World of Warcraft Launches

The last major MMOG launch of the year hits retail stores today. World of Warcraft finally goes live after years of debate, development, and a more than six month Beta test. The usual suspects have details on the game, with Gamespot already having details on upcoming content and Gamespy laying out personal experiences from the test and interviews with the developers.

Comments

Re:Expensive?

[badmammajamma]

Maybe you should check the prices for other MMOs before you make such statements...

Re:Expensive?

[stratjakt]

Can one not consider them all overly expensive?

Especially when you fork out 60 bucks for the game in the first place.

Why can MSFT pull off XBox Live for 50 bucks a year, but the MMOG guys can't do it for much less than 20 bucks a month?

XBL no doubt sucks more bandwidth and does a shitload of backend work.

I was a Beta Tester

[zx75]

I was a BETA tester for WoW since early January, pretty much one of the very first groups in after it went to Beta level. Despite the pricing issues I have with any MMORPG, WoW was a lot of fun and it is the first MMORPG that I have considered purchasing.

I haven't made my mind up yet (again, the pricing) but if you're in to that kind of thing, Blizzard has done an excellent job with WoW its nicely polished and as always its graphics are beautiful. Its a lot of fun and very addictive!

Re:Expensive?

[Rahga]

Well, that's after you pay $50 for the game + box + first month free trail subscription.

Hrm, "free"... Gee, Blizzard marketing department, thanks for offering us a free month of game play in exchange for buying a $50 game that is useless without that subscription.

Ugh. Between creepy marketing like that and everyone else jumping over to a Half-Life 2, both publiched by a company that still sells Counter-Strike for $30 when they've disabled the ability to play it at all (without installing a DRM platform under a different license, of course).... I'm really just getting ticked off. I'm probably alone in saving my money and avoiding both of those games, though.

For now, I think I'll stick to working on games that are free for everyone and occasionally play UT2004 and a few budget titles without these restrictive licenses.

Expensive? Bah!

[kenp2002]

Ok for those who complain lets try something few understand, PERSPECTIVE.

1 Movie: $9
1 Popcorn and Soda: $9
Movie Runs 2 hours.
That's $9 an hour for entertainment.

Assume for the moment you play an online game 1 hour a day on average.

$15 dollars a month or $15 dollars for $30 hours.
That's about 50 cents an hour. .50 9.00 last I checked.

Now lets add in your DSL\CAble Bill to help this out.

$60 dollars a month or about $2.00 an hour to play. Still cheaper then a movie.

To further the study you could factor your inital $50 purchase of the game over, say 2 years to better tune this.

Even at $100 dollars a month that is about $3.40 per hour and is still cheaper then going to the movies. And thats assuming you can get in and out of the theater for only $18 bucks.

But, to be fair and balanced, a good quality basketball, football, or baseball setup can run you a 1 time $80 bucks and factoring that over a 2 year period throwing the old pig skin, playing softball, or doing a little boot hockey can be a hella cheaper then a video game.

Re:Expensive?

[SilentChris]

*Shrug* It's all about how much value you think an entertainment source has. Personally, I'd gladly pay a few extra bucks for some rich gameplay drawn by professional artists than play another cheap Tetris clone on Gnome.

Considering, also, that Blizzard tends to support their games for a long, LONG time (you can still play WarCraft II on Battle.net) I think it's a fair price.

Re:Expensive?

[badmammajamma]

Of course it doesn't cost 15 mil to operate, but the ONLY reason to make an MMO is big profits. The risks for creating an MMO are gigantic compared to other games. You're talking about companies spending 10 - 20 million dollars to develop the thing and they better pray they got it right or it's all down the drain. Building an FPS is much cheaper. MMOs are an entirely different business model for a game company and they're scared shitless whenever they do it.

Re:Expensive?

[FictionPimp]

I've estimated that I've spent almost 800 per account playing EQ (I had 2 accounts). I used to justify it by saying "Well, when i'm playing EQ, I dont buy other games, so its cheap entertianment". But after looking at my finacial history that is not true. I buy about 2 video games a month. At 40.00 (looks like this will go up, both doom 3 and HL2 were 55.00) a game, thats 960.00 a year on video games + 800 * 2 = 2560 a year (not including tax) on games. Thats a down payment on a car, or a new guitar. Hell, the intrest that would of saved me on my morgage alone.

I've made a pact with my soon to be wife. After the first of the year, I will only have a budget for gaming of 1 video game a month, with no option to save up (I.E. If I dont buy a game this month, I dont get 2 next month.) I'm actually hoping to get this down to 1 videogame every 2 months, but thats wishful thinking (although possible if I can get into more betas). I'll put this money back into more tangable things like my savings and my portfolio. Our at least buy toys with more long term investment (guitars and such). I have even looked at going outside for a change (gasp!).

Now if I could only stop playing video games so often, I could pick up more side work, maybe bring in more then 1-2 k extra a month.

Re:Expensive?

[HybridJeff]

Just think of it this way. If you're going to play it for say (30 hours) as your example suggested. That means you're paying $0.50 an hour. That doesnt seem like alot from an entertainment point of view (ever paid $10 for a 90 minute bad movie?). Play for 15 hours, 10 even? Thats still not so unreasonable.

That aside, you do get a month free with purchase, and its up to you to justify it.

Re:Expensive?

[Pinkoir]

I know you're trying to be funny but I'll take your commetns as straight. If you only have 3 hours a month to play games then why the hell would you play any MMORPG even if was free/free? There's no point. Just play some solitare and go about your obviously full life.

The vast majority of people who play MMORPGs spend at least a few hours a week on them. Even a weekend-only player would spend 5 hours total playing. Any less than that and there is no point as you'll have forgotten what the hell was going on in between sessions!. At 5 hours a week you get 20 hours a month and that makes the monthly fee less than a buck an hour (Grandparent's mom aside). Tell me what entertainment you can get at a buck an hour these days. And for that trifling fee you get access to a continually evolving game as many MMORPGs have free expansions (EVE launches a huge one today...w00t). Frankly I just can't understand the "I don't wanna pay a monthly fee" argument coming from any but the most light-weight players.

MMORPGs cost money to develop that's the money that you spend to buy the game. MMORPGs cost money to run (server farms, routers, bandwidth bills and such) which is part of the monthly fee and they cost money to evolve which is the other part. Unless of course you'd rather have the software developers be payed in cheese-doodles and AOL CDs and the game run on hard-ware looted from abandoned Nortel facilities.

-Pinkoir