[Keyboard Cowboy]

In order to prevent any further thread hijacks where people are going to argue there views on Pay To Play vs. Free to Play games.

Please express your views here and not hijack another another thread.


Some example of games with the options

Game Client, Expansion & subscription should be paid for. - Eg. World Of Warcraft and just 90% of the MMORPGs out there
Game Client should be free. Expansion and subscription should be paid for. Eg. Anarchy Online
Game Client & Expansion should be free. Subscription should be paid for. Eg. EVE Online
Game Client & Expansion should be paid for. Subscription should be free. Eg. Guild Wars
Game Client, Expansion, subscription should free. I don't mind paying for skills & equipment Eg. gPotato MMORPG Games, and alot of other Asian Free To Play MMOs.
Game Client, Expansion, subscription should free. I don't mind in game advertising Eg. Acclaim MMORPG Games

[wafflehammer]

ahhh man :| i misclicked..meant to hit the

"Game Client & Expansion should be free. Subscription should be paid for."

Option...if a mod can change that, please do (if it's even possible) but anyway:

I think this way because games are always being updated. Updates mean man hours of time..which means paying employees. So if you don't pay, they can't be paid, and then no more updates. I think a monthly payment takes care of the cost to keep a game going so disc buying shouldn't be required. Even expansions. I know it's a lot of content at once but you also have to wait a year or two for these expansions (like WoW). So take those 1-2 years of monthly payments and it should more than cover the cost of what production for the expansion cost.

In short...paying for game = no

paying monthly = yes

[Keyboard Cowboy]

Firstly I find playing MMORPG works out cheaper for me that playing stand alone games.
I might be paying for a client. However i am strong believer in "you get what you pay for". However normally in that client, you are pay for a disk and playier's reference manual and the most of the time the first month of game time. I do find that it's a little cheap of the programmers where they get people to pay for the game and then pay again for the first month of play.*

However when you look at stand alone games these pays, they are getting shorter and shorter. 15 years ago, I used to pick and expect about 20 hours or so of play before beating it. No days, most stand alone games you will be lucky to have any more that 8 hours of play before beating the final boss. In the mean time, you are still pay top dollar to play this games. However lets be realistic here and say that i do have a life away from by computer. So lets say I finish the game in 2 weeks after purchasing it. After 2 weeks, I am looking for another game to play. Therefore i need to folk out more money.

As for MMORPGs. I might be stuck paying for the client. However if that it the case, I am expecting that manual, disk, the first month paid for and maybe a special limited edition in game item for pre-ordering or what ever. However after that, I am paying a subscription week where i have vast open areas to explore, countless hours of play. And even when you finish about 99% of the quests, the MMORPG developers always have something new to coming out with patches and expansions.

New stand alone game is about $50
US$50 x 26 fornights per year = $1300

MMORPG subscription is about $15 per month
US$15 x 12 months per year = $180.

So if we weigh up the price differences between a me playing an MMORPG for 1 years vs me purchasing a new game every 2 week, it does work out far cheaper. Even if I am paying another $50 for the MMORPG client.

As for my views on the clients. Personally i do feel that the clients and expansions should be for free. Especialy when the devs seems to make more money alone on the subscription than they do on the game. However if I am paying for a expansion, they better have some thing like a new class, a vast reigon to explore and a higher level cap. If I am also paying for client, I really wish that the devs would bring out a 14 trail account before having to fork out real money for a game that I am not sure if I am going to like or not at the end of the month.

For those people that want to complain quality of the free2play MMO clients. I do feel that they have no right to complain about ingame items needing to be paid and not so nice looking graphics. At the end of the day, you do get what you pay for.

* The only expection in my experience has been Phantasy Star Universe and that because there is no serial number to activate your online account. Plus there is the offline story mode too.

[Trotter]

Edited the vote.

[wafflehammer]

^^ thank you trotter

and i agree with keyboard. Yea if you think "wow $15 a month for the same game over and over..that's expensive!". But it's not really. I played wow for about a year n a half. Put in about 3 months of actually game time.

$300 for game and monthly payments for that time for about 2160ish (rough esimate) of game play.

You're average game now that isn't an MMO gets about 8 hours to 50 hours (depending on game type..fps are short..but rpg's are long)


Still though. Take those 2160 hours of game play and divide it by 50 (average time for a good rpg..like fallout) and it's enough time for 43.5 games.

43.5 games at $50 each..comes out to over $2100.

Now, I doubt anyone buys 43 games a year or at least not that many RPGs so these numbers aren't exactly realistic. But when it comes down to it $300 for a MMORPG payments in a year...or $2000 for the same amount of hours in other games.

[BlueHeaven]

I don't think either choicee is better than the other. It it just the developer's or publisher's chosen bussiness model.

Guild Wars vs WOW vs Rappelz (gPotato): I've played all three. Amount spent on each:

Guild Wars - Prophecies $50 + Factions $50 + NightFalls $50 + Eye of the North $40 = $190 total. That was over the course of around 2 years.

WoW - I only played for about 2 months (didn't like it). But if I had played it for the length of time I had played Guildwars I would have paid - 24 months x $13 + intial purchase $40 = $352

Rappelz - now this game is genius when it comes to getting you addicted then getting your money. So far on this 'free to play, pay to stay' game I've spent $150 over about a year x 2 years = $300

Guild Wars actually ends up being the cheepest oddly.
But even though Guild Wars is the cheapest, this game has definitely the most responsive to the clients needs, bug fixes, patches, updates, game balancing etc. In fact it makes me wonder why I stopped playing it in the first place.

But even looking at the numbers, I believe the quality of the game has more to do with the developer/publisher than how they choose to make their money off the game. They all need to make some type of income.

[Keyboard Cowboy]

Originally Posted by BlueHeaven

Guild Wars - Prophecies $50 + Factions $50 + NightFalls $50 + Eye of the North $40 = $190 total. That was over the course of around 2 years.

Now days you can pick up the Trilogy (Prophecies/Facttions/Nightfall) for $50

But then again, I have noticed with other MMOs as more expansions comes out, they start grouping them together as one product.
Eg. Start Wars Galaxies Complete Saga Pack, City Of Hereos/City Of Villains
I am a little surpised that they have not done that with World Of Warcraft just yet. Currently you still need to purchase both WoW and WoW:TBC seperately.

Originally Posted by BlueHeaven

Guild Wars actually ends up being the cheepest oddly.
But even though Guild Wars is the cheapest, this game has definitely the most responsive to the clients needs, bug fixes, patches, updates, game balancing etc. In fact it makes me wonder why I stopped playing it in the first place.

Level 20 or was it Factions?

[wafflehammer]

I dunno about guild wars..From what I've heard they never update it, it's glitchy, etc..so you get what you pay for.

I can see paying for the game if there is no monthly payment..guildwars did make a good choice there


^^ keyboard, they have a battlechest thing out for WoW where you get the first game, TBC, and some guides for like $40 i think..but they still don't have all three games together

[tastegw]

i only play games that you buy the game itself and pay for any x-pac's.

game client and xpac's paid for, subscription should be free.


and, i voted the wrong feild ;/, didnt see the correct box at the time of voting.

and edit for wafflehamster, its not glitchy, and it gets updated atleast once per month for skill balances.

[Pyrocide]

I play CoV/CoH off and on. Currently not playing because of a video card issue I cannot figure out. (its in the hardware troubleshooting forum if you have a response).

Personally if a game is good after the free trial after the intial purchse I wouldn't mind playing. But there should be a lot more "game" than what is put out and paid for.

For instance, WoW, with the largest MMO player base it still looks like ****. When I played years back, the PVP was busted and doesn't have a good story.

Warhammer Age of Reckoning had a great RVR system, great graphics but lacked story.

City of Villains/Heroes had a good PVP system, good graphics moderate story but bugs and glitches cause so many players (including me) to exploit it to get insane amounts of Infamy/Money letting me tweak out my lowbies. Finally fixed a good deal of them, but then the gold sellers caused a big player drop because they were annoying and Cryptic didn't do anything about them.

Age of Conan one of the best looking MMOs. Crap story, crap game play.

Intial game should be paid for, expansion packs paid for, booster packs, in game additions should be paid for if you want the extras. Lower the subscription fee or add MORE to the games. Up the graphics, get a better story do something that is worth me paying 15 bucks a month.