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Role Playing (Games)

MMOGs Branch Out 116

Posted by Zonk from the getting-out-and-seeing-new-people dept.
Via Kotaku, a Wall Street Journal article looking at ways the Massively Multiplayer genre are opening up to new players. Besides new game genres, the article discusses changes in revenue collection schemes. From the article: "The industry's traditional business model is to charge about $50 for the game software and a monthly subscription fee of about $15 for online play. That model has proved risky: When a game is highly popular, the monthly fees yield steady revenue streams for many years. Some of the industry's earliest hits, such as EverQuest, released in 1999, still have many users. But monthly fees have been "a significant barrier" to growing the market, said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, based in San Diego."
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MMOGs Branch Out More

MMOGs Branch Out

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  • Interesting article though ;)
  • but:

    1) I'm shit at games
    2) I don't have much free time
    3) I'd get addicted and lose my job

    Would I be happier with a shittier job, a small residence and spending all my time playing games? Hmm...
    • Just get a job as a gold grinder

      1. You do the same all the time so its easy to learn

      2. It IS your job so the more time you spend on it the better!

      Now what to do in your spare time is something else ;)
  • Personally, I would be more inclined to play a MMOG if I wasn't charged a monthly fee. When I already have to pay $50 a month for DSL/Cable connection, another $50 for my cell phone, $35 for my land phone line, $50 for Cable/Satellite television, how on earth can I justify paying $15+ a month to play a game I spend $50-60 for at the store? They aren't necessarily providing me a service in the sense that the previously mentioned items are. Or are they? World of Pirates [wordofpirates.com] is a fun one and it is only a one-ti

    • Re:I can't justify that sort of monthly expense (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @03:48PM (#14571405)
      The game you mentioned looks quite interesting, but the link was wrong.

      http://worldofpirates.4players.de/wop/index.html [4players.de] is where yee should set sail!
    • They only mention it in sales table, but Guild Wars is one of the best selling MMORPGs because it has no monthly fee. That's the reason why it's the only MMORPG I've ever owned. I'm with you on the high monthly fee for other service front, I refuse to buy a game I have to pay to play.

      I would consider a game, were it truly fun to play, that was free to download but has a monthly fee, though. The big problem with no monthly fee is that there's not as much incentive to play. That's why I have guildmates that

      • I would consider a game, were it truly fun to play, that was free to download but has a monthly fee, though. The big problem with no monthly fee is that there's not as much incentive to play. That's why I have guildmates that haven't logged in in a month.

        Mmm, speaks volumes about how fun that game is, doesn't it. That's one of the reasons i never got into MMORPGs - they become a chore, sooner or later.

        As for the fees issues, i agree completely. I can't understand how people fin
        • Mmm, speaks volumes about how fun that game is, doesn't it. That's one of the reasons i never got into MMORPGs - they become a chore, sooner or later.

          I can't argue that sometimes it becomes a chore. However, I think that I should clarify my comment about incentive. The problem isn't that the game isn't fun, the problem is that people get busy with life.

          Maybe it's silly to suggest that life is getting in the way of gaming, but that's basically the case. When you aren't paying an arm and a leg for the pri

        • I thought it was kind of lame to have to buy a game for $50, then continue to pay for it. Then I got thinking: I bought my car, but I have to keep paying to use it (gas, registration, maintenance), and then I realized that's basically the same for just about any device someone could buy. You buy your computer, but have to pay each month for the electricity to use it (well, someone pays for it, be it your parents or your college, etc.).
          • The thing is no one forces you to buy brand "X" when you want to refill the tank in your car "X". You can go to any gas station and buy it, or make your own biodiesel, or install a gas kit, or whatever. Same with computers - you don't buy your power from Dell.

                What bothers me is that the game you bought is useless unles you keep paying to the vendor.
      • The Guild Wars marketing team was really quite genius. Just on this thread alone I see tons of posts calling it a "MMO", when it is nothing of the kind. It is like Diablo 2 with three-dimensional chat lobbies where you put games (instances) together. Sure, the gameplay has a MMORPG "feel" and "look", but it is all instanced; there is no *massive* world. The reason this was a genius bit of marketing was because it was advertised as being a "MMORPG without a monthly subscription," which instantly got it atten
      • They only mention it in sales table, but Guild Wars is one of the best selling MMORPGs because it has no monthly fee. Well thats because its not really a MMORPG, but a clone of Diablo, yes I own both and I play both so I know what I am talking about. So quit being a marketing moron and passing along false information about this being a MMORPG. I would call it an OPRG.
        • It really depends on what you consider an MMORPG. At the bare minimum Guild Wars is an MORPG (Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). The debate is whether or not the game qualifies as "massive".

          In the traditional view of the MMORPG there are servers where you create our character. You character is then tied to that server and any friends starting up must play on our server to play with you. You generally do not have a method to migrate your characters between servers. Guild Wars is different. Only th

    • Re:I can't justify that sort of monthly expense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @03:50PM (#14571434)
      I don't see these expenses as connected- wether I play an MMOG or not, I'm still going to have cable, a phone (although I don't know why anyone needs a land and a cel these days), and cable. An MMO is an additional means of entertainment. And fairly cheap at that- about the cost of a movie for a month of play time. If the game is fun, its worth it. Do you not go to the movies/rent movies/read books/go to a bar/see a concert/etc because you have those fees already too?

      I find the alternate ways of paying to be worrying. Those selling in game money or enhancements for cash- I'm worried that I'm going to have to spend large amounts of money on gear to continue to play. No thanks, I went through that with Magic once. I want to know how much I'll be shelling out up front. In game ads? I refuse to ever buy ANYTHING thats ad supported, I find ads annoying, insulting, and just plain rude. I don't watch TV, buy magazines, or listen to radio anymore because of them (in fact, I subscribe to satelite radio to avoid them). I'm quite happy to pay for my entertainment, just don't force ads down my throat.
      • I'm worried that I'm going to have to spend large amounts of money on gear to continue to play.

        I don't know how old you are, but aren't you worried that young kids who can play 12 hours a day are going to get much better gear then you even when they aren't cheating?

        That's one of the reasons that I don't really care if people cheat, in as much as it affects me there is little difference in the effect on me.
        • Nope. WHen games get all about gear, I quit them. Thats why I recently quit WoW.

          My concern is more about games like Project Entropia and the upcoming Roma Victor, where the only way to get in game money is to buy it, or get someone else to buy it and get it from them. EBay doesn't bother me- in fact I use it to make games playable for longer. Its when the game company itself gets in on it that I worry- they have an incentive then to make it impossible to get items and accomplish goals without spending
          • But games are never about gear, they become that in the MINDS of some people (like you :). But a lot of the rest of us don't care, not even in Wow - you want to waste time trying to get gear - well your choice.
            • Unfortunately, in WoW if you want to PvP competitively, you need gear. This wasn't as true 6 months ago, when you could get good enough gear without MC runs. Nowdays, you're at a supreme disadvantage if you don't have high level raid gear. Its one thing to lose because the other guy is better than you, its no longer any fun when he can beat you because he spent more time gearing up than you. And 5-6 hr long raids every weekend for gear are not fun.
    • If you pay a monthly fee, you will feel more obligated to pay. So you will put more time into advancing your character. You don't want to think all your time spent advancing your character is all for nothing, so you play for another month, and another month...

      Playing for free, well, you can play an hour, set it aside for a month, then play for a night or two. This is not building the sort of brand loyalty that is going to make Blizzard or Sony rich. And without those big bucks coming in, they won't be spend
      • I certainly won't pay $15 a month for a game I'm not playing right now. I *had* characters in many MMORPG worlds, but recently they've started getting deleting by the game companies - some after just a few months!

        It's weird getting email from one of these companies "Come back to our world! BTW, we deleted half your characters to get te names back, but come back anyway!"
        • I completely agree with you. It is pointless to pay for the games to keep your characters active, and it is pretty shitty of the companies to delete inactive characters. At the very least keep the character but make the name be changed when the player rejoins. Only then there is confusion when a player attempts to recontact their old friends.

          To the OP. You say Sony and Blizzard can't get rich while not charging a monthly fee. It's true that they might not have the same level of WoW having 5 Million pl

          • Blizzard sold a truely absurd number of copies of Diablo-franchise games. 40 million? 140 million? something stupid like that. You don't have to look farther than Blizzard itself to see that a company can make a healthy profit without the monthly fee.
            • Exactly which is why it's good to keep an eye on ArenaNET. Their main developers are all ex-Blizzard employees who formed Battle.NET from the ground up, and they were also part of the Diablo teams. For people they haven't tried Guild Wars it definately has the Blizzard polish they are famous for. Hopefully they can pull of this business plan and we'll see more game adopt it.
    • Check out Guild Wars [guildwars.com]. Buy the game once, then never pay ever again. Well, except for expansion packs, but that's normal :) Like the FAQ [guildwars.com] says (emphasis mine):

      Several people in my family (or guild) intend to play Guild Wars. Do we each need to purchase a copy?

      Like every other online game, anyone who wants to have a Guild Wars Game Account needs to have his/her own copy of the game. There is never a monthly fee to play Guild Wars, so you will have tremendous savings over most online games. Spawning mult
    • Maybe you already know this, but in case you don't ... what you're paying for in the monthly fee includes the following: maintenance costs for the online servers, bandwidth costs for their datacenter, and additional content updates and bug fixes. Most non-MMO games don't have such additional fees. Either their multiplayer games are actually hosted on customer's machines (a la Diablo or most FPSes), or their server maintenance isn't that high (for example, Battle.net matchmaking servers are much fewer than t
      • Easy, Guild Wars is *NOT* a real MMO.

        It's a glorified, well-hidden matchmaking service (the 'town' zones) for a Peer-to-peer small team instanced combat. Everything except towns are instanced, and even towns have copies created as needed. The overinstancing really kills any shred of immersion (together with other nice things like 'you cant walk down here, because we put an invisible wall here' and 'btw you cant jump'.

        Now if you want a sword & sorcery version of Quake with nice ladder/matchmaking, it's n
        • You can be an MMORPG without having every square inch of the worl be a giant chatrooom.

          Guild Wars is an MMO with most of the game instanced. Works for me! There was never anything *good* about non-instanced adventure areas anyway - unless you play an MMOG for the fun of waiting in line for a spawn and the immersiveness of discussing the latest basketball game on the broadcast channel (bonus points if it's a roleplaying server).

          But then, I guess a lot of people *do* play for that - they're not really inter
          • The immersion comes from the fact that when you do stuff in the gameworld, a human can help or hinder you at moment's notice.

            Playing single player games is boring. Playing single player games cooperatively with couple of friends is almost as boring.

            But when you get gankz0red while peacefully exping because you didn't pay attention, you tend to remember that you are not alone in the game, and it's a tough world out there.

            Guild Wars = nice carebear-friendly instaced-everything bother-nobody-ever gameplay with
            • The immersion comes from the fact that when you do stuff in the gameworld, a human can help or hinder you at moment's notice.

              The suck comes from the fact that just about every time you try to do anything in the gameworld, some damn human is bound to come along and hinder you at a moment's notice. I bet you're one of them.

              Playing single player games is boring. Playing single player games cooperatively with couple of friends is almost as boring.

              Just because you find a game boring if you can't go spoil someon
              • Actually, you are gravely mistaken.

                I'm not a 'ganker d00d'. I derive no enjoyment from ganking defenseless people. But the 'alternative' offered - nobody can hurt you, so you might as well be playing single player - is kinda pointless as well.

                To me, enjoyment comes from playing MMOs that do not feel like a padded cells with everyone wielding a foam rubber bat.

                My current favourite is EVE Online. The whole core of the game is PvP. Note, this is different from 'ganking' and 'griefing'. In EVE once you learn th
                • Except, of coure, I *like* PvE! I have no interest in doing politics, project planning, and contingency planning in a fantasy world for entertainment. That's the shit I put up with in real life, and you have to pay me an aweful lot to do so.

                  PvP can be a lot of fun, but only if the game guarentees a fair fight. Yes, the Guild Wars PvP is a bit simple, hard to care much about, but then I don't play it for the PvP. The same system with real maps and real complexity in team v team combat would be great. No
              • You made a pretty big leap there calling this guy a ganker and griefer simply because he likes PvP servers. And, at least in WoW, PvP servers are far from a "small niche" in the game.

                We get your point, you don't like PvP, or at least PvP servers in a MMORPG. But many people do. I play on a PvP server because I like the challenge of going up against a real live human being rather than a AI controlled opponent. And many others do as well.
                • There's a difference between PvP in general, and free-for-all PvP, where anyone can attack anyone else at any time. All servers in DAoC have realm-based PvP, for example, but when they made free-for-all PvP servers they flopped after huge initial interest. Everyone realized *they* weren't going to the the top of the pecking order and dropped.

                  There have been a couple of all-PvP-all-the-time MMORPGs, but none has ever made it big in, at least America or Europe. You can't argue with the success of Lineage i
      • what you're paying for in the monthly fee includes the following: maintenance costs for the online servers, bandwidth costs for their datacenter, and additional content updates and bug fixes

        Start with the game costs $60 for initial purchase. Ok now given that WoW has over 1Mil subcribers, at $15 a month. Then Blizzard has an income of 15 mil to pay those maintenance cost? You really think that it costs anywhere near that much to maintain that game? A month? Plus the 60 mil for the sale of those games to beg
        • Okay, WoW is an exception, because of how unbelievably popular it has become. In my original post, I actually thought about calling that one out, since it's really obvious that Blizzard is making a LOT more money off subscriptions than they could spend on maintenance.

          However, I doubt you can say the same for many other MMOs ... especially the less popular ones that are still around, like the original EQ, UO, DAoC, etc. Many of them were popular enough to drive some serious profit. However, once MMOs get to
    • I think they should give the programs away for free and allow you to setup your own, albiet smaller, worlds to play with friends for free from your own computer, and only pay a subscription fee if you want to play in the big worlds. That way you get a free hit and get hooked and go for the bigger addicition. I'm not willing to pay $50 to try out games and THEN have to pay for a subscription.
    • There is also http://www.guildwars.com/ [guildwars.com] which has a client and looks really nice, its fairly primitive in gameplay, unless you thrive on PvP.

  • Not jump on the "Guild Wars is freeee" bandwagon.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kazzahdrane ( 882423 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @03:44PM (#14571352)
    But I bought it a couple of weeks ago and have played it for maybe 20 hours so far. It seems pretty good but for the last few days I've been struck down with a horrible illness that's left me with little energy to do anything except sit and wait to get better, including...playing games.

    There's the beauty of the Guild Wars model for me, when I played WoW I'd be annoyed if I couldn't play for an extended period of time (my trip to the USA for the whole of June last year, for example) since I'd be paying for that time even though I wasn't actually getting anything out of it. With GW I don't have that annoyance and don't feel I should be playing more than I feel like just to make sure I get a "good deal" on a monthly subscription charge.
    • Time cards are useful for that. However it is for two months though and cost a little more than paying online. I use game cards because 1) I don't play a lot online and 2) I don't buy/pay online.
    • I second that. I play Guild Wars on occasion, but by no means often; on average, I'd say I don't log in more than once a month or so to spend an evening there with friends.

      With WoW or EQ, that would simply be impossible, as I'd have to pay a significant amount each month that would not decrease no matter how little I actually played. Guild Wars, on the other hand, allows me to do this without losing a fortune.

      So it's Guild Wars for me, and Blizzard and Sony lost a sale each.
    • Hey I'll jump on that bandwagon. In fact, I did about 6 months ago.

  • Nothing wrong with monthly fees! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Max Threshold ( 540114 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @03:55PM (#14571532)
    I don't mind paying monthly fees. In fact, I'd prefer a game where the business model is driven entirely by that, so there's no incentive to muck the game up with sketchy expansions.

    I'm currently hooked on Dark Age of Camelot. One of the things I absolutely hate about it is that each new expansion pack has introduced obscenely overpowered races, classes, and items, presumably to entice everyone to rush out and buy it. In the process, classic races and classes have been rendered obsolete, and whole zones of the game world have been left empty and forgotten. Not only is this a source of frustration for players who don't feel like starting a new character, but from a business standpoint, it seems like a terribly inefficient way to develop a game. They've basically thrown out all the time and energy they invested into designing those old zones and classes. And in their rush to market, the quality control on the expansions is terrible. Trials of Atlantis was released, what, two and a half years ago? They've come out with two major expansions since then, Catacombs and Darkness Rising, yet the ToA encounters are still riddled with bugs, and they're still grudgingly undoing the horrible game balance issues introduced by ToA.

    • They've basically thrown out all the time and energy they invested into designing those old zones and classes

      I played DAoC for a while from the day it went live. My chosen class was obsolete from day 1! In there first months, there were only like 2 monster models in all of Hibernia (everydamnthing was a Spriggen) and there was no loot dropped in any of the high-level dungeons. There was also no high-level crafted gear, so basically everyone had green gear at high level. Energy invested? Not so much.

      If
      • But then they dumped a bunch of time and energy into fixing up those zones. I mostly play Alb, and I used to love fighting in the Catacombs of Cordova, Lyonesse, or Llyn Barfog. Nobody goes there anymore, and there's not much reason to; the new zones have so much better drops. Why did they make the new zones, when they could have just fixed up the old ones? Or why not a little of both?

        Likewise, none of the old really awesome loot is worth anything anymore, because the new stuff is so much more powerfu

  • Eve Online (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Odin_Tiger ( 585113 )
    I like the Eve Online [eve-online.com] model, myself. The game is free to buy and can be downloaded from their site. Monthly fees are about average for the market, and go down if you buy them in larger quantities at a time. You can cancel your subscription and they will hold your character and account for a -very- long time (they did it for me for 8mo) without you paying a nickel, and you can resume with all your cash, skills, items, etc. later, so cancelling a subscription for a 1mo vacation, or while you move if you kn
    • I just resumed playing EVE after an absence of 2 1/2 years, and everything is still there, including the last in-game email I got, which was from my insurance company about the loss of my Exequeror cruiser. My character even finished Gallente Cruiser Level IV training while my account was cancelled.
    • I like a space environment, but what i don't like about eve is the tiny letters in their interface. I simply can't read them, and that is the way with most games, they seem to be designed by 20 somethings for 20 somethings with perfect vision. World of Warcraft on the the other hand has a scaleing engine in the interface, a simple addon and you can scale all items (and not just the chat as clueless support usually suggest).
      • The font problem was introduced with the last expansion patch, previously it was crystal clear (this new font ha multilingual support or something similar, that's the reason of the change). Some people seem not to notice any problem with the font (and rudely tell the ones with problems to go to have their eyes checked). Other have headaches. And others agree that it's really difficult to read. I can hardly notice the decimal points. For what I know CCP is already looking into this.

        At least the company seems
        • I don't think it was introduced in the last patch, I think it has been there all the time - for some of us. I got into the beta and promptly stopped again because I couldn't read the font - I told them about it then, and they promptly couldn't care less.

  • Generate revenue another way (Score:5, Informative)

    by TPJ-Basin ( 763596 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @03:57PM (#14571571) Homepage
    ArenaNet (developers of Guild Wars) did away with monthly payments to play, but instead decided to generate their additional revenue by way of expansion modules. The first one should be on the shelves fairly soon. Included in the modules are things like additional playable races, more lands to discover, additional items and skills, etc. Instead of forcing the users to pay every month whether they play or not, it is up to the users themselves whether (and when!) to purchase the modules. As noted elsewhere here, being away from your computer for a few weeks doesn't feel like throwing money away!

    Flagship Studios' forthcoming debut title Hellgate:London will likely follow a similar path.

    I run a very sucessful online gaming community, but never have much time to play. Avoiding being locked into a monthly fee suits me just fine.
  • You get into a dangerous cost game when you host a MMOG. Suppose you have 10000 people pay 50 bucks, so now you have 500k. However, over the course of a year, those people don't have to pay anything extra, and you have to give them access to the server, which costs money to maintain, bandwidth costs, etc. Where does the money for that come from? If you get new subscribers, that can stave it off for a little while, but eventually you need more cash from the existing customer base to maintain the system a
    • Exactly. It's not an easy thing to predict populations, which is why most MMOs when they launch have server problems. If you had a steady stream of new users, the constant supply of $50 might do it. Arguably, though, if you build an MMO, your goal is to keep players in the game, and that's mighty expensive over time.

      Another alternative would be to increase the initial cost of the game, but I'd gather more people would be hesitant on paying $100 to get in a game (especially if they don't know how much they'l

  • Yeah, because subscription really hurt WoW (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @04:10PM (#14571782) Journal
    Just read the article and look at the sales for WoW (subscription) vs Guild Wars (free to play). And that is without WoW's continued monthly income of a few million times 14.95

    Oh sure, there will always be people who say they won't pay a subscription on top of the box fee. Some of the more insane even bring up their internet connection fee. This is a bit like people who object to having to pay for gas after they bought a car. Even when they pay roadtax!!! The outrage!

    WoW has proven that whatever anyone thought about the MMO industry was wrong. The market had not been saturated. There was no objection against paying a monthly fee. People were not tired of fantasy worlds with orcs and elves.

    People just wanted a game that was fun to play without to many game crippling bugs. No matter how rough WoW has been it was nothing compared to games like EQ and UO wich were at launch so bad it begged believe.

    The subscription fee however is indeed a barrier. Against kiddies seeking to grief. While it doesn't stop them the costs involved keep games like WoW and EQ/SWG cleaner then say a guildwars. As to the few totally free games. Well, browse slashdot at -1 for an instant impression.

    There will be different ways of "selling" an MMO but I think the old and tried box+monthy subscription model is far from death. In fact WoW should have revived it a lot. Wich company could possibly resists years of receiving hundreds of millions of revenue. Most game companies drool at the thought of making that during the launch of a game and Blizzard is doing it month after month after month.

    SOE failed, Blizzard succeeded. Now it will be intresting to see if anyone else can copy WoW's success or wether it was something unique.

    • Though I see your point, the article was talking about MMOG branching out to people that are reluctant to pay a monthly fee for a game. WoW is popular, no doubt, but there is still a much larger user base to be had.
    • WoW did do something right. It used an established revenue model and simply did what Blizzard does best; make quality games that perfectly fit the genre. (Starcraft/Warcraft= arguably best RTS ever, WoW = arguably best MMO ever)

      The real issue that I think these people are missing comes down to the fact they want to get console like revenue in the PC market via the MMO revenue model. They want to attract buyers that might pay $60 for the newest EA sports game but don't touch PC MMOs presumable for their t

    • Games on the Cable Model (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tipa ( 881911 )
      EverQuest is still chugging along seven years after launch, still making money, still releasing expansions and enhancing the game. In what universe could you ever call SOE and by extension, EQ a failure. It's been an unqualified success.

      In six more years, then you can compare WoW and EQ.

      I play WoW. I sit in long queues every night. I get random disconnects. Farmers own places I would like to solo (they even try to sell people stuff in BGs). Some things are severely broken. The endgame is deathly dull and re
      • But WoW passed EQ in subscriber-years just a few months after release, right? From a business point of view, WoW is *already* more successful than EQ. I find WoW completely unappealing as a player, but it's a heck of a business model!
      • You can see this espcially with SWG wich they butchered in the hopes of being seen as more WoW.

        I don't know about the old everquest but the 2nd version has also been overhauled to make it appeal to a bigger crowd.

        Most notable? Increased run speed so your character now looks like a loony toon and no more death penalty.

        SOE was one of the big boys in MMO land and then Blizzard came along and showed them how it is done. By the fact that SOE now seems to be in a panic overhauling their games to appeal to a di

    • The difference between buying a car and then having to pay registration and fuel taxes is that you can sell your car and get money for it if you get tired of playing that particular fee game. If you have a game with a non-transferable account then you lose that option. Also, you can still play with the car off-road (dirt or track, or on your own property) but the MMOGs have no single-player mode.

      Most slashdotters cannot make suitable automotive metaphors and they need to stop trying.

    • Some of the more insane even bring up their internet connection fee. This is a bit like people who object to having to pay for gas after they bought a car.

      No. It isn't. Its more like people buying a car and then complaining that they have to send a montly fee to ford.

  • $15 = one movie with popcorn and a drink (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hab136 ( 30884 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @04:10PM (#14571783) Journal
    2-3 hours at a movie = $15.

    If you spend more than 3 hours having fun in a MMORPG, it's well worth the $15/month.

    I don't get why people are adverse to such a small monthly fee.
    • "I don't get why people are adverse to such a small monthly fee."

      Given the growth of the industry since the release of Everquest, it seems that people don't mind paying the monthly fee as long as the games are enjoyable. I think most articles about MMO fees are really a symptom of the industry being afraid to write anything meaningful that might piss of an advertiser.
    • Because its slavery, you have to keep paying to keep your character. Now if you could download it and keep it when you stopped that would be something else.
      • >Because its slavery, you have to keep paying to keep your character. Now if you could download it and keep it when you stopped that would be something else.

        WoW keeps characters indefinitely, actually. You can cancel your account, then come back a year later, and it's still there.

        Let's say they did allow you do download your character. You now have an XML file describing your stats, reputations, equipment, and gold. What exactly did you plan to do with this? You can achieve the same thing by register
        • WoW keeps characters indefinitely, actually.

          Not from what I heard.

          Let's say they did allow you do download your character. You now have an XML file describing your stats, reputations, equipment, and gold. What exactly did you plan to do with this?

          Thats not the point.

          P.S. if you are having problems with the stylesheet,

          Yes the problem is that sometimes pages show up blank. Though not always so perhaps its a combination of their new stylesheet and some adds.
          you can turn on "Simple Design"

          I know, it looks

  • Guild Wars is NOT an MMOG (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @04:10PM (#14571787) Homepage
    Guild Wars is NOT an MMOG. Or, rather, if you call GW a MMOG, then all games that consist of a lobby area and instanced versions of the game are also MMOG: Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, etc. There's a big difference between playing with a group of people in an instance and with a large number of players in a large zone.

    Guild Wars is an evolution of Diablo 2 and it is a fun game, but it isn't a MMOG comparable to WoW, Everquest, etc. In fact, Battlefield 2 is more of a MMOG than Guild Wars, I'd argue.
    • In GW, your avatars and all their belongings are persistent. This is not the case in CS or UT. I call GW an MMORPG.
    • I would like to extend on what the parent poster mentioned. While most of you believe Guild Wars is a MMORPG, it is no such thing. Guild Wars is only a MMORPG to players who don't realize what a true MMORPG is. Let me explain: I quit WoW for about six months because I got tired of level 60. When I came back to it six months later, WoW had drastically changed. Not only where there battlegrounds and the talent tree of some classes fully revamped, but many instances and minor events throughout the entire gam
      • Ouch. I've played both WoW and Guild Wars extensively, and I would have to say that Guild Wars wins in the graphics category. They have a different style of graphics, definitely, however. WoW goes more for the larger, lower resolution textures/graphics. In Guild Wars, things tend to be smaller and higher res. The artistic qualities of both are outstanding.

        Now, do you know why Guild Wars has such small patches?

        It's because they can! They have absolutely mastered their patching/streaming system, and can
      • Look, if it supports a crapload of simultaneous interacting players, and it's an online game, then it's a MMOG. If it's a RPG, with persistent characters, then it's also a MMORPG. I mean, the definition is right there in the name... Whether you like it or not has nothing to do with anything.
      • I almost feel bad for not explaining all the other advantages WoW has over Guild Wars

        I'm sure that WoW is "so wonderful, it's just like drinking unicorn giggles [penny-arcade.com]". If you're not actually getting paid by Blizzard for this post, then you should apply right away!

        Even by IGN standards, that was on over-the-top fanboy post.
        • WoW is far from perfect and has many flaws; I didn't quit at level 60 because it was perfect, obviously. WoW's problems range from caster itemizations, to reputation proportions given for various battle grounds, and all the way to lack of small-group, high-end PvE encounters. I might be a bit of a fan boy of Blizzard, but Guild Wars also stems from the Blizzard team and I had high expectations for them.

          I think Guild Wars is a fun game with problems of its own like every game in existence. However, even th

          • Playing solo, Guild Wars has vast amounts of content at the highest level you can reach. Does WoW have any? Everything IN GW can be done with 1 team, but that's a huge problem with the WoW endgame.

            I'm sure WoW has some very cool content for 60-player raids, but I'll never do that stuff again in any game, too much politics and too much drama. If you only consider something a "real MMO" if you can do 60-player raids, I can't argue GW is not an MMO in that sense.
    • I'd argue that it is. Unless MMOG doesn't mean massively multiplayer online game (look at it written like this: massively-multiplayer online game to see where the emphasis on the title really is). I do believe they have greater than 1 million players (quick google search gave up this clicky [gamershell.com] and that's a 9/05 post), offer a fairly large world to adventure in, but just because that world is instanced and not seamless like WoW, EQ, etc., doesn't NOT qualify it for the title of Massively Multiplayer Online Game
  • Recently, developers of the game Planetside announced you would be able to try it free for 12 months (you will be limited to battle rank 6), and you have to pay for access after that. Most players can make it to BR6 in a month, of course, and they're hoping people will purchase a subscription. The game only costs $20 to buy and that comes with a one month subscription, which is $12 to $15 a month after that, depending on contract length.

    I bought in back when you had to buy the box, but even then it was on

  • MMO's the new Bingo? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AdamThirteenth ( 857966 ) on Thursday January 26, 2006 @05:09PM (#14572585)
    This article brought up an interesting revelation in my mind. It stated at the end how the number of retiree's playing MMO's is increasing. Now my mom and dad were born in the 50's, they'll be retiring in 10 years, and they introduced ME into gaming. My first memory is at 4 years old playing an educational game called Mixed Up Mother goose. As I got older I actually played Diablo II online (on the realms) with my mom when she was out of work. My dad played games like CnC Generals and the likes. My mom has recently even given games like EQ and WoW a shot. It makes perfect sense if they were to retire tomorrow (unlikely) that they would pick up MMO's. Even my grandma has confessed to me she's played her slot machine game until 4am on some nights ("wow grandma I didn't know we had that much in common") Now my conclusion is that if games become more user friendly to begin with, easier to pick up and get interested in and allow for a larger interest and larger market it is very possible and logical to me that retirees, in 15+ years (and even more so come the time gen X retires), may very well replace your typical retiree activities of today (think Bingo, knitting, romance novels, etc.) Compare the demographic similarities of your average mmo player (16-20 something) and a retiree: Lots of free time Moderate levels of expendable income (or access to it like parents/kids) The desire to do something that involves commitment and shows progress (think knitting, quilting, crafts) Now future retirees will have more tech savy and important factors like being able to understand a sort of virtual world, but other than both my parents slow repsonse time (another thing I think will slowly change) it seems perfectly viable for a retiree to be the next MMO demographic. Or maybe my family has a genetic addictive personality and for some reason all of it gets channeled into video games and vodka (in grandma's case)
    • This article brought up an interesting revelation in my mind. It stated at the end how the number of retiree's playing MMO's is increasing. Now my mom and dad were born in the 50's, they'll be retiring in 10 years, and they introduced ME into gaming.

      My first memory is at 4 years old playing an educational game called Mixed Up Mother goose. As I got older I actually played Diablo II online (on the realms) with my mom when she was out of work. My dad played games like CnC Generals and the likes. My mom ha
  • > But monthly fees have been "a significant barrier" to growing
    > the market, said John Smedley, president of Sony Online
    > Entertainment, based in San Diego.

    No, slapping your customers in the face with massive, constant nerfs to their beloved characters that, often, they may have more hours invested in than your own workers do in the game programming and design!

    In any case, you get rid of fees, you pick up on initial sales, but you lose the fees. So you get a bunch of teenagers who are too lazy to
  • Having played both of these games (WoW/GW), I know what they're like. Is WoW a better game? Definitely. Is it worth the money? Probably. However, being a Poor Ass College Student(TM), that $15 a month seems like a fucking mountain of cash. I'm sitting here with $4 in my pocket, and short of pawning my clothes, it's all of my assets. I work (more than a student should), but with rent, food, gas, and other lame responsibilities, I'm doing just dandy with my free GW account.

    p.s. WTS Shirt of Hanesosity,
  • I don't want to pay $50 for software that I then have to pay $15 a month to use. I don't quite understand why Blizzard doesn't make the WOW almost free or free (like $15 in store, with maybe a month of service). The $50 barrier to entry is what has kept me from playing.
    • Well it seems supply and demand has spoken and they can get away with charging 50 bucks in stores seeing as how it's been wildly succesful. If I was at blizzard i'd see no reason to change.

      Obviously being a consumer your bias (me to) and want cheaper, faster, and higher quality but it's just not realistic.

      I happily pay my 15 a month. I like the movie analogy.. How much is it to go to a movie? or even worse a fair or some other entertainment venue? From an entertainment to cost ratio WoW owns everythi
    • I completely agree. I got a 14 day trial of City of Heroes with a PC gamer I bought to read on a long plane trip. I gave the game a try, and actually had a lot of fun playing it, but completely balked at the idea of ponying up another $45 just to contniue playing. This made no sense to me, I would have paid $15 for another month without a second thought, but $45 just for the "game" which was already installed on my computer seemed ridiculous.
  • It's kind of a mixed bag, to me.

    On the one hand, it is nice not to have to pay a monthly fee. The advantages are obvious. No extra $$$ output from your original purchase price. More players. Less difficult to get your friends to play.

    On the other hand, with the monthly fee, you tend to get better service. More bug fixes. More content updates. More money (supposedly) sunk into servers and GM support. Less players that are playing once a week or less.

    For the amount of time you usually spend playing a

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