nuts. It's not like if Blizzard needed that money to survive...
But i think Blizzard will be the very last to sell expansion that high. With the current mediocrity of MMO right now, the way to crazy profit and sheep customer milking is laid bare. I don't know if the timing was planned that good or if they are just lucky to end up with no serious competition, but they are certainly jumping on the occasion like misery on poor people. (I don't consider any "niche" game like serious competition btw.)
Please, bring AoC, War Hammer and Vangard already. This madness will stop if those games are as good as they should be, and company will be lucky to get 20$ in the future for their expansion because of the competition on the market.
What deserves to be done, deserves to be "well" done...
Oddly enough, SOE of all people have joined the "free expansion" list, by giving the "Restuss" SWG event that was meant to be a paid expansion as part of regular game updates. I suspect that their decision was more an act of desperation than anything else, though.
Dasharr Eandall, SWG, Smuggler/Pistoleer (retired after 2.5+ years)
I don't think one type of model will elimate others. I think companies will continue to do what works for them.
First rule of capitalism: whatever the marke will bear.
If people are willing to pay for a product, you don't give it away for free.
Diablo II only had 1 expansion and it's been in stores as long as EverQuest.
I guess some have minor exceptions.
Neptus - FFXI - Pandemonium
Neptus - WoW - Detheroc
All in all, I don't mind paying for an expansion pack that is WORTH it. Games like EverQuest's Xpacks such as Ruins of Kunark & Scars of Velious were worth EVERY DIME. Xpacks like WoW's The Burning Crusade? I recently quit WoW because I'm so bored with current WoW & the Xpack isn't even worth my attention, let alone my money.
D.
So many games, so little time!
I love both.
Free expansions are the coolest, but it is normal and expected from a game that generate a monthly income.
Paid expansions should be optional and not enforced the way some companies enforce them, IMO, new paids expansions should only be applied on NEW servers...existing server should never apply a paid expansion on them. Have a system for characters transfer or duplication on a new server with a paid expansion added in it.
A specific server should exist for every new paid expansion, featuring only PART of the other expansions...so you have the original server, the new full blown server with all expansions in it and the "partial", the server with expansion that have a similar vision than itself but not the expansions that are incompatibles...this work should incomb to the team working on the expansion...so each paid expansion would add 2 new types of server.
Paid expansions should be stand-alone game, you buy the latest, you don't need to buy any other, everything is unlocked automatically. Obviously, newer servers from newer expansions would be locked to you, yet you are 100% free of these on the server(s) you play. Paid expansion should be RARE and costing at least as much as the original game retail price, as a stand-alone game.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Paying for expansions should stop since we are already paying monthly fees, what more?
~Greatness~
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I really wonder how Blizzard is going to solve that with the chinese and korean mmorpg market, with the Burning Crusade.
Lienage 2 has chronicles, and these chronicles arent just little patches, they are huge add ons. Adding dungeons, levels, massive amounts of content. To be hoenst expansions are a ripoff. No one explains what the monthly fee is for, since your paying extra for expansion as well as the monthly fee.
Everyone makes the arguement that the monthly fee goes towards content, but when that content comes out we gotta pay for ti, so what does the monthly fee go towards?
I think all game companies should just raise the monthly fee a little, by 2 or 3 dollars, and make all new expansions free. Andthat whole theory about games dissapering is nonsense. if they just made all downloads digitial with no box fee, and the first month just cost the amount you would pay for buying game instore instead of asking people to find box instore they would be better off.
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Either they do it by subscription fees, or the box price, or both, but one way or another it gets paid for.
If anything I feel the industry is getting WORSE, not better.
It used to be that paying $10 a month was to provide "content" but that went out the window with Everquest charging $10/month and also requiring you to pay for boxed content.
So what was the $10 for? Keeping up the servers.
Battlenet didn't charge you $10 a month to play. Guildwars doesn't.
So most of that $10 a month subscription fee was pure profit for the company, on top of profiting from the box.
Then WoW came along and the gold standard became $15 a month after also buying the box for $50.
Blizzard is milking their fanbase just like Sony did.
It used to be that paying a fee for an MMORPG was like sponsoring an artist. We're no longer sponsoring artists, we're enriching giant international megacorps with no soul.
Eve deserves $15 a month, they're a small company, and they actually provide CONTENT for your $15 a month. They're not sitting there trying to rip off their fans.
Guildwars deserves support. I applaud Arenanet for making such a wonderful game free to play. I plunked down $50 for the box over the weekend with no regrets, because I knew they weren't trying to milk me. And I'll plunk down $50 for the expansion. And another $50 for the next one, because I can SEE the content, I can SEE the value they are providing for my money.
With WoW I didnt see value.
With Vivaldi I saw a French megacorp milking American children.
With SOE I saw a Japanese megacorp milking American children.
Why are they bad for the industry?
The success of games like WoW encourages soul-less foreign corps to hire slave programmers from India or China for 50 cents an hour, slap together some code and good-looking pictures and sell it to overfed American kids over the internet for a huge profit.
The success of the mmorpg market has proven that you can put together any piece of schit game, and garner 10-15000 fans which is enough to live very comfortably in Romania and other third-world countries.
As a matter of social responsibility and integrity, I will no longer be paying any monthly fees to play anything.
If its a boxed product, I might buy it, and I might buy expansions provided they are quality content.
Being a smart consumer is a social responsibility.
.. I have friends who haven't paid for a piece of software in years. Everything from PS1/PS2, Saturn/Dreamcast, Xbox/PC games/apps. They pirate music, movies, ect and think nothing of it at all. Every time you see posts like these, folks will deny they're like the above mentioned description. It's all just varying degrees.
D.
So many games, so little time!