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  • guildwarzguildwarz Member Posts: 23
    Originally posted by guildwarz


     
    Originally posted by Ykalon


     
    Originally posted by guildwarz


     
    And where pray-tell, did you get the numbers of the Closed Beta? o.O
     
     
    I love all the conspiracy Theories out there. Here, I'm throwing you a non-conspiracy one:
     
    They learned from WoW's launch, which was ridiculously bogged down. I couldn#t even register my account for the first three days much less play very much for the following week due to server-crashes, log-in waiting and pings in the 4digit range.
     
    So instead of having the same mess, they decided to control launch and -NOT- bog down servers more than needed. FYI, the RPPVP Server Cimmeria already had a small waiting line for a while tonight. Now imagine all those players giving out Buddy Keys, some one, some even 5. And now imagine the people who bought the game hollering on the forums that they can't play the game they paid for. Not a pretty picture, eh?

    Its not a consipracy its good business, they did this on purpose because  at the end of the day they will make more money this way. Their  hype machine and all those little tricks paid off and I bet they've sold or will sell enough boxes to call it a financial success, the 15 a month is just icing on the cake. 

     

    This is also a sign of a company that doesnt have much faith in their product, as any good game doesnt have problems giving out free trials because the game sells itself, but they dont have the best game, they know it, in which case they're doing the right thing squeezing every penny from you before you leave.



    This is why I see less and less reason to pay a monthly fee, for what actually? server fees? just charge me whatever it cost you to develop the game i bought at the store, and Ill pay more if you make more but hoping to get free content down the road to justify a monthly fee is just stupid....  Theres more servesr in BF2 right now, dont tell me it costs $15 a month to run servers.   MMO's arent any different from any other normal game in the stores right now, all they have to do is sell enough boxes and theyre in the clear, just like any other game,  the only difference is they somehow convinced you to pay $15 a month for online multplayer which has been in every game since doom for free.  

     

    Free trial?  no way, its like when doom3 came out, they're not going to put out a game with a trial  because it will kill their sales, obviousley they dont care for you to keep on subbing monthly otherwise they'd include buddy keys, seems getting you to buy the box is enough for them, which further proves my point thats is all they need and the $15 a month is just icing on the cake.

    Funcom has spent more than 5 years on this game, most of the time with a staff of a bout a hundred. No the box price alone do NOT pay the cost of developing and distribution, not even half of it.

     

     

    For example WoW took 6 years of development which amounted to about £90 million to 100 million in costs. Most of the box cost don't go to the developer btw. Some is eaten up by taxes, the stores want their share for providing shelf space, the game needs to be marketed as well or no one will buy it so part of the box price goes to that. I don't think more than $15 (probably less)goes back to the developer. 1 million times $15 = 15 millions, that would be  a loss of $75 to 85 millions if they let everyone play forever for free after buying the box. Now I know WoW has sold more than a million copies but that's the exception so far in the MMO industry so maybe just maybe they actually made a profit from just the game boxes. But that profit is eaten up by server costs, development costs, an MMO is never done, new content is always in development and the programmers, designers and artists do need to get paid.

     

    You can't host millions of characters on just one little PC you know and that's not all that's stored on the servers, basically the only thing that is kept on your pc is the textures and sounds etc, the rest are being run on the servers.

     

    And the servers need an internet connection and I don't think the one you have at home would be enough for Funcom or Blizzard. They don't measure network traffic in megabits per second they need terabits at least, and no ISP is gonna give them that for $20 a month..

     

    It actually takes most mmo's 2 years or more to turn a profit.

     

    Im sure it costs a lot of money to get these things going, but thats the investors fault.  The market is so saturated with mmo's right now theres no way that games with monthly fees will survive in the future.

      WoW was able to get away with it because it was the first to bring this kind of game to the masses, and all the greedy devs made clones hoping to get rich quick and lots did, but its not going to last for ever not with monthly fees.  Maybe when a better more inovated genre comes out they will get away with chargin fees again but right now with this same old WoW formula you can only do if for so long before people get tired or even worse!! before a competitor does it just as good or better WITHOUT monthly fees, and they already have - Guild Wars.

      Im subbed to 2 mmo's right now and I can justify paying a monthly sub because they offer something that no other games do, but how about the wow clones?   They'll never make it, maybe im giving funcom to much credit here but if they're that dependant on monthly fees to make a profit then all I can say is they're going down.   Wait until  Guild Wars 2 comes out with no monthly fees with a persistant sandbox environment,  that will be the end of the MMORPG get rich quick era of monthly fees.  Mark my words.  This idea was a blip on the radar screen and fortunately when all these failures die the stronger better ones will emerge.

     

    edit:

     

    but i dont think funcom is that stupid, i think they aimed at having the boxe sales to recoup their costs like any other high budget single player games do and the monthly fees bit is just to milk this fad of all its worth before its over.

    QFT

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