Free to Play VS. Pay to Play

Yeah in some ways it is not fair to compare GW and WOW but the whole point was that companies who use the p2p model can afford to give the player alot more in return than a f2p model can. It is already proven that people will pay that monthly fee for more playable content.

GW has proven that you can make a good game and still make it free. Some have been playing this game for almost 4 years now. I cant see paying 15$ a month to play a game, 180$ a year, and 720$ wasted over that 4 year period, on top of at minimum 50$ per game for 4 games, not including if you paid for collectors editions upwards of 100$. Add to that more character slots and bonus content and its getting absurd. And dont forget to add the cable bill to that total, so you can even access the game, which is already ridiculous in its own right. Granted, it is a way better deal than my cable television offers for the time spent, but games like that would be like buying a DVD movie and having to pay the cable company every time you wished to watch it.

Now maybe I wouldnt mind paying a monthly fee to play a game if I didnt have to buy the game on top of it too. What the hell are you really buying at the store then, if its useless unless you pay to play it, other than a cardboard box with pretty pictures?

No thank you. GW had given me 1000s of hours of enjoyable content, has kept me interested for years, and hasnt bankrupted me doing it. Especially in an economy where people are being forced to really cut extra expenses. My vote will pretty much always reside on what am I getting for my money spent and GW has proven a good deal hands down. So pay2play games will always loose to the free online in my book. If GW can provide great graphics, a moving storyline, good support, and quality then so can others, and only greed is the deciding factor.

Honestly, GW does the same thing. You can download Prophecies, Factions, Night Fall, and EOTN for absolutely free on GW's website through the game client. All you are really paying for is a serial number to open an account on GW. You don't own the game itself. If you read the fine print, they have the right to deny you from playing "their" game.

Yes Toxin, but GW doesnt make you keep paying to play it over and over every month. What I was going for was that if you have to pay to play every month then the download of the game itself should be free. Not 50$ - 100$ for a game and then still keep paying to use it.

Uhhh, 50-100? I paid $20 for my WoW battlechest (BC and vanilla) and got a month free. That's more gameplay than the $30 I paid for Eye of the North for 8 hours of new quests and reskinned weapons & armor.

The download of any of the WoW games is free. Just download their game client off their site. Just like GW, you do however have to pay for an account to play it. An account for the core chapter itself is only $19. I honestly only see the 14 dollars a month as a fee for a variety of entertainment. It's not that much different than paying for cable as long as you keep getting new material. GW was great, but it's life only lasted 3 years before deciding that they had to make a sequel and stop adding major content to the original. They had to keep making new games every 6 months to make up for not having a fee. So, you kinda were paying a subscription every 6 months. Now the focus is on GW2.

Games always get cheaper over time. I know that when WoW first came out, it was somewhere around $60 or $70 (that's Australian). I don't know if WoW ever had a collector's edition, but if it did you can easily add $20-30 onto that original price. When I started GW, just after Factions was released, I paid $80 I think for Factions CE, and got... well, so far almost 36 months, for free. I would say that EotN was slightly overpriced in hindsight, but I still enjoyed the storyline the first time through.

I dislike subscription games. I waste my time enough on computer games without having salt poured into the wound by having to pay for that wasted time. I also can't afford it, since I'd much rather spend my money going out with friends. I absolutely hate having to make scheduled payments each month, which is something akin to debt. But the main thing is that I prefer to see exactly what I am getting for my money. I much prefer a system where I can choose to buy small content upgrades to my account and can see exactly what my money is going towards.

The 24th is almost here and it should be interesting.

I play Everquest2 and GW. Mostly EQ2 and yes I pay $15 a month and before I was paying $30 for EQ1, Vanguard and EQ2. If push comes to shove in the economic department I may have to cancel for a time, but I hope not.


GW is a nice change on occasion because it's a lot easier then EQ and doesn't take a lot of thought, not counting instances. And after all these years I still like to play it. But for the option of doing so so many different things: Crafting, Questing, Raiding, Instances, I have to say I like EQ better. But that's just me. GW has a place in my heart too.

They both have pros and cons. As for nerf bats LOL you should see the ones that are hitting EQ in the coming game updates. Everyone yells and everyone stays

In the end play what you want, it is entertainment after all. Enjoy the journey regardless the game. And it is just a game

Like I pointed out before - that may be true, but I also haven't done anything close to everything WoW has to offer yet. PvP is much bigger, the world is much, much, MUCH bigger, and there's so many more dungeons to do it's absurd (and contrary to what the guy said about Burning Crusade, it's much more interesting than the classic version. Some of the newer instances, and especially the boss fights, are very creative now that Blizzard is starting to learn that people will only grind through 40 man tank-n-spank raids so often before they get bored and quit).

Guild Wars? Done it all twice and then some. Yea, it only cost me about $175 or so, but I also ran out of things to do much quicker.

It "should be" priced at whatever people will pay for it just like every other product on earth is, and most people will pay an up-front cost plus a subscription (and as an aside, your "up-front cost" also includes your first month's sub, so you're paying roughly $25-$35 for the game itself, not 50-100).

I've plopped about $250 into WoW and it's two expansions so far and it's been worth it. I've spent about $2700 on cable/satellite over the same time period and gotten maybe half the entertainment, and at roughly $5/hour, if you don't get any snacks, movie theaters are out of the question too.

Yea, it's more expensive than Guild Wars, but it's also a lot more involved. I'd still play Guild Wars instead of WoW... but funny thing.... I've had nothing new to do in it for over a year now. If I were interested in replaying the same thing over and over, I'd just spend all my time playing Baldur's Gate or Planescape:Torment again. They're better games than Guild Wars and WoW combined and I only paid about $20 for each, but I've already done everything there is to do in them and I don't want to just keep repeating the same content over and over and over.

Not to the point, really, but I strenuously object to this approach. Blizzard's entire digital purchasing and content delivery system is an unmitigated disaster.

Then don't play them. Your personal preferences say nothing about the quality of the product. I hate paying too much for cars and I can't afford a Porsche GT3. Doesn't mean it's not a great car, just means it's not for me.

That's really what it comes down to. Yea, it costs more, but you get a whole hell of a lot more too. Guild Wars is short, lacks most of the basic features of modern MMOs (and even some basic features of semi-modern 3D games in general) and it's not being actively updated. That's a tradeoff for it being cheap. If that's okay with you, and you're happy spending years playing the same things over and over, fine. Not all of us can do that. I'd rather spend $15 a month and know that there's still a ton of things to experience in the game that I haven't gotten to yet even after years of playing it. At the same time, I enjoyed Guild Wars, and I think I got my money's worth from it, but there's just nothing left to do because they're not maintaining the game anymore in any serious way.

Bottom line: Some (most?) people don't mind paying more to get more when they can.

"Free to play" doesn't really exist.

There are:
- Leech to play. This is only used mainly in pirate servers, where some donate to pay costs and the rest play for free. Usually those that donate get stuff that those that do not will never get.
- Micro pay. This is like leech to play, just legal and more extreme. The few that play get unfair advantages, while those that do not pay are usually cannon fodder and extras to make the game feel less empty. If you remove the non paying players, you'll find the game emptier than maguuma.
- Fees to play. Those suck. They are just a scam. Players will usually pay more that they get, instead getting more stuff the more they pay. Most of those players play those game because their friends are there and they don't want to be left out. People also mistakenly feel like the game is better just because they are paying fees, that's usually because having to pay each month, they feel like wasting money if they played also other games. People that pay fees for games and defend that kind of payment are just deluded fools under a very effective brainwash.
- Pay once to play. This is the best because I say so, of course there are other reasons but the main one is that one. People pay once to buy the game, and then they can play forever. People can leave and come as much as they want, since the game will always be there without having to make anything else, you just have to open the box, install it again, and you are in.

Because there is something else that people like more: "Follow the crowd and not being left alone".

Basically, it comes down to the idea that you have to pay for the game somehow. Either by buying new content every so often, or by paying monthly fees (or both).
At this time, WoW is a more expensive game to play then GW, but that's not entirely a result of the financial model used.
For example, let's imagine that GW was set up so that you purchased it for free, but had to pay a $5 monthly fee to play it. It would then still be cheaper than WoW, even though they would both be pay-for-play.

Really, the only question is - "Is the game worth it to you?"

Edit - P.s. I've done pretty much everything I can in GW, so for the past month or 2 I've been playing WoW. Each game has it's good points and bad points. I don't think I'll be getting any of the expansions for WoW though. I bought the first game for about $25 (including a free month), which isn't bad, but I can't see me paying $50 plus monthly $15 (US) fees for it. Basically, WoW and GW are too old now - it's time for something fresh.

Your ridiculous speculation on the motivations of millions of people you've never met aside, it doesn't change the fact that, obviously, people don't "prefer" free to play as the other poster stated. If they preferred free to play, you'd think that the most successful free to play MMO out there wouldn't be lagging behind the leading MMO in the field by a 2:1 ratio.

Seems to me it's more likely people prefer a good MMO and don't really care so much about whether or not they have to pay a subscription fee.

I know it just shocks the ever-loving crap out of some people to find this out, but some of us don't really mind paying a measly $15 a month for hours upon hours of entertainment. Maybe before you bemoan $15 a month for a video game you should go out and harass the people waiting in line to spend $10 a ticket on "Paul Blart: Mall Cop".

Just a simple choice between what is right and wrong. I believe it is wrong to charge a monthly fee. Just like it is wrong for me to hang out with thieves. In this case the thief is blizzard. You can apply my sentiment to any MMO that charges a monthly fee. Applying words like imperative and dilemma over-dramatize my sentiment.

As you stated people are willing to pay the fee, and that is the problem. Some people are willing to pay more taxes too, does not make it right, I guess that I am not patriotic. Should any MMO be forced into no monthly fee Absolutely Not. If you can charge $40 for WOTLK and $15 a month to play it more power to em.

Now Blizzard has to option to pay $15 dollars to alter the sex of your toon per each change. Give me a break, at this point it is just Greed Unleashed, I do not care how anyone tries to justify it. They have to be laughing back at Blizz HQ. This is still EQ/SOE's fault, blizzard is just being blizzard and doing it better than anyone else.

On the flip side, I am glad that there are many people playing WoW also, this means there is hope Blizzard may just put out a NEW game not related to "franchise titles" we have been getting from them for over a decade. I do not want my son playing Diablo 10; God of Geriatrics, StarCraft; Legacy of the Idea Void and Universe of Warcraft, I have no doubt they could spare 3/4 billion dollars on it. After playing Warcraft from 1994 to 2003 Diablo since 1996 and Starcraft since 1998, I am getting sick of whole thing. Too many sequels is a bad thing.

My views on the subject:

I, for one, have no issues paying a subscription to a game I feel is worth the money. I'm currently subscribed to LotRO. I feel it's worth the money I pay into it for the content it provides. I see it is an entertainment service and most of us, if not all of us, pay some amount of money for some sort of personal entertainment in our lives. Buying a cellphone and then purchasing the contract, buying a tv and then purchasing the cable service; Both examples of buying the product and paying the service charges accompanied by it.

However, I don't buy into the idea that P2P games can always offer more. Both B2P and P2P rely on having a large and sustainable player base to keep up income. A P2P model can easily fail as much as a B2P, or F2P. It's all a matter of the quality of the game. Make it good and people will pay for it. Make it bad and people won't.

Pertaining to P2P, while I feel LotRO is worth my investment, they have the service downtimes Guild Wars doesn't have (or very very rarely has). Since my intital investment back in November, there have been countless service downtimes, server restarts, emergency down time, and unexpected service downtimes; The worst of which often last 4-10 hours.

While they have a support phone number, which I used once, it took more than 3 seperate calls and a near 35 minute wait on hold to get my issue resolved.

P2P, might offer a bit more, but that doesn't make it perfect. For all the money WoW takes in, they never solved the Server Queue issues that plagued the releases of both expansions and the insane amount of service downtimes. In my two 10 day trials for WoW, there was a total of 106 hours of service downtime and often a server queue that moved backwards; From a wait of 20 minutes to 8 hours just to get in. I don't think I could count to 15 hours total downtime for GW in the 2 years I played and I've never had to wait in line once I logged in. When a patch is ready in GW, all I have to do is restart and I can do that when I choose. In LotRO, or WoW, I have no choice. If a patch is coming I'm out for hours.

Now before I get jumped by WoW players, I'm not saying this downtime isn't needed. I know it is. My point is that the P2P model doesn't equate to perfection, or being better, in all areas. Honestly WoW is worth the money paid for it because it is a quality game regardless of waring gaming factions. It just so happens WoW is a game I, personally, didn't enjoy when I played.

F2P also has it's perks. Obviously, being free, that's the big attraction. Also they're far more accessible and the choices are far more plentiful. The downside is F2P games often throw in the catch. You can play all you want, do all you want, but if you want the best stuff it's in the "cash shop".

When I used to play Flyff many moons ago, I knew people who spent hundreds of dollars a month, sometimes even full paychecks, on Cash Shop items.

F2P also, in most cases, sacrifices quality for effeciency and quick release.

Whatever the business model may be, each has shown they can work and each has shown they can fail. As consumers, we just have to be wise on how, or where, we invest the money in relation to what we feel is worth that investment and what we enjoy playing.

I'm going to jump you because you're either complaining about problems that haven't existed for years or you're just making it up. Downtime is still an occasional problem, but 106 hours? No, that hasn't happened in years. There's an hour each day scheduled and there's scheduled downtime for server patches each Tuesday. It's always on off hours when the least people are playing. The biggest annoyance now is that they seem to have a lot of "emergency restarts", but those are 15 minutes each generally, and even that's only every few weeks on any given server.

And queues? Yea, right at the launch of expansions, but not eight hours. You might recall that Guild Wars doesn't suffer queuing issues at content releases and events, but it sure does have a crapload of lag that, in some cases, makes the game pretty much unplayable. Furthermore, when server pops start to have queue problems, Blizzard offers free moves to low pop servers to balance them out.

Yea, there's still queueing issues and downtime issues, but nothing even remotely close to what you described.

I believe there are some errors in your logic here.

It is true some people will go try out a game because their friends are there, I did that with WoW. I didn't stay because I didn't like it. I made a decision based on game play not who was playing.

As I said before I pay to play EQ2 and I also play GW, yes while my sub is running even. Some friends from work have started GW and I've been helping them. Am I sweating about the $15 bucks no; but I am sweating about missing stuff I want to do in EQ lol.

I am neither a fool nor am I brainwashed and I also think that blanket statements should never be taken seriously.

One more time: Play what you like

On topic however, I bet anyone could buy 4 games during the year and get more content, better play and exposure to more genres from those 4 games than any MMO could provide in the same timeframe. Burnout Paradise, DOWII, Kings Bounty, World of Goo come to mind, Dragon Age looks to be massive. This would also have the added benefit of having more that one developer get lions share of the money.

i dont mind paying 15$ a month for a game with alot of content, i mean i make than in less than an hour.

I remember when i got factions, back in 2006, finished the game 2 days after its release. 2days for 49.99+ tax.

The problem i had with Wow and other games, is that they took to much time from me..for example sometimes in an hour i could complete like 2 quests and that's all.So i just became bored since it was taking me too long to catch up with friends who had more free time. That is probably one of the main reasons i stick to guild wars..altho it gets boring after doing the same stuff over and over for 4 freaking years. Eye of the north wasn't that bad since i only paid 9$ for it.

If you have hundreds or even thousands of hours of playtime, read and post on internet forums about a game when you're not playing it, but a $15 subscription fee is "too much money", then there are other better low hanging fruit expenses to look at, if value for money is what you are really trying to optimize.

You say I made it up, but you just ackowledged in the above quote that it has taken place. So there's no real need to explain the position, is there?

Let me restate. It was over two (2), 10 day trials and a combined down time for both of those periods which included the weekly down time periods and extensions. One of those periods included the 24 hour+ 3.0.2 patch process, server restarts and extended service on some realms.

It appears we can both do the math.

Not once did I state that this is the norm for WoW just as great lag is not the norm for Guild Wars. Yet they both occur.

That was the point that was made. The P2P model, using WoW as the example (And LotRO), does not equate to perfection, nor does it solve game play, or technical issues, from the profit difference the P2P model takes against the B2P. If that offends people, I'm sorry...sort of.

Each model has it's pros and it's cons dependant on the players likes and dislikes, but also the quality of the game developed by the company.


Regardless, this is not a thread to debate WoW vs. GW. If you feel the necessity to do so further, take it up with me in private. I've got plenty of good things to say about both games and plenty of complaints about both. As well as many other games for that matter.

There isn't a clear choice when you just say "p2p vs f2p." It's possible to sway one way or the other maybe if you compare two specific games and how each one is run. Even then it's kind of opinion isn't it. In this thread there is already a lot of mention of WoW. I won't play that game so I can't add my thoughts on it's worth. One issue I have is that all the major ones charge $15/month no matter how well they stack up. Some companies should take the blinders off and see that they're worth maybe three & a quarter.

Using my personal experience what I can do is compare the less than $200 I "had" to pay to get all content of GW and it's campaigns (3 years of full-attention playing), plus what I see now as quite a bit of dev involvement, timely updates and quick bug fixes up through the release of EotN with the game I've been playing for the last nine months. Up to this point I've spent $180 for content maybe equal to Prophesies (including a couple zones they finished and added in), less than five 'major' patches, multiple old and new bugs, outright broken stuff, very little dev involvement and very, very slow on fixing things - even major problems that make the biggest fanboi question. What I'm saying is that I got much more for my money out of this particular f2p game than I have in this p2p game.

Is the game I'm playing worth $15/month at this point? No, but I do. I'm sure there are some, have been and will be that are though.

No, I said: "you're either complaining about problems that haven't existed for years or you're just making it up"

That's not downtime. All of those big patches are downloaded prior to their release in almost their entirety. That you didn't do that is not Blizzard's fault, and it's no different than any other online game. If you just installed a four year old copy of Guild Wars today you'd have to sit and wait forever while it downloaded four years worth of patches too. Your complaint is unreasonable.

Not in dispute. What I'm disputing is your unreasonable characterization of Blizzard's problems. Blizzard isn't exactly the greatest on patching and downtime, but your claims are extraordinarily overblown. If you don't like WoW, or any other game, fine, but your reasoning for your dislike has, thus far, been pretty flimsy, which is why I'm taking exception. It's not Blizzard's fault that you didn't download the patch prior to the update. You jumped into a four year old game and you needed four years worth of patches. Not unexpected. There's also a certain irony in that most of the size of the patches you're upset about are content updates, graphical, and audio upgrades that have been released over those four years for free.

I used to have that problem with it too and it's what drove me away in the first place. I don't WANT to sit for four hours to accomplish one stinking task. I don't want to sit in front of a video game for four hours PERIOD most days. Lately though seems like they fixed it up. You might try LOTRO though. They seem to have organized a lot of things so that you can do four or five quests all at once without having to run from one end of a continent to the other and back.

There are countries where people can eat a month with $15.

While 'pay once' games are usually sold with variable prices in different countries, and people can afford them sooner or later, fees ensure mostly those that live in countries where the fee seems lees will be able to join.

There are some shops in some countries where you can acquire all 4 Guild Wars for around 30$.

15$ is not always measly, most of the time is way too much.

I'm sorry, but what?

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/30...-eu-customers/

So, Blizzard compensated everyone for no downtime regarding 3.0.2?

Perhaps "patch process" was the wrong term, but it was in reference to Blizzards patch process for them, their upgrades of the servers, which means downtime. I never said a single thing, not one, about me sitting there and dowloading files for past patches. Past game files are downloaded while in-game (background).



Apparently they're not unreasonable when they were addressed, in part, with the compensation given to players by Blizzard as sourced above in the link. Blizzard acknowledged the massive amount of downtime for this one instance. Players were certainly vocal for that downtime and the instability of many realms that followed it (in particular the RP realms). Extraordinarily overblown? No, I don't think so and Blizzard didn't think so when it came to 3.0.2 either.


Then it's best you return to my original post and take great care in reading, once again, about my thoughts on WoW. Actually, here, let me do the key parts for you.

Note the bolded parts. I believe WoW is worth the money people pay for it. I believe WoW is a quality game. I don't care what the GW vs. WoW warring gamer factions have to say. WoW is a worthwhile game and is quality. That's the opposite of saying it's not worth the money and the opposite of saying the game is poorly designed and not worth the CD's it's coded on.

Nowhere did I state my reasons for my lack of enjoyment. I also stated I understand the need for WoW's downtime, just as I understand the need for LotRO's downtime.

I connected downtime to the business model, which you turned into my supposive reason for not liking WoW itself, which I clearly stated it was a worthwhile game and of quality. If that was the key issue, downtime, I would not have said I am subscribed to LotRO, which also has its share of downtime (which I clearly noted as well in reference to the models).

"When I played" was the key phrase in the above quote. One doesn't play a game when it can't be accessed.

My (mine, not anyone elses, but mine) main reasons for not enjoying WoW when I played are as follows; Since it seems curious minds want to know:

1) I'm not a fan of the art style. Yes, the game in many areas looks great and runs great. I can appreciate artistic styles regardless of what my preferences are. But I've never been a fan of the "toon" style. That goes with any game. I very much prefer a more realism feel to my surroundings. That's not a developer fault; That's just a personal preference.

2) I found the quests to be lacking in interest and Questing is a big deciding factor in the online games I choose to play. I felt like there was no progression of anything in regards to story structure and found myself running to kill(X) and bring back(Y) more than I would like. I'm sorry, but I need more involvement than that. Perhaps that changes in much higher levels, but to me it felt like generic grind. The kind of grind I prefer to avoid, which I also avoided like the plague in Guild Wars (Rep Points in EotN and Kurz Faction. Both I absolutely dispise in GW).


So let me restate for a third time. My mention of the downtimes was an example and reference in regards to business models of games. That being P2P does not equate to perfection, or the abolishment of technical and/or support issue surrounding the game (The arguement often used). Do I honestly need to say it again?

So?

For entertainment in the U.S., it's measly. That's all that matters because that's all this subject is about. You can't eat a WoW CD (or, at least you should SHOULDN'T), so it doesn't matter how much food $15 buys in a month. It's a pointless comparison.

Perhaps. When I hear "patch process" I think of the notoriously screwy blizzard downloader and the sometimes arduous task of rebuilding an up-to-date copy of the game from scratch.

But I was still wrong about the downtime, so I'm sorry about that. None of the servers I play on had anything close to that sort of trouble. That was still an isolated event though and I maintain that it says nothing about the business model one way or another.

$15 a month to play a game is far too much money to pay when I can instead play GW, Oblivion or Civ 4 completely free.

$15 a month over a year is a lot of money - $180 per year is something that a lot of people will never pay for a video game. No I dont pay to watch movies, nor to I ever go out to a venue where I have to pay an entrance fee. Just because you have a lot of money and are irresponsible with spending it on whatever pleasures you like doesnt immediately give everyone a reason to waste their money on the same thing that you waste yours on.

And before you go blasting me for my opinion, I have played every major P2P game on the market - WoW, DDO, LOTRO, AoC, and were very very optimistic about each one before starting to play it. I played each game for a month or two, got totally bored and fed up, and in the end I werent playing enough to justify paying the fee. So I stopped paying, and couldnt care less that I couldnt play. I have similarly had moments where I get fed up with GW for whatever silly reason and decide to stop playing. However, it then costs me absolutely nothing to pick up the game again a few months later, log in and give it another try.

P2P games are a virtual version of hard core drugs to a lot of people. You become addicted, cant stop playing, and more importantly cant stop paying. You then try to justify your spend with lame reasons such as 'my drug is fun and waaay cheaper then other drugs' to people who think your a moron for trying to justify spending any money every month on a damn video game. My games are free to play once I have made a purchase, they have been like that since I started playing on my Atari 7800. P2P is a major scam that has ruined the traditional model of video games, and also ruins the hundreds of game companies that attempt to make P2P games to cash in on the virtual crack cocaine market and fail to sell their version of virtual crack.

Yes I have been addicted to a lot of games in my time as well, but at least my crack didnt come with a monthly fee. BTW I dont own a TV and dont want one and would never buy cable TV. All I need is my PC, Broadband connection, and my Piano (woot, I have a hobby, maybe you should try find one too), and I am perfectly happy with plenty of entertainment to meet my needs without paying for addictive things every month.

And I visit internet forums because I have teh intarwebz, and arguing with people is funneh.

And there are some of us who choose to play, not just a subscription based online game, but B2P and F2P games as well on multiple platforms. Variety is the spice of life.

And they have that choice and they have the right to feel that way. Those who do pay though also have the right to make their decision.

And who are you to say what is, or isn't irrespnsible spending of other peoples earnings? What say, if any (which you don't), do you have in what I choose to spend my income on? At 30 years old I have every ability and responsibily to spend my house hold income on what I choose as long as I continue to pay my bills and put food on my table. What I choose to do with the remainder is not up for debate by anyone, just as your spending is not up for debate by anyone.

So what are you getting angry about? You chastise others for paying, but you paid up yourself? Does it occur to you that others can justify their reasons, even if you couldn't?

I don't see anyone ripping you apart for your choice in games you play. And no, I hardly consider this post ripping apart your choice. So why you feel the need to do the same to others (even when you've tried them yourself) I'll never understand.

And for those who would criticize you for that choice, with ridiculous arguements like, "You're too cheap!", they should equally remain silent.


...but not all people. The horror stories are often inflated around the web because "evil" makes news, while "rainbows" don't. There is no denying that some individuals become hooked on their games, but it is in no way limited to P2P games. I, too, have played many different models of games. "Addiction" comes in all forms regardless of the existance of fees, or not.

Oh, hey. Thought I just said addiction comes in all forms regardless of the model. How about that.

Sorry, Bhavv. My apologies. I didn't mean to smile and giggle a bit, even laugh aloud, but a few lines up you finished saying, "You then try to justify your spend with lame reasons such as 'my drug is fun and waaay cheaper then other drugs' to people... "

That's a bit of irony there, eh? If the subscription excuse is paying less than other drugs, then not paying the subscription model is cheaper than..well..the other drugs (the virtual crack, as you put it?).

But you buy the PC and broadband connection. How much is that connection?


Liiiike, the intarwebz?

How much is that intarwebz you're on again?

.

To be fair, a PC is basically required these days, especially if your job/education requires you to do some stuff in your own time. The same goes for an internet connection. Both have uses other than gaming, so you can't really compare how much someone pays to play an MMO and how much someone paid for their PC and internet, nor can you compare it to how much someone pays for TV.

One of the aspects to GW that I love is that it's free to play. On top of that, it's a gorgeous game, it's fun and there is always something new to learn/figure out. I have all campaigns + EotN and have been playing for a little over a year.

I do have the time and the money to shell out for a pay to play like WOW, but I won't. I did that with Runescape (cue laughter and behind hand snickering, I had a crappy computer at the time so I didn't have a lot of choices) and if you're not playing, you're tossing money out the window and I feel guilty that I should be using something I'm paying for. There are times when I do have to quit for a month or two and with GW I like that I'm not paying for something I'm not using. (I know RS has free to play, but it's crap and that's being kind.)

If WOW had a model like GW, I would try it. I'd run down to the store and buy it in a blink of an eye. But honestly I'm not interested enough to pay $15.00 a month.

It can be worth it. I play Eve which is p2p, but for that sub fee I get a very polished game with unlimited storage, and something like five thousand systems to frolick around in. So yeah, I pay because I find it worth it, and it's fun playing internet spaceship captain! I wish it were free but seeing the depth of their game I can see why it's not.

I used to think like some of you, that I'd never p2p a durn video game,.. but once GW's sheen wore a bit I looked around, and that two week free hook snagged me.

GW was the gateway drug though!!

I think one problem I have with traditional MMOs is... it feels so... empty. People complain about GW and not being able to run into people when you are exploring, but in most MMOs, actual contact with other people while PvEing is often uncommon. Most MMOs are too "big" to support the relatively smaller number of players they have. Actually having instanced towns makes the game more crowded and social. LA district 1 will always have a conversation (or spam) going. Plus, since GW is all on one "server" instead of spread out like traditional P2P games changes a lot of the social dynamic aspects of the game.

Ultimately though, that doesn't matter a lot to me. My Bartel Pysch score is on the aggression/exploration paths, not on the social path. But it is still a big difference in the games.

To me the pros and cons seem pretty obvious and self-explanatory though it's always good to see game makers bouncing ideas off each other.

I play both and enjoy both formats for what they are.

My only current gripe at the subscription model, which I hope is raised at this discussion, is the recent trend of rush-releasing games at beta phase.

The last year has seen some awfully broken and incomplete MMO's enter the market that actually expect people to pay for the privilege of working as game testers, bug reporters and balance setters which is unacceptable.

I'm far from demanding perfection or expecting MMO's to not have issues on release but the quality of some releases in the last few years have been truly horrid with comments like "It's an ok game but but should be better in a few months when it's brokenness is fixed." or "Great potential, but pretty sub par right now." becoming almost mantra in the subscription MMO community.

A couple of concepts I would hope to see raised:

The advent of "free-to-play" on purchase for a period of 2-3 months, at least enough time for a semi-serious player to get at least one capped character, then pay-to-play for continued access to the game.

Nothing worse than having to purchase a game + game-time just to find out it's broken....and then 2 months later it's still broken, or the end-game sucks, or high tier PvP is broken, etc, etc.

Either that or simply paying for new content like the BM but better, bigger and far more regular.This was a great idea, not sure why Anet decided against exploring it further.

It could also be an interesting idea to explore having separate servers for the different formats with socializing and competition between servers, keeping both sides happy while maximizing player numbers, quality of product and relevance.

Would be cool to see the two types intelligently integrated into one game.

Firstly there was no anger in my post, simply just opinion.

My intarwebz is
£9.99 a month is important and gets me far more use then just one game a month.

My PC is also a requirement for much more then video games. You also have to pay for an internet connection and a PC on top of a monthly fee for your video game. Seriously, Blizzard makes billions every month and fans of the game justify that their spend is required to pay for the servers and updates ... I smell bullshit.

If you are so happy with the P2P model, then why do you bother with playing GW? I thought your P2P games were supposed to better then free ones.

And just because you choose to pay your monthly fee doesnt mean that everyone else is entitled to be happy about P2P games polluting the video game market. For every P2P game that is made, and in 90% of cases completely fails because no one wants to pay to play it, there could instead have been a free to play game that many many people could have enjoyed instead.

Fans of P2P state that your fee that you pay is worth the entertainment. From that statement alone I would assume that you are hooked to the game if you have paid a fee and got your moneys worth for over a year. I am even more worried that you continue paying every month and cant stop paying for the game. It is a choice, but at the same time the video game company is scaming you out of so much money that it is incredibly stupid for anyone to defend paying a fee. Yes you get your moneys worth and enjoy the game and updates. I also get all that and far more value from GW and single player games.

...MUDs (excluding IR's) coming to mind).

I play Guild Wars and a pay to play game. Guild Wars got lucky because it had a few small things I really enjoyed; identifying rares/chests, fast leveling, and the vanity in general..while it lacks a lot of depth it's good at what it does. LOTRO is the game I pay for, and I pay $28 for 3 months (so just under $120 a year), and I get my $28 worth each month. It's a great game but it can get really repetitive with playing alts and doing the same quests over. Guild Wars was like that, it was faster though and I didn't have LOTRO at the time which is why I played it like that, maybe I was addicted, I'm not sure.

Regardless I'm happy to be keeping up their servers and payrolls and what not. I think they deserve it. It's leisure and entertainment. There are many other things that people pay for like that.. gambling, golf, the bar, going out, taking vacations etc. I'm doing something I like to do, for a very little amount of money considering $28 is a day's worth of work and I only have to pay it every 3 months. I also get all that from my single player games and Guild Wars, much like you Bhavv. But I need more than 1 game.

But I am not hooked on LOTRO, and I will keep paying simply because I get a really nice discount and if I was to cancel it I would lose that discount. Not to mention the free updates that come along have me going and playing for about a week till I go back to casual play. Still I play it as much as I play Oblivion, GTA 4, Guild Wars, Tiger Woods 09..etc. I think your bashing of people who do P2P games is fairly funny though. Who cares if you don't like it? That's all you have to say.


OH yeah I also wanted to mention that LOTRO doesn't have a lot of downtime. If it does it's usually only 4-6 hours, and that's pretty decent. When it does a content update, it's about 6-8 hours, usually in the morning and it's back up by noon. While there are a few problems here and there with servers and what not (mostly because of the large amount of people playing on them), it's fairly decent with all that. The only company that beats them out is Guild Wars because of the way it's setup.

Those are 'leech to play'.

Some people pay the server costs, and other play at the expense of them.

People should play whatever they enjoy playing and what they can afford. I have no problem with ANY of the various types out there. And with Guild Wars being a "Buy to Play Free" game, you are still paying to play, you just pay it all up front. Is it a very good value? I certainly think so. Does that mean people shouldn't play other games just because a few of you think that somehow those other games aren't as good a value as GW? Nope. People should play whatever they enjoy and clearly many think they are getting good value for whatever monthly fee they are paying to play those games. I don't see a problem. If you don't like another game or think it is too expensive... don't play it. But don't flame others for playing just because you can't afford it, don't like it, or whatever. If they are having a fun time playing more power to them.

I do think companies are going to have to rethink the AMOUNT they charge for some games, as $15 (or 15 pounds/euros) a month for a lot of them just doesn't make any sense when they don't have the content or features or whatever the more popular games have that keep people playing each month. Hybrid games (like GW) will play a bigger role in the future as companies try various methods to compete in the market.

I'm trying a few of the Pay to Play games (thank you free trials) and so far haven't found any I enjoy as much as GW, so I won't be playing them. I just like how the combat in GW works, being limited to 8 skills and having to figure out builds, etc. I'm also playing around with some of the Free to Play type (Atlantic Online and Runes of Magic), which are kind of fun, but right now I'd rather spend that time in GW. When I do everything I want in GW I'll go play something else, although I expect I'll always be on from time to time as long as the GW1 servers are running.

Don't forget you have to pay 30-40 dollars for Wrath of the Lich King expansion on top of the monthly fee.

http://www.blizzard.com/store/browse.xml?f=c:1

Then you can pay to change the sex of your toon $15 per change. And $7 for the additional security, and $15 for the figurines and so on.

Actually they are only making around $165,000,000 a month just from monthly fees. 1,980,000,000 a year. They are at +11 million accts. Over 2 billion a year easily when you add in the cost of the game/expansions.

The cost of maintaining their servers was in the last PC gamer mag I think it was 200,000,000 total over the last 4 years(that is not per year). (i will confirm that later)

Problem is these people are willing to pay it and justify it for whatever reason. NO game is worth $220 dollars a year EVER. This model has been made acceptable which is where the problem lies. If not for blizzard it may have died off eventually. To make it even worse this is the same old warcraft story/stuff they have been pushing since 1994. They also have released only warcraft stuff for the last 7 years. Move on already. Now we have companies that look at this and think they can do it also.

Really hope the pollution ends and people come to thier senses or we all will be paying $220 a year for our games. Maybe with the economic downturn we will see a change.....

I don't ever recall saying P2P model was always better. In fact, I'm pretty sure my first post in this thread I said that I don't buy into the arguement that P2P automatically means an overall better game. Can you find where I said such a thing? Maybe I'm overlooking it.

Bottom line is GW and LotRO are both fun. So are some of the console games I play. I know it's an odd thing; Playing more than one game at a time on different platforms simply because they're fun, but I just don't believe in virtual monogamy. I like having multiple partners :P



Noone ever said they did have to be happy. Again, I'm not sure where you got that idea. If people in this world want to be bitter over tiny things in the grand scheme of things, all the power to them.

They fail because they're crap games. People don't pay subscriptions for crap, they don't B2P crap, and they don't download crap that's free. That is most people don't. AoC could go B2P today and I wouldn't go back to it. Would you? Hell, it could go F2P and I wouldn't touch it again. I may have a sadistic side to me, but that's pushing it.

Let's just move to your next few words..

Bingo. Paying a fee to play does not equate to paying a fee because you can't stop playing. If paying a fee suddenly meant you're hooked I'd still be playing AoC and Warhammer. Fact is those games weren't worth it, period. Hit "Cancel Subscription". You did it, I did it. So where's this "hooked" thing coming from? If simple enjoyment means hooked then oh boy; you and I are both addicts on many, many things in life.

Now, if I choose to keep paying while I go into debt, stop paying my bills, stop putting food on my table, and fail to meet my daily requirements in my work and flunk out of school (which doesn't really apply since I graduated long ago) then you'll have an arguement.

To digress a bit, in all honesty, I think cellphones and the fees that come with those are huge scams, which is why I've never owned one and have no intentions of owning one. They offer me nothing in service that I can't tend to with my home phone. A phone is a phone. But if I wanted to be found anywhere, anytime, I'd go out in public wearing neon pink. If I wanted directions, I don't need an "app". They have a great invention already called a road atlas, or a paper map that costs me a quarter. If I wanted to play cards during dinner with in-laws I'd bring a deck of cards and not an iPhone.

However, I'm not in any place to call others addicts, or anything else of the sorts, because of their choice. I mention this because in a tiny way I do understand where you're coming from, but I just don't understand why you blanket your statements in some areas. Maybe it's just for shocknawe value..I don't know.

Choice..it's a wonderful thing isn't it?


Can I ask you a serious question? Human being to human being. We are, as we've both stated, talking about choice. So let me ask this:

What's the real difference in someone paying $175 dollars in a year for one game against someone who pays the same amount for roughly 4 console games? Aside from saying, "Well I get more games, duh". Or, to take a different approach, If I spend the same amount of money in a year on the original prices of Guild Wars, is that more responsible than paying the fee for one game when the cost is exactly the same? If so, please explain with the understanding that approximately $175 is $175 invested no matter what. Also keep in mind that individual value is subjective to the person. If a person is getting their personal enjoyment out of one investment, vs the same enjoyment out of 4 seperate purchases, where's the difference? Why is one more responsible than the other? Just because of the method involved?

Another serious question here. Do you find F2P games with cash shops scams? Because people spend a lot of money in those. To use Flyff as an example again, when I played many many years ago, I knew people who would spend $50 alone on a single item. Hundreds of dollars a month on multiple items. Chances are they still are doing it. It's also not the only game to provide such prices for premium items like mounts, scrolls, and variou other game items.

Is it ok to justify those purchases?

Is it ok to justify SoE Station service?

Again, I'm asking these in all seriousness. I'm truly curious to find out where people draw their lines in the sand.

Look at what we learned in the past few years.

Subscription models dont really work for anybody other than WoW:

The failures of AgeOfConan, TabulaRasa, and underperformance of Warhammer and LordOfTheRings online are just the recent proofs. These models dont generate the numbers of players needed to make the economics work, especially in Asia. Westerners will pay to play every month, but the rest of the world wolnt... Even WoW adjusts its models.

There's room for Wow but not much else in the pay to play market.

Guild War's Model doesnt really work for an MMO, and nobody's copying it

Here are the problems:

1. You have to pay for the whole cost of the game upfront. The market, especially in Asia isnt willing to do this, not when similar quality games are completely free to start up.

2. After the frist Expansion, startup costs for new players get really high, killing the growth of new players. (Example: somebody who hears that Guild wars is a great PvP MMO and wants to start needs to buy all three expansions which costs about $70-$120 on Amazon.com right which is a high price to try a game).

3. You dont get a constant stream of revenue. You get a (typical for the non MMO games industry) big initial spike and then a long tail off on revenues, resulting in an ever decreasing budget to update and support the game.

4. Game dies faster: the breakpoint where the game cant support continuing additional content expansion hits faster in games that depend on relatively high priced expansions.

Personally I think the future of the MMO industry, WOW excepted until the WOW killer finally comes, is in the free to play with cash shop model. In these games people can download their game for free, play for free, and the game is supported by the item mall. Even Guild Wars has a "cash shop" of sorts where you can buy extra character slots, gaining an in game advanatge (extra storage, not having to reroll pvp characters) over people who dont pay. The biggest of the free to play games, Habbo, is almost as big as the world of warcraft, but many free to play MMO have million player followings many times bigger then the playerbase of games like Everquest or lord of the rings. Its not long before these games overtake North America (they are already pretty popular in Europe),

I think the guild wars model has been discarded with good reason from every other MMO after guild wars came out. It's just not the best way to create a community which can then be used to make money.

In fact I'd even be surprised if Guild wars 2 continued the payment model of Guild Wars 1, especially knowing what we know now are the consequences ( the lifespan of how long the game will be supported with additional content updates is much much shorter than either the pay to play games or the free to play item mall games).