"Paying a monthly Fee is stupid" - No..no it's not.

[Merkavar]

if you play enough hours in that month $15 is cheap as bru.

$15 is the same price as a movie and popcorn in most places, movies are like 2 hours long so if you play 2 hours or more a month its better value than a movie.

 

[NooNameLeft]

I get what you're saying but I spent hundreds of hours on Team Fortress 2 and
I only paid 20$ for it.

 

[Thunderlot]

I actually completely agree with this. I thought I'd save money by playing a f2p game but in the end instead of $15 per month for a p2p I ended up spending $200 per month on end game items and such. Most f2p games I notice, especially once you get to end game items, require you to pay for them even to be able to compete in pvp. You need costumes and other time limit items just to be okay at it let alone good at it but to do that it costs even more money. Sometimes I swear they should change the name from free to play to pay to win.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

The thing is not the 15$ a month, it the 40$ for the newly release "big update" for that same game. yes I talking about expansion. They already make a nice profit chunk with all the 15$ a month why in the hell don't they sell us that expansion for way less.
In calculation, for World of Warcraft, they could have upped the cost of the montly fee by 1$ and gave us BC, WotLK and Cata almost free by then.

 

[Nooners]

I can understand paying the $15 if you play WoW or CoH regularly, but for someone like me who only plays DDO once in a rare while, it makes more sense to use a F2P method. At least from a gaming standpoint.

 

[Layzor]

Two words: Guild Wars

 

[cp.06]

Because when I can buy other, in my opinion better, games for $15, and enjoy them for the same amount of game time I'd spend on an MMO then I see no point. I'd rather play interesting, new and unique experiences every month, rather than limiting myself to one mind-numbingly dull game over and over.

Pre-Flame: I am referring only to WoW here. I know there are other MMO's, but none of them really interest me (Except for DC Online, but even that is only a 'maybe'). Primarily because I've never seen one with a decent combat system. The majority of MMOs all try to copy WoW's combat, and the combat in WoW is just downright awful. If a game can't get what I'm gonna be doing the majority of the time (in this case, fighting) right, then I'm not going to play it.

 

[Erana]

Whenever I'm reading articles about MMOs or topics about MMOs on this forum I always see some familiar words.

"This game looks cool, but I'm not paying $15 to play a game I already bought."

"15 Dollars a month!!! That's ridiculous, I paid for the game once, let me play it!!"

"MMOS are Ripoffs!!"

"LOSERS!! PAYEING $$$ TO PL4Y a GAEM. U AINT L33T!"



Are these people that mathematically challenged?


When you pay for a regular game you get a certain amount of content for a certain amount of money. Let's take Dragon Age for Example. If you do everything in the game once, you get about 40-50 hours of gameplay. Yes you can replay it, but for the most part, there is only 40-50 hours of new content. So if the game costs $50, that's a dollar per hour of gameplay.

Now if you take an MMO, you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay. PvP, crafting, leveling, raiding, etc. Even if you only play a couple days a week, the dollar per gameplay hour ratio is way way way higher than a normal game.


So the "Ripoff" that people claim is not even close to true. The sad thing about this is that companies are taking advantage of this stupidity and going with "free to play" games. This gets the anti-monthly fee guys addicted to a game because it's free, and then charge them crazy prices for in game items and gold.

So the people who were against paying money for an mmo now end up paying potentially more money for an inferior game ruined by micro-transactions.


So before you complain about other people paying a monthly fee for a game. Do the math.

Its only feels like a ripoff to me when the monthly fee is going into the big pockets of the publisher/distributor/etc, rather than back into development.
I can understand people wanting to turn a nice profit, but it would be nice to feel like the money I'm paying went to repay the efforts of the developers. I still have a taste in my mouth from buying WoW and some expansions...
I mean, there have got to be a bunch of Activision businessmen who don't give a damn about their products but are Scrooge McDucking the profits out there.

I know profits=incentive for people to invest in games, but with MMOs, it just usually doesn't turn out so well...

Same thing goes with Xbox Live: I'd feel a lot more interested in paying if PC, Nintendo and Sony weren't providing the same service for free. I know the charge isn't necessary for this service, so am I just lining someone's pockets? It feels that way.

 

[Netrigan]

Actually, I wonder why MMOs charge for the original game. They should treat it like they're dealing drugs. Sell the game at cost (or a free download), give them a free trial, hook them and start collecting a monthly fee.

They actually do that... they usually gives a 10-day free trial... And THEN charges you for the game

but they still charge $60 for DCU Online.

 

[nintendoeats]

I wouldn't call it a ripoff, because you ARE getting something for your money (though it could probably be cheaper at least as far as WoW is concerned). But I for one simply don't want to pay for a game more than once. I suppose that for people who just want to invest a lot of time into one game the monthly fee makes sense, but I suspect that the average gamer doesn't want to spend that much time or money on a single game.

Case in point, EVE Online. I think it looks really neat, but I simply cannot justify putting in the necessary time and money. I could play a whole bunch of other games and probably have a better time because its constantly something new. On the other hand, I will fire up CS every few nights because there is no obligation for me to dedicate to it. I can go long stretches without touching it and jump back in whenever I want. MMOs are too lifestyle-ish for this approach.

 

[Sabiancym]

I'm not against monthly fees, but frankly I don't see why I'd have to buy the game for the full price in the first place. If it was ONLY about monthly fees, fine, but why shall I shell out the initial cost first? This might actually be a part of the addiction psychology - the "I've already invested so much, so I'll go on".

Either way, free beats everything.

Free does not beat everything. Free means less support, fewer updates, lesser quality players, etc.


Not charging for the initial box price would mean millions of dollars of lost profit. If MMOs didn't charge for the box price, they'd be in the read for first couple months of the game. Some companies couldn't sustain that. Hell, some companies only make it to release date because of the pre-order money. Just look at WoW, if they gave the game away free and still charged the $15 fee, they'd lose $450 million dollars in revenue and I highly doubt they'd make that up in new players. The people who are too cheap to pay $50 initially are also too cheap to pay $15 a month.


Cheap gamers are a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I understand that some of them can't afford all the new games, but $$$ is what keeps the industry going and advancing. I would gladly pay $70 a game if that extra revenue was put back into better and more advanced games.

 

[katsumoto03]

I just always figured that those were complaints from kids who didn't have jobs, but really wanted to play the game. Once you are working, $15 a month isn't that big a deal.

Unless you're a uni student and don't have time to earn a decent amount, let alone pay it in addition to bills and shit you just barely cover

And thus you shouldn't even be thinking of playing something so time consuming as an MMO.

You are correct, OP. 'Tis no big deal.


Well this was fun.

 

[Sabiancym]

Whenever I'm reading articles about MMOs or topics about MMOs on this forum I always see some familiar words.

"This game looks cool, but I'm not paying $15 to play a game I already bought."

"15 Dollars a month!!! That's ridiculous, I paid for the game once, let me play it!!"

"MMOS are Ripoffs!!"

"LOSERS!! PAYEING $$$ TO PL4Y a GAEM. U AINT L33T!"



Are these people that mathematically challenged?


When you pay for a regular game you get a certain amount of content for a certain amount of money. Let's take Dragon Age for Example. If you do everything in the game once, you get about 40-50 hours of gameplay. Yes you can replay it, but for the most part, there is only 40-50 hours of new content. So if the game costs $50, that's a dollar per hour of gameplay.

Now if you take an MMO, you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay. PvP, crafting, leveling, raiding, etc. Even if you only play a couple days a week, the dollar per gameplay hour ratio is way way way higher than a normal game.


So the "Ripoff" that people claim is not even close to true. The sad thing about this is that companies are taking advantage of this stupidity and going with "free to play" games. This gets the anti-monthly fee guys addicted to a game because it's free, and then charge them crazy prices for in game items and gold.

So the people who were against paying money for an mmo now end up paying potentially more money for an inferior game ruined by micro-transactions.


So before you complain about other people paying a monthly fee for a game. Do the math.

Its only feels like a ripoff to me when the monthly fee is going into the big pockets of the publisher/distributor/etc, rather than back into development.
I can understand people wanting to turn a nice profit, but it would be nice to feel like the money I'm paying went to repay the efforts of the developers. I still have a taste in my mouth from buying WoW and some expansions...
I mean, there have got to be a bunch of Activision businessmen who don't give a damn about their products but are Scrooge McDucking the profits out there.

I know profits=incentive for people to invest in games, but with MMOs, it just usually doesn't turn out so well...

Same thing goes with Xbox Live: I'd feel a lot more interested in paying if PC, Nintendo and Sony weren't providing the same service for free. I know the charge isn't necessary for this service, so am I just lining someone's pockets? It feels that way.

A lot of the money from MMOs goes into making other forms of games. Not just the developer, but publishers and advertisers get a cut and play parts in advancing the gaming industry.

 

[Polock]

Funny.

Guild Wars.

Not an MMO you say?

Fine.

Guild Wars 2.
Also Free to play after purchase.

=====

OK OK. For smaller developers it makes sense.

 

[2xDouble]

One could argue that quality is superior to quantity. Crafting, level grinding, farming... is not something I consider entertainment. That is work. Why would I pay anyone anything to work for them?

I understand how PvP could be considered worth paying for (after all, Lazer Tag costs $10 a person to play), but if that is all you're doing, then you're either missing 60-80% of the content OR you've had to slog through those artificially extended work hours JUST TO BE ABLE TO PLAY the game that you paid/are paying for. When that is taken into consideration, the monthly fees are no better value than an XBox Live account.

This leaves endgame content: "raiding", etc.. As in my previous argument, why would you want pay for those hundreds or thousands of hours doing effectively nothing just to be able to play the fun part of the game for an hour or two? That is NOT value. Back me up on this one, Yahtzee [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2634-World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm]. I invite you to watch this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E]. Colin Johanson explains my feelings on this issue quite adequately around 1:27.

TL/DR: A simple average of inconsistent experience is improperly weighted and therefore meaningless when measuring true value.
Do the math correctly.

 

[gerrymander61]

Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2, CounterStrike and Heroes of Newerth all have provided many hours of entertainment and I only had to pay for them once. The reason I'm against monthly fees is because, while I'm sure I would enjoy the hell out of say, World of Warcraft, these games have no monthly fee, still get updates and patches (well, maybe not CS so much), and provide oodles of fun.

 

[fordneagles]

I guess if you speak like that with that sort of spelling then it means you're twelve, thus you are either 1) spending 3/4 of your monthly pocket money on an MMO, which is a waste because you should be learning how to spell or 2) your parents are paying for it in which case you have no right to complain anyway. Go back to your English homework

I do think there needs to be a distinction for something though. The difference between buying a 'game' and paying for an 'account' to play said game. You have to shell out for the 'game' to start with regardless of what genre it is. You're paying for the disc, the box it comes in, the programming, the time spent developing, etc. The difference is that games without accounts have been developed up to the point where you bought it, and that's all you'll get. Whereas games with accounts (in this case, MMO's) are constantly undergoing development, getting updated, have new content and so on. If you think you should get to play a game for free forever while there are people whose paid job it is to do all the programming/updating/developing for your game, then you're an idiot and we don't want you in our MMO's because you'll just clog up the chat channels with rubbish anyway Just kidding (mostly)

Also, you can't expect developers to just give you a game they're going to charge you periodically for, there's too high a risk that people will decide to not play it and they would lose too much money manufacturing the disk/box/etc.

 

[caselj01]

When you pay for a regular game you get a certain amount of content for a certain amount of money. Let's take Dragon Age for Example. If you do everything in the game once, you get about 40-50 hours of gameplay. Yes you can replay it, but for the most part, there is only 40-50 hours of new content. So if the game costs $50, that's a dollar per hour of gameplay.

Now if you take an MMO, you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay. PvP, crafting, leveling, raiding, etc. Even if you only play a couple days a week, the dollar per gameplay hour ratio is way way way higher than a normal game.

Firstly, I would say that there are plenty of 'regular' games where you get more that 40-50 hours of gameplay. Games with online multiplayer (TF2, Counterstrike) can easily be played for much longer than this. Also I personally find that strategy games, even in single player can give you hundreds of hours of gameplay with pretty decent variety just by playing different maps/factions or whatever.

Secondly, $15 a month would not be so bad except that it is in ADDITION to, not INSTEAD of the cost of buying the game in the first place. Taking the obvious example of WOW, you have to buy 1 game, and then 3 expansions just to start with, which is going to be about the cost of at least 2 'regular' games

 

[monkey_man]

tf2 costs 20$
I played it more than 800 hours.
No monthly fees. But regular content updates. so Valve beats MMO makers I think?
-
[small](I think so anyway, Not a big fan of MMO's
Unless tf2 counts as that, but I don't think it does, does it?)[/small]

but I cannot detect any form of discussion here, more of I say A. Deal with it

Spoiler: Example

And it's not nice to insult people, Math can be quite hard for some. Like me.

 

[cp.06]

tf2 costs 20$
I played it more than 800 hours.
No monthly fees. But regular content updates. so Valve beats MMO makers I think?
-
[small](I think so anyway, Not a big fan of MMO's
Unless tf2 counts as that, but I don't think it does, does it?)[/small]

but I cannot detect any form of discussion here, more of I say A. Deal with it

Spoiler: Example

And it's not nice to insult people, Math can be quite hard for some. Like me.

You sir, are all 7 forms of win.

OT: Basically what this guy said, except not so much TF2, as I'm really bad at it XD