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Another pay to play boooo!
FonzyBear
Member Posts: 49
in Tabula Rasa
We all need to boycott pay to play games. The companies can run these games without charging monthly fee. Greed is why companies charge monthly fees.
Comments
I disagree in the respect that it depends on the company involved, and the average size of the expansion. All of us expect that bugs and tweaks are considered part of the package. That stuff needs to be fixed or it will either be 1) exploited, or 2) dropped.
But a company has to have some kind of incentive to put the time into coding whole new content instead of directing those resources into all new games. I don't know of any company out there that does this just to lose money. No harm no foul. It's just business.
So we pay a monthly fee to cover maintenance on the servers we all play on, salaries for the programmers that install all new content, monsters (w/ new A.I. scripts), weapons and equipment, events, ect.
Now if I were paying a subscription on a game that the developer never improved and it got stagnant? I'd kiss that account goodbye in a heartbeat.
Sure there are developers out there that run no-pay niche mmo's out of the kindness of their own heart, but most likely they do it for the love of what they do, and I'm pretty sure they aren't making running a business with it.
All in all, I think that a reasonable subscription fee is a fair trade for a continually expanding, dynamic environment to play in.
Next time you go see a movie in a theatre, ask them if they'll let you in for free or you'll boycott Hollywood, then enjoy your walk home.
They would charge for expansions. Any fixing of broken things would be part of the money brought in for that content.
Again I've determined from looking at a number of the big time poplular MMOs that financially they still turn a profit if you remove the income from the monthly fees collected. Thus charging $30-50 per content package (chapter, expansion or whatever you want to call them) is all that is needed to cover expenses and still turn a profit.
This is true of any game if nothing new is added or broken content not repair people soon start to give up the more % of their income the purchase the quiker they will go.
They know that having a monthly fee is just greedy so its not really kindness of their own heart its that they have some sense of moral value it not ripping of the consumers in the name of profits. There could be some totally free to play games that are barely paying for the game but if they weren't profiting they'd soon start charging a one time purchase of the chapter or expansion if they do expansions.
If all you were paying was the monthly fee this would make sense buy you are paying $30-50 per chapter and expansions on top of it. Of course it would also make sense if suddenly no more copies were sold ever again. Because at that point if they couldn't cover operating expenses then they'd stop the game. Your movie example is not a valid comparison I see this used often as an argument for paying a monthly fee. However I'm not asking for a game to be completely free. What I'm saying is that the monthly fees are because of greed and no need.
The movie example would be valid if it were that you buy the ticket which grants me to watch the film but for every 15 minutes I sit in the theater I must pay an additional but smaller fee to continue watching the film. People would stop going to the movies if that happened.
Well I agree that if you are paying a monthly fee AND for expansions, that's a bit much. However Other NCSoft releases such as L2 don't charge for expansions. You're already paying your monthly fee to maintain content and access. Chronicle expansions are part of the package, no additional cost required.
So is that considered greedy or a fair rate?
I was unaware that the other games under ncsoft were continually adding expansions and new content without chaging more than the monthly fee. So is that all there is then a monthly fee for the games under ncsoft? In that case this in not greedy if they are making new expansions and chapters at least once a year. I was under the impression it was like all other MMOs and it cost you like $30-50 but mostly close to $50 and then pay $13-15 a month and then pay $30-50 for an expansion at least once a year.
If you think about it the monthly fee would be as if you were paying $150-180 for a game title at the store. I understand however that it costs money to operate the game so I don't expect a game to run on no continued income. But even at $13-15 a month may very well be over the top. The pricing of the monthly fee ncsoft titles with the knowledge you provided that you don't pay for expansions brings it more reasonable. As long as they continue to provide new chapters and expansions content at no cost then they aren't being greedy but may be able to lower the montly fee a bit to say $9 a month. Should still turn millions in profits.
But when you take WoW as an example you pay $50 for the game box and then at best $13 a month after. As of sept 2005 they had 4.5 million subscribers. Thats $702 million a year at $13 a month. I'm not even going to count the profits made off the box sales. But lets assume that not all these people subscribed every month or stopped and take an average of 1 million users a month. Thats $156 million in one year. There is no way its costs that much to run the game. Al of NCsofts expenses totals $340 million and this includes all 6 of their currently running MMOs and the expenses for upcoming titles that are currently not bringing in revenue. There is no way it cost half of that to run just one MMO. Thus those games like WoW that charge a monthly fee and also charge you for the game and chapters/expansions afterwards are doing so out of greed and not need.
just as a general rule... and you can look it up if you want...
they dont turn a profit on box sales... the price on the box goes to game development, distribution, and promotions....
in essense, without monthly fees, MOST mmos would be distributed "at cost", meaning there would be no direct profit to the companies developing and publishing the game.... merely covering the cost of making it.
there are a few exceptions, but that is true for most companies. the monthly fees are, for the most part there to pay for two things... server/game matainence, and game/quality of life improvements... keeping the current game healthy and viable in the market, and adding content to maintain fan base.
I'm sorry but when your looking at a companies revenue it is included in that. However for the sake of my argument I was ignoring the revenue from box sales. If a company didn't profit from box sales then all games before MMOs came out were out of the kindness of the companies hearts and they all lost money giving us games like Farcry, SW:KoToR, Warcraft I, II, Starcraft, The Sims 1 & 2, etc. All those games its just the box sale so yes there is profit in the box sale. Total revenue less expenses = profit. Development, distrobution, and promtion all fall in expenses. When I refered to the cost of running the game I'm talking everything including the development costs, ditrobution and promotion along with equipment, bandwidth, etc since in financial statements all of this stuff is in the expenses. Heck even the building and electric bill, water bill, gas bill, and such are all in the companies bottom line total expenses. Which further strengthens my proof that games like WoW especially WoW need no monthly fee. I've even entertained the idea of what if they did then it does not need to be 1/2 of what they charge.
Here is an example. If 1 million people subscibe to a game for 12 months each year no more and no less over the course of each year there would be $60 million in revenue from just the monthly fee. Now lets look at Guild Wars for an example of revenue earned from box sales. $54 million in revenue from just Guild Wars over 1.2 million sold. If I assume that expenses of the game are an exact 1/6th of their expenses thats just enough to cover costs. However in reality we know that this is not accurate. Lets look at their biggest two games Lineage I & II, $220 million in revenue about half of total revenue. So lets assume that half their expenses is the total for both L I & II. Thats $165 million for both $82.5 million each.
Now Based on statistics released by them Lineage has a monthly access count of 2 million users. So lets now bump my hypothetical 1 million average to 2 million for WoW and assume no more or no less that that for a full year. We already know based on info from sept. 2005 that WoW had 4.5 million subscribers. 2 million at $13 per month would be $312 million. Even if we assume it costs twice as much to run WoW with 2 milllion subscribers each month compared to Lineage we are talking $147 million in profit. Not counting the revenue from the box sales. If those 2 million payed $5 per month and we go with the more acurate operating cost of $82 million there is a ~$40 million profit.
You can't look at these numbers and tell me that paying $13 or more a month isn't greed. And can also see that its possible that the monthly fee for ncsoft titles could even be lowered to ~$8-9 a month and still turn a profit in the millions.
Why bother publishing a game then?
But in fairness I do think the $15 a month average is getting to high. Ya, I know it is ~$0.50 a day, but even considering that there are few games people are getting what they pay for. For now I am thinking ~$10 a month is more appropiate.
Why? First of all, a lower cost would attract more players and shouldn't be a massive revenue hit over all...well unless the game isn't doing well anyway. Second, there are free to play online (box sale games) that have added more content than some MMOs within a year after release (but the one time buy cost a $50 average, but the MMO cost ~$230 for the same year o.o). Third, it NEEDS to drop in average price to save the MMO genre. What? Well, as long as any company can release broken game and still take in $15 a month per player for a while (and almost all MMOs last atleast 6 months with a decent player base it seems) as long as they plan their budget around 6 months of success crappy games will just keep coming out one after another. As we can see now crap games that have a little success spawn more crap games. As far as I am concerned a successful game could make income off mini exapnsions (as much as I hate to say it but....) like EQ2 has or such, every 2-3 months $5 a player. It is the ideal income model, short term development to make players happy and success funds more short term development between major expansions.
Oh and thats where another thing comes into play. People are more likely to buy more than one of the monthly fee games and alternate between them if there are no fees. They won't feel obligated to dedicate all their gaming for a month because they payed the fee. Thus you'd make more money off the person because of reduced bandwidth and other cost associated with the person dedicating more time due to the fee.
But when you take WoW as an example you pay $50 for the game box and then at best $13 a month after. As of sept 2005 they had 4.5 million subscribers. Thats $702 million a year at $13 a month. I'm not even going to count the profits made off the box sales. But lets assume that not all these people subscribed every month or stopped and take an average of 1 million users a month. Thats $156 million in one year. There is no way its costs that much to run the game. Al of NCsofts expenses totals $340 million and this includes all 6 of their currently running MMOs and the expenses for upcoming titles that are currently not bringing in revenue. There is no way it cost half of that to run just one MMO. Thus those games like WoW that charge a monthly fee and also charge you for the game and chapters/expansions afterwards are doing so out of greed and not need.
You have used the word "greed" several times now ...How are you defining that? The business of business is profit. Gaming companies are a business. Their reason for existing is to make as much profit as possible. If you do not like the pay to play business model, then by all means take your business elsewhere. But use of the word "greed" is subjective.
Well Fonzybear - I agree with you.
That is why I am playing Guild Wars - also a NCSOFT published game. No monthly fee and you just pay for the box, and buy the expansions when they come out. They seems to be able to make a profit doing that, which is why Sony is now working on a fee-free MMORPG.
We dont know yet what the monthly fee for Tabula Rasa will be, but in one of the recent GDC interviews Richard Gariott did say each expansion would include a new world, and would be covered by the monthly fee. If this is the case I would be happy to pay a monthly fee.
I am not a fan of the buy the game, buy the expansion and pay the monthly fee model. Mainly because I have a limited budget for game purchases per year. Plus the fact games in Australia cost double what they do in the U.S or Europe where there is a larger market.
I honestly dont think NCSoft can afford to lower their monthly fee. The last report I saw they only made $20 million profit (not sure if that was for a quarter or a year). Which is not much for a company running a number of games, maintaining all those servers and funding development on several more games.
I should also note they do have some package pricing - so I think for your $15 a month you get City of Heroes and the Villain game (2 games for $15), these are infact seperate games.
In another interview Richard Gariott talked about how NCSoft has numerous payment models for MMORPG's that cover the full range of payment models, and also not just standard fantasy RPG so I think they are doing a great job.
I should also note my total MMORPG experience to date is Guild Wars.
Originally posted by _Shadowmage
(...)That is why I am playing Guild Wars - also a NCSOFT published game. No monthly fee and you just pay for the box, and buy the expansions when they come out. They seems to be able to make a profit doing that, which is why Sony is now working on a fee-free MMORPG.(...)
Actually GW-section is in the reds according to the last financial report (link is somewhere in GW-forums). That was whowever before the factions preview, could have sold more by now.
For a company its easy: whichever gives the most profit will be chosen. (Notice that publicity can be seen as future profit in the case of Guild Wars since its always mentioned nowadays when subscriptions are discussed, (seen more = more sales)).
I am myself also a fan of the GW-subscription system but I dont think (imho) that it will be used for bigger mmorpg:s because the pay per month-system is so much more profitable.
(Dont know how the "korean free-to-play but buy items for real money"-games are doing though).
[Edit: Hmm so GW is a big profit, dohh. Well that puts a spin on things regarding NcSoft-subscriptions.]
I think its also a lot to do with the underlying technology. Guild Wars is a game built on minimising costs - streaming technology, instances to reduce server requirements. If this kind of game was acceptable to everyone then we could push to get away from pay-per-month.
However most people prefer more depth to their RPG than Guild Wars offers - more content, less instancing, deeper crafting, auction halls etc. Less instancing means the servers can only support say 10,000 people which means more hardware, more staff etc. That means the box sales model isn't profitable for those games so they need the pay per month.
I was looking at Heroes Journey - they haven't formally announced their payment method but there is talk it may be a pay-per-month and pay per character model. So $15 a month gets you a single character, then another $2 per month for each additional character. Personally I would hugely object to this - I mean after buying the box, then paying a reasonable amount per month, then having to pay for additional characters seems a bit insulting.
Guild Wars gives 4 characters per account, I have 3 kids who want to play as well so we bought another 2 copies.
How many characters do other MMORPG's give per account? I hope if I am paying a monthly fee for TR it will give at least 4 as I like to experiment with the different classes, help other people, run around exploring etc.
You guys come up with all these complex reasons but it's really simple: if people are willing to pay $15 per month, companies will charge $15 a month. If you don't want to pay it, you don't have to, but that doesn't mean there are people out there who don't want to pay $15 to play a good game.
It's only simple as long as people are willing to pay $15/month.
When many people don't want to pay that, the complex reasons _Shadowmage mentioned become important. If you are a game publisher, can you sell to those people and still make a profit?
Depends a lot on the amount of support and server infrastructure your game needs.
Counterstrike works without a monthly fee, because the users run the servers and Valve only provides a "matchmaking" service that allows players to find open servers. Guild Wars seems to rely a lot on the players' computers as well. Less obviously than in Counterstrike, but I guess it also keeps the ressource usage on the publisher's servers rather low.
Everquest might not work that way, because server and support costs for a trulypersistant world are too high.
So the nature of your game does make a difference
I'm sorry but when your looking at a companies revenue it is included in that. However for the sake of my argument I was ignoring the revenue from box sales. If a company didn't profit from box sales then all games before MMOs came out were out of the kindness of the companies hearts and they all lost money giving us games like Farcry, SW:KoToR, Warcraft I, II, Starcraft, The Sims 1 & 2, etc. All those games its just the box sale so yes there is profit in the box sale. Total revenue less expenses = profit. Development, distrobution, and promtion all fall in expenses. When I refered to the cost of running the game I'm talking everything including the development costs, ditrobution and promotion along with equipment, bandwidth, etc since in financial statements all of this stuff is in the expenses. Heck even the building and electric bill, water bill, gas bill, and such are all in the companies bottom line total expenses. Which further strengthens my proof that games like WoW especially WoW need no monthly fee. I've even entertained the idea of what if they did then it does not need to be 1/2 of what they charge.
Here is an example. If 1 million people subscibe to a game for 12 months each year no more and no less over the course of each year there would be $60 million in revenue from just the monthly fee. Now lets look at Guild Wars for an example of revenue earned from box sales. $54 million in revenue from just Guild Wars over 1.2 million sold. If I assume that expenses of the game are an exact 1/6th of their expenses thats just enough to cover costs. However in reality we know that this is not accurate. Lets look at their biggest two games Lineage I & II, $220 million in revenue about half of total revenue. So lets assume that half their expenses is the total for both L I & II. Thats $165 million for both $82.5 million each.
Now Based on statistics released by them Lineage has a monthly access count of 2 million users. So lets now bump my hypothetical 1 million average to 2 million for WoW and assume no more or no less that that for a full year. We already know based on info from sept. 2005 that WoW had 4.5 million subscribers. 2 million at $13 per month would be $312 million. Even if we assume it costs twice as much to run WoW with 2 milllion subscribers each month compared to Lineage we are talking $147 million in profit. Not counting the revenue from the box sales. If those 2 million payed $5 per month and we go with the more acurate operating cost of $82 million there is a ~$40 million profit.
You can't look at these numbers and tell me that paying $13 or more a month isn't greed. And can also see that its possible that the monthly fee for ncsoft titles could even be lowered to ~$8-9 a month and still turn a profit in the millions.
You need to understand something Fonzy. Most MMOs cost far more to develop than an ordinary game. With many MMOs you are taling millions of dollars. I think in the case of Star Trek Online the initial investment figure was rumored to be over $11 million (US). That is an insane amount of money and far more than your average cost for a PC or XBox or PS2 game. You also have to take into account that in general MMOs do not sell nearly as many copies as an ordinary game. Yes the MMO market is growing, but on average these games only sell a few hundred thousand copies. WoW is an exception yes, but virtually every other MMO doesn't come anywhere near the sub numbers that WoW has. Before WoW 500k players was considred a lot in all but a select few Korean MMOs. So some of these games would never make any profit if they didn't charge per month. Hell some of them might not even break even.
Consider this: Lets say an average MMO comes along and does fairly well. That would be about 250k subs. Even at $50 (US) per box that is only $12,500,000 (US). That is not big money when you consider the game might have cost $10 million to develop. That $10 million for development might not even include marketing, distribution, and advertisment costs. It certainly doesn't include the cost of maintaining and providing servers which is substantial. It also doesn't include the cost of keeping a development team on staff for the game fixing bugs and creating new content to be releases in patches. MMOs are not like your average game. When a company releases a console game that is it. They wash their hands of it. There is no new content added and no bug fixes. Even with an ordinary online game, typically they are not paying for servers. The games are generall hosted locally by the players particiapting in a particular match. Keeping an MMO running is expensive. Without montly fees many of these games would never be able to exist. WoW is an expection to the rule because of its insane popularity. Most MMOs can never even dream of that kind of success.
Lineage2 is also another expection to the rule and that is because Lineage and Lineage2 are both played widely in Asia. Most MMOs never have any asian market penetration. Also keep in mind that MMOs don't work the same way in Asian markets. In Asian markets there is no such thing as a montly subscription. Most Asian MMO gaming is done in internet cafes where people pay for every minute of online time. So would you rather that approach? You don't play from your house you need to go out to a public cafe and pay for each minute of your online access?
In terms of Guild Wars, well Guild Wars is not your typical MMO. Most MMO gamers wouldn't even consider Guild Wars a true MMO, rather some kind of hybrid between regular online gaming and MMOs. Something more akin to D2 perhaps. Guild Wars gets around the cost of maintaining and proving many servers because 95% of the game is instanced and not static like other MMOs. Guild Wars is like a glorfied Battlenet in that regard.
Now is $15 (US) to much to pay each month? I don't know, perhaps it is. However that is what people appear willing to pay. What would yo expect a game company to do charge less than people are willing to pay and lose revenue? Why would they do that? They are in business to make money, as much money as possible. They are not looking to simply get by with the least amount of profit possible.
Two things are certain though. Many MMOs couldn't get by without subscriptions and many of those that could get by without montly subscriptions would be worse because of it. Without money flowing in each month you could forget about new content in patches from 99% of the companies behing these games. The second thing is, a boycott is not likley. The people who play MMOs seem perfectly willing to spend the money each month to play. You get an occasional "I will not pay to play," but to be honest those type of people are few and far between.
BTW SOE is not working on a free MMO. That is a distortion of the facts. SOE is working on a game that will operate in a similar fashion to Second Life. The very basic ability to log into the game "may" be free, but SOE will be charging players to access the "full game." I have heard it refered to as the velvet rope policy. You let everyone in at a basic level. You then show them what is possible at the next tier, but don't let them actually experience it unless they are willing to pay more. You thus develop many tiers of gaming, and force players to buy their way into each tier in order to experience the entire game. You are still going to be paying for the game, it is just another way of doing it. It is like going to a carnival or local fair. You can see all the fun people are having at the games and on the rides, but if you want to do more than just look you have to pay more to take part.
I disagree too with you FonzyBear . Free to play game are all shity. Bad graphic, no quest, everyone is identical (4 skin if you lucky), server suck, etc. Keep a mmorpg online cost alot of money. Especialy for this game. Good graph and alot of people working on it. You have to pay people working on it.
Anyway. I'm waiting for Tabula Rasa for a long time now. Since the announcment. If this game is good, i certainly gonna pay for it.
You obviously havent played GUild Wars then. NIce graphics, lots of quests - 12 skins. Not that I am claiming this to be a full on mmorpg, but as a way to get new players into the genre I think its a great idea.
I am looking forward to playing Tabula Rasa as my first paying mmorpg.
I also think its great that NCSoft are willing to try out different business models with different games.
- Guild wars free - make money from box sales and selling 2 expansions a year
- Tabula Rasa - box sale + monthly fee - free expansions
- Others with a monthly fee + box
- Group fee for multiple games.
I was reading an article that Ensemble Studios are considering making a MMORPG and their CEO was saying he thinks $15 monthly fee is not enough and players should pay more.
No, they can't. And no, it isn't. Monthly fees pay for servers, bug fixes, added content, salaries and rent. If you don't want to pay a monthly fee, go check out Guild Wars. No pervasive world, just a bunch of instances linked to chat rooms.
Can't wait for Tabula Rasa!
I agree check out Guild Wars. Its fully instanced this gives it.
- A story. Imagine that a mmorpg with a story
- you can adventure without all the annoying idiots you get in other games
- Almost no downtime.
- No queues or waiting for hours to get on to play
- The obvious no monthly fee
- Balanced PvP, based on your skill as a player rather than how long you have been playing or what uber gear you have.
- Everyone plays on the same servers, you arent limited to the 10,000 players who can fit on a server like some other game, you can meet and play with people from all over the world.
But Fonzybear you get what you pay for, and since they dont have as much income they do need to do things to lower their costs - like instances, smaller areas to explore, not as much content, simplistic carfting system etc.
I do feel they need to charge at least something but 14.99 is just insane and some games are just not worth paying 14.99 for.. The problem is mmorpgs have become part of pop culture (or is at least in the process) and when somthing seeps into pop culture the men in suits milk it untill it is bone dry then move onto the next trend. I mean I saw SWG on that bloody trading spouses show and little punk kids talking about mmorpgs at mcdonalds, I dont see much of a future for mmorpgs really and I think it will just be a slow death from here.
LMFAO! That must be the best post I've ever seen on this site!
Now as far as the price of the box. Companies do turn a profit on the box sale. Otherwise there would be no video games at all even online ones or the price per box would be so high nobody would buy them.
Someone else mentioned that guild wars has no fee because the engine doesn't cost as much to run as a normal MMO that charges $15/month to play. This is in fact false. A statement was made about that. It revealed that the cost of running and maintaining Guild Wars costs just as much as pay subscribed MMOs do. If you look at the costs and revenue for Guild Wars compared to other MMOs like WoW then concider then the count of players online monthly. Run the math and you will find this to be true.
Instances in Guild Wars were not designed as a cost effective tool. They were designed to eliminate the griefing and such associated with having everyone able to be in the exact same spot. Thus no boss camping, no drop stealing, kill stealing, spot camping so others can't finish as quest because they are killing all the stuff for the quest etc.
As far as free to play sure many of them are crappy but not because they are free to play but because the people coming up with the stuff just plain suck at video game design. Stip away the style of looks, the style of classes, and the style and genre of the world and every pay to play and free to play MMO is exactly the same kill x thing x times for 98% or more of the quests and grind for 1000s of hours to max level.
But anyways there isn't much point in continuing to argue the point about the other MMOs since those countering me don't want to look at the facts. But to finalize this post since someone didn't like my choice or word "greed" I'll define it for you: "An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth." A greedy company is one who charges more in order to get a higher profit when their profit is already or can be big without it. The finacial statements show this for many of the MMOs.
I disagree too with you FonzyBear . Free to play game are all shity. Bad graphic, no quest, everyone is identical (4 skin if you lucky), server suck, etc. Keep a mmorpg online cost alot of money. Especialy for this game. Good graph and alot of people working on it. You have to pay people working on it.
Anyway. I'm waiting for Tabula Rasa for a long time now. Since the announcment. If this game is good, i certainly gonna pay for it.
Gfx bashing when it comes to games just makes me sick... the best gfx in the world can not make up for a bad gaming experience, while a great gaming can lack any trace of good graphics at all...
Having said that my reasons for not liking most free games is cause of the idiot crowd they attract. Altho there are alot of free games out there that have alot of potential...
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth." - Henry Mencken
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?" - Wizard of Oz
So you're telling me that game publishers are mainly interested in obtaining a maximum profit, in accordance with current market trends!?!?!!!??11
O noes!! We must Protest
lol how naive.
The overwhelming success of the WoW business model will ensure that your boycott will travel about as far as the end of this thread.
All the well formulated arguments you can muster will amount to brightly polished brass on the Titanic.
However I will wish you the best of luck.
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Eliot