Monthly Fee for MMOs

you don't think they pay their employees?

they have to pay employees and to keep the servers maintained and running.
It also pays for new content patches, pay a sub fee and get free content and updates through the year or keep shelling out for expansions at £30 a time like the sims , i know what i prefer

I'm gonna take the liberty of adding the line /sarcasm to this comment.



Do you have a cellphone? That is more than 15 a month. If you don't like grinding, don't play MMORPGs, nothing can be done about it, its the nature of the beast.



No they don't. There a few jewels among the shit.



Yes, money well earned I say.



Yes they do need the money for servers, they also need to pay customer support people, developers, and any other personel of the company, also some of that money is going to develop Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (what other company can boast on working on two of the most anticipated games to date both at the same time?). Better graphics means nothing in the MMO genre, well pershaps if it forces you to upgrade your computer to play the game. And style? thats purely personal.



You only taking into account the graphics? Silly you. You will be surprised...



Gotta love freedom.

Those servers are NOT cheap to run you know.

i like the little known free one ROHAN-got mounts for us freeplayers-finally

Still that is untrue, Rohan though a good free MMO does not charge players in any way, why cant blizzard do that? No I do not have a cell phone anymore. When I did i didnt even pay for it. Blizzard does not have thousands of employees they have to pay either. 10 million players? mutliply that by cost of games and expansions, that is still a lot of money. Servers may cost a lot but they still lag. ITs just greed, sales of the game should be able to pay employees and servers alone if the game is succseful.

Blizzard is a business. You do realize the purpose of a business is to make money, don't you? If you're so dead set against it, then vote with your wallet. No one's forcing you to play. I don't like the monthly fees either. But guess what? I don't play MMOs. It really is that simple.

I'm curious how you had a cell phone but didn't pay anything as well.

With Diablo III, sure. Not likely SC -- it already looks like a micro-focused clickfest.

Ick.

you know how much game development COSTS? WoW is how they make the massive amount of money required to maintain/upgrade their computers, pay all their bills, employees, cleaners, buy new software, advertise WoW to make more money etc.

and Blizzard is a business - IT EXISTS TO MAKE MONEY, not to give all their money away. of course they are going to give it to themselves!!!

guild wars was a terrible mmo IMO wow had better graphics, gameplay and everything on it.. WoW also has a manual text u can type to improve its graphics significantly. to the point where my geforce 5, drops by 20 fps.

and 15$ a month is nothing.. im sorry the excuse my parents pay for my cell phone cuz they need to know where I am.. doesn't work on a game. even then pay for it months at a time and its even less then 15$ a month. IMO get a job.

"sales of the game should be able to pay employees and servers alone if the game is succseful."
- A one time sale is suppost to maintain servers for the next 10-15 years? unlikely blizz maintains their games for years to come. im fairly sure starcraft is even getting updates still.

My big problem with fee based games isn't the fees themselves, but the design decisions that invariably accompany them. A fee based game isn't about giving the user the most enjoyable and entertaining experience, it's about finding a way to keep them playing for as long as possible. Fee based games, consequently, are more about wasting your time than filling it. WoW's a perfect example, really.

And I adored Guild Wars, but it's really an action RPG that you happen to have to play online more than an MMO. It does one thing, and does it well. In comparison to WoW the control is better, the art direction is vastly superior, the graphics in general are better, and the skill system is much more interesting. The removal of all those fee based time wasters in "real" MMO's is a nice plus as well (map travel, free respecs etc). That said, it's more linear, smaller, and far less diverse than WoW, so I can understand why it wouldn't appeal to some tastes. Personally I found WoW unplayably slow, awkward, and dull, but to each his own.

Thank you Vinraith, I agree SO much. I've been playing on a 5 man team with Wow for over 2 years now, and the ONLY reason I stay in the game is because the other 4 guys would hate me if I quit on them after "all this time"; first it was to get to lvl 60, now 70, soon 80, but nothing in the game changes much; I'm so board most nights I could play after taking Night-Quill I think. When we go up a level, they seem to raise our hitpoints 2%, the monsters hitpoints 2%, and increase everyones damage/healing 2%. Rince and reapeat for 70 times.

But the way they started doing WoW now is so obvious to keep you shelling out money as long as possible, NOT to have more fun. They even have stuff you can do or items you can have for people that pay more money (expansions & bringing in new players) that you can't if you did'nt give them more money (as just one example, any Tailors in WoW know exactly what I mean, as making 16 slot bags is a HUGE pain to make, unless you pay Blizzard real moneny, then you can make them as easy as pie). After working for months to get $600 gold to get my mount, imagine my shock the very next day seeing people getting one free if they get a friend to start shelling out $15 a month.

I understand the monthly fee, but I'm guessing WoW is the last time I'll do an MMO for a loooooong time.

"You don't think they pay their employees?"



No they pay them in WoW gold instead.

why do you think they have so many Guild Wars games out.

Well really graphics is one thing, but gameplay is another. Guild Wars actually requires skill to play. Anet planned to create stand-alone campaigns to keep the players entertained. Yes if all previous players bought the expansions (which were anually released back to back) it would be like paying an annual monthly fee, but if you play WoW and decide not to get expansions, you are still paying 15 dollars a month no matter what. What sad people there are today who play a noob game that only takes your life to beat (socially and physically). Yes I am biased towards Guild Wars and other free MMOs that are far and few.

oh yes i know and i can't wait for the Free Star Trek MMO to come out.

Noone is forcing anyone to pay. You don't have to like it. Don't like it? Don't pay. It's as simple as.


But please, have some respect for what other people like and don't like, and recognize that their priorities may be very different from yours.

They charge what enough people are willing to pay in order to give them the profit margin they desire. It's not so simple as cutting price = more subscribers = more money, as more subscribers also makes for higher costs (more servers and support reps needed, etc.).

So just as a completely unfounded example, cutting the price by 30% might need to bring in 50% more players just to match the profit of the higher price. But even that's not highly likely to happen. The potential MMO userbase isn't a nice curve of people who might play if only it were a bit cheaper; it's largely a cut between those willing to pay at all, and those not. And I'd say it's fairly likely that the paying crowd is mostly tapped already.

Yup, and they're working on Guild Wars 2 and you can bet they'll have several expansions for that as well. Guild Wars makes its money by regularly releasing new expansions.

In addition, Guild Wars was created by former Blizzard employees, and they license their technology to NCSoft, so they're probably making a lot of money there as well.

Every MMORPG I know of has some way of have having continuous or semi-continuous income. WoW just makes it more obvious than others.



WoW is about middle of the pack as far as grinding goes. It's not as easy as Guild Wars, but it's not as hard as Silkroad. It's a pretty flat curve if you do the quests - I'm in the mid 50s, and I can still do a level or two in a single day if I have enough free time.



Actually, they do. Server maintenance can be quite expensive, especially for something as large scale as a MMORPG. The ones that don't have explicit payments support it by some other means, such as premium items.



I'd say just about every game on the market has better graphics than WoW. WoW capitalizes on gameplay for appeal, not graphics.



Considering the GeForce 5 is five generations old by now (6, 7, 8, 9, and the new 200 series), I'd say half of the games I own would drop the framerate on a GeForce 5 to below 5 fps, easily.

You're probably getting bad graphics in Guild Wars because you're using such an old card and can't crank the graphics up. Its graphics are far better than WoW's graphics on cards that support shader model 3.



This is so true. Guild Wars is an easy game to put down, especially after you've completed the primary plot quests. Perhaps a bit too easy to put down: I haven't played in months, and the guild I'm in is down to only a few players. It's practically a single player game in many respects.

WoW, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to put down, and the guilds seem to be stronger and last longer. It seems to be a tradeoff.



Create an alt, and have it pick up the mining skill. I can make 100g easily. But yes, playing WoW can be a major time commitment if you're not careful. I'll probably be cutting back majorly (maybe completely) when the next semester at college starts.

Yes, let's pass legislation guaranteeing our right to computer gaming. Wait! How about a constitutional amendment? If you think Blizzard ranks right up there with Enron, oil companies, and predatory lenders, well then, for goodness sake don't use their products!

Agreed. You don't have to play MMORPGs if you don't like them.

Wow, people that are using obsolete hardware to play modern video games and then complain when the graphics are not pretty, there a word for that type of people but I best not say it. Just buy a new computer with decent hardware for about $1000.



You had a cellphone but didn't pay for it, thats say a lot about your willingness to pay for anything. And do you have ANY idea as to how many employess Blizzard have? Like secretaries, janitors, accountants, lawyers? And do you also have ANY idea how much money it cost Blizzard to keep all the infractrutre for WoW? Find out about those things, it will be interesting to know.



Actually required skill to play.... what does that mean? People play games to have fun. How sad are people who judge other people out of ignorance, I pity them.

Really, you don't want to pay an monthly subscription, don't do it. You want to play a fee based MMORPG, pay the subscription.

Yeah cause pushing buttons in so very skillful. LMAO. Go out side Nancy I think you need some sun.

Monthly fees...

Those companies that don't use Monthly fees generally have other in-game things that also require real money. Often, these things can be game-changing in terms of easing the grind or simply feeling powerful. Or they're just massively cool. Balancing such a thing is not easy even in a single-player-only game. In an MMO? Highly difficult indeed.

The bigger problem is they're using a 10+ year-old formula, stripped down. WoW spawned many imitators. The thing is, WoW is basically Diablo/Diablo 2, without even the hint of a grand/interesting plotline to pass it off. The emptiness of the grinding hits home without some excuse for it.


PS:

Yeah cause pushing buttons in so very skillful. LMAO. Go out side Nancy I think you need some sun.

Please note that this same thought can be applied to every game since the dawn of computer gaming, up to and including Sins of a Solar Empire. I'm certain there's at least one game in all that history that would make you sit up and say "Hey, that's not so! X does take skill...."

Honestly I don't see why Blizzard can't just offer WoW for free. I mean their staff ought to be working as volunteers, they should have loads of free servers handed to them from companies because companies exist to lose money, and of course graphics should be amazing and updated every few years that the bar is raised for free, because it's really as simple as just changing a setting on your game to improve them, and so can be done for free by those volunteers.