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

[delvin313]

I don't think there's anything wrong with having to pay a monthly fee, but it does make me feel as though I HAVE to play a certain number of hours every week. Otherwise I feel as though I've been wasting my money. The thing is, why pay a monthly fee when you can play an MMO without any monthly fees? Guild Wars was a terrific game that gave me many hours of gameplay. They constantly worked on glitches, balancing, and new content for no extra fees. I may even consider buying Guild Wars 2, based on this concept.

 

[BENZOOKA]

That is some fanboyism and inaccurate assumptions.

I just don't want to pay a monthly fee for a game. Even that is enough for me to not to play an MMO.

And where the monthly fee gives the developers a steady flow of resources to spare in improving and changing the game, it does not mean you can't get endless amount of gameplay out of a game that you only need to buy once:

I've played Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source combined for about ten years and since that Steam's counter for the game started rolling, I've played CS:S for nearly 1000 hours. Well worth the 50 ? I bought Half-Life 2 and the CS:S included.

I bet, or know in fact, that there are plenty of users here who've got well over their money's worth of gaming out of titles like Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, The Elder Scrolls III and IV: Morrowind and Oblivion, and so on, without paying a monthly fee...

$15 or similar for a month isn't necessarily much. It's not a reason to whine if it's used to improve the game and you have time to play it. But at the same time it does not make a game all that much better and grander and it definitely does not automatically add hours to gameplay.

The trend for free-to-play games with optionally purchasable stuff is good, as long as you don't have to buy things that are quite necessary in the game. If they want all of the perks of a monthly subscriber, they better do just that; after all they've got the chance to play the game free. If the free-to-play-but-pay-for-stuff is done correctly, I can't see this bothering anyone, but elitists. These games actually suit OP's preferences most accurately as you're getting exactly what you pay for.

When I said gameplay hours, I didn't mean how long people will play the game. I meant how many hours of content there is. You can play the same 30 minute level of the same game 100 times. That doesn't mean there are 200 hours worth of gameplay, there is 30 minutes.

So mmos offer substantially more gameplay hours.

That logic fails so hard I can sense the Earth trembling.

 

[drisky]

I can't afford many games, I'm a poor art student. That being said there had better be a huge value incentive for a monthly fee. There are plenty of really addicting games that I played the hell out of and the price drops if I get the game when its older. If I wanted to play Wow I'd have to pay 90 dollars upfront for the game and all the expansions then pay 15 dollars for my first month, so the game needs to be worth 105 dollars plus 15 for each additional month, not a huge incentive for jumping in to it.

 

[saruman31]

For a full price purchase and monthly fees MMO`s offer a LOT of repetitive grinding with no story behind it and no video/voiceover quality. It`s a much more inferior product with a business model that should always be boycotted just so that future games don`t up there prices by a lot.

 

[TilMorrow]

You are taking into account that a large number of people may not own/have access to a credit card and so cannot freely pay for the subscription fee right? Also Time cards always tend to cost alot more than the credit card subscription rates. Usually the reasons why people complain. Also WoW kinda did have some repetitive missions of 'kill so many of this particular creature to complete this quest' quests and so I wouldn't be surprised if some people were angry at the content that would have to/were paying for.

Also

Two words: Guild Wars

You.

Funny.

Guild Wars.

Not an MMO you say?

Fine.

Guild Wars 2.
Also Free to play after purchase.

and you.

Have provided the answers which are right in front of everyone's face. For this I congradulate you and give you a cookie. [sub]Please note I ran outta cookies [/sub]

Now if I can only get Aion to activate...

 

[GeorgW]

There is also a good reason, it cost a lot to maintain all those servers.
And I think people complain about monthly fees because they feel forced to play that month. When you've bought a game you can play it whenever you want, however much you want.

 

[teebeeohh]

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

so if you don't have time to earn a decent amount of money how do you have time to play an MMO?
those things take a lot time after all.

 

[Polock]

You are taking into account that a large number of people may not own/have access to a credit card and so cannot freely pay for the subscription fee right? Also Time cards always tend to cost alot more than the credit card subscription rates. Usually the reasons why people complain. Also WoW kinda did have some repetitive missions of 'kill so many of this particular creature to complete this quest' quests and so I wouldn't be surprised if some people were angry at the content that would have to/were paying for.

Also

Two words: Guild Wars

You.

Funny.

Guild Wars.

Not an MMO you say?

Fine.

Guild Wars 2.
Also Free to play after purchase.

and you.

Have provided the answers which are right in front of everyone's face. For this I congradulate you and give you a cookie. [sub]Please note I ran outta cookies [/sub]

Now if I can only get Aion to activate...

I bought Aion... : /

The game was beautiful, the fighting was cool, but by level 20, leveling was like watching pain grow, and the monsters were so tough past your recommended level it was like being trapped in grinding hell.

 

[Madman123456]

I have played Anarchy Online for 7 years. It's one of the more complex mmorpgs, even the level is more complex then elsewhere. You can have a character at 200/20/50. I eventually stopped playing because my toon ended up not being able to do anything on his own. Also, while the game is older then WoW it began stealing from it as soon as WoW became popular. So eventually everything new was just a cheap WoW knock off.

The monthly paying thing is something one could argue about. You pay for the right to enter a game world that is huge. Really huge. And in most mmorpg cases, more "lively" then the "just cause 2" world which can be compared to some mmorpg worlds and be called "pathetically tiny".

 

[Ranma12569]

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

Yes, free means many things, a lot of which come by default with 'free' stuff. In terms of MMOs, for me, free beats everything else. I'd rather pay for extra items than a monthly fee with the risk of losing all the progress if I don't pay.

Also, lesser quality players? Eh?

Not charging for the initial box price would mean millions of dollars of lost profit.

Fine, but that's not my problem. I'm the customer, I get to chose what I buy. I won't buy a full-priced game which makes me pay monthly afterward.

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.

Again, the role of the customer is to chose where to put his or her money. Everyone has different priorities. If you are happy to shell out $70 just so you can get more advanced games later, fine - that's your choice your priorities.

I am personally repulsed by this business model. I'd might even try WOW for $15 for one month just to see what the fuzz is about and maybe, just maybe, I'd become a customer later. But put down $50 just to see whether it's worth paying further? No thanks.

Which also covers your doubt that they wouldn't get any more customers if they gave away the original game for free. They most likely would, because even more players would try a game for $15 than for $50. And don't forget the mission packs.

Well i was gonna type out a big post of my own but Sgt. Sykes has pretty much said what i was going to and much better than I would have.

I will add however that i personally don't buy games. I rent games. This is primarily because i don't earn a lot of money so i can understand why people wouldn't want to pay each month due to wanting to save what little money they have or if they're only borrowing the game from a friend.

 

[Snotnarok]

I think the person you're referring to OP is more or less saying "Why would I want to pay for a game after I bought it? I'd rather just play games that you pay for once" because while I get why MMOs cost money, I don't care and I have no interest in paying for them.

I personally play games randomly and I don't need to pay for games I'm not playing.

 

[Vakz]

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.

Also take into account that NCSoft have several other MMOs which DO have a monthly fee. Honestly, I doubt Guild Wars would still be up if NCSoft weren't getting in a whole pile of money from their other games. I tend to think of Guild Wars as sort of a gateway-MMO. It allows NCSoft to get you started online, make you get used to be social while gaming, and then they can subtly recommend these other MMOs they also have. The fact that there are, what, 5-6 expansions for Guild Wars, each sold at full price, doesn't make it look prettier.

How long do you think it would take from the time that game sales started on the downward slope, until the servers have to be closed down, if the company didn't have other products to fund it's "free" MMO?

Think of it like this: Everyone who plays and pays for the other MMOs, are partly paying so that YOUR MMO can stay free. How would you like it to be on the other side of that fence?

 

[wordsmith]

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.

Protip: Dragon Age is a Single player game. WoW is a MMO. Apples and oranges. When the statement becomes "You can either pay $15 a month for WoW or £30 for Monday Night Combat, TF2, etc etc", it's a whole different ballgame. I'm against paying for something I already own, basically because of the addictive nature of that scheme. "I paid my $15 to play the game, I could be doing something else but I'd be wasting the money I've already paid". That's the reason that I gave up WoW in the first place, it was taking time away from other games.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Another point (that may have already been mentioned) is the fact that most games that do require a subscription fee already come with a free month of play out of the box. You don't have to pay more than the initial price if you don't want to, and you still get a guaranteed month of play out of the game (assuming it interests you enough to play it for a month.. at which point that sub fee for the next month isn't sounding like such a bad idea, is it?).

 

[Sarah Frazier]

From my experience, I'd rather pay a monthly fee. Because most free-to-play MMOs get their money via selling cash shop items for real money. Sooner or later, the game becomes unbalanced and victory is dictated by how many uber cash shop items you have instead of skill or strategy.

This is more true than a lot of people care to realize. Back when I played DDO with some friends, I calculated how many points were spent on average for such things as basic items that could really save your butt without having to find a merchant or paying some ridiculous price off the auction. Then how much cash it would take to get that many points. Guess what... You'd end up spending more money per month for those items alone (not even counting adventure packs or race/class unlocks) than the typical $15/month subscription fee.

OT: Unfortunately due to money restraints, I end up dabbling with free-to-play games and uninstall it before the week is done simply because of the demand for real cash just to have any sort of edge or just to be able to advance past a certain point of the game. What the developers are doing is holding the game hostage. If you want items that don't suck, that'll cost you. If you want to get through this door leaving the tutorial zone, that'll cost you. If you want to be able to have enough inventory space to hold important items, that'll cost you.

It's little more than a money scheme that too many players fall for and never realize until they don't have enough money by the middle of the month to buy other fun things. Or pay for more vital things such as bills or food. It's more sensible (to me, at least) to be able to budget $15 every month rather than guessing how much has been spent just to get the [UBER L33T DOODAD OF EPIC PWNING] that was on sale in the cash shop along with a bunch of other things with limited use.

 

[Ace of Spades]

Yeah, $15 dollars a month for endless grind vs. $60 for 40 hours of content not counting replay value. I'M GONNA START PLAYING WoW RIGHT NOW!

 

[Krantos]

See, my problem with the subscriptions, and why I like the F2P model is what I have at the end of the month.

If I spend, say $20 on expansion content in LotRO, at the end of the month, I still have that content. I can use it whenever I want.

However, if I spend $15 on WoW for a month, what do I have at the end of the month? Nothing. I have to spend another $15 if I want to access anything.

Given the amount of time I spend online (and my ability to resist buying stuff from the ingame-store), the F2P model is a much better fit for me.

 

[Sikachu]

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

Yeah that would be a good point except that if you don't have time to make a little money on the side as a student, you definitely don't have time to play MMOs.

 

[Jiefu]

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.

But I'd rather buy a budget game once a month and play something new.

Blizzard does do that with WoW. They recently said I had a free period of play because I had bought StarCraft II, and SCII itself had come with two codes that could be redeemed for 2 weeks of free WoW play. Blizzard understands that they're selling a product that is eerily similar to an addictive drug (from a business perspective).

As for the topic at hand, people complain about the monthly fees for MMOs because they feel that the new content offered up commonly in MMOs is fairly derivative. Collect 20 beaver pelts, defeat 20 hockey players, and other such trite quests are all too common in "new" MMO content, and while the Infinity+3 sword might seem interesting to you, the outsider sees it as nothing more than a new set of numbers to plug into the optimization formulas.