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Why do you need to pay for the good MMORPGs?
lord_dybion
Member UncommonPosts: 10
I have been wondering why you have to pay for the really good looking MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Everquest and GuildWars and ect.
Comments
1. Bandwidth costs money
2. Servers costs money
3. Devs costs money
-Currently looking forward to FFXIV
-Currently playing EvE and Global Agenda
The Big MMORPG List
Well you lumped Guild Wars in there so i'm assuming you're not talking about monthly fees, but just any cost to playing the game at all.
Therefore I'm seeing your question as "Why do you need to pay for things that are known to have good quality?"
I'm sure there are some good completely free games out there, but in general people work harder when there is financial reward. If given the choice between spending alot of time developing something in-depth for $$$ and doing it out of the kindness of your heart.....well.....I'm not surprised that those games that are known for quality had the $$$ to back them up. That quality wouldn't be there if someone didn't take the cash and put it on the line, and they wouldn't have put it on the line "just for fun".
The term "You get what you pay for" is not always 100% accurate but usually does have at least a bit of truth to it.
i would rather have a guildwars approach to paying for MMOs, where an expansion comes out every few months
i expect to see more games eventually go that way as technology costs go down.
But first we need a true MMO with that type of plan to hit it big, so that it becomes expected by the players and Pay per month games cant compete
but i kind of interpreted the question as "do you pay an initial fee to play premium games?" (mostly because guild wars was included in the question). The awnser is that all GOOD games cost money to make, and MMOs are no different
A Guild Wars structure would work ok for me as well. Though I basically expect that if I am paying a monthly fee I am going to get regular content patches and bug fixes.
MMOs require 3 things: bandwidth, support and development.
you pay for an internet connection from an ISP, so do mmo providers. they recoup that cost with subscription fees.
mmo providers have to pay for support staff, GMs, etc.
mmos rarely stay the same, they constantly get updated, this requires developers which means money.
without subscription fees an mmo would survive for about 3 months before closing down. (from the cash injection of the cost of a box).
if of course you are asking why you should have to buy a game at all, then i would refer you to the definition of capitalism.
some people think they are entitled to a free ride. i hate these people with a fierce passion.
i actually asked a similar question today at mcdonalds. i asked why i have to pay for my chicken sandwich value meal and they just looked at me like i was a moron.
Easy: They need money, and they need to make profit.
If they dont have a monthly fee they wont make a profit..eventually the costs of maintainance and upgrades and patches will become more then the income you get..even if they dont make a loss, they still want to make a profit, but they also need a good game, in order to get both a monthly fee would enable them to keep the game up to date and fun, while still making a profit.
Games of lower quality are low quality because they dont have enough money, and games of high quality..well you know where im going right?
the free to play games where you can buy stuff are for the casual player that's just playing to pass the time but can become good for some cash. I like to play Scions of Fate while I listen to podcasts at home, that to me is casual. When I played WoW and EVE I was probably not to easy to get along with cause I didn't have much patience for people that didn't play how I wanted them to play, yup didn't have too many friends.
So if you just want to horse around and play here and there play a free game, if you want to see if you're cooler than someone else play a game that you pay for.
I came up with this theory when I thought about Lineage 2 not being free like a lot of other games from the east that look like it. Lets not get into talk of bots and the "equal playing field" in that game though cause I know nothing about them (only open beta'd that game)
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
if I were to kill a titan tomorrow and no CCP employees showed up to say grats I would petition it.
Waiting for: the next MMO that lets me make this macro
if hp < 30 then CastSpell("heal") SpellTargetUnit("player") else CastSpell("smite") end
Why do you have to pay? Because they require that you pay. It cannot get any simpler than that.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?