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Online games in general
molitar
Member Posts: 17
First of all let's not flame.. let me hear your opinion on the charges to play a game anymore.
I wonder IF the time will ever come when the gamers finally realize they are being cheated! We have to pay anywheres from $50-60 for a new game.. on top of monthly fees. We old school gamers realize were being cheated because the games use to be FREE for download and you just had to pay to play the game.
At least one company is semi-realizing that their is a problem I notice on the news here and giving the client away for free.. LIKE THEY SHOULD! But until gamers of today start realizing that what we use to get for free they are paying extravagant fees just to play than they will continue to be gyped. Perhaps Anarchy Online will start the trend back towards what it should be.. pay to play.. not pay to subscribe at $50-60. That is absurd.. Diablo II, Warcraft, ect I can understand paying that kind of money because we are not paying monthly fees but do you really REALIZE how much you are paying to play a game? Let's be conservative and say $50 to purchase the game.. than another $12/month that is $194/year.. and usually just as close to that every year because of an add-on pack that costs at least $30/each.
Let me hear your opinion of what do you think... Do you think the gamers and game companies will come to realize that the clients themselves need to be free or at least very inexpensive to get by download? Or do you think the continuing trend of charging for every little thing will continue? This is one of the reasons why I really liked Asheron's Call the original it had monthly updates that we were not charged for making the game a bit more dynamic in nature. Now maybe AO will start the trend back where it began at in the days of the first games.
Comments
Well to be honest I don't know enough about costs of the production and shipping of cd and the manuals that come with them. Dark and Light as I remember will be distributing their client to peer 2 peer sharware programs like Ares for a free download and trial period after which you will decide on whether or not you wish to continue with a monthly payment. The article can be found here.
From what was said, it almost sounds cheaper just to do this rather than paying for production and shipping. The 50 dollars must barely cover those costs alone. Hell, I'm all for this kind of distribution. I'm sick of paying 50 bucks plus monthly everytime I get a game and then when it turns out that the game wasn't what I expected and I end up leaving at the end of the first month, that's 50 bucks down the toilet. You pretty much have to beta test these games nowadays to really know what you're getting yourself into when you put down your money on something like this. I know some people out there think 50 bucks is nothing, but after a while it adds up and certainly becomes an expense I'm not willing to waste on something that's not going to entertain me for more than a month or so.
You have to take into account how many people work on a game compared to back in the day. Fees are also high thesse days for one, because cost to keep them up and 2nd 15dollars a month is some how acceptable.
Finding out that systems like xbox2 are going to have games charge for extras (even if it costs a penny) I am probably not going to buy and xbox2 as a vote against paying extra for what you should have for free.
The $15 monthly fee isn't even necessary at all.
Every new MMORPG just follows that same price, because what do they achieve if they make it lower, other than make less money?
I'm all for getting things free or cheap. But usually those things are crap.
Seriously, I would be happy with paying around $40 bucks for an original game and a free month's subscription.
How much do you pay for other games? Once you've opened the package, if you don't like them your money is wasted also, nobody gives refunds do they?
(I think CD costs have always been outrageous, but whaddaya gonna do...)
Unfortunately, in todays gaming industry you have to account for the years of development before the release of the game. During that time, the company is hooking up with a publisher to give them the money they need to produce the game. When the game is released, shareholders, publishers, lawyers, etc. need to be paid back...with interest of course. The price of the box offsets this a bit. Only some of that money actually goes to the people who created the game. With so many people putting their hands on a project, you're going to get the high client prices. Plus, as someone mentioned above, you have to take in account the production of a box, CD, manual, map, special figurine, special edition embossed gold incrusted collectors tin...well you get the point.
Personally I think there has to be a better way.
"Rome wasn't coded in a day"
- Kanoth
The developper has an interest in selling a game through boxes, it'll boost sales to a broader market. It seems your average Joe is willing to play online in a secured connection environment. The same person is however not willing to download a large file from the same location (variable causes like 56k modem, viruswarnings,...). That is the real reason why we end up paying for a service we weren't used to pay. If we want this market to continue existing, there has to be interest from investors, this interest comes from increasing generated revenue, retail boxes were one way of doing that and it seems selling ingame resources through the company itself will be the next step.
However as said these new online gamers should realize they are being massively "scammed" if you can call it that way. They are paying for a service that used to be free, yes and if you look far enough you will still find companies that don't believe in pay the package but prefer download which allows them to change the client as they wish.
As for me, I won't buy a boxed MMO no matter what, it is selling something you won't be able to use unless you pay for something else. I don't need a fancy CD or a paper manual for that. I'll burn one if needed be. If I miss out on WoW or EQ, I have to say that I don't really care as I don't agree with the practice of these combined sales.
Yes, other games, when you stop playing them your money is wasted, however, if you take your time you could easily go to a second hand informatics store and get a part of the money you invested back. Or you could pick the game back up 10 years from now and play for the good sake of old memmories. This is something that is typically not possible in an MMO since you pay for a service that maintains the game, you participate in server costs even after having bought the game box.
As for what I'm going to do, plain simple, I'll boycot any game that doesn't provide me with a free download (preferably with a few days trial package). I could pay for the game, that's far besides the point, in fact I'm currently paying 9,95 USD a month for a game and have been doing so for more then two years (which means I payed over 240 USD for the same game or four to five times the price of a regular game). Not forgetting to mention that the income for the first month of subsciption is about equal to the one they are getting from the retail box guesstimate of about 5-15 USD depending contract and succesfactor.
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Almost all mmorpgs make the majority of their revenue this way.
Thing you have to bear in mind is that 6-12 months from release the boxed version is either downloaded for free anyway, so where would additional revenue come from if monthly charges were abolished.
If you pay month by month it is usually $15 otherwise it goes down as you buy more blocks, even below $10.
Can't really buy much for $10 today LOL.
p.s. not all of that $10 goes back to the original developers.
I think that the initial game should be free, with a $15 a month charge, and then subsequent charges for expansions (since expansions typically don't change the monthly fee).
Reasoning? People would be more willing to drop $15 to try out a game than $50. There are a lot of games out there that I've played and even payed a monthly fee for that I would have never tried had I had to buy a box for the game. AO, EVE being the most recent 2. AO got $30ish from me, and EVE has got $20 so far (And will probably get more), but I wouldn't have tried either of these games if I would have had to buy the box.
The potential downside to this is that you will end up with a lot of people that play the game for a month or 2, and then leave their account. I don't know how much of a downside this is, as most games get this anyway even with the $50 up front fee.
In the long run, especially games that have been out beyond their initial hype period, I think having a free client is more profitable. Sure, games like WoW and EQ2 made a ton of money from their initial release, but EQ1, SWG and UO can't be making that much from box sales anymore, and I would consider playing them for a few months if I didn't have to pay for the box first.
Welcome to Capitalism, where the first and foremost law is:
Whatever the market will bear.
Hashman, actually most games do not go for free download later. You are still required to purchase the original box because they even check the cd-key. So you are paying full price for a game that you than have to pay monthly fees.. And if you think about it.... It's not even a full game it's just a client that allows you than to download all the patches to play the game which usually takes another hour+ after 6 months or more. To this day Sony still cheats people they have more than made back their money and they offer a free download to trial than guess what THEY make you PAY for the full game to continue playing... I tried their trial played it the 7 days than found that out and uninstalled the software from my computer it is not worth paying them a $50 price tag for the game than a monthly on top of that.
Now for those that don't have fast download for a reasonable fee of $9.95 they would ship you a CD with the latest version on it. Which was actually better for them and you because say you do play with a 56k modem and a 6 months or more down the road you have to do a full reinstall of your system. Now the way it is now you have to re-install the old version software than spend hours and hours downloading all the patches but the reasonable fee for a CD method than allows you to go purchase a newer cd and your up and running shortly without hours and hours of downloads while dialup users even get disconnected often and have to start over many times without spending alot for the game again.
Free download + bought CD-key, online. Since when did you have to buy an original box you can download the client, manuals etc, this isn't the 1980's and majority of mmorpg'ers have broadband anyway. *shrug*
Arrg dissappearing posts strike again,
Anyway the "good ole days" also brought a buck a minute to connect, and there were usualy tons of dissconctes items being lost inventory screw ups and plain ole current techonologies not handeling the problems.
Then there was a time you had folks try every new mmorpg that got released and were proud of there investments, with hope that one of those game coming out would be "the one".
Then we had Ao launch, problems swg, bugs, other dissappointments that came into the genera (horizons)....
There were those that bought both eq 2 and wow and were dissappointed in each, 100 bucks to find out neither were right for them...............
I think consumers will try the hyped ones, but to get them to stay passed that first few months or even the first month is the key factor now to sucess or failure.
I truely beleive it goes back to those that stuck with eq for years then daoc for a long long time realize what the "grind is" and have the idea been there done that. THere fore it takes more to "suck them in and then Keep them.
Keeping subscribers will be the big push in the current released games and future ones. Those with huge expectations will be dissapointed, those that just want to enjoy it may be pleasently surprised.
But there is also those that like pvp and those that do not like pvp. WHere as l 2 has a big pull else where not so much here. Put to many got to do chores, before play time comes in is also a problem for the causual gamers.....
if deveolpers actualy look at what is very a very big hit, learn from past mistakes there is always room for more, but continuing the same ole theme without adding anything new to the current genra, will give
potential subscribers well maybe not this one i can wait, for a free trial......................