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Most Expensive MMORPG? The winner is...DAoC?
Mordethh
Member Posts: 24
I'm playing the 14 day trial of DAoC and I'm impressed. It's a great game. BUT...it's an older game that recently raised it's subscription fee to match WoW and CoH, and that would be fine if it weren't for the fact that you also have to buy the expansions. Don't say you don't HAVE TO buy the expansions....because any serious player would. Exspecially since people keep inviting me to go to dungeons that I can't go to since I don't have the expansions.
So let me break this down into a easy to follow chart thingy.
Game Monthly fee Large Expansions
CoH pay FREE
Guildwars FREE pay
WoW pay FREE
DAoC pay pay
It's a great game. But I can't justify paying what seems unfair by comparison.
Comments
I was under the impression that the only game packs that they now sell contain most of the expansion pack included ???
e.g here in the uk you can order the complete pack online for 17.99 with the game, shrouded isles, trials of atalntis and catacombs included
I see you have WoW large expansions as free yet I don't think they've ever release one so how can you say they will be free?
Make a difference!
Sideswipe is correct - buying DAOC now buys you all back expansions as well, so... It's not that expensive. For ~$40-50 US you'll have all the DAOC expansions in hand.
As for future expansion packs you have to buy, well - WOW already has one in the works. NCSoft seems to be avoiding them with L2 and CoH, but that's the exception, not the rule. DAOC adds new content every two weeks; they're actually better about adding new free content than WOW is, in my opinion, but then they have a lot more experience in the business of running an MMORPG than Blizzard does, too.
Owyn
Commander, Defenders of Order
http://www.defendersoforder.com
I would point out some of your flaws here. CoH has CoV. This is a standalone product which is rather cool. However you will need to own both of them if you want to have villans/heros fighting each other. So while not a true expansion it is close enough to one. Further since it is a seperate game I would expect the $50 price tag and a monthly fee.
GW is not an MMORPG so we can skip that.
WoW will seel you the expansions, sorry but they aren't going to be free. If you are considering the Battlegrounds to be a free expansion I will point out to you that it is simply finishing the game out. They are going to have a retail expansion out that will cost money. I would also like to point out that WoW charges taxes in some places and DAOC does not charge taxes. So in at least a few places you are going to play more.
DAOC you do not have to buy the expansions if you do not want to. If you are on the 14 day trial you can just stick with that. You can get the game in the retail store with all of the expansions for $40-$50 in the US. The price will probably drop soon when they have a combined box for all of the expansions. So DAOC with all of the expansion for the same cost or less than WoW.
But if you want to look at what you are getting free. Well for those that didn't buy the first expansion they finally gave it to them free. Last year they had TWO FREE LARGE EXPANSIONS. The first was the addition of player housing the second was totally redoing the RvR system, added 1 new zone, and more BG.
This year FOR FREE they upgraded the art for all of the original/first expansion zones. While every expansion also upgraded the graphics, this was the first time the art work was redone to make them comparable with the latest expansion. Those who do not have the expansions can now get the graphics upgraded for free for whatever expansion they are using to the newest graphics. So everything is nice a pretty without costing you any more. The last patch and the one upcoming will also make major additions to the game for free. Including changes in the guild system, introduction of RvR missions, and many other large significant content for free.
Mythic gives DAOC every year 1-2 free expansions and 1 retail expansion. Almost every other game just offers you a retail expansion and that is it. Or int he case of SoE many retail expansions every year.
So you should really know what you are talking about before posting on these boards.
Nah, I don't think DAoC is considered the most expensive. I think you should go check out EQ2 before you say that...
want more than 4 char slots? must buy them. They already plan to have 3 expansions planned for this year which you have to pay for. On top of that they willo also include adventure packs that are downloadable, but you have to pay for them as well. They plan to tease you with intros into a dungeon and once you go through an instance...INSERT CREDIT CARD HERE...
After John Smedely put out his public notice about this back in January I unsubscribed and uninstalled EQ2. I would have to be a DIE HARD EQ2 fan to think I am going to pay more than a monthly subscription. Plus for them to already have a plan for 3 expansions within the year sounds more like they are thinking up any way they can to dig deeper in our pockets than provide us with valuable entertainment.... I will never buy a SOE product again...
My final words......Most Expensive MMORPG? The winner is ..... SOE. They make SUCKERS our of all their players.
WOWs expansions will NOT be free. Just remember the gank patch and battlegrounds should have been in the game to start with so you've already paid for them and continue to pay them to put those missing features in.
Surely EQ is the most expensive with their 1000s of expansions.
Well, I think the first post is fairly deceptive. DAoC HAS included free expansions, and charging a monthly fee and charging for expansions is pretty standard for MMORPGs.
I would still agree that DAoC costs more than most MMORPGs though, because to compete in RvR, a certain number of people in the game need buff bot accounts. If you want to do any soloing, you really need buffs to compete (of course, you can always make friends with someone who has a bot), and even groups in Midgard need an extra buff bot since a single shaman can't buff a whole group. Even with that, I think DAoC is worth twice the money for me since I am paying for two DAoC accounts instead of a single account for a different game.
That's why I put question marks in my Subject title....to show that I wasn't sure. You should really learn how to read before posting on these boards
.
I have not seen Catacombs included with the past expansions...and I've looked. As far as I can tell. You need to buy the Platinum package which has all PAST expansions....and then buy Catacombs.
City of Villians is a seperate game. You can own it only and play....and if you own both you only pay one monthly fee. And the free expansions that CoH gives are HUGE. And they've given 4 or 5 so far.
Expensions should be free, however...no old server should get any expension ever.
So you have to either start a new toon, or pay a transfer fee to the server with the expension(which is like paying for the expension).
That way new players only pay the game and start on the newest server with full expension and 80% of the players pay the fees to change servers and experience new communities if they didnt like the old server. If for any reason some players dont want to ''evolve'', they can stick to old servers who are expensionless. If an expension is unpopular, you can also offer the new expensions on some new servers that skip an expension or 2(so if a lot of player remain in the second expension and never buy the 3rd and the 4th come out, you may have some new servers with only expension 2 and 4, not the 3rd...and so on).
Lot of work, but less shipping and less middle men. Such a system would need a page accessible from the character sheet to show info about server transfer, where the devs encourage you to move, and lot of charts and tables there...info is good.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
What gets me about DAoC is that while a really fun game to play you MUST have the previous expansions in order to use a new expansion. So if you are out of the loop for a while and come back and expansions have been released you are going to spend a lot of money.
I have the original and Shrouded Isles. I never got Trials of Atlantis since I didn't see it doing anything for me since I wasn't max level. Highest character was level 40 Ranger or level 38 on Merlin. Now I would have loved to play again to try out Catacombs since they had things for all levels it seems plus instance areas. Now in order to play that I still have to buy Trials, plus Catacombs. Having to by something I'd never use nor like just to play something I like. I love how EQ1 did expansions, same for Anarchy Online. You just don't have access to the areas to the expansions you don't buy but access to the ones you do.
Past expansions being required was something I never liked. Same for the graphics upgrade. Never given a choice last time I checked if you wanted it or not. You just got it with the payed expansions with no option to switch over or not. I felt nothing was wrong with the original version and the upgrade is nice but a choice would be good, especially if the new engine doesn't run well on your system and you don't want to be forced to run out and upgrade certain parts to keep playing. So in some ways I can see and understand DAoC being called the most expensive MMORPG. It's a game that does require you to spend a LOT of money at times, more so then any other game.
Hell with EQ1, you can have the original Trilogy or original game and be just fine. Though that isn't a problem with EQ1 since SOE actually includes all of the expansions and original game in one package, all but the really recent ones and even then they are really optional since you don't even have to get them at all if you don't want to.
EQ2 started with 4 character slots, then added 2 more. Station Subscribers get 4 more slots, but they also get the adventure packs free, and get to play all the other SOE games. While it is a bit more than the monthly fee for the one game, it's really a good deal if you're playing any of their other games.
As for 3 expansions planned for this year? Are you sure that's right? They've only announced the one for Sept. I believe it was said there would be two expansions per year and 2-4 adventure packs per year.
Regardless if you like SOE or EQ2, I don't think there are many (if any) MMORPGs which can compare with EQ2 for the amount of content they have in that game ... and it's only been six months since it's launch. In the last six months, they have added so much stuff to that game. The only other game that I think has done it better has been AC1 with it's monthly content updates. I have yet to hear of a game that publishes regular monthly updates (complete with additional content, quests, items, etc.) better than AC1 has done in the past.
As for CoH, while the updates are of a good size, the time between updates I feel are too long.
DAoC, at least during that first year, there were no true content updates ... the PvE world was static and boring. Nothing ever really happened.
I must have been spoiled with AC1.
I played DAoC for a few years. It's a decent game for a mmorpg, but what kept me paying was the pvp. Next to GW, DAoC is the best pvp mmorpg experience I have ever had. Though I eventually quit playing it because the pvp was dumbed down too much. I guess, if you don't like having to think about your pvp and prefer the running with the crowd thing, it may be worth it. There is also a huge time sink in there that GW doesn't have. The only reason I compare it GW is because of the pvp though. I think people who don't care about pvp are still better off playing a different game.
To PvP competitively you are pretty much forced to buy an extra account for a buffbot, so of course it's the most expensive.