Guild Wars runs "without service fees" due to the fact they make their money licensing their technologies to other developers who are under NCSoft. The end player of GW doesn't see this cost but please don't act like they are running it for box cost + 0
They make plenty of money on those 150$+ in expansions/original game for 1 account and they are also closing down GW some time in the near future from what I understand to release GW2.
No content is released outside of an expansion in their model. None the less in the end each game has its money being made one way or the other.
I never denied the money made off of the boxes. And although it is stated that one day like all things GW may end that it won't end just due to GW2 releasing.
The point i was making in my last post though was that both companies will be making money off of the box sales, but ArenaNet is making money by licensing their tech to other NCSoft dev houses. FSS states they will be realeasing content to subscribers.. all in all it seems pretty equal to me. just different means to grab at the same money.
lol this whole subscribtion idea is such total bullshit.
Like 'oh well we want to keep supporting the game and bring out cool new content but in order to do that we need to have a team working on it and in order to have a team working we need money !'
How stupid do they think we are. Though obviously alot of people are stupid enough to buy that nonsense and think its a justified reason to ask for a 10 dollar monthly fee lol.
Then how come we have to pay for content already written ? I mean content like Elite mode, Hardcore mode, extra drops you get in those modes and whatever else you get with those modes. Its already in the game !!! Any other game would simply see that as normal content you SHOULD get when you buy the game.
Then they come with their adding content on a regular basis for which they need this 'team' and subscribtion fees. Yeah right, whatever.
Why not do what all other companies do, bring out expansions ? Well hell no coz with expansions they'd only make what.... 3 or 4 months subscribtion money, 30 or 40 dollar ? While if you would subscribe they could probably get at least double the money for the same content !
Its kinda funny when other companies manage to release ace products with loads of content and hosted FREE servers with great connectivity and a team working on adding content full time. And this all without any subscribtion fee ! Its a miracle ! How come flagship cannot ? The simple answer is they want BIGGER PROFITS !
Seriously if you people buy that utter bullshit like ohhh well we need to pay for the hosting servers and connections and team working on the content bla bla bla story then yer just the people they need to pay the subscribtions.
Maybe you have forgotton how MMORPG subscribtion fees used to be justified by the development teams in the early days.The reason for those companies was always..."We will be adding live content and events!..... specially events was used alot!. Well how often have you seen events in mmorpgs , also the early mmorpgs ? You can probably count them on one hand. And content lol .... the only extra content you always saw were patches and fixes till the expansion arrived. I think wow was one of the first companies that actually gave good free content updates and set an example for other companies to follow.
So what did we pay those subscribtion fees for again when people thought it was outrageous mmorpgs asked monthly fees ?
You people need to understand that its all business. Im sure they are exited about making cool games at all but in the end it all comes down to making as much money as possible on a product, thats all there is to it and they'll use whatever bullshit story to make you pay as much as possible.
Its just a product they sell, nothing different from some tv you buy in a shop.Its making a good product and selling it for good profit. Thats called doing business.
The only reason they make good games, sometimes, is coz they have the talent to actually make a good profitable game. If crap games were good profit no componany would ever make good games, trust me. Its just about money and nothing more. Dont think they love the gamer so much lol. They love their money.
Its all marketing and market research which often can result in setting an accepted norm. Like mmorpg fees of 15 euro/dollar a month is an accepted norm. Go over it and the public asks why ? But why is every single mmorpg worth 15 euro a month then ? Dont tell me they are all as good lol.
Accept this subscribtion fee, which i know many many people will, and other games will follow and so a new accepted norm is set for the games after that.
Stop being so incedibly naief and have yourself be fooled by publisher words.
I don care if you pay subscribtion fees or not. Hell i do it too. But at least i do it while knowing its bullshit but i do it coz i can spare the money. And that's all the count on, they research how many people would pay money for what they want to ask money for. And the boundaries get pushed and pushed till we have to pay for everything.
Flagship studios is just money hungry and its a risky business model which they are willing to take to get the extra profit they wouldnt get by having an expansion business model.
lol this whole subscribtion idea is such total bullshit. Like 'oh well we want to keep supporting the game and bring out cool new content but in order to do that we need to have a team working on it and in order to have a team working we need money !' How stupid do they think we are. Though obviously alot of people are stupid enough to buy that nonsense and think its a justified reason to ask for a 10 dollar monthly fee lol. ..........................
Flagship studios is just money hungry and its a risky business model which they are willing to take to get the extra profit they wouldnt get by having an expansion business model.
I'd really love to live in your world mate...
I really would - the place where games are being made by insubstantial ghosts that have no other needs except a place to sit and a PC to code on... (oh no, wait, even that costs money!)
You have no idea what you're talking about. If you're so financially comfortable you can afford working 8hrs a day just for the heck of it, please don't hesitate to contact me - I can give you a lot of interesting stuff to do.
... as foir HG:L - it's a financial model just like any other. A matter of balancing between how much your merchendise costs to make and for how much you can sell it. If you remove the psychological barriers I don't see players shortchanged at all (see my previous post). I expect an average player will pay much less per game day than an GW player, for example. And I'd always give money to people that I think deserve it. If EA shares a part of FSS profits then so be it - they do deserve a credit for recognizing and supporting such a great game when it found itself in financial difficulties (before EA stepped in). Fair is fair. And it might encourage EA to give more leeway to its more original and independent developers.
You buy a car right, and you don't go WTF I NEED GAS TO RUN IT?. People can't provide new updates if the money doesn't come from some where, so please go play a FPS instead of complaining, your not gonna obliterate the optional fee.
I don't see a problem here. If people want the extra perks and content then they will gladly pay with no issues because it is something they want. If people choose not to pay for the extra stuff then they won't and will continue to play without a subscription fee. The subscription fee is optional.
Just from being in beta the majority of the testers love the game will choose to subscribe. Heck, there was a long list of people in a thread in beta stating they are going to do the Founders subscription. So really, complaining about something that is completely optional is kind of silly and taking up forum space :P
To the people out there that think paying a subscription every month for $10 is absolutely bullshit, just dont buy the damn game. How hard can this be? This thread is getting very long and it just seems like it keeps getting rehashed.
Seriously folks, if you dont want to pay $10 bucks, then dont. Whats the big fricken deal anyways. I mean I know alot of people want shit for free in this world and who wouldnt. If $10 seriously disturbs you, then move on to another game and stop pissing and moaning. There are plenty of other free games out there.
You as a person have a choice, you either do or you dont, how hard is that? You have 3 types of people that look at hellgate.
1. Are opened minded and will try Hellgate out and see if its there cup of tea. Maybe you will subscribe, maybe you wont. $10 isnt shit to you since you can afford cheap pizzas once a month and you know $10 bucks isnt going to break you. You dont mind paying as long as it entertains you.
2. People looking for a free game with everything handed to them since spending $49.99 or $59.99 is going to cripple there pocket books and why should I pay more, isnt $49.99 / $59.99 enough for god sakes. This game should be free, no if ands or buts.
3. Dont give a rats ass about this game since its not a true mmo and are just here to troll and talk shit about a game they wont even be playing, but just like to rant and say how a POS this game really is to them and why you shouldnt like it either.
The game comes with a 18 rating... the price for me will be £7 I think, thats less than four dollars, thats two pints of budweiser in my local, I think I could do without that each month.
Honestly, any adult who complains about 7 quid a month, well they definatly need to get out more. People moaning about the third world blah blah go out there and help, instead of moaning about it and doing nothing, just dont knock a gamer whos willing to give up two pints of lager for a months sub of fun!!!
Ok, I highly doubt anyone here would argue about fees in an MMO(save for those freaks who complain about how everything should be f2p). That stated,
For those who want to pay the $10 a month, you get an MMO-like experience with monthly and quarterly content upgrades, additional character slots, and other perks.
For those who don't wish to pay the $10 a month, you still have a perfectly viable and fleshed out multiplayer experience, and the same thing the monthly players had to begin with before they paid for additional content.
So, what the hell is so hard to grasp here exactly? Or is everyone just BAWWWing over the fact that they're not being given unlimited free content?
PS: In addition, the comparisons to GW are flawed, and even so, there are key differences between the GW model and the Hellgate model that factor largely into things, which have already been discussed.
umm so waht is the "new content" that im getting every month in world of warcraft?
nothing changed since last month, but i still had to pay a monthly fee....
my dog could create that much content in a month....and i dont have a dog.
so tell me apart from the stuff thats already packaged in the game....where is my monthly sub value worth of content?
is it all the new players tha lollercopter round each realm?
logically i cant equate my monthly sub to new content....
all i can equate it to is server maintenance & administration.
becuase after i paid money for the first box then the TBC box...im pretty sure those paid for the upgrades and new content.
But then again if i open a theme park and charge everyone a one off fee, i being a selfish prick would not keep opening the doors each day if you didnt keep paying me to.
simple.
or is it the festivals that happen without patching?
umm so waht is the "new content" that im getting every month in world of warcraft? nothing changed since last month, but i still had to pay a monthly fee.... my dog could create that much content in a month....and i dont have a dog.
so tell me apart from the stuff thats already packaged in the game....where is my monthly sub value worth of content? is it all the new players tha lollercopter round each realm?
logically i cant equate my monthly sub to new content....
all i can equate it to is server maintenance & administration. becuase after i paid money for the first box then the TBC box...im pretty sure those paid for the upgrades and new content.
But then again if i open a theme park and charge everyone a one off fee, i being a selfish prick would not keep opening the doors each day if you didnt keep paying me to.
simple. or is it the festivals that happen without patching?
Not that this is the WOW forum but there has been a very good amount that has gone into the game after the TBC expansion. Honestly, WOW is the absolutely worst example to put up here complaining about monthly fees; they have put a TON back into the game in the way of instances, items, PVP content, web functionalty (armory, etc), voice chat, etc.
Nobody promised you a monthly content update for your $15. What they did promise (as a majority of MMO content providers promise) is that there will be constant updates to the game. Most of the big name MMOs deliver on their promise for new content: LotRO, CoH/V, WOW, etc. Hellgate is probably one of the very few companies out there telling you an exact content schedule (before you decide to subscribe or not): Something new every month and something huge every quarter.
What you (and your dog, evidently) don't realize is that building content for MMO games takes months of work and thousands of man-hours to deliver (from concept, to design, to programming, to testing, to tuning, publishing, and then support). Somebody has to pay for that amount of work done. If you are reaping the benefit of that content, then chances are it is you that is paying for it.
The fantastic thing about the monthly fee MMO model is that you, as the consumer, have the power of decision. If you don't wish to give big old bad MMO company XYZ anymore of your hard-earned cash you can simply cancel your subscription. And you can even choose to only pay them when new content is released that particular month.
In regards to Hellgate: London. If you don't wish to give them money, it is OK. Honestly, nobody is going to hold it against you for not paying FSS. You can spend your lunch money elsewhere. But just remember: you get what you pay for.
Its very simple, none pay monthly fee, and within a week or 2 we all get the stuff for free. Too bad theres so many suckers
Goodluck in thinking that the paid for content will be available for free within a week or two - The game's subscribers would cancel. And if nobody subscribed they would not be able to sustain the infrastructure and support to continue with the game. This is pretty much how all MMOs function: Require a constant stream of revenue to continue operations related to the game (bug fixes, new content, support, maintenance, etc).
Furthermore, I don't think that I am a sucker for subscribing for new and/or exclusive content (nor anyone else who subscribes). Nobody is forcing you to pay the subscription fee. Nobody is even forcing you to buy the game and play it. Don't insult those who wish to do so; respect people's decisions, especially when it comes to their money. If you have an argument, then state it and back it up with facts (which your, thankfully, short post was entirely devoid of).
Far as I am concerned the fee is not optional. Too many restrictions of the free to pay portion.
So YES it is a big problem because the content just does not justify a fee. Heck I would rather get another Eve account than pay HGL's ridiculous fee. At least for the Eve fee I get character development and CONTENT!
Go right ahead and pay the fee, but you are getting far less for your money then any other MMO. I call that being foolish with your money, but it is your money.
Its very simple, none pay monthly fee, and within a week or 2 we all get the stuff for free. Too bad theres so many suckers
Goodluck in thinking that the paid for content will be available for free within a week or two - The game's subscribers would cancel. And if nobody subscribed they would not be able to sustain the infrastructure and support to continue with the game. This is pretty much how all MMOs function: Require a constant stream of revenue to continue operations related to the game (bug fixes, new content, support, maintenance, etc).
Furthermore, I don't think that I am a sucker for subscribing for new and/or exclusive content (nor anyone else who subscribes). Nobody is forcing you to pay the subscription fee. Nobody is even forcing you to buy the game and play it. Don't insult those who wish to do so; respect people's decisions, especially when it comes to their money. If you have an argument, then state it and back it up with facts (which your, thankfully, short post was entirely devoid of).
thats it pal! Dont u start insult me back ok...in game u will find my char called Krulos, and im going to kick the shit out of your char ok, cause i take your insults very personal ok!!!! Its duel time baby and on hard core ofcourse....no wait...i need pay fee for that...crap!
First off, the content isn't going to be available to free members after any set period of time. If you read the review PCgamer did on Hellgate, the whole system has been laid out by the company already. You will get new classes, more slots, more levels and content as a subscriber. If your subscription ends, you loose access to it, including the new classes. The have stated that their plan is to release minor updates monthly and larger updates on a quarterly basis. So you can take the snide WoW comments and stow it, especially because WoW players did get plenty of content for their $15 a month, or are we forgetting the revamps, the new zones, the holiday events, and list of other items that were developed. Content like that doesnt magically drop from the code monkey tree. It's possible at all because they can support the servers and work on development with the monthly fee.
I'm done with this discussion. People have been bitching about the subscription since they first announced it. If people want to be ignorant, fine with me. Not to be mean, but it gets really old hearing the same poor arguments over and over again.
The costs of hosting servers has changed dramatically over the past years. Bandwidth is not the lion share of the cost anymore. Bandwidth costs are going down down down and the more you use the cheaper it is.
What has been going up are power costs. I run data centers for a living hosting numberous public services with hundreds of servers. Bandwidth is the least of my cost concerns. The big cost driver is power pure and simple. Power drives everything now days. Servers have shrunk and space is becoming a non issue but what has not shunk is power usage. So now a server is 1u but it uses the same amount of power as a older 3u box. And data centers now days are focused on power density not space. 120w/sqft isn't a good power density in the latest data centers. The data center I'm in right now is 65w/sqft.
So for me bandwidth and hardware costs are not significant what drives my costs are power and space based on power density. 100 servers will easily run $30k per month just for power and space. The other big expense is software. Database software like Oracle can easily run into $100k with a $20k per year cost and thats conservative.
So when you think about the cost of a game like this think about how many servers are being hosted, how many databases. Do you run a secondary site and 100% redundant equipment. Dedicated circuits to sync data. Ops people 7x24x365.
On the other hand a service like HG where a lot of the system is instanced might not require as many servers to maintain as a real MMORPG that has to have data from all players.
However there might be more sync going on then is apparent to prevent cheating. For example if you are in an instance and get some loot and then reboot your computer in HG you come back in the game at the nearest outpost but you do have the loot you found. So for online play there is a connection even when you are in an instance. Similarly things like killing mobs and gaining xp would probably need to be tracked on the servers to prevent cheating. So you can see it starts to close the gap between an mmo and HG.
So running HG could easily involve 10s or 100s of servers and run into a $1M or more per year. Running that for free might get a little offset from ingame advertising but is no doubt going to be a money loosing proposition unless they can get revenue to support it. Expansions every 6 months like Guildwars is one way or the other is having a subscription.
Exactly HGL is a cool casual hack and slash game. In my oppinion it is not better ( or worse ) than Guild Wars (also made by makers of Diablo) Question is If GuildWars would require subscription to let say access better skills and higher level dungeons , would so many play it , and would it be such huge success ? I believe not. So why is HGL a game not superior to GW (or even a regular MMO) thinking it is worth subscription ... i dont know. I bet , HGL will not meet comercial sucess it planed because of this issue , and in close future we will see subscription discontinued - and HGL will go to good time tested buisness model of GW If only EA was not so money greedy
how do you know already that it is not as good as GW? do they have a demo out?
"The new age is upon us, yet the past refuses to rest in its shallow grave."
Far as I am concerned the fee is not optional. Too many restrictions of the free to pay portion. So YES it is a big problem because the content just does not justify a fee. Heck I would rather get another Eve account than pay HGL's ridiculous fee. At least for the Eve fee I get character development and CONTENT! Go right ahead and pay the fee, but you are getting far less for your money then any other MMO. I call that being foolish with your money, but it is your money.
I play Eve Online and you know its very time consuming as well, unfortunately it takes time to build a character on Eve since you gotta train skills and Eve Online and HGL are totally 2 different games of enjoyment. Believe me, I enjoy Eve Online and been playing for 2 years now, but there is no way of building a character faster than you can on HGL. A total bad comparison <imo>
Exactly HGL is a cool casual hack and slash game. In my oppinion it is not better ( or worse ) than Guild Wars (also made by makers of Diablo) Question is If GuildWars would require subscription to let say access better skills and higher level dungeons , would so many play it , and would it be such huge success ? I believe not. So why is HGL a game not superior to GW (or even a regular MMO) thinking it is worth subscription ... i dont know. I bet , HGL will not meet comercial sucess it planed because of this issue , and in close future we will see subscription discontinued - and HGL will go to good time tested buisness model of GW If only EA was not so money greedy
how do you know already that it is not as good as GW? do they have a demo out?
there is actually, but if youv played the beta you would know that the demo is complete crap, but it gives you a EXTREMLY BASIC idea.
From my experience in HGL beta versus owning 3 expansion packs of Guild Wars ...
From a PvE perspective, HGL wins hands down.
From a PvP perspective, GW wins hands down.
I am pretty bored (and have been for a long while) with GW, so HGL it is.
As for all the people forecasting doom and gloom over this (incorrectly labeled) "new" financial model ...
Ad-based games with limited features for non-subscribers is not a new concept. Funcom has been doing it for 3+ years with Anarchy Online. They even go one step further and they GIVE you the basic game entirely financially and commitment-ly free. Checking on this very website, Anarchy Online has an 8.0 hype rating which exceeds HGL so I hardly see how HGL is doomed based solely on its financial model.
Here is another excerpt from the book of common sense ... corporations exist to make money. If you want to blacklist every company that meets your criteria for being greedy i.e. wanting to turn a profit ... then I hope you tamed your own wild mustang for transportation, grow your own food for sustenance and crafted your own dwelling ... cuz if you didn't ... you are being hypocritical.
Comments
They make plenty of money on those 150$+ in expansions/original game for 1 account and they are also closing down GW some time in the near future from what I understand to release GW2.
No content is released outside of an expansion in their model. None the less in the end each game has its money being made one way or the other.
I never denied the money made off of the boxes. And although it is stated that one day like all things GW may end that it won't end just due to GW2 releasing.
The point i was making in my last post though was that both companies will be making money off of the box sales, but ArenaNet is making money by licensing their tech to other NCSoft dev houses. FSS states they will be realeasing content to subscribers.. all in all it seems pretty equal to me. just different means to grab at the same money.
O, yeah. Can't deny that. I agree with ya Pwn. Musta just missread your initial post.
lol this whole subscribtion idea is such total bullshit.
Like 'oh well we want to keep supporting the game and bring out cool new content but in order to do that we need to have a team working on it and in order to have a team working we need money !'
How stupid do they think we are. Though obviously alot of people are stupid enough to buy that nonsense and think its a justified reason to ask for a 10 dollar monthly fee lol.
Then how come we have to pay for content already written ? I mean content like Elite mode, Hardcore mode, extra drops you get in those modes and whatever else you get with those modes. Its already in the game !!! Any other game would simply see that as normal content you SHOULD get when you buy the game.
Then they come with their adding content on a regular basis for which they need this 'team' and subscribtion fees. Yeah right, whatever.
Why not do what all other companies do, bring out expansions ? Well hell no coz with expansions they'd only make what.... 3 or 4 months subscribtion money, 30 or 40 dollar ? While if you would subscribe they could probably get at least double the money for the same content !
Its kinda funny when other companies manage to release ace products with loads of content and hosted FREE servers with great connectivity and a team working on adding content full time. And this all without any subscribtion fee ! Its a miracle ! How come flagship cannot ? The simple answer is they want BIGGER PROFITS !
Seriously if you people buy that utter bullshit like ohhh well we need to pay for the hosting servers and connections and team working on the content bla bla bla story then yer just the people they need to pay the subscribtions.
Maybe you have forgotton how MMORPG subscribtion fees used to be justified by the development teams in the early days.The reason for those companies was always..."We will be adding live content and events!..... specially events was used alot!. Well how often have you seen events in mmorpgs , also the early mmorpgs ? You can probably count them on one hand. And content lol .... the only extra content you always saw were patches and fixes till the expansion arrived. I think wow was one of the first companies that actually gave good free content updates and set an example for other companies to follow.
So what did we pay those subscribtion fees for again when people thought it was outrageous mmorpgs asked monthly fees ?
You people need to understand that its all business. Im sure they are exited about making cool games at all but in the end it all comes down to making as much money as possible on a product, thats all there is to it and they'll use whatever bullshit story to make you pay as much as possible.
Its just a product they sell, nothing different from some tv you buy in a shop.Its making a good product and selling it for good profit. Thats called doing business.
The only reason they make good games, sometimes, is coz they have the talent to actually make a good profitable game. If crap games were good profit no componany would ever make good games, trust me. Its just about money and nothing more. Dont think they love the gamer so much lol. They love their money.
Its all marketing and market research which often can result in setting an accepted norm. Like mmorpg fees of 15 euro/dollar a month is an accepted norm. Go over it and the public asks why ? But why is every single mmorpg worth 15 euro a month then ? Dont tell me they are all as good lol.
Accept this subscribtion fee, which i know many many people will, and other games will follow and so a new accepted norm is set for the games after that.
Stop being so incedibly naief and have yourself be fooled by publisher words.
I don care if you pay subscribtion fees or not. Hell i do it too. But at least i do it while knowing its bullshit but i do it coz i can spare the money. And that's all the count on, they research how many people would pay money for what they want to ask money for. And the boundaries get pushed and pushed till we have to pay for everything.
Flagship studios is just money hungry and its a risky business model which they are willing to take to get the extra profit they wouldnt get by having an expansion business model.
I'd really love to live in your world mate...
I really would - the place where games are being made by insubstantial ghosts that have no other needs except a place to sit and a PC to code on... (oh no, wait, even that costs money!)
You have no idea what you're talking about. If you're so financially comfortable you can afford working 8hrs a day just for the heck of it, please don't hesitate to contact me - I can give you a lot of interesting stuff to do.
... as foir HG:L - it's a financial model just like any other. A matter of balancing between how much your merchendise costs to make and for how much you can sell it. If you remove the psychological barriers I don't see players shortchanged at all (see my previous post). I expect an average player will pay much less per game day than an GW player, for example. And I'd always give money to people that I think deserve it. If EA shares a part of FSS profits then so be it - they do deserve a credit for recognizing and supporting such a great game when it found itself in financial difficulties (before EA stepped in). Fair is fair. And it might encourage EA to give more leeway to its more original and independent developers.
You buy a car right, and you don't go WTF I NEED GAS TO RUN IT?. People can't provide new updates if the money doesn't come from some where, so please go play a FPS instead of complaining, your not gonna obliterate the optional fee.
I don't see a problem here. If people want the extra perks and content then they will gladly pay with no issues because it is something they want. If people choose not to pay for the extra stuff then they won't and will continue to play without a subscription fee. The subscription fee is optional.
Just from being in beta the majority of the testers love the game will choose to subscribe. Heck, there was a long list of people in a thread in beta stating they are going to do the Founders subscription. So really, complaining about something that is completely optional is kind of silly and taking up forum space :P
To the people out there that think paying a subscription every month for $10 is absolutely bullshit, just dont buy the damn game. How hard can this be? This thread is getting very long and it just seems like it keeps getting rehashed.
Seriously folks, if you dont want to pay $10 bucks, then dont. Whats the big fricken deal anyways. I mean I know alot of people want shit for free in this world and who wouldnt. If $10 seriously disturbs you, then move on to another game and stop pissing and moaning. There are plenty of other free games out there.
You as a person have a choice, you either do or you dont, how hard is that? You have 3 types of people that look at hellgate.
1. Are opened minded and will try Hellgate out and see if its there cup of tea. Maybe you will subscribe, maybe you wont. $10 isnt shit to you since you can afford cheap pizzas once a month and you know $10 bucks isnt going to break you. You dont mind paying as long as it entertains you.
2. People looking for a free game with everything handed to them since spending $49.99 or $59.99 is going to cripple there pocket books and why should I pay more, isnt $49.99 / $59.99 enough for god sakes. This game should be free, no if ands or buts.
3. Dont give a rats ass about this game since its not a true mmo and are just here to troll and talk shit about a game they wont even be playing, but just like to rant and say how a POS this game really is to them and why you shouldnt like it either.
The game comes with a 18 rating... the price for me will be £7 I think, thats less than four dollars, thats two pints of budweiser in my local, I think I could do without that each month.
Honestly, any adult who complains about 7 quid a month, well they definatly need to get out more. People moaning about the third world blah blah go out there and help, instead of moaning about it and doing nothing, just dont knock a gamer whos willing to give up two pints of lager for a months sub of fun!!!
Ok, I highly doubt anyone here would argue about fees in an MMO(save for those freaks who complain about how everything should be f2p). That stated,
For those who want to pay the $10 a month, you get an MMO-like experience with monthly and quarterly content upgrades, additional character slots, and other perks.
For those who don't wish to pay the $10 a month, you still have a perfectly viable and fleshed out multiplayer experience, and the same thing the monthly players had to begin with before they paid for additional content.
So, what the hell is so hard to grasp here exactly? Or is everyone just BAWWWing over the fact that they're not being given unlimited free content?
PS: In addition, the comparisons to GW are flawed, and even so, there are key differences between the GW model and the Hellgate model that factor largely into things, which have already been discussed.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
umm so waht is the "new content" that im getting every month in world of warcraft?
nothing changed since last month, but i still had to pay a monthly fee....
my dog could create that much content in a month....and i dont have a dog.
so tell me apart from the stuff thats already packaged in the game....where is my monthly sub value worth of content?
is it all the new players tha lollercopter round each realm?
logically i cant equate my monthly sub to new content....
all i can equate it to is server maintenance & administration.
becuase after i paid money for the first box then the TBC box...im pretty sure those paid for the upgrades and new content.
But then again if i open a theme park and charge everyone a one off fee, i being a selfish prick would not keep opening the doors each day if you didnt keep paying me to.
simple.
or is it the festivals that happen without patching?
Its very simple, none pay monthly fee, and within a week or 2 we all get the stuff for free. Too bad theres so many suckers
Not that this is the WOW forum but there has been a very good amount that has gone into the game after the TBC expansion. Honestly, WOW is the absolutely worst example to put up here complaining about monthly fees; they have put a TON back into the game in the way of instances, items, PVP content, web functionalty (armory, etc), voice chat, etc.
Nobody promised you a monthly content update for your $15. What they did promise (as a majority of MMO content providers promise) is that there will be constant updates to the game. Most of the big name MMOs deliver on their promise for new content: LotRO, CoH/V, WOW, etc. Hellgate is probably one of the very few companies out there telling you an exact content schedule (before you decide to subscribe or not): Something new every month and something huge every quarter.
What you (and your dog, evidently) don't realize is that building content for MMO games takes months of work and thousands of man-hours to deliver (from concept, to design, to programming, to testing, to tuning, publishing, and then support). Somebody has to pay for that amount of work done. If you are reaping the benefit of that content, then chances are it is you that is paying for it.
The fantastic thing about the monthly fee MMO model is that you, as the consumer, have the power of decision. If you don't wish to give big old bad MMO company XYZ anymore of your hard-earned cash you can simply cancel your subscription. And you can even choose to only pay them when new content is released that particular month.
In regards to Hellgate: London. If you don't wish to give them money, it is OK. Honestly, nobody is going to hold it against you for not paying FSS. You can spend your lunch money elsewhere. But just remember: you get what you pay for.
Goodluck in thinking that the paid for content will be available for free within a week or two - The game's subscribers would cancel. And if nobody subscribed they would not be able to sustain the infrastructure and support to continue with the game. This is pretty much how all MMOs function: Require a constant stream of revenue to continue operations related to the game (bug fixes, new content, support, maintenance, etc).
Furthermore, I don't think that I am a sucker for subscribing for new and/or exclusive content (nor anyone else who subscribes). Nobody is forcing you to pay the subscription fee. Nobody is even forcing you to buy the game and play it. Don't insult those who wish to do so; respect people's decisions, especially when it comes to their money. If you have an argument, then state it and back it up with facts (which your, thankfully, short post was entirely devoid of).
Far as I am concerned the fee is not optional. Too many restrictions of the free to pay portion.
So YES it is a big problem because the content just does not justify a fee. Heck I would rather get another Eve account than pay HGL's ridiculous fee. At least for the Eve fee I get character development and CONTENT!
Go right ahead and pay the fee, but you are getting far less for your money then any other MMO. I call that being foolish with your money, but it is your money.
Goodluck in thinking that the paid for content will be available for free within a week or two - The game's subscribers would cancel. And if nobody subscribed they would not be able to sustain the infrastructure and support to continue with the game. This is pretty much how all MMOs function: Require a constant stream of revenue to continue operations related to the game (bug fixes, new content, support, maintenance, etc).
Furthermore, I don't think that I am a sucker for subscribing for new and/or exclusive content (nor anyone else who subscribes). Nobody is forcing you to pay the subscription fee. Nobody is even forcing you to buy the game and play it. Don't insult those who wish to do so; respect people's decisions, especially when it comes to their money. If you have an argument, then state it and back it up with facts (which your, thankfully, short post was entirely devoid of).
thats it pal! Dont u start insult me back ok...in game u will find my char called Krulos, and im going to kick the shit out of your char ok, cause i take your insults very personal ok!!!! Its duel time baby and on hard core ofcourse....no wait...i need pay fee for that...crap!
First off, the content isn't going to be available to free members after any set period of time. If you read the review PCgamer did on Hellgate, the whole system has been laid out by the company already. You will get new classes, more slots, more levels and content as a subscriber. If your subscription ends, you loose access to it, including the new classes. The have stated that their plan is to release minor updates monthly and larger updates on a quarterly basis. So you can take the snide WoW comments and stow it, especially because WoW players did get plenty of content for their $15 a month, or are we forgetting the revamps, the new zones, the holiday events, and list of other items that were developed. Content like that doesnt magically drop from the code monkey tree. It's possible at all because they can support the servers and work on development with the monthly fee.
I'm done with this discussion. People have been bitching about the subscription since they first announced it. If people want to be ignorant, fine with me. Not to be mean, but it gets really old hearing the same poor arguments over and over again.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
Some bad information on this thread...
The costs of hosting servers has changed dramatically over the past years. Bandwidth is not the lion share of the cost anymore. Bandwidth costs are going down down down and the more you use the cheaper it is.
What has been going up are power costs. I run data centers for a living hosting numberous public services with hundreds of servers. Bandwidth is the least of my cost concerns. The big cost driver is power pure and simple. Power drives everything now days. Servers have shrunk and space is becoming a non issue but what has not shunk is power usage. So now a server is 1u but it uses the same amount of power as a older 3u box. And data centers now days are focused on power density not space. 120w/sqft isn't a good power density in the latest data centers. The data center I'm in right now is 65w/sqft.
So for me bandwidth and hardware costs are not significant what drives my costs are power and space based on power density. 100 servers will easily run $30k per month just for power and space. The other big expense is software. Database software like Oracle can easily run into $100k with a $20k per year cost and thats conservative.
So when you think about the cost of a game like this think about how many servers are being hosted, how many databases. Do you run a secondary site and 100% redundant equipment. Dedicated circuits to sync data. Ops people 7x24x365.
On the other hand a service like HG where a lot of the system is instanced might not require as many servers to maintain as a real MMORPG that has to have data from all players.
However there might be more sync going on then is apparent to prevent cheating. For example if you are in an instance and get some loot and then reboot your computer in HG you come back in the game at the nearest outpost but you do have the loot you found. So for online play there is a connection even when you are in an instance. Similarly things like killing mobs and gaining xp would probably need to be tracked on the servers to prevent cheating. So you can see it starts to close the gap between an mmo and HG.
So running HG could easily involve 10s or 100s of servers and run into a $1M or more per year. Running that for free might get a little offset from ingame advertising but is no doubt going to be a money loosing proposition unless they can get revenue to support it. Expansions every 6 months like Guildwars is one way or the other is having a subscription.
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Ethion
how do you know already that it is not as good as GW? do they have a demo out?
"The new age is upon us, yet the past refuses to rest in its shallow grave."
I play Eve Online and you know its very time consuming as well, unfortunately it takes time to build a character on Eve since you gotta train skills and Eve Online and HGL are totally 2 different games of enjoyment. Believe me, I enjoy Eve Online and been playing for 2 years now, but there is no way of building a character faster than you can on HGL. A total bad comparison <imo>
how do you know already that it is not as good as GW? do they have a demo out?
there is actually, but if youv played the beta you would know that the demo is complete crap, but it gives you a EXTREMLY BASIC idea.
From my experience in HGL beta versus owning 3 expansion packs of Guild Wars ...
From a PvE perspective, HGL wins hands down.
From a PvP perspective, GW wins hands down.
I am pretty bored (and have been for a long while) with GW, so HGL it is.
As for all the people forecasting doom and gloom over this (incorrectly labeled) "new" financial model ...
Ad-based games with limited features for non-subscribers is not a new concept. Funcom has been doing it for 3+ years with Anarchy Online. They even go one step further and they GIVE you the basic game entirely financially and commitment-ly free. Checking on this very website, Anarchy Online has an 8.0 hype rating which exceeds HGL so I hardly see how HGL is doomed based solely on its financial model.
Here is another excerpt from the book of common sense ... corporations exist to make money. If you want to blacklist every company that meets your criteria for being greedy i.e. wanting to turn a profit ... then I hope you tamed your own wild mustang for transportation, grow your own food for sustenance and crafted your own dwelling ... cuz if you didn't ... you are being hypocritical.