Seems obvious to me. The way the servers work in a fps is an entirely different kind of beast from an mmo. How much does WoW cost to maintain a day? Couple hundred thousand?
Why Do MMO's Cost Money?
- Thread starter TBA
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Server upkeep costs and new content. Aslo there is no such thing as a free lunch and every single TF2 server you have ever played on is owned by someone who pays for it. So yes even TF2 has money put into server just because you don't do it doesn't mean others don't. Also it pays for more admins and game moderation.TBA said:
A few factors come into play
Pretty much MMOs use much more server-farms than somethings as simple as shooter. You can set up a server for things like TF2 on your own PC and it will run fine for the most time. The more people you want to handle the stronger server you need. Then there are instances which require separate server to run them, separate server to handle log ins, etc.
Second thing would be development of content added through patches. Not everything deserves a full blown expansion pack, people run out of things to do fast. You need to keep regular developers group dedicated just for that, which means they are on your payroll all the time. If you stop releasing content to your players, they will get bored fast and stop playing. And thats even without factoring in constant balance tweaks and bug fixes.
Third thing is customer support staff. Depending on the MMOs size its either very smaller or larger. Again those people expect regular salary for their work, you need GMs that will respond to users issues, you need some people to handle all exploits and spammers, you need technical support, community reps, moderators.
Last but not least is the driving force behind any production. To earn money. Game developers are not charity service for your enjoyment. They want to actually see some results of their, often annoying, job and it is much easier than having to come up with new game idea every 6 months, while a little raid instance/zone will just get you enough profit. It is efficient if you can keep up decently sized playerbase.
And really, 15 bucks / month is not that much.
Pretty much MMOs use much more server-farms than somethings as simple as shooter. You can set up a server for things like TF2 on your own PC and it will run fine for the most time. The more people you want to handle the stronger server you need. Then there are instances which require separate server to run them, separate server to handle log ins, etc.
Second thing would be development of content added through patches. Not everything deserves a full blown expansion pack, people run out of things to do fast. You need to keep regular developers group dedicated just for that, which means they are on your payroll all the time. If you stop releasing content to your players, they will get bored fast and stop playing. And thats even without factoring in constant balance tweaks and bug fixes.
Third thing is customer support staff. Depending on the MMOs size its either very smaller or larger. Again those people expect regular salary for their work, you need GMs that will respond to users issues, you need some people to handle all exploits and spammers, you need technical support, community reps, moderators.
Last but not least is the driving force behind any production. To earn money. Game developers are not charity service for your enjoyment. They want to actually see some results of their, often annoying, job and it is much easier than having to come up with new game idea every 6 months, while a little raid instance/zone will just get you enough profit. It is efficient if you can keep up decently sized playerbase.
And really, 15 bucks / month is not that much.
Someone needs to pay for the patches, the administrators, and the intense amount of detailed work they put into, and continue making for the game.
/givecigargoodman528 said:
But also, unlike TF2, MMO's that have montly subscriptions regularly do (a lot more) significant content updates and hire staff to tend to all kind of needs of the players.
Also, on server upkeep, the difference between keeping a server up for an MMO and a small scale FPS is huge to say the least, for a start, think of the amount of players you see in a TF2 game vs an MMO.
It's worth noting the following.
F2P games are often hosted by a company which is not the developer of the game, they tend to buy the rights to the game and host it in whatever area. This is cheap, doesn't require much in the way of upkeep and doesn't need many staff (If any.) The only cost is the server upkeep which can be covered quite easily by cash shop items. The developers of F2P games will generally work on a new game after finishing their first and content updates will be very sporadic, if any at all.
P2P games on the other hand are often hosted by the development company, have a lot of staff to be paid and of course, are constantly updated by these developers. Developers will work on the same game for several years, constantly updating and adding new content. The monthly fees often act as the only form of profit for the development company. (After a few months, the profits from sales reduces to almost 0. WoW can be bought for £5 for example and pretty much none of that will go to Blizzard.).
So, to summarize the reason why P2P games cost a monthly fee, is because, well, developers need to eat too.
F2P games are often hosted by a company which is not the developer of the game, they tend to buy the rights to the game and host it in whatever area. This is cheap, doesn't require much in the way of upkeep and doesn't need many staff (If any.) The only cost is the server upkeep which can be covered quite easily by cash shop items. The developers of F2P games will generally work on a new game after finishing their first and content updates will be very sporadic, if any at all.
P2P games on the other hand are often hosted by the development company, have a lot of staff to be paid and of course, are constantly updated by these developers. Developers will work on the same game for several years, constantly updating and adding new content. The monthly fees often act as the only form of profit for the development company. (After a few months, the profits from sales reduces to almost 0. WoW can be bought for £5 for example and pretty much none of that will go to Blizzard.).
So, to summarize the reason why P2P games cost a monthly fee, is because, well, developers need to eat too.
If this was any other site I would call this guy out for trolling... Well for starters TF2 isn't an MMO... Just from the type of interactions they entail MMOs need a LOT more support so that costs money. In an MMO once you reach endgame players expect more content, which costs money to make. Once that content is implemented there is the tedious job of keeping the game balanced, etc. etc.
Price of maintaining a WOW server $800/month or 53 people buying a month card
Keeping it a secret priceless, there are somethings greed will get you
Mindless addicts is one of them
Also explain if servers cost so much how do people run private servers with 8000 people on them? magic dust?
Keeping it a secret priceless, there are somethings greed will get you
Mindless addicts is one of them
Also explain if servers cost so much how do people run private servers with 8000 people on them? magic dust?
Because people are willing to pay it. That's the only reason.
Look at Guild Wars, you bought the game, and that's it. Could play it all you liked, no extra fees, no monthly charges.
Then look at Final Fantasy XI on 360. You pay for the game, you pay for a live membership, you pay to be able to play the game WITH the live membership, and THEN you pay a monthly fee. When I realised this, I couldn't return that game fast enough.
Look at Guild Wars, you bought the game, and that's it. Could play it all you liked, no extra fees, no monthly charges.
Then look at Final Fantasy XI on 360. You pay for the game, you pay for a live membership, you pay to be able to play the game WITH the live membership, and THEN you pay a monthly fee. When I realised this, I couldn't return that game fast enough.
No I'm implying that MMO developers are greedy, exploiting toolbags.ionveau said:
And that you probably have insecurity issues for somehow thinking that.
Well, lets say each rack has 15 servers on it. The general "data center" standard is this:ionveau said:And you need 53 people to play on each to pay them off each monthAC10 said:because good MMOs require hundreds or more of these
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/3709945-3709945-3328410-241641-3328419-3884098.html
that puts the cost of a rack, without the cost of a rack, up to about $29,235 dollars for a single rack. However, there is a cost to maintan these, the power and the bandwidth they take up all cost money. Not to mention the number of hard drives they burn through, you could probably expect at least a single failure a day at each server farm minimum. Thus you'll need someone to replace it.
I'm not claiming MMOs cost more to run than they make, they make a LOT more than it costs to run it, but the cost of maintaining a large scale MMO is not cheap.
I'll just make a list:
- Server costs (Servers for MMO's are much larger than TF2 servers and there are a lot of them)
- Customer Support (GM's online day and night, for any good MMO's you should get a response within a couple hours)
- Updates (MMO's can't survive without content and that content needs to be updated regularly, there is also always tons of balancing needed to be done)
- Addictive (If they can make money off people and those people see no problem with that then who are we to complain)
MMO's are starting to switch to a new system that allows people to buy game time in-game with special credits you must buy off other players, I think that method actually works better than the regular subscription fees most MMO's use and I think it's the next step in the evolution of the MMO.
For instance im playing APB at the moment and except for the initial fee I probably won't have to spend any more money because I sell stuff on the auction house for points to buy more gametime for myself, someone is still paying the company their money but they're also helping me play. business gets their money, I get gametime, and the people who buy from me are getting items they want, it's a winning situation for everyone involved.
- Server costs (Servers for MMO's are much larger than TF2 servers and there are a lot of them)
- Customer Support (GM's online day and night, for any good MMO's you should get a response within a couple hours)
- Updates (MMO's can't survive without content and that content needs to be updated regularly, there is also always tons of balancing needed to be done)
- Addictive (If they can make money off people and those people see no problem with that then who are we to complain)
MMO's are starting to switch to a new system that allows people to buy game time in-game with special credits you must buy off other players, I think that method actually works better than the regular subscription fees most MMO's use and I think it's the next step in the evolution of the MMO.
For instance im playing APB at the moment and except for the initial fee I probably won't have to spend any more money because I sell stuff on the auction house for points to buy more gametime for myself, someone is still paying the company their money but they're also helping me play. business gets their money, I get gametime, and the people who buy from me are getting items they want, it's a winning situation for everyone involved.