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Server Costs
Tiberiux
Member Posts: 90
One of the biggest arguments pro-monthly fees is server costs. I have heard many many people use this lame excuse for agreeing to pay monthly fees for a game.
Before I go on, I must admit I do not know the correct MMORPG stastics I am about to attempt to talk about, I also do not know what server costs really are. Everything mentioned here is educated speculation.
Server Costs.
One thing I do know, having been part of several beta tests, is that at most only 10% of the total number of people who have an MMORPG will be online simultaneously. 10% is from my experience (which may be incorrect) approximately a good stress test for the servers because during normal days of play online users are about 5% of game owners (for online only games).
If you make a game which doesn't have a monthly fee, this means that quite a few people who buy it might hardly even play it. If you add to that the fact that Guild Wars will have zones that aren't server based, then you are reducing the server loads considerably.
If you are paying $15 a month for a game you sure as H... will want to play it as much as possible to get your money's worth. A game without monthly fees will attract more casual gamers who will pay but not consume nearly as much server resources as the avg pay-to-player.
With the factors mentioned above, you've already reduced your server costs be a large factor.
Now lets talk about actual server costs compared to employee wages, business costs, etc.
Technology has improved at such a rate that while perhaps a few years ago server costs were a big chunk of profits, nowadays they are still a chunk but not as big in relation. Employee wages and operational costs are also not as big as poeple make them out to be. The problem comes when you are paying for servers to hold 200,000 users and all of a sudden you're stuck with 15,000 users. Which is what happens to most MMORPGS after some months.
With reduced server costs from day one, the long term loss is reduced, and with frequent expansion packs the costs are more than recovered.
Also, profits are tremendous these days. If Guild Wars can sell a million copies, beleive you me, their server costs, wages, rent, hardware, and bonuses are covered for the next three years.
1million users, with 5% users online at any given time that's 50,000 online users. At 5K users per server avg you're talking about 10 game servers.
I don't know the money generated by selling a million copies, but im sure that it more than coveres server costs for 10 game servers of 5K users each online for a few years and theres pleanty to go around for wages etc.
The bottom line is greed. Those MMORPG companies currently building good MMORPGS are large companies tha are very greedy in profits. The publisher gets 95% and the developer gets 5%. The other MMORPGS are built by small comanies and publishers which are aiming at a small number of people paying to play so they need to juice those few users as much as possible to be able to pay wages etc.
With or without monthly fees Guild Wars would make money. But to me, it looks like without Monthly fees and with the correct media exposure and fan support, Guild Wars should make ALOT more money than the others.
Comments
I totally agree with you..
Without monthly fees far more people will buy the game and you will get MORE money at the start (if it''s a good game;))
Than the expansion packs they will have a lot of income with them too, they just need to make them good and add a lot of content so every player will buy them too...
I like this marketing system, I really really do... If the expansion packs won't cover the expensis they can still make them necessary to play the game. I think still more people will play the game than when it would have monthly fees
Yes, when you compare the expansion business model and the monthly fee model in more detail you realize it can generate enough profit to maintain the game and not milk-cow the users like standard MMORPGs do.
What ArenaNet is of course counting on is a larger gaming community because of the competitive nature of the game and the no monthly fee / expansion model. They also want to make expansion packs interesting and compelling enough so that players will want to buy them. Since there is going to be a global story, I suppose expansion packs will continue this story, as well as bring lots of new content into the game.
Let's also not forget that NCSoft (publisher) and ArenaNet are aiming for the huge Korean gaming community. They already have a separate instance for Korean gamers with Korean letter support and since we know that Koreans are freaks when it comes to competitive and RPG games I think the gaming community will be quite large.
Just think about the amount of money WoW or Everquest is making... oooh..
Anyway, servers that can hold 5k users are really though servers, and I bet they do cost quite a chunck. But as you say, they will probably be able to pay it off with the expansion money. I at least bought it for less money than I would have given for a regular game, and they have to make money in some way. I doubt it will be enough with only the money from the first release.
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For Evig! For Alltid!
Personally, I think a no monthly fee MMORPG (this is a CORPG though) has a tendency to be a worldwide game. People like me can afford the game but have no international credit card to pay the monthly fees. There are some resellers here on Brazil that are selling the game and will surely profit for that, so we have no need for the credit card. Another thing I've seen is that games like WoW we have to buy the game which costs like the same price as GW and they still have the monthly fee. I do not think people that pay-to-play hardcore just because they payed to play, but more because they LIKE the game. P2Ping or not, that is just a factor that will make people think they should play more or not, still it won't make difference for a hardcore player, and it will surely sound nice for people that work, etc, and do not think paying monthly to play 1 hour daily is worth it. I believe GW is trying to hit as many people as possible with this way of payment that I haven't seen for a while.
I have read in the game FAQ that the expansions of GW will be different than any other expansions you have seen around - they will cost the same price as the original GW and will have like the same ammount of NEW content than the original one (this means it should DOUBLE our game world). Leaving this an optional purchase is good too, since people that hardcore after 6-9 months will feel the need to purchase the expansion since they will probably have finished the storyline of the original game.
Well, this was my opinion about this. I also think that at this rate, the game should have enough money to have it's costs covered without needing to drain more players' money monthly.