Most MMO's charge a monthly fee, although in the last year the ratio of F2P to P2P has reversed. There are now more F"P MMO's than P2P ones. Starting with WAR the cost of playing an MMO could go up. "Q: Will the game require a monthly fee to play WAR? A: Yes, and EA Mythic's President Mark Jacobs has stated that the subscription fee will quite possibly be more than the standard $14.99 that most MMOG's charge." Instant reaction to that is, well it's EA WTF do you expect. BUT if they can "get away with it" what is to stop every MMO from charging more? I think the monthly fee was dreamt up one day by the guys who made Ultima Online. It's been roughly that value since. You could argue that actually the cost of a lot of everyday items has gone down. Food is one example (although the price of wheat is high now). But I digress. How much is everyone willing to pay AND would you still play your favourite MMO(s) if there was a price hike (for no apparent reason other than if EA does it why not). Let's face it, the cost of making a AAA game now is astronomical compared to 10 years ago when MMORPG was barely heard of. Does this mean the cost should be handed to us or is a fact of making games. My opinion is that it goes against current trend with MMO makers realising an empty world isn't very appealing and so that's why F2P games are overtaking P2P ones.
Get over it, I'd pay $50 a month to play a game that I enjoy, because that's what it's worth. $15 is cheap, it's expensive to make games, I don't mind paying a higher price as long as it's for a game I like.
Currently Playing: Tabula Rasa Gaming History: EQ, EQ2, SWG, EVE, Anarchy Online, CoX, GW, SRO, Rakion, Ryzom, WoW, Rappelz, Shadowbane, 9Dragons, DAoC, Dungeon Runners, DnD Online, Space Cowboy, LotRO, Vanguard, Fury, Hellgate Wanting to Play: WAR, TCoS, Darkfall, Aion
Good Druz, if it could people like you out, who will only be online in game to whine on about the price instead of actually PLAYING it, Ill pay double.
Go play a azngrinder, they are free. And itll fit your budget.
Yea you have me pegged... buy games to whine about how much I bought them for while I am in game...wow
and yea I'll go play azngrinder because they are free when I said nothing about mmo's being free...wow
you are in your own little world .. it is so pathetic!
Your simplistic responses shows me you have nothing real to say.. you respond with insults that have nothing to do with anything I've said and I don't think you've ever counter pointed what I've said either
So I've come to the conclusion that your IQ is wayyy too small for this message board and you should just go back to your special MMO in which you have so much fun spending your retirement check on
With a little retirement check, I can only afford so many things.
Movies are out of my price range. Waterworld is too expensive. SuperBowl tickets.. cant afford em. Cable TV? its an expensive dream. Vacations in the Hamptons? Nah, too rich for my blood. Heck, I cant even spend my food stamps at Burger King.
But you know what? My measly retirement check can pay for just about every GOOD MMO running nowadays, and I like that. As long as they make a good one, Ill spend my few remaining years till I get arthritis paying and playing for the good ones. If they raise it to $50 in 2 years, know what? Itll still be the only thing a retirement check will cover.
So, yeah. VERY cost effective. They can raise the price several times for all I care.
You can pay $1000 a month for an mmo, but that doesn't mean you are going to get a better product. On the contrary, my cable and phone bills continue to go up, and I don't get better service. I get a lot of channels bundled together that I don't watch, double billed, phone trees from hell, customer service that can hardly speak english, etc.
If you think you will get more from mmo's by paying a bigger subscription fee, you are just fooling yourself. The greedy suits will vote themselves raises and continue to outsource customer service while they make lousy management and development decisions.
The big five of mmo's are probably worth $15 / month: WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, COH/COV, Eve Online. The other mmo's should probably start working on some marketing strategies like LOTRO with the life time membership or this holidays special $9.99 / mo plan. Just my opinion.
What is this "service" youre talking about in an MMO? I dont remember much of that ever. All I ever cared about was:
1. Was the server up?
2. Can I log in?
3. Can I move my character and do the quests work?
4. Is this fun?
Most mmo's i played its been the case. The ones where it didnt, I quit. Vanguard was a prime example. I would have paid $50 a month if they did all the things they said they would have, but looked like they did less than half of that, so I quit. My sub lasted 3 months while I waited for them to get better as they said. It didnt so, I went to EQ2 after that and thought the VALUE was better for the money. That simple.
Idk what this "service" is everyone expects.. I dont want to talk to GMs. I dont want to fill out "hey, how are we doing?" forms. I dont care to see patrol units of GMs running thru the fields to make sure everyone isnt cheating. I just want to play a decent game. Whoever gets it right, gets my buck, no matter how much they charge.
The only reason they want to raise prices on the monthly fee is that they know people will own multiple accounts, already paying more then say, 30 USD a month for 2 accounts. The problem with them thinking that people will pay more for an account is that there are benefits to people owning more then one account in games like WoW where you can use the two characters at one time.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
Sorry about the Earlier Post, after I posted it, i could not delete it.
Now onto the subject, Look at it this way. If you go to the movies, you are going to spend $10-$15 (at night) and be entertained for 2 hours, 2.5 hours max for 1 night. For roughly the same price, you are getting a 4 or more hours per week every week of the month.
Originally posted by Druz Fair enough.. I still think they are just trying to milk us for as much as we will allow.. other than that I have nothing more to say
Perhaps you should try to start your own business. You and many other posters here, seem to have very little understanding of what it takes to run and business. You also seem to think that innovation just magically happens. Innovation takes a lot of trial and error. A lot of money is invested that may never be recouped. Companies should make money. They need to make money. We would have zero innovation if they just ran their business to break even. We wouldn't be playing the games we do today if UO and EQ were not successful and profitable.
MMO prices will probably go up. As it becomes more cost effective for companies to build and release new MMOs, the prices will drop. However, this is not the case today. We all see how many fail, run out of money, lack innovation and take years to build! They invest a lot of money during that 5+ year development process, with NO guarantee they will ever make it back. You have a lot of never to think they shouldn't be rewarded for their risk.
If you want to be pissed off about the cost of entertainment. Get pissed about 11 dollar movie tickets or 80 tickets to a football game. Or the 6 dollar beer and 5 hot dogs at the stadiums. You don't see game developers running around on MTV cribs.
For those of you that are kids and don't even have to worry about rent, mortgage, car payments, the cable bill, groceries, etc. Well, you should probably stop crying about cost and focus on your studies anyway. You really don't know shit about the world yet.
Druz. I say this with all sincerity. You should stop playing games and get yourself into business school or business classes.
Thing about this is..you dont know what level you might be getting.. they might decide to let you play Daoc for free if you have a warhammer sub. even though some might not play daoc, its an easy way for them to make an extra dollar
I'd be willing to pay a higher monthly payment to a company like Blizzard on one condition, the game must hold my attention and strike my interest for longer then two - three months.
Personally I enjoy games regardless of the price, one of my favorite games would have to be Astonia 3: The Conflict, It was created in 2002 by Intent Software and I have been paying for the game since then. The monthly charge is close to fifteen dollars a month so that calculates to roughly $1080.00 American. Currently I make that and more in two weeks of work and sometimes feel like I'm ripping off Intent Software, it's been nearly six years and I have only been charged $1080.00 for entertainment for the whole time.
To put it in perspective if I was to go out with friends tonight I would spend close to $100.00 doing god knows what so if you calculate how much money I would be paying if I was hanging out with buddies every night it would be something like $219000.00 for six years of entertainment. Considering that Astonia has cost me about $1080.00 in six years thats only 0.4% of the cost for a normal night out everyday of every year for a total of six years.
If Sony could get away with charging $30 bucks for Station Pass what's stopping other game companies from doing so. The first massive commercial mmo like UO/EQ charged $9.99 back in 1997-1999 era then it went up to $14.99 for the 2000-2007 era.. i think $15 bucks is rather low if you're going to adjust for inflation... however, I think the game companies have to account for what the current market can bare... A good price range would be around $15-25 ..... $30 is probably a bit too much.
And how many games does that pass include? More than one.
Originally posted by Zorvan Originally posted by liddokun If Sony could get away with charging $30 bucks for Station Pass what's stopping other game companies from doing so. The first massive commercial mmo like UO/EQ charged $9.99 back in 1997-1999 era then it went up to $14.99 for the 2000-2007 era.. i think $15 bucks is rather low if you're going to adjust for inflation... however, I think the game companies have to account for what the current market can bare... A good price range would be around $15-25 ..... $30 is probably a bit too much.
And how many games does that pass include? More than one.
I'm pretty sure that it includes 5-6 games which in todays standards isn't a bad price. Personally I'd love to see more companies like this make "Station Passes", mostly NCSoft, Blizzard, etc.
Also if people are concerned about the prices of monthly payments for games lets bring up the amazing deal known as Orange Box, Its currently $39.99 at Bestbuy.com, (49.99 Canadian) and it comes with a total of six games, I'm sure Valve will be releasing more "Boxes" like these as the sale numbers for this game package are incredibly high
Guys, you do realize that USA is not the only country in the world, right? For some people, even 15$ is stretching up, let alone 25$ or more. Me thinks 15$ is a great price for MMO entertainment. Just look at Blizzard, they are bathing in money!!! Companies like EA should learn that if they make a great game, they'll make great money, even if the price is 15$....
Originally posted by SephyrMK Guys, you do realize that USA is not the only country in the world, right? For some people, even 15$ is stretching up, let alone 25$ or more. Me thinks 15$ is a great price for MMO entertainment. Just look at Blizzard, they are bathing in money!!! Companies like EA should learn that if they make a great game, they'll make great money, even if the price is 15$....
1. Games are not a necessity, they are a luxury. 2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point? 3. Vivendi did not break out the Blizard unit in their 10K so you have no basis to claim "Blizzard is bathing in money!!!" Hell, you probably didn't even know that Blizzard isn't the parent company. Do you even know what a parent company is? To the best of my knowledge Activision does not break out each unit in their 10k either. 4. Kids crying about the cost of games while living off their parents used to be funny. Now it's just annoying.
Guys, you do realize that USA is not the only country in the world, right? For some people, even 15$ is stretching up, let alone 25$ or more. Me thinks 15$ is a great price for MMO entertainment. Just look at Blizzard, they are bathing in money!!! Companies like EA should learn that if they make a great game, they'll make great money, even if the price is 15$....
2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point?
What many world's are you talking about, exactly? Have I missed some major discovery of other populated worlds?
The world currency for Earth, btw is either the euro or US dollar. And now the US dollar is not worth as much as the euro. That doesn't qualify as "many". Good day, troll.
$14.99/monthly is more than enough for game companies to charge. Especially when there will be a box charge as well. If they decide to go for more, they may be surprised how easily greed bites them in the ass.
I agree here. I'm completely fine with paying a monthly fee but 15$ is more than enough for them. Especially since we're buying the box and expansions as well.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
The US dollar is overvalued. That means the US and their consumers that pay in $ are overspending, they can spend more than they actually have, but that will result in either a dollar crash or a recession.
And the overspending isn't by a bit, it's by a lot. If China decides to sell it's US credits the US economy would crash.
Some economist explained it this way:
"It's like someone falling from a 100 story building, and passing the 50th floor and saying everything is fine. Not realising the person is about to crash."
The problem though with a company wanting more then the average price though, is that they arent offering you anything more then any other company. Sure the game is different but nothing in that game am i going to turn and say "wow this is really ground breaking and i've never done it before, this is completely worth the xx.xx dollars i pay a month for it.
Not only that but the customer service will more then likely still not be any better, they cant stop the spamming or the account hackers/keyloggers from getting in, they cant solve the issues of the economies spiraling endlessly out of control.
So seriously, what is my incentive for paying more to play a game with better graphics? I'm sorry, thats in the development cost which is what i pay for when i buy the game. Not only that but there are the endless expansions anymore that they charge you for. Companies act like they're doing you a big favor by adding in free updates like VOIP for you or opening up certain areas that have always been there but they just never touched.
I dont know, i cant really see a reason to pay more for a game. How often do you see brand new enemies thought up constantly, and that kinda stuff? Hell, look at WoW's TBC expansion. I dont recall really seeing many new enemies or item, etc, its all the same. _________________________________________________________________________
Originally posted by candygirl6 The US dollar is overvalued. That means the US and their consumers that pay in $ are overspending, they can spend more than they actually have, but that will result in either a dollar crash or a recession. And the overspending isn't by a bit, it's by a lot. If China decides to sell it's US credits the US economy would crash. Some economist explained it this way: "It's like someone falling from a 100 story building, and passing the 50th floor and saying everything is fine. Not realizing the person is about to crash."
On this note, yes, the USD is way overvalued. However that doesn't make it any easier to come by here. Yes, they keep pumping up minimum wage but what makes it difficult is that jobs are difficult to come by because no one wants to spend money.
Because no one wants to spend money, there are a lack of jobs and because there are lack of jobs and layoffs, people who dont have jobs are spending there money on the bare minimums.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
Originally posted by brostyn Originally posted by jgankum
Originally posted by SephyrMK Guys, you do realize that USA is not the only country in the world, right? For some people, even 15$ is stretching up, let alone 25$ or more. Me thinks 15$ is a great price for MMO entertainment. Just look at Blizzard, they are bathing in money!!! Companies like EA should learn that if they make a great game, they'll make great money, even if the price is 15$....
2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point? What many world's are you talking about, exactly? Have I missed some major discovery of other populated worlds?
The world currency for Earth, btw is either the euro or US dollar. And now the US dollar is not worth as much as the euro. That doesn't qualify as "many". Good day, troll.
You did miss a major discovery. It's called Asia! But I guess you don't count them, huh? Now you could come back and bring up third world countries, but that's just stupid. Since we are talking about internet games here, it should have been obvious the conversation would pertain to those countries have economies that support the topic.
As for your little "troll" snip. You can call me all the names you like. It doesn't make your argument stronger. The fact that Asia is a MAJOR part of the gaming industry and you completely discounted them tells me that you have little real value to add to a conversation. Beyond name calling, that is.
Costs keep going up for game development but the cost of the monthly fee does not. Thats why the standard monthly fee went up to $15 before.
Also, if it's not Warhammer Online that is the first to go above $15 a month then it will be some other MMO, and you can be sure that it will happen within a year's time.
This is why SOE is looking to move to the Item Mall system. They know the monthly fee payment system is in danger. A rise to $17 or $18 may be tolerated by many but it's very doubtful that $20 would be.
The modern MMO is reaching critical mass and a rise of the standard monthly fee could set it off.
Comments
Get over it, I'd pay $50 a month to play a game that I enjoy, because that's what it's worth. $15 is cheap, it's expensive to make games, I don't mind paying a higher price as long as it's for a game I like.
Currently Playing: Tabula Rasa
Gaming History: EQ, EQ2, SWG, EVE, Anarchy Online, CoX, GW, SRO, Rakion, Ryzom, WoW, Rappelz, Shadowbane, 9Dragons, DAoC, Dungeon Runners, DnD Online, Space Cowboy, LotRO, Vanguard, Fury, Hellgate
Wanting to Play: WAR, TCoS, Darkfall, Aion
Good Druz, if it could people like you out, who will only be online in game to whine on about the price instead of actually PLAYING it, Ill pay double.
Go play a azngrinder, they are free. And itll fit your budget.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Yea you have me pegged... buy games to whine about how much I bought them for while I am in game...wow
and yea I'll go play azngrinder because they are free when I said nothing about mmo's being free...wow
you are in your own little world .. it is so pathetic!
Your simplistic responses shows me you have nothing real to say.. you respond with insults that have nothing to do with anything I've said and I don't think you've ever counter pointed what I've said either
So I've come to the conclusion that your IQ is wayyy too small for this message board and you should just go back to your special MMO in which you have so much fun spending your retirement check on
Two movie tickets, $22, for at best 2 1/2 hours of fun.
MMO at $20 for 30ish days of fun anytime I want!
I'd say $20 bucks for a game is dirt cheap.
Jonny
sad thing is if they brung back pre-nge swg i'd pay $30 a month.
arguing with a corporate fanboi is like teaching special education.
even if you teach him something...at the end of the day he's still retarded.
You scare the hell out of me...
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
Thats the key Druz,
With a little retirement check, I can only afford so many things.
Movies are out of my price range. Waterworld is too expensive. SuperBowl tickets.. cant afford em. Cable TV? its an expensive dream. Vacations in the Hamptons? Nah, too rich for my blood. Heck, I cant even spend my food stamps at Burger King.
But you know what? My measly retirement check can pay for just about every GOOD MMO running nowadays, and I like that. As long as they make a good one, Ill spend my few remaining years till I get arthritis paying and playing for the good ones. If they raise it to $50 in 2 years, know what? Itll still be the only thing a retirement check will cover.
So, yeah. VERY cost effective. They can raise the price several times for all I care.
Again, just provide good, long lasting content.
"TO MICHAEL!"
You can pay $1000 a month for an mmo, but that doesn't mean you are going to get a better product. On the contrary, my cable and phone bills continue to go up, and I don't get better service. I get a lot of channels bundled together that I don't watch, double billed, phone trees from hell, customer service that can hardly speak english, etc.
If you think you will get more from mmo's by paying a bigger subscription fee, you are just fooling yourself. The greedy suits will vote themselves raises and continue to outsource customer service while they make lousy management and development decisions.
The big five of mmo's are probably worth $15 / month: WOW, EQ2, LOTRO, COH/COV, Eve Online. The other mmo's should probably start working on some marketing strategies like LOTRO with the life time membership or this holidays special $9.99 / mo plan. Just my opinion.
What is this "service" youre talking about in an MMO? I dont remember much of that ever. All I ever cared about was:
1. Was the server up?
2. Can I log in?
3. Can I move my character and do the quests work?
4. Is this fun?
Most mmo's i played its been the case. The ones where it didnt, I quit. Vanguard was a prime example. I would have paid $50 a month if they did all the things they said they would have, but looked like they did less than half of that, so I quit. My sub lasted 3 months while I waited for them to get better as they said. It didnt so, I went to EQ2 after that and thought the VALUE was better for the money. That simple.
Idk what this "service" is everyone expects.. I dont want to talk to GMs. I dont want to fill out "hey, how are we doing?" forms. I dont care to see patrol units of GMs running thru the fields to make sure everyone isnt cheating. I just want to play a decent game. Whoever gets it right, gets my buck, no matter how much they charge.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Fair enough.. I still think they are just trying to milk us for as much as we will allow.. other than that I have nothing more to say
The only reason they want to raise prices on the monthly fee is that they know people will own multiple accounts, already paying more then say, 30 USD a month for 2 accounts. The problem with them thinking that people will pay more for an account is that there are benefits to people owning more then one account in games like WoW where you can use the two characters at one time.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
Sorry about the Earlier Post, after I posted it, i could not delete it.
Now onto the subject, Look at it this way. If you go to the movies, you are going to spend $10-$15 (at night) and be entertained for 2 hours, 2.5 hours max for 1 night. For roughly the same price, you are getting a 4 or more hours per week every week of the month.
url=http://www.enjin.com]
[/url]
Perhaps you should try to start your own business. You and many other posters here, seem to have very little understanding of what it takes to run and business. You also seem to think that innovation just magically happens. Innovation takes a lot of trial and error. A lot of money is invested that may never be recouped. Companies should make money. They need to make money. We would have zero innovation if they just ran their business to break even. We wouldn't be playing the games we do today if UO and EQ were not successful and profitable.
MMO prices will probably go up. As it becomes more cost effective for companies to build and release new MMOs, the prices will drop. However, this is not the case today. We all see how many fail, run out of money, lack innovation and take years to build! They invest a lot of money during that 5+ year development process, with NO guarantee they will ever make it back. You have a lot of never to think they shouldn't be rewarded for their risk.
If you want to be pissed off about the cost of entertainment. Get pissed about 11 dollar movie tickets or 80 tickets to a football game. Or the 6 dollar beer and 5 hot dogs at the stadiums. You don't see game developers running around on MTV cribs.
For those of you that are kids and don't even have to worry about rent, mortgage, car payments, the cable bill, groceries, etc. Well, you should probably stop crying about cost and focus on your studies anyway. You really don't know shit about the world yet.
Druz. I say this with all sincerity. You should stop playing games and get yourself into business school or business classes.
Jonny
Thing about this is..you dont know what level you might be getting.. they might decide to let you play Daoc for free if you have a warhammer sub. even though some might not play daoc, its an easy way for them to make an extra dollar
HOGG4LIFE
I'd be willing to pay a higher monthly payment to a company like Blizzard on one condition, the game must hold my attention and strike my interest for longer then two - three months.
Personally I enjoy games regardless of the price, one of my favorite games would have to be Astonia 3: The Conflict, It was created in 2002 by Intent Software and I have been paying for the game since then. The monthly charge is close to fifteen dollars a month so that calculates to roughly $1080.00 American. Currently I make that and more in two weeks of work and sometimes feel like I'm ripping off Intent Software, it's been nearly six years and I have only been charged $1080.00 for entertainment for the whole time.
To put it in perspective if I was to go out with friends tonight I would spend close to $100.00 doing god knows what so if you calculate how much money I would be paying if I was hanging out with buddies every night it would be something like $219000.00 for six years of entertainment. Considering that Astonia has cost me about $1080.00 in six years thats only 0.4% of the cost for a normal night out everyday of every year for a total of six years.
So really I have no problem paying more.
And how many games does that pass include? More than one.
I'm pretty sure that it includes 5-6 games which in todays standards isn't a bad price. Personally I'd love to see more companies like this make "Station Passes", mostly NCSoft, Blizzard, etc.
Also if people are concerned about the prices of monthly payments for games lets bring up the amazing deal known as Orange Box, Its currently $39.99 at Bestbuy.com, (49.99 Canadian) and it comes with a total of six games, I'm sure Valve will be releasing more "Boxes" like these as the sale numbers for this game package are incredibly high
Guys, you do realize that USA is not the only country in the world, right? For some people, even 15$ is stretching up, let alone 25$ or more. Me thinks 15$ is a great price for MMO entertainment. Just look at Blizzard, they are bathing in money!!! Companies like EA should learn that if they make a great game, they'll make great money, even if the price is 15$....
1. Games are not a necessity, they are a luxury.
2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point?
3. Vivendi did not break out the Blizard unit in their 10K so you have no basis to claim "Blizzard is bathing in money!!!" Hell, you probably didn't even know that Blizzard isn't the parent company. Do you even know what a parent company is? To the best of my knowledge Activision does not break out each unit in their 10k either.
4. Kids crying about the cost of games while living off their parents used to be funny. Now it's just annoying.
Jonny
2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point?
What many world's are you talking about, exactly? Have I missed some major discovery of other populated worlds?
The world currency for Earth, btw is either the euro or US dollar. And now the US dollar is not worth as much as the euro. That doesn't qualify as "many". Good day, troll.
I agree here. I'm completely fine with paying a monthly fee but 15$ is more than enough for them. Especially since we're buying the box and expansions as well.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
The US dollar is overvalued. That means the US and their consumers that pay in $ are overspending, they can spend more than they actually have, but that will result in either a dollar crash or a recession.
And the overspending isn't by a bit, it's by a lot. If China decides to sell it's US credits the US economy would crash.
Some economist explained it this way:
"It's like someone falling from a 100 story building, and passing the 50th floor and saying everything is fine. Not realising the person is about to crash."
The problem though with a company wanting more then the average price though, is that they arent offering you anything more then any other company. Sure the game is different but nothing in that game am i going to turn and say "wow this is really ground breaking and i've never done it before, this is completely worth the xx.xx dollars i pay a month for it.
Not only that but the customer service will more then likely still not be any better, they cant stop the spamming or the account hackers/keyloggers from getting in, they cant solve the issues of the economies spiraling endlessly out of control.
So seriously, what is my incentive for paying more to play a game with better graphics? I'm sorry, thats in the development cost which is what i pay for when i buy the game. Not only that but there are the endless expansions anymore that they charge you for. Companies act like they're doing you a big favor by adding in free updates like VOIP for you or opening up certain areas that have always been there but they just never touched.
I dont know, i cant really see a reason to pay more for a game. How often do you see brand new enemies thought up constantly, and that kinda stuff? Hell, look at WoW's TBC expansion. I dont recall really seeing many new enemies or item, etc, its all the same.
_________________________________________________________________________
On this note, yes, the USD is way overvalued. However that doesn't make it any easier to come by here. Yes, they keep pumping up minimum wage but what makes it difficult is that jobs are difficult to come by because no one wants to spend money.
Because no one wants to spend money, there are a lack of jobs and because there are lack of jobs and layoffs, people who dont have jobs are spending there money on the bare minimums.
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
2. The US dollar is crap against many world currencies right now, so what's your point?
What many world's are you talking about, exactly? Have I missed some major discovery of other populated worlds?
The world currency for Earth, btw is either the euro or US dollar. And now the US dollar is not worth as much as the euro. That doesn't qualify as "many". Good day, troll.
You did miss a major discovery. It's called Asia! But I guess you don't count them, huh? Now you could come back and bring up third world countries, but that's just stupid. Since we are talking about internet games here, it should have been obvious the conversation would pertain to those countries have economies that support the topic.
As for your little "troll" snip. You can call me all the names you like. It doesn't make your argument stronger. The fact that Asia is a MAJOR part of the gaming industry and you completely discounted them tells me that you have little real value to add to a conversation. Beyond name calling, that is.
Jonny
Costs keep going up for game development but the cost of the monthly fee does not. Thats why the standard monthly fee went up to $15 before.
Also, if it's not Warhammer Online that is the first to go above $15 a month then it will be some other MMO, and you can be sure that it will happen within a year's time.
This is why SOE is looking to move to the Item Mall system. They know the monthly fee payment system is in danger. A rise to $17 or $18 may be tolerated by many but it's very doubtful that $20 would be.
The modern MMO is reaching critical mass and a rise of the standard monthly fee could set it off.