Poll: MMO's for free...

[starocean13]

First off I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but I've never seen it and I want to ask. So I want to know would you (if you dont already that is) play MMO's like WoW, DC Universe,Star Wars the Old Republic, etc...if you could play them for free? Let me state this is purely hypothetical. I understand that it would be nearly if not completely imposible to actually reales something like WoW and keep it up dated the way they did without any money coming back in.

I realize that there are lots of free MMO's out there already and I've tried them and they just dont really have any polish so I dont bother with them. This question came about cause I tried WoW a couple months back on the 10 day trial, just to see if I would like it. I did surprisingly but in the 10 days I had to play I only got to play a total of about 10 hours. My problem was justifing paying the monthly fee when I could only play a couple hours a week on it. I would imagine Im not the only person that has had this problem, at least to some degree that is. So would you?

Certain MMOs (like WoW) need a monthly fee to run.

I suggest adding an option "I will pay for MMOs if the price is justifiable" instead of "I like to pay for my fun".

Thank you, honestly that was what I meant with that option but your wording is a lot better that way. It clearifies so much better than how I have it now.

 

[Savagezion]

Yea I do. It cost a lot of money to keep those servers up. WoW has quite a few subscribers.

Also do you really think the only thing that the fee's goes to is keeping the servers up and patching? Blizzard has employees...

SO it just happens to cost whatever = # of players x $15 to keep a server up and pay your staff? They aren't using any of that to push their stock up or secure their company? They are just paying for costs? How would you guess that Arenanet is producing GW2 that is getting all kinds of recognition if they have only made the Guild Wars series and haven't charged subscription fees for 5 years? (Arenanet has never charged fees) You can buy everything in their item shop for 60 bucks and it's permanent and you won't have to buy it again. (Unsure of how many "extra" character slots you are allowed in addition to your 5 free ones, that only includes purchasing 1 extra) Guild Wars is built on a finite purchase system as opposed to the infinite purchase system by WoW. And GW build a complete stand alone campaign for each of their expansions. They don't require you to buy all the previous installments. LoTRO offered an account without subscription fees forever if you pre-ordered. They also gave more of those out later in the game's lifespan. Many MMOs out there cost 10 bucks or less and don't have near the subscription base. Argue polish all you want, (like I said, psychological) but I know old games that use the old system such as WoW and have a notable level of polish and charge less. A couple games charge 100 bucks a year (7.95 a month) or 15 a month. Thus giving you a much better rate if you pay in advance.

 

[Kinguendo]

im having a lot of fun with the F2P 1s theres a good f2p copy of every p2p out there.
runes of magic instead of WOW....
alliance of valiant arms or soldier stead of CoD....
you just gota know where to look
besides, paying a monthly fee is almost torture especially for the grindy ones, why bother?

Allods is a much more apt comparison to WoW than Runes of Magic... Runes of Magic is more like... super Runescape.

 

[infohippie]

I'm happy to pay for a sub to a game, but I think Blizzard's pricing system is double-dipping, and the same with a few other MMO companies. Pay for the game, pay for the expansions and pay a monthly fee? No way! A monthly fee is fine but the game should be free to download. Expansions should also be free and automatically downloaded and installed for all players upon release.
Or, they could go the other way - no subscription fee, free to play, but charge for the game box in the first place.