Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
The Shot heard round the World (of Warcraft).
lostkoss
Member Posts: 149
This is a general gaming post that mentions World of Warcraft, no other intent except a bit of snark is intended and this post IS about general gaming. And gaming in general.
The following post is based on PURELY ANECDOTAL information and in fact is not any sort of attempt at a scientific evaluation.
I have noticed among my peers outside of gaming who have kids or a spouse or grandkids now that are into games that a certain conversation or two has been going on in their lives, and its been shared and chatted about quite a bit in my circle at least.
Two things keep reappearing in MY experience.
#1) People do not like DLC. People find being nickled and dimed to death extrememly annoying and will junk a car that starts to do that.My friends complain that most DLC is a scam and should be included in the game or not offered at all. After paying 60$ for a new game, its not cool to add another 50 in DLC, starting 3 weeks later.
An expansion is one thing, but I am starting to get extremely leery of most expansions as well. If its a full quality expansion that adds to the game and improves it exponentially , FINE. If it's just a tacked on crafting experience or a gaggle of new classes/races I am much less interested. Those are the things that should have been in all along.
My friends and family believe most ADDITIONAL DLC is a rip off.
#2) There is a re-evaluation of bills going on in households around the world or well at least in my neighborhood. One of the things I have heard several times that promts me to write this is that I have heard friends state that their "kids and/or huband/wife" want this new Star Wars game thats coming out but it cost 15$ a month but they are already paying for that Warcraft game.
Now here is the funny part of number two, and again is purely anecdotal, I have had more than 6 different people come at me about this , because they know I play games too. ALL of them have said to a ONE, that whoever their family member that is playing WoW said the exact same thing to them and I QUOTE.
" Oh, that game? I don't play that anymore, I havent for a few months. You can stop paying for it now."
They all looked at me like I was crazy when I said, "Yeah quitting can be hard."
Anyway, this is just a true story and a bit of personal oddity that I thought I would share.
Please do not take OFFENCE and find the NEED to GET ALL MODDY if there is something somehow inappropriate !! I apologize in advance for being so dumb as to want to possibly share my opinions here!~
Have a sense of humor, no need to get ALL MODDY ! 
A Simpson's quote shouldn't be worth a warning. You are lucky anyone is bothering to read this rag.
Comments
#1) Plenty of people love DLC. Tons of them.
#2) If you're that concerned with bills, stop playing mmo's and get a job. The money paid for a game vs the hours of entertainment is an amazing bargain.
if we are talking about DLC in p2p games, than yes - that's a scamm. Also item mall in p2p is a pure scamm. What are people paying for? Some minor content updates for the price of half the expansion?
Guild Wars 2 Youtube Croatian Maniacs
My Guild Wars titles
About #1, you really need to look specifically into which games people like the DLC's for and which games people do not. I personally dont mind dlc's that are fully thought out, but I hate paying 10 bucks for a DLC that adds 4 hours to the game. Thats absurd. I also think its greedy as hell when a studio puts out a game that has a DLC you can buy ON LAUNCH DAY. If its ready on launch then why the hell do you not include it in the game. The game is already $60 so why make me pay $70 for the full content at launch if you already have the content completed.
I am ok with DLCs that are for content that is fluff. ie Paradox likes to have DLC for more historically accurate sprites for certain culture groups in its games. That's fine. However, throwing out DLC that is vital to gameplay shortly after the release just feels like a way they could get the game out incomplete, then get a an extra 10 bucks for people to get what they should have in the first place.
Sent me an email if you want me to mail you some pizza rolls.
I would rather pay for DLC's and exansions than a monthy fee, in my opinion p2p is a scam actually its a pyramid scheme.
Explain to me how it's a pyramid scheme. I don't get it, and throwing around a term doesn't make it true (or false)
I don't think its a pyramid scheme or even a scheme at all. For (most) mmo's, that mothly subscription gives me acess to THEIR servers using THEIR bandwidth to transmit back to me information about other players stored on THEIR servers. It usually also gets me constant bug fixes and minor content patches.
I would never expect to get that for free without any catch (catch being a cash shop).
Did you even READ his post? More like tell your KIDS to get jobs and start paying for their OWN games. He wasn't complaining about paying monthly fees even.....hello?? He did mention DLC which, in my opinion, at least in the case of Bioware and Dragon Age: Origins was STUPIDLY expensive and worth far less than what was paid. So he's not the only one that doesn't like ALL DLC. It depends on if it's good content, that is if you have any common sense.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
although if you want a huge huge following....make it a pyramid scheme lol. if you sign someoen up for the game you get $1 a month of their sub see, and if they sign someone up under them you get .50 of that persons sub fee, and then under them .25. For 1.75 off of sub fees you could have people recruiting the CRAP out of EVERYONE.
I think this is a crazy idea, but it would be cool if you got in early
I hate the way of the MMO, it's no longer about exploring new worlds, making new friends, and getting super schwasted killing a dragon and hitting on your Guild master's daughter in ventrilo.
It's all about epic lewt, using others, playing solo, and having ungoldy expensive and ugly busts made of your character with the gear that they're wearing... which by the way will be replaced in a couple more weeks cause the top end game guild downed the lastest patch 2 hours after it went live while every one else was achievement farming for random pixelation on their screen that resembles an octopus fart.
DLC is being vastly overvalued at this point. That's why the big vendors are trying to get you to prepay for DLC while you're still giddy with "hawt new sexiness game" excitement. (Examples include LA Noire and COD Elite).
1. I don't mind paying for DLC if the original game is worth the money I paid for it. Unfortunately, many of the games being released for the pc these days are console-ports. I own a PS3, a Wii, and an XBox 360 with Kinect. If I want to play a console game, I'll buy a console game. 'nuff said.
2. MMOs, like all games, are time sinks. For some parents, paying $15 a month to keep your kid off the street is worth it. If you're lucky, your kid will have interests outside of playing video games all day. The downside, unfortunately, is that it costs a lot more to sign your kid up for hockey, baseball, or gymnastics, than it does to buy a 60 dollar game with a sub.
And, as far as WoW goes, the only reason I don't play it anymore is because the idiots at Blizzard still haven't figured out how to keep my account from getting hacked every 3 months. I've sub'd to many, many MMOs. Some of them (I'm looking at you, Eve.) I've even had multiple accounts on. And not once, in almost 15 years of playing MMOs, has one of my accounts been hacked.
Until WoW.
When those buggers decide to give me one of their "decoder ring" security fobs for free, I might reconsider. But I'm not paying them one. bloody. cent. for something that everybody else in the industry seems to be able to do for free, without any problem.
They do? Plenty of people rather pay for extra stuff then having it included for free?
DLC are getting annoying now, games like ME2 and DA have small parts of the games sold for a high price to earn extra money. DLCs are fine in a game that lives on them, like DDO does but I never met someone liking them in games like Mass effect 2, in fact I know several people who justified downloading the game from pirate bay instead of buying it just because of them.
Adding them in P2P games are a scam. First you buy the game and it's expansions, then you pay another 15 bucks a month. That is plenty of money, particularly since bandwidth and server costs have gone down a lot since the mid 90s and the first MMOs. Why can't the whole game be included in that?
DLCs are good in games that have no intial cost, after all needs the devs to live. But they are not fine in the most expansive games around.
I don't mind paying for DLC, so long as the quality is good. For example, RDR: Unead Nightmare added a TON of content and was practically a whole new game in and of itself. I don't regret spending $15 on it at all; it easily gave me as much, if not more entertainment than the base game did for $60.
Now, paying $5 for horse armor is another thing entirely...
Having recently reinstalled my copy of Dragon Age: Origins, purchased in a package that included a slew of DLC, I've had to deal with some trouble reinstalling extra content that came with it. In particular, the Warden's Keep DLC is widely known to work for most people one (I'll write this again, and in bold: one) time, despite being advertised as additional content that can be installed and reinstalled without any issue. Do a google search for "Dragon Age Wardens Keep DLC unauthorized" and you'll find a myriad of individuals who paid for this specific DLC, are using the same accounts in which it was purchased, but are unable to actually authorize the content through EA. I spent several hours working through developer provided walkthroughs to no avail, and even worked through several user or individually offered fixes that were just as successful. Why do I mention this here, though? Because DLC is a huge fucking headache when it doesn't work the way its supposed to, so if companies are going to focus so much effort and time into creating expansion based chapters to entice more sales, they need to be taking the proper steps to realize that it needs to be as simple and as painless as possible to reinstall these packages.
I hate DLC to begin with, don't get me wrong. It's extremely ass backwards to release a game that's been built as a shallow hub, that requires and prompts you in the game itself to purchase DLC that (in some cases) released the same day. Not only does it seem greedy to me, but it's slapping me right in the face after spending fifty to sixty dollars for a product that five or ten years ago would have provided somewhere upwards of forty hours of gameplay, and being prompted every time I meet a new NPC to buy the DLC for his specific quest (which, by the way, is a mere 200 hundred spacebucks).
What I'm getting at that is if you're going to force DLC down my throat, or provide shallow, unfinished experiences in the hopes that I'll spend more money to make that experience whole, you and your company can get fucked, especially if I can't reinstall or reuse said DLC whenever the hell I want to.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
I bought EA battlefield 2 when it first came out, probably paid $40 for it. I never bought any of the expansions. I normally don't buy any of the extra DL content. If its not with the original game, I don't need it. I played Oblivion, no extra expansions or download content. I played dragon age, no extra expansions or DL content.
Basically I don't really buy expansions or do much DLC. If I buy the game and its not included, then I don't need it.......
I've bought some gold games that had extra stuff in it, I play the main game and move on..... Like I bought Battle for middle earth anthology, included 1, 2, and rise of the witchking expansion. Even though I own the game, I played battle for middle earth 2, and nothing else. I didn't really finish the game either, I played it a few hours and moved on to something more interesting. Game wasn't challenging, if I remember correctly.
Warcraft III I never finished, was too difficult. Same with Heroes V. Its a happy medium between making a good game and one that is too difficult or too easy (not challenging). Dragon Age origins was challenging and pretty good. Its a little simplistic though.
==========================
The game is dead not, this game is good we make it and Romania Tv give it 5 goat heads, this is good rating for game.
I'm not seeing the connection between the title and the text.
You actually think some people rather pay another 50 bucks for something they would otherwise get for free?
I do know some people that are lazy and like to buy certain items instead of grinding them, but most DLC are just content that really should be included in the game.
As for the second thing, sure MMOs aren't that expensive but adding DLCs, box price and monthly fees are still a rip off. And telling people to get a job isn't exactly fair today, some countries (and states in the US) have huge economical problems today so getting jobs is harder now than 4 years ago before the crisis.
I have some problem seeing why I must pay monthly fees and boxes if the game sells DLCs as well, when I can play LOTRO or AoC with only DLCs?
Activision, EA and SOE are getting really greedy lately and will charge players all ways they can imagine while put more and more focus on cheaper content like raiding.
In general, most DLC is not worth it IMO. I would even go as far to say that it is a scam from a sales stand point. They typically get the kiddies who are using mom and dads credit cards to buy stuff that they don't really know the value in since they don't actually have a real income themselves. Companies know that this is often the case and they will pump stuff out in order to get the extra cash. For those adults who buy it well then they are typically big fans of the game and I don't have much of a problem with it. They know what they are paying for.
Personally, I don't do much DLC due based on principle. But occaisonally there is DLC that is worth it and deserves the extra cash.
The scam on DLC is the DLC that is AODC. Already on disc content. There are games that make you pay to unlock content in these games that are already on your retail discs. That is a rip-off. These companies will say that they release games then expect patches etc, but would it not just need to be in a patch if it is already on the disc? Why is it now all of a sudden DLC?
This just might be the most disconnected thing I have seen in a while. A pyramid scheme you say?
I do not mind high box price if I don't have DLC's. Especially with such vital things like new map for f.e. FPS game which everyone want to play.
I do not mind subscription if that guarantee me that I won't have cash shops.
That's allow me to have better track of my expenses. I know how much I spend, where I do on what.
With microtransactions it is easy to lose how much did you spend (5$ here , 7$ there ,etc) and what is worst:
I CANNOT assume how much I will have to spend in future If I will want to have access to full game.
I don't know how much and how often and how exactly priced will be DLC's.
I do not know (in mmorpg's) what's gonna be put in store next? What game changes will be made to fuel cash shop spending.
In times of crisis I also watch my expenses more closely. Microtransactions, cash shops and DLC's bring uncertainity to my expenses, since even if I pay upfront for box / sub I still don't know how much game creators will try to leech of me, if I would want to have complete game experience.
Ummm.......Im not sure he knows what a pyramid scheme is or maybe he does and we're just unenlightened as to his meaning.
But P2P is a scam. The justification for it has always been " To keep the servers running" or " So that we can continue to add content to the game as well as provide patches! "
False all around. Many mulitplayer games have servers, and its not required to pay a service charge for them. Cant count the slews of games that have patches and no charge. Content should be charged for. After it is made. If they are going to charge me before hand for content then they might as well have been charging me for it years before the game even releases. Thats not the way the industry works though, and it shouldnt for future content once a game has released.
P2P does one thing and one thing only. It lines the pockets of the publishers and or the developers. Thats it. You get nothing for you money except the right to play a game you've already purchased, and probably not cheaply at that. Especially if you bought it new.
Its like me going out and buying an arcade machine, that belongs to me. Except in order to play it, I have to insert quarters, and then once a month a guy comes into my house, and empties the machine. And forever after, Im inserting qaurters into an arcade cabinent I already paid for.
There's a reason the American arcade scene died and the reason for that was you could pay a one time fee and play the game at home with equal graphics. And the P2P model will eventually die as well once people wake up and stop supporting it. There's no reason to keep paying for a game you purchased. If you want to buy NEW things, like expansions or content thats something you are getting for your money.
Im amazed so many people get angry at cash shops (Im not a fan either), but at least with a cash shop you are buying something with your money. With a sub fee, you are buying nothing. Absolutely nothing. But game time to a game you've already bought. Give me the game for free and then charge me a monthly fee okay. Thats at least reasonable but also kind of crappy. But to charge me for a game box and then expect me to keep paying you for absolutely nothing? NO WAY.
Sub fees are an absolute lie. They're taking your money and giving you nothing in return. And they still charge you for expansions and extra content. Dont pay them. Id rather give 15 bucks to a homeless person than give it to greedy publishers and developers any day. The homeless person doesnt deserve it any more than they do, but at least he or she needs it more.
I've played WoW since late beta. I have six 85's (and some 60's and 70's). I have two accounts. One on the US realms, and one on the European realms (friend of mine moved to Ireland). In almost seven years, I have not had any problem what so ever with hacked accounts. I also have an authenticator on both accounts. If your account security isn't worth the $6 or 7 dollars it would take to purchase an authenticator, and lock down your account, perhaps this isn't your type of game?
I have a LOT of time and effort invested in my two, and I'll take any advantage to protect them I can get. Given the costs involved, I seriously doubt that Blizzard is making much, if anything off the authenticators. Yes, in an ideal world, they would provide one with the package. No doubt the bean counters threw a screaming tantum about the idea. All the business suits care about is the quarterly report.
As for DLC, I have no problem what so ever with paying for additions to games I enjoy. Content takes time/talent (money...) to produce. I'm not going to expect something for nothing. Paying the initial price gets one the content at launch. Anything created after that costs money to produce, and so I've no problem paying for it. This IS a business after all.
@ Corehaven
That's not entirely true. Up until recently subscriptions were buying you something, that something being all the content that was provided to be available in-game without the need of the mentioned cash shop.
Of course recently the lines are blurred since certain companies feel entitled to provide both venues.
Up to that point the difference between people was the amount of time they could (or were willing to invest) and how smart they were using that time to see in-game improvements. It seems that recently the time factor is no longer the only differentiating factor, since the shortcuts via the cash shop start to get legitimised by subscription based companies. I suppose that the decision to provide this option was based on two factors:
Companies decided they can't win the RMT third party war, so they might as well offer a legitimate venue for those willing to buy their shortcuts (and it seems that market is huge, despite the continuous war).
Tied to the previous point, companies decided they might as well make some extra money out of people willing to shortcut their way through the content.
I am assuming of course that said benefits are available ingame without the use of the cash shop, it just takes "normal" gaming to acquire them. If this is not the case, then in my opinion, the company providing a cash shop with benefits only for those that use it, has little concern for the longelivity of their game, which entitle us to have no interest in it at all.