I don't agree with you, the subscription is justifed. It takes alot to develop a game, and a MMORPG such as this has constant content update, some times as often as monthy, where tons of new stuff gets added to the game. With out that kind of on going devlopment, the game would sudden be very boring. I'm gladdly paying the subscription whatever it may be.
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City of Heroes - Best MMO EVar!!!!1!
- Thread starter Tengis
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I don't agree with you, the subscription is justifed. It takes alot to develop a game, and a MMORPG such as this has constant content update, some times as often as monthy, where tons of new stuff gets added to the game. With out that kind of on going devlopment, the game would sudden be very boring. I'm gladdly paying the subscription whatever it may be.
Oh and I just like to add another thing before some one argues the point. Its much differant in the Frist Person Shooter world. Frist off it cost less because, there's less traffic in one server, unlike an MMORPG where its full of traffic all the time. Also game patches don't count as an content update, its more like game fixes. And when there is a content update, like say a MOD, its not done by the game company, but a mod team made up of gamers, who do it for free, and offer the mod for free.
Tengis
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The cost of playing an MMO is justified in my eyes. If the game is fun, and I enjoy it, then I dont mind paying to play it. There are so many horrible games... MMOs are well worth it.
(people X subscription fee) - (bandwidth cost + upkeep + employee pay) = profit
People who wont pay for an MMO until its free... YOUR DREAMING! It will never happen unless its beta or is run on someones personal server. MMOs are never going to get rid of the subscription fee. Period.
And as long as you are paying to play them, they will always "strive" to be the best games out there. They are the only games that developers see as giving cashflow longterm, so they will always be changing and trying to get better and better. MMOs will be around for a very long time.
(people X subscription fee) - (bandwidth cost + upkeep + employee pay) = profit
People who wont pay for an MMO until its free... YOUR DREAMING! It will never happen unless its beta or is run on someones personal server. MMOs are never going to get rid of the subscription fee. Period.
And as long as you are paying to play them, they will always "strive" to be the best games out there. They are the only games that developers see as giving cashflow longterm, so they will always be changing and trying to get better and better. MMOs will be around for a very long time.
BobSutan
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Wrong. Try telling that to Valve. The key to having a long-term cashcow in the standalone game arena is by making it open to modification and encouraging small developers to take it and run with it. Besides, many developers make their real money by licensing their game engines out to other game development houses.
easy solution to the game price.
Buy it six months from now. There isn't a MMORPG out there that didn't lower it's price after six months on the shelf.
You will probably be able to pick up COH for 29.99.
An added benefit to waiting is that they will have worked out a few of the bugs and hopefully added some content to the game.
Buy it six months from now. There isn't a MMORPG out there that didn't lower it's price after six months on the shelf.
You will probably be able to pick up COH for 29.99.
An added benefit to waiting is that they will have worked out a few of the bugs and hopefully added some content to the game.
BobSutan
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Hell, that's exactly what I do with every game.
odoe
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My buddy told me he already saw a Tick-like character in the beta.
The character customization in the game is supposed to be top notch according to what the beta folks are saying.
For $50 up front I want to be able to play a full game, if I'm paying a monthly fee at or over $10, the original disc had better be about 1/2 that price.
Comapre it to, any game out there. $50 gets you single and online play, not MMO worlds, but still. Same is true for say, never winter nights. I would possible pay for a truely MMO NWN world, but not for servers with >60 people logged in.
If you can't do this out of the box, and it's ONLY MMO, then there should be minimal cost to the game itself.
Comapre it to, any game out there. $50 gets you single and online play, not MMO worlds, but still. Same is true for say, never winter nights. I would possible pay for a truely MMO NWN world, but not for servers with >60 people logged in.
If you can't do this out of the box, and it's ONLY MMO, then there should be minimal cost to the game itself.
Also for me, having a wife, two dogs, and a full-time job, I just do not have the time to get my 10-15 a month gameplay in. At best I could see playing at most 8 hours/month. And some months not being able to play at all. Also these games are probably hard to play in short duration.
Games like UT2k4 I can buy, and play a quick 20-30 minute game. I pay $40 and will probably play it for atleast 1 year and get 50+ hours of game play.
Single player games like FarCry I can play at my own speed and usually takes me a LONG time to finish.
Most MMORPGs I probably would always be behind the curve level wise and over the period of a year the game would cost me $150 - $200.
BobSutan
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Again, I completely agree with this line of thinking. I'm in the same kind of situation, and really, for anyone with an active life where gaming is not a major thing, then anything more than $10 a month is just not worth it. But then looking on the flip-side of the coin, who are these games geared towards. Causal gamers, or hard-core kids that have all the time in the world? You be the judge.
I belive that its this distinction that has given rise to such different views of MMORPG, or at least monthly charges for gaming. If we can recognize this and understand it a bit better, maybe we'll be better off in the long run as to how and why games are being presented in a particular manner.
Quit opposite of me. No girlfriend, no pets, no kids and no outstanding debt *cept car* and full time job. Just free, single and all my time and money to me, me, me, and thats probably how I'll have it till I die. So bring on the MMORPGS!!!
But your right, people in your situations, MMORPG's are just simply not geared towards that kinda lifestyle, and the developers know it and thats why they catter to the kids and adults who basically just have that kinda time to play 4 hours a day to level a character to accomplish something else in the game when you reach a certain level thats only possible by putting in many hours of work..
Life is all about perception and balancing, or so I think.
REALLY!?!? HOW?
You give the wife the credit card and tie the dog to the fence only a daily basis or what?
Good to hear though I am not the only one without the time for these games. Don't get me wrong they look sweet, and the concept I like. Just do not have the time to put towards them I guess.
Close.Originally posted by m1abram
REALLY!?!? HOW?
You give the wife the credit card and tie the dog to the fence only a daily basis or what?
Nah, the NWN persistant worlds are great for me, esp the one I play in. If you really-really wanted to you could go from 1st to 40th level in less than a week. It would take me double that. But anyways the level progression is fast and there is lots of RPing going on, so I'm not behind the level curve, I just may not have as many characters as other people.
Other than that fast paced FPS like UT2K4 are right up my alley.
My girlfriend stops me playing MMOG's as well. I'm allowed one and I have strict times when I can play. Like when she's asleep. I probably get like 3.5 hours a day less than her because of that rule.
That's a little blinkered, take into account Eve, today they are upgrading their FC system, now for the scale of upgrade they are talking about you are talking £250,000 GBP easy. Probably more and their subscription base is only 45,000.
If you've got an ongoing team of 10 developers @ 80k a year each working on future updates and fixes that's nearly 90k a month gone on wages. That's 7500 peoples subscriptions before tax.
Then add in 4 GM's another 10k a month.
Cost of admin staff (including IT Support staff)
The cost of server hosting. (Multiple sites, large pipes, low latancy is not cheap)
$15,000 servers. (A FC HBA is $2400 on it's own)
Hardware upkeep costs (replacing drives and such)
New Servers to cope with increase demand.
Plus it costs more money to develop in the first place. Why? well because the scale is generally much greater than on a normal game and you need people that specialise in things other than coding, things like SQL Databases, Servers, SANs, Networking etc etc.
And it goes on and on and on. So yes Evercrack could be cheaper as it makes a ton of money just because of the huge userbase but probably don't make anywhere near as much as you think they do.
The way I look at is this.
If I play Eve 10 Hours a week that's the equivelent of me buying 1.5 games a month. That costs more than the £12 I pay and I play eve way more than 10 hours a week anyway.
Peace.
Back on topic, it looks cool but I doubt I'll get it. Hasn't got that wow factor for me, not unless I can shoot laser beams out of my eyeballs. (Why does Cyclops have the coolest power and the lamest personality )
That's a little blinkered, take into account Eve, today they are upgrading their FC system, now for the scale of upgrade they are talking about you are talking £250,000 GBP easy. Probably more and their subscription base is only 45,000.
If you've got an ongoing team of 10 developers @ 80k a year each working on future updates and fixes that's nearly 90k a month gone on wages. That's 7500 peoples subscriptions before tax.
Then add in 4 GM's another 10k a month.
Cost of admin staff (including IT Support staff)
The cost of server hosting. (Multiple sites, large pipes, low latancy is not cheap)
$15,000 servers. (A FC HBA is $2400 on it's own)
Hardware upkeep costs (replacing drives and such)
New Servers to cope with increase demand.
Plus it costs more money to develop in the first place. Why? well because the scale is generally much greater than on a normal game and you need people that specialise in things other than coding, things like SQL Databases, Servers, SANs, Networking etc etc.
And it goes on and on and on. So yes Evercrack could be cheaper as it makes a ton of money just because of the huge userbase but probably don't make anywhere near as much as you think they do.
The way I look at is this.
If I play Eve 10 Hours a week that's the equivelent of me buying 1.5 games a month. That costs more than the £12 I pay and I play eve way more than 10 hours a week anyway.
Peace.
Back on topic, it looks cool but I doubt I'll get it. Hasn't got that wow factor for me, not unless I can shoot laser beams out of my eyeballs. (Why does Cyclops have the coolest power and the lamest personality
)Most game GM's are volunteer's.
Bandwidth cost goes DOWN over the years, not up. It's cheaper to use bandwidth now then it was years ago when EQ and UO were the main mmorpgs.
Thus the reason you still have to BUY the game at a normal games retail price. Hell most new mmorpgs are simply better graphics, the gameplay IMO was far greater in Ultima online then any other mmorpg that's came out since then. I'd gladly trade in the other mmorpgs for a new UO game that keeps the rules before that tram/fel crap.
of all the people i've known that played mmorpgs, they STILL get other game regularly like they would anyways, same for me, i get an mmorpg and play it but still buy the other games i want to play.
Bandwidth to the end user gets cheaper, it hasn't got much cheaper at the backbone for about 3 years. They had so much over capacity in most areas (Excepting MCI's West Coast Pop, can't remember the name off hand, great network design that was) that they haven't had to install much extra capacity since the glory days and so because of this and because they've stopped price warring Tier One ISP's are pretty similar to what they were 2-3 years ago.
One myth dispelled.
Other networking myths.
Gigabit to desktop won't happen for 3-5 years on a corporate level.
Companies haven't needed to upgrade bandwidth for a long time.
SDSL won't kill leased lines.
End users aren't the driving force they think they are. In 3 years an end user consumer will account for 70% of revenue from DSL lines but that will still be nothing compared to the money generated from businesses.
The thing is though, companies aren't upgrading because a company large enough to use a lot of bandwidth would usually use a MAN or LAN extenders to join sites and as these are in place to 10GBit in major citys there is still no need to up the pipe to the internet. The only exception to this is the relatively high bandwidth that VPN enabled broadband users take up. Even this accounts for only a 4mbit line in our European HQ of >10,000 users.
I know they buy other games, I buy other games, I buy a ton of games in fact (at least 17 in the last 4 months). I wasn't saying you won't get other games just that IMO over a long enough timeline you will get more playtime per $ from a MMOG.
You have a few volunteers GM's, not most. Customer service reps are volunteers. Not gm's. Oh ya let's give Johnny Volunteer access to our multi million dollar database.
I will stand up and say this as well, I may be talking out of my ass but after seeing (with my mk 1 eyeball) the setup forjust little old eve, a small mmog, I cannot see how they can get costs back from the retail boxes, Maybe the AoE guy (Torgo is it?) will have a better idea as I don't know game developmen but I do know hardware costs and my first instinct is. Not a chance in hell.
All said though I'm probably wrong and look an ass.
One myth dispelled.
Other networking myths.
Gigabit to desktop won't happen for 3-5 years on a corporate level.
Companies haven't needed to upgrade bandwidth for a long time.
SDSL won't kill leased lines.
End users aren't the driving force they think they are. In 3 years an end user consumer will account for 70% of revenue from DSL lines but that will still be nothing compared to the money generated from businesses.
The thing is though, companies aren't upgrading because a company large enough to use a lot of bandwidth would usually use a MAN or LAN extenders to join sites and as these are in place to 10GBit in major citys there is still no need to up the pipe to the internet. The only exception to this is the relatively high bandwidth that VPN enabled broadband users take up. Even this accounts for only a 4mbit line in our European HQ of >10,000 users.
I know they buy other games, I buy other games, I buy a ton of games in fact (at least 17 in the last 4 months). I wasn't saying you won't get other games just that IMO over a long enough timeline you will get more playtime per $ from a MMOG.
You have a few volunteers GM's, not most. Customer service reps are volunteers. Not gm's. Oh ya let's give Johnny Volunteer access to our multi million dollar database.
I will stand up and say this as well, I may be talking out of my ass but after seeing (with my mk 1 eyeball) the setup forjust little old eve, a small mmog, I cannot see how they can get costs back from the retail boxes, Maybe the AoE guy (Torgo is it?) will have a better idea as I don't know game developmen but I do know hardware costs and my first instinct is. Not a chance in hell.
All said though I'm probably wrong and look an ass.
I can say this ... I've never even been remotely interested in MMOGs. Mainly due to the fact that I'd have to pay to play. But after years of CS I told myself that paying for play is a great way to stop 'a lot' of online cheating. The theme for most MMOGs have never really been my 'thing' so when I heard of WoW I thought ahhhhh I think I could do this. WoW looks great, but I almost feel obligated to buy it because I'm such a loyal Blizzard fan. That feeling kinda bothers me, but THEN! ITS A BIRD, ITS A PLANE, ITS ..... ITS ....
..... ITS CITY OF HEROES to the rescue!!! I've read several reviews on this game, and I must say it looks really impressive. I don't bitch and complain much about movie/games/life because it gets you nowhere. If people don't want to pay, thats fine, go play UT2k4 or whatever suits your needs. I've never played a MMOGs and Im excited to get my copy and kick some villian ASS! Being a guy, I find it irresistable to become/create my own SUPER HERO. I don't expect every game to have FC graphics (well someday ), rather I'm more interested in gameplay, etc ...
I personally can't wait for the game, good thing it launches in 4 days!!
..... ITS CITY OF HEROES to the rescue!!! I've read several reviews on this game, and I must say it looks really impressive. I don't bitch and complain much about movie/games/life because it gets you nowhere. If people don't want to pay, thats fine, go play UT2k4 or whatever suits your needs. I've never played a MMOGs and Im excited to get my copy and kick some villian ASS! Being a guy, I find it irresistable to become/create my own SUPER HERO. I don't expect every game to have FC graphics (well someday
), rather I'm more interested in gameplay, etc ...I personally can't wait for the game, good thing it launches in 4 days!!
There are cheaters in every mmorpg, only mainly they find a way to exploit something, money/xp wise, or dupe something. Since the nature of the game though the developers usually can fix it, and if caught ban the people, but you WILL have cheating pop up in a mmorpg a few times.
Happened in every mmorpg i've played, EQ, UO, AC, AO, DAOC, etc.
NIGHTMARE2
Gawd
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Let's see.
Average movie 90 min long. I'll put a movie ticket at $8.
180 min of movie watching at a theatre is $16.
The average mmorpger plays more than 180 min a week at around $13/month.
Do the math you cheapskate douche bags.
Average movie 90 min long. I'll put a movie ticket at $8.
180 min of movie watching at a theatre is $16.
The average mmorpger plays more than 180 min a week at around $13/month.
Do the math you cheapskate douche bags.
I really enjoyed the three day trial. I mean I was really impressed with how good this game actually is, they have some really good ideas, such as inpirations and the variations of powers in the different archtypes I was really put in my place after trash talking this game to my friends before I played it. Im really torn over buying this game or not, I mean im really looking foward to WoW but this game was really fun to play. It was just hard enough to piss you off when you died but not hard enough that you didnt wanna play. Ive never played an MMO where I didnt get pissed when people would mooch off some of my kills. The instanced missions are very very fitting for superheroes because I couldnt see a mission zone overpopulated with superheroes, it would just kinda be out of place. A group or just solo in the missions works perfectly. I would like to see how the end game turns out though before I buy it.
Whats the verdict? Wait for WoW, or just buy this game now? Its not even the monthly fee that I dont wanna pay I just dont have 50 bucks to shell out now.
Whats the verdict? Wait for WoW, or just buy this game now? Its not even the monthly fee that I dont wanna pay I just dont have 50 bucks to shell out now.
NIGHTMARE2
Gawd
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What the hell? What are you smoking?
My point was you get MORE entertainment for LESS $$$$ so bashing monthly fees is retarded.
apples and oranges man.
Games have ALWAYSSSSSSSSSS been longer then movies period. (well most of em
)I know a monthly fee is the "easiest" way for a mmorpg to stay profitable/going, but imo they could survive at 9.95 a month.
That was fine with me, i mean you have to remember a lot of people that play mmorpgs are kids/teen's that don't have jobs yet and count on their parents paying for it, now i know a lot of parents(while not much extra) will pull the old "well 15/month, times 12 months , =" and decided not to let their kid play.
NIGHTMARE2
Gawd
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Originally posted by Stiler
apples and oranges man.
Games have ALWAYSSSSSSSSSS been longer then movies period. (well most of em
I know a monthly fee is the "easiest" way for a mmorpg to stay profitable/going, but imo they could survive at 9.95 a month.
That was fine with me, i mean you have to remember a lot of people that play mmorpgs are kids/teen's that don't have jobs yet and count on their parents paying for it, now i know a lot of parents(while not much extra) will pull the old "well 15/month, times 12 months , =" and decided not to let their kid play.
Everyone I have ever known has done their chores, mowed the lawn, maintained their grades in school, etc, and in return their parents bought them "toys."
And with the invention of 90 day game cards you can't use the credit card debate.
Sorry but I'm not comparing apples and oranges.
Entertainment in hours is Entertainment in hours.
Money is Money.
Entertainment in Hours / Money = Entertainment Value.
MMORPGS have a much higher Entertainment Value than Movies.
gg no re math wins
Instead of adding something in an expansion that is so important, it should be there to begin with. Too bad the internet has made it so people can buy just part of a game and then buy the other parts later, whether they are bug patches or actual important features of the game!
Companies need to pull a profit. Expantions is one way of doing that, I don't mind. The PC game industry is hard to make money on when console systems dominate the market. Companies like NCsoft have to pull a profit somewhere in order to expand the company and continue making games. And besides a expantion is a update on a good game, crappy games don't get expanded. I like seeing and have new stuff in a game I love, it makes me continue playing the game, which in turn will give more money to the company making the game. That just sounds like good business to me.
NIGHTMARE2
Gawd
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MMORPGs don't charge for patches, considering patches come weekly to bi-weekly in most games.
And a lot of mmorpgs tend to add free "zones" and content periodically to give back to the community. New stuff doesn't always come in the form of an expansion.
And why do people always say "bandwith doesn't cost that much" to $13/month? Do they forget that there are programmers, artists, office positions, customer support, and gms to pay, among other things.