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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.
1st!
and i'm really happy that WoW is mac playable at launch date. I don't own a mac, but it's something mac fans will appreciate
Maybe you should check the prices for other MMOs before you make such statements...
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
I am gonna go ahead and wait for "patch 1"
THEN
say good-bye to the wife and kids for a few months.
We'll see if they can avoid the opening day problems that always haunt MMORPG launches. =)
eve-online is also doing their huge expansion titled "exodus" today as well..
One of the most anticipated expansions in MM games for a while... large download (519M) but not as large as WoW which is 2.1GB
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
I am having just as much fun playing the free alpha Wurm Online.
http://www.wurmonline.com
The client is even written in Java so it should be runnable under Linux.
My rights don't need management.
didn't I call in sick today?
:(
It's sitting at home installed, and I'm sitting here at work
I was all looking forward to this game coming out, but City of Heroes snagged me instead. Not that I'm not interested, but I have friends, a supergroup, etc...
Which brings me to thinking: how long until we get some kind of trade-in service for MMORPG characters? What if I could trade into the WoW universe some portion of the time / XP I put into my CoH character? What if I got a bonus to what I got for each friend I brought along? Seems like a good business to me. You give away something worth nothing for extreme goodwill and extra subscribers.
And hey, you could even sell the characters on eBay if you wanted! Hehe.
adam b.
15$ a month for countless hours of entertainment? It's cheap as it gets. Equals about 2.5 meals at McDonalds, 2 trips to the movies (some places not even that).
Since I played mainly MMOG, I saved nice amounts of money on single player games. I used to buy one or two single player games a month, now, not one. Savings: 100$ bucks. Take out 15 from it for $MMOG and I still have 85$ left over.
The BNEtD is for WarCraft/Starcraft games not for World of Warcraft. The MMORPG world has a much bigger infrastructure running it.
welcome our orc and elven overlords.
Zug Zug
Unfortunately I discovered that the WoW downloading client acts as a pseudo bittorrent client, which caused my school to shut down my internet connection for seven days. For anyone else out there who is going to a school with draconian downloading rules (such as University of Florida and their ICARUS client [previously featured on slashdot]), be warned.
It's still the same company though, doesn't matter if it's running on different servers
--- Jeff
I Showed up about 11:00pm last night, figured that the line might be half way around the building, Turns out the line went around the building twice, took up most of the parking lot, and then for good measure it went down the street a couple hundred yards. Talking to the Fry's Employee, he said that they had 2 or 3 truck loads of games on the way, but doubted thier would be enough for everyone. The poor guy seemed rather alarmed and stressed seeing several thousand gamers surrounding the store. According to him, the line started forming around 1pm. Although everyone seemed to be in a good mood, I didn't stick around.
I'd play this in a split second, if it weren't for the fact I'd need to upgrade the ol' PC. I play FFXI on PS2 now, and am growing quite tired of it. I wish they'd port WoW for PS2 and/or XBox.
VOTE!
Thats beside the point. Parent is trying to ease the conscious burden of supporting Blizzard even though they are assholes.
That price point is fairly common (range) with MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games; I assumed you didn't know the acronym since you posed the question).
MMORPGs are one of those things you are either interested in or not. And whether it's worth it depends on which side you're on. I subscribe to Final Fantasy XI for $12.95/month and I can't complain. That's just two fast food meals.
That's about the same as every other MMO out there [sans crap like Runescape]
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
I was playing a bit this morning on my lunch break. (wanted to snag my SN before someone else did) and I have to say I'm impressed. So far very little lag at all, including the n00b areas. That and they went with a distributed download for the initial patch, and it seems as if they might have done alright estimating bandwidth/demand on the first day.
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 don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Pirates , the classic Sid Mier game launches today as well. It's a remake of the classic game.
I love Blizzard, but WOW is nothing new.
Its swamped with quests where you seek out an object/NPC, or kill a sequence of monsters which lowers the tedium some.
The combat system involves clicking on some action keys, but isn't too complex.
Graphics are nice.
This game is one big level grind with Warcraft Lore in it. It may seem fun to some, but I was bored the whole time I betaed it. Maybe they'll introduce fun stuff down the road, but this game isn't what the market is thirsting for.
God spoke to me.
The launch was as smooth as a babies bottom for me, good times people, good times :)
Loaded up good
Ran good
Didn't crash
No lag errors or server crashes (wow)
A+ launch in my book
Steam... haha, I joke.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Countless hours?
/3 hours of playing = 5 dollars an hour, which is the going rate your mom charges.
I can count them easily. In a given 30 day month, I'll probably get about 3 hours to sit and play games.
15 bucks a month
So, you're right. WoW is really cheap, as cheap as your mom.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but XBox Live games are played peer-to-peer, correct? Then the bandwidth requirements for a MMORPG would be much greater than the Live service, thus justifying the higher price.
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!
This is not a sig.
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.
EQ set the standard but they long ago raised the price. The trick is to prepay for 3-6 months and save money. That is what they want you to do at least, keeps you locked in for a longer period of time.
'Same speed C but faster'
The speed of the vitriol about the cost of online games was truly amazing! We got some speed typists here.
It's a religious debate as to whether or not it's worth it, so I won't weigh in. I'm just amazed that there were people hovering over their keyboards with "OMG I can't believe that anyone would pay $15 a month for something like this more like $0.15 twice a year is what I would pay!" in the paste buffer.
adam b.
It was a joke son, don't ya get it?
--Foghorn Leghorn
Actually, my son and I get up early on weekends and play Starcraft Brood Wars for hours before breakfest.
Old game but LOVE it!
I participated in the open beta, and I must say, I was quite impressed. I've played EverQuest, but got sick of the grind after making level 30. I was unfortunate enough to play Anarchy Online on launch, what a nightmare that was. But once it got patched to the point of being playable, it was quite fun. However, it never really offered the community aspects that make an MMORPG worthwhile, so I gave that genre a rest.
Then, I decided to see what all the fuss was about with WoW. I downloaded the open beta client (took me only 4 days) and started playing. I was hooked right from the start. Just getting into the game was a snap, it took less than 45 seconds on my Athlon 1.4GHz, compared to several minutes for EQ and AO. Even creating my character was fun and easy to do, and once I got into the game the environments were beautiful, everything ran smooth (on my dated equipment), and the quests were easy to find and fun to complete. Not to mention the fact that grouping and making friends is a breeze. Unfortunately, the open beta ended 5 days after I finished the download, so I only made it to level 8 with my warrior (and that was with playing one hour a day).
I don't think I'll be buying the game, but the only reason for that is my addictive personality. While I never became much of an EQ addict (though I've seen some of my friends become zombie-like creatures who have sacrificed school, jobs, and even marraiges to get that piece of uber-loot), I can definately see myself getting sucked into this game, and that wouldn't be good for me, my studies, my relationship with my fiance, or our baby daughter. Otherwise, I'd probably be up to level 15 by now!
Get a free Nintendo DS! No BS! http://www.ds4free.com/default.aspx?r=64402
It would be very cool to have a Linux native version of this game. I have always loved the WarCraft games and I expect this one will be no exception to that. :)
~Petaris "The world is open. Are you?"
I have always thought if they were going to charge per month the game should be free. If you buy a game for $50 to have the CD it should have $50 free access to the game or the option to download it for free and connect for a monthly rate. I have never bought an online game because of this. Why charge me $50 then a monthly fee to play it? If I can't play it in single player mode, why charge single player game prices?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
...because I will not be supporting Blizzard in any manner whatsoever so long as they continue the bnetd case. However, I did check out the open beta (couldn't resist!) and was greatly relieved to find out the game isn't that good anyway.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Wow, it looks really pretty. I bet the gameplay is pretty fun too. But you know what the basic problem is: the people. It doesn't matter what kind of look and feel they put into it when the world's largely populated by screaming frustrated adolescent asshats who use "Jew" as an insult, "U" as a pronoun, and punctuate every sentence with "LOL"
... tho perhaps that's just EQ.
Even if one just avoids people like that and approaches it from a pure gameplay point (that is, game mechanics over character, an attitude that can better bear the aforementioned asshats), you still end up playing in one overall league, and that's the power gaming munchkins who squeeze every bit of actual fun out of the gaming experience by very quickly reducing it all to cost/benefit ratios of weapon/spell damage outputs and multipliers, often to the point of converging on a single attack or combo. (Try playing UO without every other bark being "Corp Por")
To say nothing of the soviet-style queueing up (enough with the soviet russia jokes) at spawn points so that your character may have their standardized ration of fun
MMORPG's suck, and it's the players that make it so.
Not saying all MMORPGs have to have a one time fee, that's not doable, but it should be cheaper at least than my crazy webhosting deal I get for like $7 a month. There needs to be an MMORPG price war, but I don't know how one would be initiated.
Quick coffee crazed idea; but I'd love to see a MMORPG client and server frameworkd developed under the GPL, and then the servers would be run by third parties who charge for access.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
I foolishly met up with friends last night who were at the midnight release at the Fountain Valley Fry's.
I arrived right about midnight, but they had already been standing in line for roughly 2 1/2 hours. The line wrapped once around the entire building, then again around the outside of the parking lot, and then went down the street for roughly a block.
There was a food truck, a radio station was there broadcasting music...
From the point where I got in, we didn't get into the store until 3am. There were at my guess... 5,000 - 10,000 people waiting in line. At one point they brought in a moving truck filled with more copies to meet the demand, and then they still ran out of collectors edition copies. Luckily for some there were guys scalping them in line...
Ach, alright! Tilt one back wi' me, laddie!
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
XBL only provides matchmaking services, friends lists, stats, messaging, etc. It does no actual game hosting unless publishers pay extra, and so far I don't think any have. Its bandwidth costs would probably be comparable to Gamespy's or AIM (though with far less users but in a more secure environment). You average MMOG provides continuous bandwidth during gameplay, patching, user interaction, and huge database services tracking monster, players, levels, etc. I doubt it costs that much to play, but the fact is that people are willing to pay the price, and they seem fine with the user base that the costs provide. If they don't get enough people they'll surely lower the costs, and if demand is high enough they'll probably raise them.
I wonder... Valve wants to distribute through steam because they make more profit. They're forced to also do retail because they have publishing agreements with Vivendi. I wonder if part of the upfront cost in buying the retail box for a MMORPG isn't due publisher demands? If Blizzard were free of Vivendi, could they release the client for free or at a markedly lower price?
Apparently you have no idea what kind of infrastructure is involved with a MMO. Paying $50 just covers the cost of making the game (which takes significantly longer than any other game type). The monthly fees go to very expensive bandwidth, many server farms (EQ has well over a thousand servers), huge maintenance costs, and the continual costs of constantly upgrading the game (which all MMO players expect). Sorry, but none of this shit is free.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
I am having just as much fun playing with a rock and stick.
The system requirements for WoW aren't really that bad, which is one of the reasons a lot of my friends I decided to move to it instead of EQ2. From their FAQ:
* 800 MHz or higher CPU
* 256 MB or more of RAM
* 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware transform and lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better
* 4 GB or more of available hard drive space
* DirectX® 9.0c or above
* A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection
That's pretty modest. A friend of mine who got in on the open beta told me that when he tried to install the client, it warned him that his system may not meet the requirements (I'm not sure what his system specs are). He installed it anyway, and found that frame rates were very tolerable, said the only time it was bad was during the opening cutscene. He said he didn't notice any of the graphics lag that he noticed in many areas of EverQuest.
"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."
Xbox Live has very few dedicated servers. Most of what Live does is matchmaking (the Xboxes themselves host the games).
MMORPGs need to have a ton of dedicated servers, run by a full-time networking team, on ALL the time. When servers are down on an MMORPG, there's no game, period.
In general they seem to do a 1-2 free month subscription with game purchase. When I decided to give planetside more of a go than the seven days they hand out for free on occassion it was only ~10 dollars, so I got a month for less than the normal price. Generally that is the exception, but they always give something with the purchase.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
My guess is that the Xbox live is funded by people buying a large number of different games. The cost beyond the $50 per year is included in every game you buy. This however is only bough once, then played for years. Also, once a title is relieced for Xbox, developement on it pretty much stops. This on the other hand will be under constant development for as long as people will pay. They will be creating new content and tweeking existing adventures and the like.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
Whenever I see something like this, I always think back to when I played multi-player MechWarrior (or whatever the equivalent name of it was) on the GEnie network. They charged several dollars PER HOUR. People that complain about $15/month crack me up.
So clearly the original poster wasn't an EQ player. Compared to sony, blizzard is angelic.
Not to mention the multiple server farms and extensive updates to the game. I think that if you buy a $60 MMO then you should get the first 60/15 = 4 months free. Or free download with a 4 month contract. Either way. Then I might consider it. But $60 and a 1 month trial is BS. I will not pay that much to try a game out for 30 days. I also feel that a 7-day trial (with rollover of course) would make a lot of sense.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
I'm going to make a little bit of promotion here. Go to http://www.planeshift.it . This is a free MMORPG in development. In the current released version the game is really pre-alpha. You cannot do much except walk around in a 3D world, chat, solve a few simple quests and collect crystals. But in the next version that is going to be released soon (hopefully in less then a month now) there will be magic, monsters, trading, crafting, ... PlaneShift really focuses on the RPG aspects.
PlaneShift is 100% free. You just download the game for nothing and there is no monthly subscription fee. The source is available too (GPL).
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
All MMOs invite obsessive gameplay. At least the successful ones do.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
I am having just as much fun playing with a rock and stick.
Rock and stick is too hard to manage. You have to keep track of the rock, but now where's the stick, and believe me after a short while it gets very confusing very quickly. These days, I prefer just stick.
Don't forget you can get these if you don't want to pay online especially for young people who don't have credit cards or parents won't let them. Ask your friends, family members, etc. for them as Christmas and birthday gifts.
EB = $29.99
Walmart = $29.82
Are there any more U.S. stores that sell these that I didn't list?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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?
Because Microsoft doesn't need to make a profit from it maybe? The whole Xbox business unit leaks money like a sieve, but they don't care because they're making headway into the industry. Game companies don't have such luxuries.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
$15 is a lot if you are a casual gamer.
I would love to be a casual WoW player, but only if it were something in the range of $5-$7, or an hourly rate that would, if used as as much as the average player, would equal out to $15/month. So if the average player plays 40 hours a month, i pay $0.38/hour or so.
Ok for those who complain lets try something few understand, PERSPECTIVE.
.50 9.00 last I checked.
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.
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.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
A) You're paying $50, but that's retail. The company has to get the game in the hands of the players, and electronic distriubtion isn't (quite) here yet (the install for EQII came on 2 DVDs and was 6-7GB). So it has to go through the retail chain, and everybody along the way has to make money off of the transaction.
B) First-month attrition is fairly large. This makes it non-cost-effective to distribute boxed copies for free in anticipation of recouping the expense in subscription fees.
C) 'I shouldn't have to pay to buy it and then pay per month' is a specious argument against playing these games. Either you feel you get your money's worth in entertainment value, or not. How the expense is chunked is irrelevant. If you anticipate not liking the game enough to justify the initial expense, wait several months and most games have 7 or 14 day trials available for download.
D) From an accounting standpoint, you want the inital investment in development recovered as quickly as possible, and the monthly fees to cover overhead, future development, and profit.
At least 2-3 times per day the beta would crash for me with an Error # 132. It seems this error occured most frequently on those computers with AMD Athlon (not only the 64 bit versions though) chips. There were rare reports of it on P4 chips but the overwhelming majority of the times it was on AMD chips.
That is the one thing keeping me from buying the game. It's so annoying to have it crash 2-3 times in a row in the same area (frequently resulting in death, as your character stays in the same spot in the game world and does NOT leave the server until you attempt to rejoin).
Yes, I know exactly what kind of infrastructure is involved.
I also know how fat game publishers like their profit margins to be.
It's expensive, sure, but not ($60 + ($15 x months)) x (1 million subscribers) expensive.
Maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, I really want to see this mammoth supercomputer that costs 15 million a month to operate.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So, um, don't play.
How hard a decision can that be?
*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.
As bad as they've let Diablo II, LOD get - I will NOT purchase another Blizzard game, as long as I shall live unless they can prove to me that
1) charging for the games will eliminate
a) spam bots
b) duping
c) botting
d) general cheating
2) they will keep the community informed
3) they will update and fix bugs on a timely manner
= Grow a brain...
The publishers and investors demand it. After pumping millions of dollars into the incredibly long development process, they want a big chunk of change right away.
The basic model of MMOG income is that the box sales should pay for the development of the game, and the monthly fee pays for operating costs and future development, and what's left is profit.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
Yea, I love how they use the word free.
If you have to buy one thing to get another, IT'S NOT FREE, IT'S INCLUDED.
Bring back permanent character death, and I'm interested again. Permanent character death is the solution to everything that sucks about modern MMORPG. If a future game brings back permanent character death, that game will not need to have the level-grind. That game will not have so many campers for valuable item drops.
Hell, just bring back PvP with no safe zones outside towns and no level restrictions (save for the lowest of ultra-newbs who've just started), and that'll be a huge improvement.
I haven't seen anything in WoW that isn't there to appease the whiny brats who can't stand actually having anything in the game at-risk.
Edith Keeler Must Die
It designed for a PC, so it won't be coming out for a PS2 or XBox. FFXI was designed for the PS2 first, then ported to the PC.
I remember playing Neverwinter Nights (not the current one, but the original gold-box SSI game) on AOL and paying $5 an hour to play. That was back when you could buy a gold-box game for $20-25 - and I was only making something like $10.25 per hour at the time... I got over that real quick. Moved to Shadows of Yserbius on The Sierra Network and got something outrageous like 60 hours of game play for only $90 per month...
$15 a month doesn't even faze me anymore...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
You know, Blizzard does not stop you from logging on to a server in a different time zone. I am in MST and in the open beta played mostly PST. However, i'm in a guild now and we play CST because there are quite a few players on the east coast (so we compromised time zones). You can sign up wherever you want it is not a problem. So now disregard half of your post and that is what you have to say.
I agree but I'm not one of those people who have countless hours to spend building up a character so $15/month compared to my $29 for DSL isn't really a good deal. I bet they could get a whole new crowd coming in if they offered something like $5/month for...say....30 hrs of play per month (about 1 hr per day). I would go for that. Otherwise my hr per day is going to be $15/month to go around whacking bats and bunnies for a couple of months. That is why I quit EQ during beta and never bought it.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I concur. I used to spend atleast 100 a month on games before I started playing SWG (yea yea, love it or hate it). Ever since then I buy maybe 5 PC games a year (at their reduced prices, not when they come out). Even with my 2 accounts, paying 30 dollars a month, I am saving money.
Equals about 2.5 meals at McDonalds
Yeah, right. Like I'd do that in the first place.
2 trips to the movies
Four bucks. In a real theater. With comfortable seats. Dumpster-O-Popcorn, a buck fifty.
Of course DVD "rentals" are "free".
I saved nice amounts of money on single player games. I used to buy one or two single player games a month, now, not one.
I found a few games five or six years ago that entertainingly offer infinite replay value and have strong communities that keep them up to date. One of them supports internet play with a direct connection so I'm not even dependant on company servers for that one.
I don't have time to buy new games. I'm too busy having fun.
Look, if it's worth it to you I'm not going to gainsay that. It's your money. I honestly don't care if you burn it and I'm not trying to say that you should spend your money as I spend mine. Spend it as you will, but there are those of us who can stretch a dollar a long, long way, and have just as much, or even more fun out of it.
It may look "cheap as it gets" to you, but that doesn't stop it from looking damned expensive to us, because it actually gets a damned sight cheaper.
KFG
Uh, no. What kind of match is that? If you play for one month a couple of years from now, you'll pay $15. They have to pay for the servers somehow.
You're right. Blizzard fans rave for content, and probably won't notice the grind. I noticed the grind from like level 5.
Just frustrates me that no one is breaking the MMORPG mold and trying new things. Theres a ton of things you could do with a MMORPG to make it fun and draw in customers that aren't in the market yet. Especially user created content(lots of time on your hands = creativity).Its just like Street Fighter 2's old popularity, if you make a killer game, people will turn out in droves for it. And a MMORPG should be fun for like 5-10 years. Ah screw it, I won't get into it, I could write a novel on this stuff.
I guess the game I am most awaiting from Blizzard is Starcraft 2.
God spoke to me.
Bah, anyone who says EQ wins anything needs to be tarred and feathered.
but by the same token, maybe you should consider one's relative interest in playing a MMO game before you make such counter-statements.
i agree with the grandparent, not because i think it is overly expensive in and of itself, but because i have very little interest in online gaming.
i play games as an escape, so the idea of joining a community in order to play a game seems somewhat counterintuitive to me. i certainly am interested in some of the titles out there, but i find the cost prohibitive. it's not worth it to me to invest "just" $15/mo because the whole concept is iffy at best (to me).
as an aside, comparing a relatively low $15/mo fee to a $50 new game price tag is meaningless to me (and others, i suspect) because i rarely purchase new games anyway. i buy almost every title used, and rarely pay more than $15-$20. to give a sepcific frame of reference, i have purchased a brand new $50+ game exactly ONCE in the last two years.
so from my perspective, i could spend $15/mo on the SAME game, or i could spend $15/mo for a new game EVERY month and enjoy an ever-increasing game library. i happen to choose the latter, just as many others happen to choose the former.
(this is just my personal perspective, so please step away from the flamethrowers)
What they need is a game like this with VERY fast leveling but only one life. You could play one day, build up, PVP, etc...then start again next time after you die. Whacking bunnies or bats for weeks at a time takes too much of a chunk out of my life. I keep hearing how people get sucked into games like this so deep that they neglect family, friends, a life, and just stay locked in a room for days playing. At least having a fast-level server as an option would bring people like me into the game and probably salvage a few marriages/relationships at the same time.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
It might, until you consider that $15 is also the cost of only two movie tickets.
With the quality of movies, lately, being what it is, I'd rather put my $15 toward's a month's worth of entertainment instead of 5 hours.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Nope, not at all. There's servers to maintain and ongoing bugfixes to deliver.
I pay $12.99/month for WW2Online. $15/mo is standard for MMORPG's.
That $15/month turns into a a fraction of a dollar per hour. I defy you to find any type of for-pay entertainment that's cheaper per-hour.
Typical MMMORPG player - always blaming macros for the superior skill of others.
j/k.
Okay, I stand completely corrected! You're right, if the game is all that then leveling shouldn't be a grind. What a bizarre culture that it's so easy to completely lose sight of that!
Still, I think it's a good idea basically, though. Maybe offer a time credit (try our game out free for a month, and if you end up canceling your other accounts you get another free month?), or maybe a cash reward in game, like equivalent to 10 quests run at the level you are when you run to the end of the month. Something transient, but neat.
adam b.
For a pretty in depth comparison look HERE as a bonus the thread was started by HillaryClinton :)
at least for the time being, you can only join servers that are in the region you live in
Bull shit. Look at the bottom of the server selection screen. Those tabs let you choose your region. You can create a character on any of them.
How much blizzard charges has very little to do with their costs. The game will cost consumers whatever the market will bear.
If you were running a game and 1000 people will play at $15 and 3000 will play at $5, which one would you pick?
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.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Putting aside my complaints against Blizzard for the bnetd debacle, I did take part in the Open Beta for this game. I must say that Blizzard really does have a very good game here, one that was able to keep my interest and not be boring after a couple of weeks (unlike EQ and DAOC).
The game's presentation is top notch, as to be expected from Blizzard.
If or not I'll purchase the retail copy. Well, I still have reservations about giving them my cash for their pursuit of the bnetd case. That and no matter how good a game can get, this type of game is always ruined by the community of idiots that eventually flocks to it.
I think that upcoming games like NWN2 and Dragon Age will still provide a more personal, quality experience to a small group of roleplay minded gamers. But, as far as MMORPGs go, WoW does the best job of that I've seen.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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.
it still needs some work. Having been in the closed beta, then the second stress test and open beta, I have seen the game progress quite a bit. Or digress depending who you talk to. Couple of the classes are really solid and complete, like the Hunter, Paladin, and Warriors. Other classes have been without much upgrade in the last couple of patches are in dire need of some help, such as Druids and Mages.
:)
Over all I found the game to be fun and enjoyable. It doesn't force you to group with othes, though for a lot of the instances (read almost all) you will need a group to complete all the quests with that instance. Some of the quests are simplistic, get Item A, got to Vendor B, Kill Monster C, but it does allow you to explore the world and the regions are quite amasing. The expansiveness of the game is breathtaking, especially the cities. I think that is one of the major things that drew me into the game, was the artwork.
Blizzard was pretty good about listening to their beta testers and trying to balance out our requests with reality. Though if there is something in the game that sucks, don't blame me, I probably posted against it.
I don't think I will actually be buying the game, as I don't have the funds to pay a monthly subscription, though if I did, I would likely play, at least for a while. The game has great potential, and some of the raid aspects that have been tossed around should keep the end game interesting to those that top out on levels.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
He's talking about countries. If I live in the United States and know someone that lives in Europe, we can't play together.
Yeah, well, this is why I'm probably just going to get Guild Wars instead. No monthly fees, and while it's not a true MMORPG, it's not a true kind of anything else either, but a new kind of genre, or maybe could call it a mix of genres -- MMORPG's and Action RPG's / PvP games.
:-P
The focus on the game is to get rid of the grinding aspects in MMORPG's too. I wonder if those parts are really just there for you to stick with their games for a longer time.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
compared to my $29 for DSL isn't really a good deal.
Umm... unless you buy the DSL only for playing WoW, it's pretty much pointless to include it as a cost for playing. That's like including the cost of your car every time you budget for going to a movie.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Hmmm...I'll have to check out my laptop specs when I get home. It may be able to handle that!
VOTE!
And they also know that if you subscribe to WoW, then you won't be using your TV much! From what I've seen in the Beta Test, it's going to prove at least as addictive as the old MUDs/MUSHes were to us old-schoolers.
(My wife is gonna be so pissed.)
I can see the fnords!
Lets not forget the DMs required to add content to the game and provide player support. I'm very surprised that Diablo 1 and 2 offered free online relms. So if Blizzard is going to charge for WOW, I can only imagine it will be top-notch service and entertainment. Time will tell of course, but I'll give it some faith based on Blizzards attention to quality.
BTW, I just got WOW Special Edition (thank you FedEx) today. But I think I made a mistake in not getting a large supply of NoDoze pills and coffee....damn.
Life is not for the lazy.
I briefly tried the Planeshift alpha, and frankly wasn't very impressed.
Now I understand that it was an alpha and all, but I didn't see much potential for variety or inspiring gameplay, or for that matter, many people playing it.
You can't have a very successful MMORPG if you don't have enough people playing it.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I tested the game for around 8 months and logged more than 35 days and several hundred suggestions, alongside countless bugs.
The bottom line is that the game was released prematurely, to the detriment of the product.
In the week before release, Blizzard completely revamped two entire classes (warrior and paladin), and in the process made the previous months of testing these classes in high-level content completely meaningless. There is a new "queue" system, which controls access to actually getting onto a server and playing. Despite assurances that the queues would not be visible in retail, new players are finding that they have to wait for over an hour in a queue before entering the game.
Battlegrounds, PVP rewards, and the honor system were supposed to be in place months ago. None are actually implemented yet.
Raid content was added, but of such obscene difficulty that groups of 40 players with the best gear in the game got absolutely thrashed. Limited success was generally achieved only by spamming abilities that will probably be adjusted in subsequent patches (druids and moonfire stun).
Hero classes, once heralded as a different sort of end-game, distinct from the raid encounters, have not been mentioned officially in months and may never appear.
Why was the game released before it was ready, by a company that has earned a reputation of never doing that? I have it on fairly good authority that Vivendi offered Blizzard employees profit-sharing if the release happened before the end of the year.
Blizzard's post-release support has traditionally been extremely spotty, though they are no different in that regard from the rest of the industry. Before now, however, their saving grace has been that the game was actually reasonably close to finished before it hit store shelves.
However, right now you have vastly different games, some with vastly different genres. At best, there could be a pricewar between Fantasy Based MMORPGs, SciFi based RPGs and so on. That is very unlikely, because each of the games set into each genre offers various levels of play and radically different takes on the genre.
A SciFi example being...
Star Wars Galaxies and Anarchy Online.
SWG has a well known and loved franchise. That's HUGE points over AO. SWG has a very wide crafting system and equipment system, from harvesting resources to building sub-components to crafting final assemblies. AO's crafting system pales in comparison. SWG now has a Space Combat system as well as several planets to choose from. AO doesn't have that.
There is little reason for SWG to compete with AO based upon price. SWG offers much, much more then AO currently and may ever offer.
The same goes for a variety of other MMORPGs. For the longest time Ultima Online offered things that EQ and other Fantasy MMORPGs didn't offer. It had a decent crafting system, player houses, non-combat classes and a number of other interesting features all taking place in a long-lived Computer Fantasy Role-Playing Game of Ultima.
I would like to see a pricewar, but that won't happen until all MMORPGs of a particular genre share so many features that price is the only way to differentiate between them. Until that day, those companies can continue to increase their prices just up to the point that decent numbers of players start leaving the game.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I have a 2.5 GHz AMD system with a slightly outdated ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, and even in a heavily populated area, my CPU utlization never exceeded 80%, most of the time it hovers around 75%. This is the least CPU intensive MMORPG I have ever played.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
That aside, you do get a month free with purchase, and its up to you to justify it.
My monthly Gemstone bill regularly ran to $400.
And when AOL went flat rate, I couldn't connect. Quit cold turkey.
$15/month is, what... five hours of AOL hourly rate? That wouldn't even have paid for a full evening of Gemstone back in the previous century...
I can see the fnords!
> 15$ a month
Plus about $50 for the first month.
> for countless hours of entertainment?
Let's be super optimistic, and say 720 hours (that is, 30 days). Yay, less than a penny an hour. But it's not the quantity that matters, it's the quality. What do you do when the game goes down? Or when your internet connection goes down?
Or, and this is the most important one, what do you do when the company decides not to run the game anymore and shuts it down? Then you're left with a worthless box with CDs, maybe a manual, and if you're lucky a map or some other goody, and you're out $50 + n * $15. As opposed to games that you might have bought 12 years ago and still play just fine.
> It's cheap as it gets.
> Equals about 2.5 meals at McDonalds,
$6 for a meal at McDonald's? Ugh
> 2 trips to the movies (some places not even that).
Putting something which is expensive in terms of something else that is expensive doesn't say much. Or are you saying that $7.50 for two hours is reasonable?
The current release is really only a tech demo to have us test some of the technologies we use in the game. It is only the next release that will feature real RPG features. But still the next release will also be alpha/beta so it is still not the full game.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
I expect the list to contain games with very BAD graphics, but does anyone have a list of MMORPGs that are free of a monthly fee?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
I quite sure that much market research has been done to determine the magic number that people will easily part with monthly. Why do you see so many items on TV for only $19.95? Because people will spend that without thinking. If they could charge $29.95 they would. And, since people will pay $19.95 why charge less? Same goes with game pricing. They've found a sweet spot that makes it profitable in terms of number of buyers that will pay the price asked. Given the number of responses justifying the cost by comparing the monthly pricing versus number of movies, dinners, etc that could be bought instead it appears they've done their homework well.
I believe he was making the point that this would cost half as much as he pays for broadband and would be significantly less than half as useful. Thus: not an attractive price for him.
Vivendi Universal Games lost a lot of money last year, and the year before, and so on. See http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/14/news_61073 51.html.
They really need some "wow" to boost the bottom line this year. I'm sure that there was pressure on Blizzard to get this door for the holiday buying season.
EQ2 just went live two weeks ago. Easily as big a deal as WoW is by any standard I can put it to. Not saying either is better then the other just a bit hard to miss the lines I saw of people picking up eq2 at the local mall.
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.
Yes, that's how marketing works for an MMORPG. The thing you pay for in the box is the work that went into developing the game itself, reimbursing the company for the server hardware, reimbursing the company for the optical line installation (or co-location setup costs), and knowing Blizzard's heavy Microsoft strategy: OS licenses and database server licenses. The amount you pay per month is goes to the employees needed to maintain the server and the money needed to pay for the optical lines (or co-location monthly fees).
The free first month is really deceptive marketing: the first month's fee has already been figured into the product price.
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.
I don't agree with the way Valve (yes, I'm blaming Valve here, not Vivendi) is handling Half-Life 2 registrations. However, they are correct in that piracy is rampant. I still don't play on getting HL2, though.
As for game development, it's a fact of life that 3D games take more time and money to create than 2D games. It's a fact of life that the bigger the game, the more resources it takes to develop. The first M in MMORPG stands for Massive for a reason: the game world is extremely large. Given these, it really isn't surprising that MMORPGs are expensive when they first come out.
On the flip side, most computer games cost the same amount up front as WoW does, so you're either paying less for WoW itself, or the first month really is free...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Gameplay wise, I thought the quests were better than the auto-quest mulch you find in DAOC and SWG and the UI is fairly easy to use too. The crafting was so-so but at least you could make things that had value. The first ten levels were pretty easy to solo in the beta, but it got a bit harder then. I didn't play much longer because the beta ended.
I haven't played EQ2 but I'm not exactly bowled over by its pedigree. I hated EQ (when I realised that the fun had been replaced with grind and Verant didn't care about the top heavy player population), and I saw nothing about SWG to suggest EQ2 would be any better.
Having said that, I don't think I'd pay $15 for a monthly game either. It would have to be a bloody good game, and it would have to be a free download to warrant me bothering.
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
I would certainly be willing to give it another try upon its next release. I have no doubt that the features and content will make Planeshift more impressive, but how do you plan on attracting people away from the new MMORPGs like WoW and EQ2?
I gotta give you credit for what you've done so far, so please don't take my above comments as a criticism of your work. I'm just not sure how a group such as yourselves, doing this (presumably) in your free time can compete for players with juggernauts like SoE and Blizzard.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
No, you don't remember correctly. Games are organized via XBL, but the actual in-game data is hosted "peer-to-peer" (i quote that because it's not strictly p2p. One xbox is in host mode and the others talk to it).
Have you ever noticed, playing on XBL, every once in a while you'll get a blue screen (i tend to die during these, so fitting) with a message that says "Connecting to Session", then "Setting Up Game"? This is when the host box drops out (or perhaps is voted to quit hosting because of lag) and all the boxes get together, decide on a new host, and sync up game data.
There's no reason XBL couldn't act like a firewall broker (ie. ultrapeer mode), but trust me, XBL does not host the Halo 2 games.
On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse
Having been in the open beta, and running a 1Gz box (512MB ran and a 32MB RAM video card), I can say with some authority that older systems have no problem at all with WoW. I didn't have any frame lag, and the game automatically set the various video settings to minimal for my box. It was quite nice to be able to play a game that didn't require me to build up some insane machine.
For us in the UK...
We cant buy a US subscription, so we have to wait until January for the game to be translated in French and German.
THEN we cant play on the US servers, without getting a US address and credit card and buying a second subscription.
AND the preorder starts on Friday but the only retailer knows nothing about it and the stock of pre-order boxes are not yet in store.
What the hell is the point in paying $15/mth for a worldwide MMPORG when it's not worldwide! I want to play with friends both in the EU and in the US, so WoW is right out the Window for me. All they have to do is make it possible for those in the EU to play with those in the US and bang... they get my money... but no, the bl00dy publisher (Vevendi I believe) are so stuck on making a bigger profit that it's not possible to do that.
They can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
Beep beep.
Do we have to attract people away from those MMORPG? There is room for more then one MMORPG in the world. Also PlaneShift will be completely free. I suppose that for many people that are not prepared to play such high amounts for MMORPG games (like me) that is a compelling reason to switch.
You talk about 'competition'. But we don't earn any money from PlaneShift. So there is no real competition.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
So I guess I can play with my guildies so long as I don't give a shit about performance? Afterall, that was the reason they gave for setting it up that way.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
If you had ever enjoyed a game of this nature, you would understand that the cost of the game, the monthly fee, and any expansions are a BARGAIN. WoW is the best / most fun mmo ive ever played, and well worth the costs incured. If you're having trouble justifying the cost of the game, dont play.... as for me, ill be having a blast (and spending much less than i would at the bar or the movies).
www.topmudsites.com is a good place to start. If you like MMORPG's, and you enjoy a more literate, deeper, and more immersive game playing experience, MUDs could be for you.
Thanks. Yes I was comparing the two.
;)
I would rather subscribe to NetFlix and get more hours of entertainment for my buck
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
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.
But you are getting married, right? I am afraid you'll have to cut back on your video games and you won't have extra bandwidth for more side work.
Permanent death? Consider the buggy state of most MMORPGs and where some won't even guarantee character inventories you want people to trust these developers to not have bugs, exploits, or whatnot that result in losing their character permanently?
Then you top it off with the age old reply of "PVP will solve everything". Actually most MMORPG problems stem from PVP and the behavior of the players involved.
See one thing I have learned in my nearly 10 years of similar gaming is that PVP people think they are the only ones who really know how to play yet at the same time they are the first to justify every asshat activity they do.
Free for all PVP is just stupid. Why? Simple because players cannot govern their own worlds properly. What you have is anarchy and no one wants to invest time in that type of world. Another way to put it, there are not enough mature players to handle all the immature twits that would ruin any attempts at imposing some type of law. (don't bring of ATITD)
Your terminology also indicates that your blinded by this PVP or anything idea. Dismissing everyone else as "whiny brats" I am surprised you forgot to toss in carebear.
Get this, the majority of North American players do not want PvP. They do not want to waste their investment of time. They do not want their play time which they pay for controlled by the actions of a bunch of immature punks. In other words, they want to enjoy the game with others in a cooperative environment.
Let me save you the trouble. There are many PvP centric games available for you to play. The trouble I am saving you is the standard reply "but game X didn't do it right, but this game Y could be right IF ONLY THEY HAD PVP".
In other words you will whine till the cows come home because many of us refuse to allow you to impose upon us your lack of maturity.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It's called updated content. It costs a lot of money to keep a tea of developers adding content/Server up and running/Database back ends. It's not like they let joe blow run his very own WoW server. Can't handle $15/month, don't play. End of story. $15 is lunch ain't a big deal.
oogly boogly!
Have you actually played the game?
Nice, but the actual numbers are more like 1200 at $12 vs 2200 at $4.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Is GuildWars actually an MMORPG or is it like Diablow in that you use Battle.net as a chat/meeting place and then the games are peer-to-peer?
Everquest, for example, has over 1000 machines in its server farm, more than one data center (gotta lease, own, or pay rent), and bandwidth out the wazoo. Also, there are people to pay to keep all that running. None of that comes with no cost, even the F/OSS understand that hardware and bandwidth costs money, if not the people and code.
In comparison, Battle.net isn't that big of a deal.
Beta tests and actual game aren't necessarily the same. Many people play the betas to see if they will like the game. If they don't like it, they don't buy it. Even if they get 400,000 buyers, that's $20M. The project probably had a budget they have to pay back of a few $M. After that, if they actually have to maintain a server farm like Everquest, they'll blow through the rest of that money in a year or two at most. Everquest has been around for 5 years. Perhaps GuildWars doesn't plan on being around that long...
I hope you included the price of your DVD player, your TV, and your electric bill in that calculation. :)
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Not to meantion content upgrades, 24x7 in game support, server upgrades as necessary. You have to consider they're providing more of an online service/community like *shudder* AOL than just a game.
When ID was done with Doom3 they released some patches perhaps kept an eye on it, but here able to move on with their lives. Blizzard will be heavily working on/supporting WoW for years to come assuming it becomes as popular as Dark Age of Camelot / EverQuest. (yeah it's not like it'll catch up to EQ)
I agree that's still entirely too much to pay for a subscription, but they have a limited fanbase and they're going to milk them for all they can.
-nt-
Enjoyment being equal, seems like the MMO is quite a good deal. Even if you take the initial purchase price into account ($50, in this case), $65 for 40 hours is $1.63 an hour, which is still cheaper than a movie.
Yes, I realize you have to have a computer and an internet connection, but if you already had those, then their cost is sunk and can be ignored when deciding what to do with your entertainment dollars. Stop acting like it's ridiculously expensive to play an MMOG.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Xbox live can pull off reduced prices because the game developers due all the work developing the servers, theyere just hosting them, and even there how much content gets updated over time?
compare that to how oftem a mmorpg gets updated with new data. they keep adding more content to retain players. so $15/month is justified.
plust as said below the upfront charge is to pay for all the work they did to get to the point where users can play. its NOT an easy task. i don't here you bitcha botu forking $50 for halo and then $5/month to play it online.
Geee..
Be sure to remember as you're doing this to retain _some_ fun in your life. If games aren't the best fun for $ deal for you, then by all means spend your money elsewhere. Generally I find games are an excellent entertainment value cost wise. Particularly compared to tv/movies.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
So that part of your criticism is moot.
btw, I'm one of the many disappointed Europeans (UK) hoping to import, but now must wait for "early next year release" due to this regional lockout, bah! Though it doesn't matter too much, I still got HL2/CStrike:Source and GTA Andreas to waste my time on till then. :)
Good, stay with gnome-games (less idiots begging for shit in my games).
To all the idiots crying but but in 10 years if they turn steam off your fucked. Oh fucking well. in 10 years people will be saying WTF is half-life2!? oh that game, why not just play half-life 15: The moron expansion.
People love to cry ohh gnoes it's not free!! Free the beer, Free the speech. Everything should be free. Wrong asshole, it's called making money, you don't like it, go live in the fucking woods with RMS (I hear he has a wonderful guide to getting laid you should read up).
Have fun with your free beer (generally tastes like shit as the person who made it usually doesn't know how) and your free speech (of course untill you disagree with them then you need to STFU, works both ways asshole).
You keep working on Tetris clone 600,000,000 (it has purple blocks now woot woot!!) Before you start opening your pie hole about how it's a shame they charge money for a product, simple fact you don't like the license, don't fucking play it. Cause right behind you a million other people are willing to buy it, and play it for a couple months before moving onto a new game.
oogly boogly!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Trouble with being married is that you cannot play as much as you used to.
I found myself playing less than 50% of the time I used to play games.
Take that as a figure for your budget, and you get your one game a month ;-)
But believe me..after marriage..budget is not the issue when it comes to video games ;-)
I think $15/month is the norm in MMPOG industry.
Have you ever paid for any subscription based contents? I can understand how you can make that kind of comment if you haven't.
Anyway, I've paid for things much less than WOW (Lineage 2, have I mentioned I hate NCSoft?), I think if any MMPOG is worth it, it'd be WOW. If I don't eat out as much, $15 is quite easy. Besides, I hardly spend money on PC games anymore.
But if what you say is true about players not being able to govern their own worlds then isn't the answer to have the game do it for them? For instance, to discourage random killing set up a police force of bots. Murders can be reported and the suspect can be sought, imprisoned, tried, banned, killed, or whatever. If I knew that killing some random person i met along the way would result in my getting arrested and possibly executed for my crime I might think twice before doing it. Of course, if I was aiming to play a murderer then maybe this would result in a more detailed and exciting world.
You can join any of the servers. They do reccomend servers in your region to you though. My guild has members in more than a dozen timezones and we are having no problem getting on the same server.
I hopped into the open beta a few days before they stopped taking applications and played my little heart out for near a week. I had a few days I couldn't play at all, but I had one day I played for 12 hours straight so it kind of balances out. Here's what really struck me about the game. I'm not going to mention what everyone else has already said (i.e. you can quest for xp), but I'll stick to what leapt out at me.
Technical
The game was fairly smooth but somewhat choppy so I had the detail turned down for most of the test. Come to find out that I can turn the detail settings all the way up in every aspect except for draw distance and get remarkable framerates. My system is no slouch (P4/2.8HT, 512MB, GeForce Go FX5200), but it's still good to know.
I ran WoW in a window the entire time I played it. It was remarkably smooth, and tabbing in and out of the game never had a problem. Blizzard also thoughtfully coded the game so that when it is not focused, clicking in the window gives the window focus, but the click DOES NOT go to the UI. Thus, you won't try to click a Start Menu entry that disappears out from under you, resulting in you attacking a herd of 840 ravenous orcs just begging for a reason to stomp you like yesterday's grapes.
One feature that cannot be emphasized enough is the customizability of the UI using XML. The regular interface is surprisingly bland and you'll run out of clickbar space in your first ten levels (probably your first four if you're a mage). Instead, you can grab an alternate UI (I suggest Cosmos) which is simple to install (unzip the Interface directory to the Addons directory), then restart the game. This adds hordes (hehe) of customization options to the interface, as well as useful features you will wonder how people do without.
Gameplay
You can jump. I know this doesn't really seem like much, but it's so fun. It feels like I'm playing Jak 2 or something, jumping through the treetops of Teldrassil like a Bawlz addict on E, marvelling at the amazing colours and visual textures. I myself took great pride in being able to leap from the top of the great tree Aldrassil to the ground, bounding from branch to rooftop on the way down, to land safe and healthy among the 'jumpers' (corpses of those that fell to their deaths). This serves no practical purpose, but it's a lot more fun than walking everywhere.
Getting around is easy, and you actually get experience for finding new-to-you places. It's not much, but it's free. You can travel by walking, you can fly by griffon, hippogryph, wyvern, or something else, you can have a mage teleport you if you ask really nicely, you can take an underground rail, a ship, or even a zeppelin. It's fun to explore, sneak around, find new monsters, and kill them.
You can have up to ten characters per server, and I think you can be on 5 different servers (don't quote me on this). Suffice to say, you'll have more characters than you'll need, unless you're some kind of sick weirdo (or you are actually unwell and spend a lot of time in bed).
The game is very social, but differently so than Final Fantasy XI, which is also very social. While FFXI is social by forcing grouping, WoW is social despite not forcing grouping. I only grouped once, and that because some guy thought I was a chick and I wanted to use him as bait to finish a quest. That being said, every area has various chat channels (i.e. Teldrassil General, Darnassus General, Darnassus Defence, etc) so you can talk to those around you who don't mind random chat, but if you don't like it, you can leave the channel (I guess). Thus, even though I am wandering around on my own, I can still chat with people around me, ask questions, answer them, ask if anyone wants to group for a quest, etc. I can pop in for 30 minutes, chat and kill, and leave. Easy.
PvP
I have no idea. I guess you can kill other people. They say it's fun.
Classes
The classes are varied, and t
I went out and bought both collectors editions. Sad to say the DVD for WoW was messed up but the CD install worked just fine. I finally got in and found the graphics somewhat cartoony. Though I do love how the dwarves look.
I went on a few quests and found them to be kinda fun. I'll probebly get bored with it after a few days of playing though. It's too mindless, I have more fun still playing Neverwinter Nights simply because of the scripting in module building. I just hope there's some good people in there to keep my attention longer.
Right now I've installed HL2 and am waiting on Steam to do its thing so I can just play the blasted game. I'm quite sorry to have purchased HL2 because of Steam. Infact my whole service/pay per play experience is hurt by both games. Price, opressive terms of service, and playability wise makes me think I just wasted $160.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
By the time it's gone through retail it's been marked up about 100% (generally the amount the publisher sees is about $25 to $30).
So, consider it as $15 for your first month, $10 to $15 for the CDs and starting the account, and $20 to $25 to supporting the retailer you bought from.
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Wrong fucktard. You cancel. in 2 years you wanna play you reactivate your toon.
oogly boogly!
Those that play and complain about grinding out levels or crappy questing really need to analyze why they are playing these games in the first place. I play to have fun. Sometimes I find it fun to mindlessly sit there and swat at rats for hours on end. Most of the time I don't. When I don't I stop playing or find another game to play. WoW is more fun for me because the journey (leveling) is more important then the destination (uber toon). I enjoy trying to get there in WoW. The quests are fun and the terrain/graphics are enough to keep me coming back. I guess that's why I also ride a motorcycle. Because sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination. Who wants to get there fast, I'm enjoying the ride. LouSir
If you are looking for information on World of Warcraft, we have pretty much everything about the game listed in great detail -- quests, items, mobs, spells, skills, talents, maps, etc.
http://wow.allakhazam.com
--Allakhazam
Actually, THIS portion of Blizzard's fan base won't be buying into WoW because of the monthly fee structure.
Yes, I love their games. Diablo rocks hard, and I play it almost every day.
But, I can only justify that on a "one time cost vs. ongoing enjoyment" basis.
MMO's ARE a new business model as others have suggested, just not one that's got where it needs to be to attract my $$$ yet.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
http://www.eve-online.com
If you like a bit of roleplay, enjoy rpg style action blended with amazing graphics... you might want to consider EVE online. There are a ton of reasons why, but I'll brush up on only a few:
1. No level grind. Since this game takes place in the future (WAY in the future) the human mind no longer learns just through experiences, it learns through memory chips. You insert them Matrix-style and your brain processes the information. This means, instead of killing over and over for experience you can just right click on your skill list (obtained by purchasing them), and set it to learn. Each skill has 5 total levels to it, the skills are organized into different ranks(difficulty) of learning them.
At that point, that's it. You're done with the leveling. Now you just wait for it to complete. Some skills take 6 minutes to learn, some 39 days to fully learn (like Navigation level 5). However, that's okay because you can continue learning skills even while not logged in. That's right, you can be away on a cruise and still be learning skills. Just set it to a LONG term skill (say a week or two) and go on the cruise. While you are away, the skill is cheerfully working it's way into your character's brain.
2. Space. It's a massive area just begging for a good MMORPG to take hold of it. Fortunatally EVE Online has. EVE online is a space-flight based game in third person mode, using rpg style controls rather than first person controlling.
3. The graphics continually amaze everyone who plays. Here are some from my own character ingame:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 4
4. Customer service is actually very helpful, and by that I mean familiar with the topic they are trying to help you on because support not only progroms EVE, but is most likely also one of the GM's ingame. They are network professionals who deal with the problems as soon as they appear.
Anyways blah blah blah, sell sell sell. Give it a trial, and see if it may end up being something you could spend $15 a month on.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
What he's referring to is the "localizing" of servers by major geographic area...North America versus Europe, for example. Blizzard has stated quite clearly that the only way to get onto the North American servers is to have a North American billing address (australia is, I believe the exception, as they're being considered North American).
Rumor has it that this is being forced on them by Vivendi, but that's entirely speculation. The fact is, they've said that you have to have a local billing address to get to the servers, and they do not want people crossing areas.
I bet Nethack still beats this.
That's not a general XBL feature- Only Halo 2 can migrate hosting like that (AFAIK).
Well the maybe-good news is that there are a few exceptions to this with Australia and one or two other countries, I think. But still a bummer for sure.
I know that this isn't the same quality as WoW, but this game seems to be publisher-free, and they offer a free downloadable client with a (sort of restricted) free account.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
Can one not consider them all overly expensive?
Especially when you fork out 60 bucks for the game in the first place.
This is not true of all MMO's either. Two of the ones I play (Eve and A Tale in the Desert) get you into the game with a free download of the client, including free trial play. ATitD doesn't even make you register or give cc info, you just start playing for the free 24 hours they give. Then just plug in your card number (right inside the client, no website visit) when you want to start subscribing. Eve is currently undergoing a massive expansion, which is also free (unlike SWG's Jump to Lightspeed), you just keep up your monthly subscription and keep playing, the expansion is really just a massive patch to the game I am already paying for.
I enjoyed early days with a tank and turrets. I'd lay out a turreted area where I could flee to, and then go run over people. When I got hurt I'd just go back and heal the tank in the turreted area. I could kill like 50 people at a run like this.
Problem with PlanetSide is that you can get everything you want in under a few hours(not much for RPG). That and you're in an army. When you're in an army, you share rations, and never get to hoard loot for yourself. I've said it before, but an optimal MMOFPS would have it so you could form a clan and create a custom fortress/factory. You'd constantly be fighting battles to secure more resources, and then using the resources to make your fortress/vehicles/self better.
Yes, I had lots of fun in PlanetSide, and abused some bugs(like killing all the spawn tubes but 1, and autokilling people who spawn in the last one). PlanetSide was fun, but it has no long term goals of building up your player/clan/bases. To me its HIGHLY important to have long term campaigns/gains in a subscription based game. If you want me playing for years, you need to give me new content over time or let the players make content.
God spoke to me.
I tried Guild Wars out over the "open" weekend, and it struck me as sort of a traditional (pen & paper) RPG that was stuck into a computer world. It was very different, and very cool.
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
But then, if a movie ticket costed you, say $1000, you would be justified in saying that your movie ticket costs almost as much as the car that you drove to see it. Sometimes, comparing apples and oranges makes sense if they're priced right ;-)
I for one... welcome our orc and elven overlords.
Dude, seriously.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
That's like $.50 a day to play online... if I put in five hours a day, that's only ten cents an hour for what is, to me, quality entertainment. (It's more likely I'll be putting in..uh... ten hour days for a while.)
Compare that to movies, buying beer, eating out, or even prostitution in dollars per month as alternate recreation and WoW becomes highly affordable to the point of being transparent. When it gets taken transparently out of one's credit card it becomes like the water or electricity bill- you don't even feel it.
Yes, you could pay once or not at all (for free/free beer games)for a single player experience that entertains you, alone, for longer time. But for me it's worth it to play online with lots of other people, friends and stranger alike. I don't mind dropping a negligible amount of money to cover the server and bandwidth costs I know MMORPGs generate.
It's funny to me to hear Slashdot users, who almost by definition of have computers and broadband (which represent plenty of disposable income) complaining that $14.95 a month is somehow breaking the bank. If anything, the largest cost involved in the game is the opportunity cost. If a slashdot geek's techno-time is worth even $20 an hour and they play one hour a day, that's... $600 in opportunity cost to relax and have some fun in WoW! $14.95 is NOTHING compared to that.
$15 dollars a month is bupkis for quality entertainment. I live in Los Angeles and a movie costs between $10 -$14 dollars, parking anywhere costs $3-$5. When I buy into a MMO, I want to know that the developer is going to have adequate funding to not only host and support the game, but to be constantly adding content, patching errors, creating new art and code, etc... We have discussed this issue in numerous other threads, coming largely to the conclusion that most of that $15 per month goes to hosting and ongoing development/maintinence costs.
I played the Beta a bit and thought WOW was great fun... so looking forward to getting back into it. :)
Does anyone know if you can buy a key online and download the client?
I haven't been able to find anywhere, suggesting I need to go to a store and buy a box... seems so inefficient in the day and age of broadband!
MyLinkVault - online bookmarks with a fast drag-and-dr
I played through the Final Stress and the Open Beta. Of those who say that the game is just a rehash of other games with updated graphics, I can only conclude that you were only focused on the game mechanics, and not on what was going on in the world around you.
Sure, mechanically there is not much new (though instanced dungeons are pretty new, and go a long way to eliminating the dealing-with-morons factor). But where this game really shines, what causes this to be far more immersive than any other RPG I've seen is the environment.
So many RPGs have huge cities that are just ghost-towns. The only NPCs you ever run into are those that serve some game mechanic (weapon vendor, healer, in keeper). In WoW, cities are literally bustling with activity: kids playing tag in the streets, teachers leading a class of students around town, mages hunkered down under trees debating magical theories.
In many MMOs, you're given a quest to kill X bad guys. Then you get another quest to kill X more bad guys. In WoW, you're given a quest to kill X of a specific type of critter, because it makes a really good stew. For completing the quest, you get the recipe for the stew, then never again get a quest to kill those critters.
WoW isn't about the game mechanics. It's about the immersion. It's about the Dwarven mortar team that blows stuff up once you bring them their ammo. It's about the Gnome whos experiment accidentally turn the subject into a hyper chicken. It's about the NPC that mails you a thank-you note for completing her quest. It's about the freelance trader tucked away in a corner amongst the marauding Defias Brotherhood.
If you want a game with really new and different mechanics, go find some other game. If you want a game that you can loose yourself in, go get WoW.
I've always found part of the attraction of cable is the ability to channel flick and come across random things I might find interesting that I wasn't necessarily searching for. I think that's the main thing that will keep a "on-demand pay-per-use" model from gaining widespread appeal... or at least will keep the appeal of the bundled services.
MyLinkVault - online bookmarks with a fast drag-and-dr
Guild Wars is going to do it with more frequent expansions, every 2-3 months IIRC, direct download for about $30 each (So they get all the money, instead of letting distributors and retailers get a piece). While you don't "have" to have the expansions, if you want to be competetive (and they're making PvP seem like a very important point), you will buy them. That's pretty close to the monthly fee other games charge. You just don't know that's what it is.
This will sound dumb to some(and most people shouldn't care), but since then I haven't decided if its morally right to play a game that advocates gangland violence. Vice City was my favorite game of all time, with the good vehicle physics, car chases, quests and storyline.
Yet I didn't buy San Andreas because I have moral issues with playing a villian. I think its wrong to get joy out of running over people, assasination, and prostitution, even if its just fantasy. Its sort of sick to have a desire to shoot RPGs into random people's cars. Now I still really want to play the game because I know its quality, but the morality of it all is at question for me.
Beyond my own personal debate... I think a lot of thought needs to go in to how games like these could affect America's youth too. When I was young, I played Atari and they had rules against violence. Now there are 5 year olds growing up, doing virtual bank jobs, giving them an ego boost that they can do criminal acts. I don't have the answers, maybe just default back to it being the parents responsibility.
God spoke to me.
You're right it is insanely expensive for what you get, but if you notice the other responses on the thread, they aren't charging more than the market will bear. If people are willing to pay it, you can't fault the company for charging it :)
It depends on the quality of service one wants. I don't mind paying it because, given the experiences I had during the beta, Blizzard's servers work much better than games in the $9-$13 range. I quit playing EQ because I got sick of paying for servers that crashed regularly and were unavailable during peak times. My experience with the WoW beta suggests that Blizzard was tooling things to make sure that those things don't happen, and assuming that it stays that way I'm cool with it.
Is it just me, or does $15/month seem WAY out of proportion for something like this?
Why is it whenever somebody discusses an MMO, somebody always has to whine "They cost too much"
Professional sports ticket prices are too high, but each time sports comes on the news I don't start ranting "$50 bucks for seats at a 3 hour game, what a rip!" I accept the fact that people are willing to pay that price and I spend my time and money on an entertainment alternative (movies, watching the game in the bar, etc.)
$50+$15 is a standard pricing scheme the company chose, deal with it. There is no MMO monopoly, no MMO conspiracy, it's free market economics. There are free client pay for services, pay for client free service, and even everything free MMOs. Yet millions of people are willing to pay for clients and service; people even pay $80 for a client and a free in game cookie. If you are not willing to pay what the companies ask, play an alternative.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The store you buy from is taking about half of whatever you paid for that game (in this case, probably about $30-35).
Take the cost of stamping CDs and boxing and shipping them out... of the amount of that $60 you paid that the company will see, your first month's cost ends up being much closer to the normal monthly fee than it does to what you paid.
And honestly, it's sort of like a Tivo - which many people here seem to love. Pay for the device (in this case, the game), then for the service. You can't use your Tivo without paying the extra monthly fee. Sure, they offer a lifetime subscription, but it amounts to paying for 2 1/2 years up front on a device with a 90 day warranty.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
What about Guild Wars? According to their FAQ, there will be no monthly fee, and I believe the devlopers are composed of ex-Blizzard members.
Many MMORPG players consider someone who "only" spends 4 hours / day on these games to be a casual player. The hard core types will easily spend 8-10 hours, or more, every single day playing them.
And as a customer, he has no need to be. He's just specifying the conditions under which he will part with his money to play these games. If nobody can meet his conditions and make a profit, then he doesn't buy the games and they don't get his business.
I'd be willing to bet all of us are ignorant about the infrastructure involved in many (and maybe even most) of the things we purchase. That doesn't disqualify us from making individual decisions about what we consent to buy. If I decide that something is uneconomical for me to indulge in, giving me a detailed accounting of why it is as expensive as it is may be informative, but doesn't really change my balance sheet at all. This is the very basis of the free market, and it is a good thing.
Sheep who is too corwardly to post with his real name huh?
Either way, I do what I want, play the games I want. If you think crying outrage about $15/month to play is going to keep your world free, I suggest you wake up.
oogly boogly!
To whom it may concern:
There were several posts and FAQ answers concerning billing and
payment methods for WoW. PayPal was one of the options often
mentioned, along with prepaid game cards, and credit cards. With no
prepaid game cards available until the third of December, and PayPal
NOT being an option at the time of this email- I am a naturally
frustrated customer. Blizzard has always been very fair corporation to
me, and I would appreciate a non-misleading update on the availability
of alternative billing methods. I realize that credit cards are in
Blizzard's best interest, but repeatedly stating that alternative
methods for payment would be available, but not come through on that
promise, is frustrating to me as not only an avid Blizzard fan, and as
a consumer. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
-William A. Morrison
HwaguyGmail.com [@ removed]
(XXX) XXX-XXXX [phone # removed]
I found a few games five or six years ago that entertainingly offer infinite replay value and have strong communities that keep them up to date. One of them supports internet play with a direct connection so I'm not even dependant on company servers for that one.
Uh, would you like to tell us what these games are? Just interested.
of all the races; you choose a troll.
scary...really scary.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Halve that. If the game costs $50, likely the publisher is going to see $25 to $30.
Budgets on games these days run about $3m to $5m or more for development, MMORPG games tend to cost twice that.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Thanks, I'll check it out. I do like Elite style games, but I passed over Eve at the time because I was playing City of Heroes. Now I'm done with CoH I might just go back and see if I missed anything.
It is expensive if you are a high school kid with 40 hours a week to blow on a video game. It is less then a one hour worth of wage for most adults. So, it really depends on who you are.
The reason why there is so much bitching and moaning about MMORPGs price is because the target audience are not people with the money. $15 a month is nothing to me, but even spending 10 hours a week on a video game is completely unthinkable to me. That goes triple if any of that 10 hours is less then fun.
I personally love the idea of a massive online world. I would shell out $20 a month without a second thought for it. The difference is that I am not willing to 'spend time' on a game. When I start a game, I want to know that I am going to enjoy it from time zero until it is done. I don't want content denied to me because I don't have the same amount of time to blow as a high school student or someone without a job. My time is too valuable to get off on the slow feeling of 'progression' that MMORPGs almost completely rely on.
So, when an MMORPG can offer me a massive online world that I can simply jump right into and enjoy without ever have to 'pay my dues' (or however you want to word it), I'll shell out as much money as they want without a complaint. Until that day MMORPGs, and yes even WoW, (I was in the beta) will not get a cent. Why pay for a game that revels in drudgery when I can simply give my dollar to Half Life 2, FarCry, Unreal 2004, Counter Strike, and Grand Theft Auto? Massive online worlds are not synonymous with boring drudge work for people with too much time, but you would be hard pressed to tell that from the crap the industry keeps shoveling into a box.
Where do you live? Pleasantville? Even the cheap showings are topping $6 / ticket now and the dumpster-O-Popcorn will run $7, plus another $4 or more for about $0.25 worth of soda.
Hows the tech industry in your neck of the woods? Some of us migh want to move there. :)
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.
This "argument" seems to only exist in your head and other appologists for the MMORPG companies.
I haven't seen anyone here or other places complain about the monthly fee expept for the few who say they'd like to play it a little bit but not enough to justify the monthly fee.
What a lot of people have a problem with is paying the $50 up front for what is essentially a piece of client software for a server. It's like an activation fee. The $15/month is easily justified, there is just no excuse for the $50.
All it does is deter people away from signing up and paying them the $15/month that is their bread and butter. When I was in school and moving every 4 months (co-op program), I paid the telephone company's $50 activation fee twice. Then I smartened up and bought a cell-phone, which factoring in the savings of $50 every 4 months was actually cheaper than a landline. This was 10 years ago when cell phones were still pretty expensive. Now I still refuse to have anything to do with the land-line phone company, so they've lost 10 years of revenue from me. They're also one of the two satellite TV carriers in Canada, and it's because of the phone activation fee that my satellite sevice for the last 6 years has been with the other carrier. So far, they have lost about $7,000 in revenue from me because of one stupid activation fee.
Well, until about 3am (mountain time) the game will be down tonight due to the release of a HUGE upgrade named Exodus. Not to worry, tomorrow things should be as good as new.
If you would like a free seven day trial, let me know and I'll activate one for you as soon as the servers come online tonight/this morning.
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
I think a lot of people spend too much and then have a hard time by not planning for the future. When we got our house, my future wife asked me what would happen if we got fired. I realized I couldn't afford to pay my car payment, eat, pay rent, and my other bills for more then a month after severance/unemployment runs out.
Thats scary. Thats almost doom 3 scary. Especially for someone who works in the tech industry.
u r a n00b jew lol
EQ didn't set the standard- UO did. UO was $9.95, and EQ didn't think they would pull enough people away if they were any more expensive, so they too were $9.95. That was the baseline price until a few years ago, and now they all mostly hover around $15.
If AOL could fill every video store, electronics store, laundromat and Bait & Tackle shop with free CD's, you can't tell me that Blizzard couldn't offer the install disk for $5.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Why not?
Are you saying that unless you can devote a whole lot of time to playing them, they aren't fun?
I can't be "whisked away" to the "enchanted world of warcraft" in a mere hour a week? You can't pop in, kill a couple of elves, have a couple of laughs, and leave?
Bear in mind that I would never give a fuck what level I am in relation to anyone else. I'd be in it just for the fun.
So, is the game simply not fun? Is it only about showing off your level (which equates time spent logged in) to others, or is there any actual gameplay?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Apparently somebody loves their "free beer" a little too much...
Grand Prix Legends (the direct connect one. Up to 20 players at a time. 28k of bandwidth per player. The community supports a match service and provides public servers). Red Baron 3D. AOEII. Those are the big three. I've gotten a fair amount of replay value out of Shogun:Total War as well.
I think the only other game I've even fired up (not counting solitaire) in the last two years is Grim Fandango. That one's worth a pass every now and then, just like a good book is worth rereading.
Of course the genres that interest me may not interest others (FPSs bore me to tears, driving in circles may do the same to you), but the key issue is that they all have replayability built into them by design. They're open ended, just like any "real world" game or sport (which they simulate), and they all represent a "best of breed" version of the genre.
People play sports they like for years, and even lifetimes. Golf, Chess and Go frickin' absorb lifetimes. There's no reason you can't do the same with computer games. Find the good ones. Keep playing them until you're good at them. The best computer games you'll never feel like you're really good at them. Just like Go or Golf. That's part of what makes them replayable.
And if you just want a game you can jump into and play for 5 minutes when you have the time, well, doesn't solitaire come with every frickin' OS in the universe these days?
KFG
I'm sorry. but I don't care... It's too expensive for a game that I might not even be interested in playing in a couple of months.
How about $50 and six months of play time included... As it is. I have no interest in playing WoW.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
too bad I no longer care much about Warcraft... and have NEVER cared for RPG's of any sort. Where is Starcraft 2?
Free electronics!
I dont think it is only the unliked lonely nerds who play this game. The people who do play this game and become obsessed with it become the unliked lonely nerds!
Who modified this insightful? You're beating a dead horse as the parent of the parent!?! just explained the comparison being made. RTFPost!!
.. unless you marry a girl who loves games. My wife and I play everything from Tetris Battle Gaiden (via ZSNES over our network) to Ragnarok Online (wizard+priestess == ownage) to Wheel of Time (with friends) to Tales of Symphonia (on the Gamecube).
A non-trivial percentage of our monthly budget goes into games and gaming simply because it's something we both enjoy doing. I can't imagine being married to someone who -didn't- love playing games...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
They may do this, I don't know. I haven't played an MMO since UO's first couple of months in 1997.
Why not charge $50 for the game but give two or three month's free time? After all, usually when you buy a game you don't play it too much after the first couple of months.
Why not sell directly from the website? Sell a stripped-down version in a jewel case for $25. Don't include retailers or box manufacturers, etc.
I think it would also make sense to have "tiered" servers. Maybe $20 a month gives you the nice fat pipe, servers with more employees playing roles, scripted events, etc. Maybe you get a badge. For $15 you have the regular game. For $7.95 you've got a server that is often filled and maybe you have to name your characters after products. "New Tide with ColorPlus Bleach(TM) defeats a dragon! You acquire 1,000 Gold and one Sony Walkman(R) for your castle."
I mean, YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates is completely free as in beer (it might have a 30+ day trial period).
I think it would be worthwhile to sell super-premium "lifetime" memberships (realistically limited to 3 years). Instead of charging $50 + ($15 x 36), charge $295. You get a (Chinese made, $3) pewter statue, a t-shirt, a poster, aguide, special gold stars next to your name, etc. Meanwhile the MMO maker gets 6 times the revenue instantly. I can see this being a litmus test for bad games however -- if you haven't earned trust, who's going to plunk down $300 in hopes you're around for a couple of years?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Put into that perspective, EverCrack is cheaper than regular Crack. To me the cost of MMOs is time. To really enjoy them you need to devote probably a good 8-15 hours per week, something I don't care to have.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
You're trying to compare apples to oranges.
GW is fun. WoW is fun. HL2 is fun.
is like
Diablo 2 is fun. EverQuest is fun. Quake 3 is fun.
-----
Next discussion, monthly fees:
Why do 2 of those games require a monthy fee? There's a good reason.
Too much?
Do you think $50 shoes cost $50 to make? More like $5 (in materials). Is the company making $45 profit/pair? No. Are they making a profit? Obviously, or they wouldn't be selling shoes anymore.
I think shoes are overpriced, how do I get them cheaper?
Buy cheaper shoes or go barefoot.
---
Final discussion, borrowing money.
"Mom, may I have $10?" "Yes honey."
"Dad, can I have a car? Get a job, pay me back"
"Mr. Loan man, may I have $300k loan?"
"Assuming your credit history is good, and you have a job paying you sufficiently, then yes, you can have a $300k loan. It will cost you $150k. You can pay me back $450k over 30 years."
"Mr. Investor Man, I'd like $5M to fund my game"
"Well you seem to have a record of successfuly managing money, but what's in it for me? You can't possibly pay me back $5M in our lifetime, so I will have to assume risk that you fail. No, I will not give money to you, and not at once. I will let you use installments of my money to run your business. I will meet quarterly to discuss how you've spent this money, how much you've earned, and how much you expect to earn next year and perhaps give you a bit more money or pull the plug. I expect to make consistently 20% above my investment. Some of this I will give to you back in salary. I will let you have a small percentage of the profit, another percentage will go back to your company for investment, the rest and majority I keep."
"It's not as "gigantic" a risk as you state. No company will take a "gigantic" risk."
In general, I agree with your statement that companies won't take giant risks. However, with MMOs they are ALL huge risks. Star Wars Galaxies was expected to be a sure thing, however, it's considered a failure and they are trying desperately to revive it. The Sims Online was expected to have the largest MMO subscription base in the world and it was...you guessed it! a failure.
All MMOs are high risk, my friend.
As for $40 mil for half life 2...a) that's just an estimate by outsiders and b) nobody really knows what that number includes. Gimme some hard numbers and we can talk. Even if you can back it up, that would definitely be the exception to the rule.
Oh, and I've been a Blizzard fan forever and was looking forward to the day when I could buy WoW but I've decided not to because it's derivitive crapola.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
You're right, it won't 'catch up' to EQ. It will decimate it. Wait until the Korean launch.
Where do you live? Pleasantville?
.
:)
.Kurt Vonnegut.
:)
Hardly. In fact my city has been a traditional joke city for about 75 years. One of the big laughs of the Cary Grant movie "Dream Wife" is when he says he's from my city and it's funny just to imagine it. Ed Koch called the general area the "land of pickup trucks and gingham dresses." We remembered when it came time to vote for governor.
We do have one hell of a two dollar theater though (three if you want to sit in the balcony. Oh, yeah. The soda's a buck. Candy bars the same price as at the CVS across the street. No need to sneak in your own at all. The city used to be rolling in dough and was one of the biggest stops on the vaudeville circuit (hence the grand old theater) because. .
Hows the tech industry in your neck of the woods? Some of us migh want to move there.
It used to be the tech center of the universe. More PhDs per capita than any place else in the world, including Los Alamos. Once upon a time you could do things like walk down the street and bump into Tesla, Westinghouse, Edison, Bethe, Lord Kelvin, or. .
I'm afraid times have changed, now we play host to the family of the most infamous anti-tech nutball in the world, but in the area we do still have the NY state capital, RPI, Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, Intermagnetics and Plug Power. Lot's of nuclear research, steam turbine manufacture, locomotive manufacture, fuel cell research and banking up the wazoo. You can usually find a job. Especially if you're willing to do desktop tech support. Salaries aren't great, but then the cost of living is nothing compared to NYC or Silicon Valley. $50k here equals a quarter mil there. It's not the money, it's what you can buy with it.
And we have trees, air, trout streams and shit, if you're into that sort of thing.
Come to think of it, stay the hell away, ok.
KFG
However, I also had very low hopes for the game based on what I saw at the two last E3s. I'm a convert, to both WoW and EQ2. The games are very similar. I can play only one, because I have time for only one, at best. But I tried to do a side-by-side comparison of them both.
If anyone's interested, head on over to here.
Wow. You really need this.
When you're done with that (you'll probably need the whole book), here are a few further hints:
1) If a person is working on games for Gnome, it doesn't mean he thinks everything should be free.
2) If a person dislikes intrusive DRM systems, it does mean he thinks everything should be free.
3) The grandparent didn't say it was a shame that WoW was charging money for their game. He was complaining that the costs are excessive and badly structured. Blizzard should be able to make plenty of money just off subscriptions.
4) Good grammar makes for happy readers.
5) Gratuitous insults make for unpersuaded readers.
6) Caffeine and ritalin don't mix.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
AOL doesn't have someone who only makes money from people buying the CDs. Blizzard does, and they're even owned by them.
On the flip side, most computer games cost the same amount up front as WoW does
Not exactly true - if I buy any other non-MMORPG game, I get to play that game as often as I like over the entire lifetime of my machine (and very probably my next three machines too).
I am waiting for someone to hack the shit out of WoW so I can play it single player offline. THEN it will be worth $50... I don't give a crap about the social aspect of WoW right now, I want to see all the beautiful locations and follow the various stories for the races, while building up a character doing quests and killing stuff. That 4+ GB sitting on my drive MUST have pretty much all the content - why can't I buy it as a single player game and pay for the online stuff when I actually want to interact with other players (like Diablo)? If it's true that the cost of the game will cover their development costs, then they have nothing to lose under this model.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
WoW is definatly the best major MMORPG for this, but no, you won't enjoy it if you play it an hour a week, any more than you would enjoy any classic CRPG if you played it an hour a week. You won't make it far in the story, get high enough level to do any real PVP stuff, or be on enough to do anything "social". As these are the main appeals of WoW, why would you want to play if you can only play an hour a week?
War2 BNE is actually a relatively recent product (99 iirc). Diablo 1 is the oldest game you can play on bnet.
Another good and free online game is Continuum (used to be subspace). You can hope online and play for 10 minutes or 10 hours. It doesn't have fancy graphics or game play (it's a lot like a steroid addicted asteriods). There are a few different game styles, but my favorite is capture the flags. I have a blast and play as much as I can spare the time.
But the company needs the 50 bucks from the sale of the game to stay solvent. Maybe not Sony or Blizzard who have deep deep pockets and the ability to carry a bunch of debt but a lot of MMORPGs are done by smaller companies who don't have anything else. Think of Anarchy Online...ever heard of Funcom in any other application? I sure hadn't. Or EVE Online...that's run by a company out of Reykjavik in Iceland. If they don't get the initial infusion of cash to cover the development expenses and pay a few months salary the game is over before it begins.
I'm not in the software industry but I am in Product Development and I know it takes a crap-ton of money to get a project off the ground. If you don't have deep pockets that means debt and the only way to get out from under it before it crushes you is to get a good chunk of money. That's why the $50 up front. Once a game is established that price usually goes away. To go back to the EVE Online example, you can now just download the client and start up a new account for $19 IIRC. They are established and have a stable cashflow so they don't need the $50 "entry barrier" any more.
-Pinkoir
www.guildwars.com have to wait till feb though.
I dropped netflix for WoW....I can get many more hours of entertainment from wow every month for $3 less....
Did you see how AOL just got hit for a $750 million fine for the funny accounting they used to justify sending out all those CDs?
As you can tell I dont play MMOGs either but I've seen what happens to some people that play them, and I swore them off. Though the matrix one looks tempting, I won't play it.
BTW: there's nothing wrong with my math.. if you could read, you'd notice I never said you had to rebuy the game every month. I said you had to buy expansions. Sure I exagerrated a little on that part, but its the principle of the matter that counts.
You're nothing; like me.
what? you prefer undead?
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
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.
Well, one thing to hope for would be a game that wasn't "useless" without a subscription. There are a number of ways this could be done, each of which has a reason why it will never happen in the commercial MMORPG world:
I would love to see a MMORPG that would eat up just a little of my life, priced accordingly.
The server wait is unreal. I logged in at 9pm and there is an 820 ppl long line waiting to get in to the game. It is now 9:30 pm and I still have a 430 position in the queue. I think they are having a pretty rough launch. The ppl on the official forms are pissed. I hope I can get on soon.
Yes, the startup fee is $9.95, but they've done something clever. You buy land in the game, and depending on how much the land is worth and how much of it you buy, it will affect your monthly payment - so it's more like you're renting the use of virtual land from the software company.
It seems pretty fair to me. I pay $60 for your average game and I'll typically play it for one month before I'm bored. I pay $60 for WoW and I'll play it for one month. If they keep adding new content and keeping me interensted I'll keep playing $15/month.
If new content in WoW keeps me interested enough not to buy a new game every couple of months I'm out ahead, and if not I'll cancel my subscription.
One thing that noone seems to mention is that you are paying for future content. At least with City of Heroes I have already seen two major updates with a third on its way shortly. I haven't had to pay anything extra for this additional content.
The other reason that can be noted is that you are paying for an ongoing service rather than a game that runs entirely on your computer. This requires dedicated servers to be run, maintained and to have support staff available. It's also not the same as multiplayer FPS servers since MMO's have to maintain a persistant character base and do it reliably.
Does this make it worth it? Well I guess it depends on the player. My monthly game expenditure has gone down since I started playing COH because most of my gaming is COH. Go figure.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
i had an Athlon643 FX51 and never had this error, and i worked my character up close to level 30 in the beta...
i could live a little longer in this prison
*cough* Steam © *cough*
And tivo is hardware. I can understand that initial cost. The cost to allow a user to download a game is far less than the retail price.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Ya this game runs on pretty crappy computers, so id say if it was made in the past couple years your gonna be just fine. Find someone with a collectors edition, and use the 10 day pass to test it first.
My friend runs WoW on his laptop, it has an SiS video chip in it, not sure of the model number or anything, but any SiS onboard video chip isn't gonna be that good, and it runs just fine.
But no mac version that I know of :(.
I know, I know, don't troll, I know. It's just more convenient for me at this moment to play games on my main mac (and server) than it is on anything else- I doubt EQ2 would run on a P2 450 - and I'm ever-so-slightly broke at the moment, what with being 15 and all _. After Christmas I might have a sane X86 box. Does EQ2 run well under wine, or better yet, is there a *nix version?
My UID is prime. Is yours?
If anyone wants a look into the darker (and funny) side of Eve Online, try:
The Great Scam
It is a long read and contains some "R" rated language, but gives you an idea of what the game can be like.
-Valen
If you follow the money to the top of the reganomics pyramid and they get a measly 50 thousand players, they get around 10 million dollars a year. There's no way it costs that much money to run the infrastructure needed for this game.
You're right, but now factor in how much it cost them to bring this product to you. Market Research, Development, Testing, Publishing, Distribution, all are multi-million dollar endeavors. It's going to take them a couple years just to come out in the black from this venture, and that's if they get 100,000 players.
The price is wrong.
Tell you what, go spend a couple hundred $M on an MMORPG. Come back and tell me you're price isn't going to reflect the fact that it's going to take you a couple years to come out in the black. Oh? That's what I thought.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. no.
Silly rabbit, networking is not for you.
There is only one game that is using dedicated servers that host the game and that is Pantasy Star Online. There are XBL servers that hold the stats and what not but the connections are host/client based with the people you are playing. Example: Halo 2, if the host drops there a pause in the game and the system looks for the next best person to host the match and the game contiunes.
That's why I can play a 16-player battle, with voice communication, in Halo 2 on XBox Live, when there's no way any of us could host such a thing on our normal connections. Um if you read anything about how they designed the Halo 2 matchmaking and game play system you would understand why you statement is false. The whole reason why there is the 4 step process when joining games in Halo 2 is to find people with similar quality connection (rank as well).
It's also the reason I can play that 16 player game with people from Quebec, Texas, Alaska, etc, and not any lag problems.
Distance over GSP networks dosn't increase the lag all that much. It is the quality of the connections.
At this time, yes..
If you follow the money to the top of the reganomics pyramid and they get a measly 50 thousand players, they get around 10 million dollars a year. There's no way it costs that much money to run the infrastructure needed for this game.
The price is wrong.
The price you pay does not correllate with the cost of making the product available to you. So what? That's how capitalism works. You invest in making a product and hope that it gives you, the investor, a maximal amount of return. The market will decide how much the potential customers are willing to pay for the product, ie. how good the investment was.
Forcing them to scale the price to the costs would be market regulation at best, communism at worst. How would you like it if you wrote a kick-ass piece of software, and the government/someone said that since it's so good and it'll sell like crazy, you can't ask more than ten cents per copy, because otherwise the "price would be wrong"?
www.mudconnector.com
Most, if not all, are completely free. And quite addictive, too.
I looked all over sourceforge for your open source MMORPG and game server, but I wasn't able to find it. Let me know when your FREE as in beer game is available.
Oh, you're not developing an alternative? You're just complain^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsharing your wisdom? Well, maybe you could help these guys out. They're looking for a RPG Guru. =)
If you don't like that one, I counted over a dozen mmorpgs under active development on the first page of search results on sf.net using mmorpg as the search term. Knock yourself out.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Tip for the compulsive gamer: never ever buy a game when it first comes out. It'll get cheap eventually, trust me. Minus the very odd exception (usually only limited edition boxes of games I've been waiting a long time for), I never have to pay more than $20 for a game, and sometimes as low as $10 or so! All you have to do is stay 6-12 months behind the curve of what is the latest and greatest. The additional bonus is that, at least for PC gaming, this saves you money on hardware too, because you don't have to upgrade as often. Buying games for half the price means you get twice as many to play for the same amount of money. You'll have so many games to play, you won't mind waiting the 6-12 months for the stuff that just came out.
For $7.95 you've got a server that is often filled and maybe you have to name your characters after products.
It's sick fucks like you that keep me coming back to slash dot. Product placement in MMORPGs!
"I tire of this quest for the Golden Nikes®. Let us go to Castle Qualcomm®, where I might get a Coke® and a Big Mac®, and perhaps have my coat of many logos repaired."
"But Sir Viacom®! You promised Princess Exxon®!
Aren't they already doing this in the SIM games?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You're conveniently leaving the multiple years of development by a 30-100 man team out of the picture.
As for some places not even that, here McDonalds would be close to $15 for one meal, and I certainly wouldn't get two trips to the movies, one trip with some snack possibly. :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
You are one lucky husband!
I am still wondering how to get my wife to touch a video game for her first time in life.
I am hoping WOW will do the job ;-)
I'd want some way to be able to blow up buildings in a big PVP world. They wouldn't be indefensible if you allowed "ghost men" for logged out players. For those who don't know, "ghost men" are NPC controlled players who are offline. Simply log off at the fortress, and your character is a guardian of the place.
Instead of urban sprawl, you'd have a large world with spots of tight resistance in bases of various sizes.
The real difficulty would be providing the code to destroy walls. It'd have to allow concrete chunks to be blown off and fall to the ground, possibly injuring people on the ground, and becoming part of the game(more memory). If part of the building gets destroyed, a check should be made if another part of the building should collapse. To me thats the really tough coding, but would rock.
God spoke to me.
Parent is spot on. I end up playing a game for at most a month before getting bored with it. Max Payne 2 lasted about a week. I played Asheron's Call for roughly 2 years. I only played other games that looked *real* good.
MMORPG payment schemes have always been more than reasonable in my mind. Do a breakdown of cost per hour. I spend about twice as much taking a girl to see a movie + getting us both a drink.
Only 10 million? Shit kid get a real job in America. My budget alone for my department is 2 million and I burn that supporting only 1000 users nation wide. Hell my monthly long distance bill is 15k doing remote support and file distribution. Get out of highschool, buy a house, and learn just how muc real life cost.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
B.net which you will note was free.
Xbox Live == Gamespy
It does matchmaking. That's just about it. I remember a bunch of kids freshman year of college just used tunneling to play Halo MP without Xbox Live fees. MS just wanted to make more $$.
Maybe $15 seems like chump change because I live in a city.
Movie ticket = $11.
Popcorn + Soda = $10
I can pay $8 to go to a shitty theater that has very vocal, annoying minorities who like shouting at the movie.
I could save $15 by bringing lunch to work twice.
*laugh*
that's a regular topic of discussion. USA players I chat with are quite happy that the kekeke players will have their own servers as they make gaming no fun. I don't feel like competition with people who play games 70 hrs straight.
Korea will be a massive market though, yes. Euro release is looking significant too.
Also you really don't need a hefty machine to run it like people are saying, it worked fine on my second machine which is a gut-busting 1.2GHz.
The crafting is a complete game in itself for those people (like myself) who like to make everything. The fact that you can lvl and branch out as an artisan seperate to your fighting profession just doubles the fun. If you get bored of running around fighting npc's, you can go craft yourself some new armour/spells/weapons/etc... And you don't need to rely on ANYONE to be able to do it.
You're recommending EQ2 over WoW, and listing things that WoW has.
And if you're a troll and he's a dwarf, you're opposing factions...you're not supposed to be able to meet up.
I see the same kinds of complaints all the time here on the Chinese servers. Why the heck is everyone so obsessed about playing on the American servers? If you do that lag sucks, and you won't be able to find as many people who speaks your language. Even Brit's don't quite speak the langauge of Americans in my opinion...
Also, nobody here want's to play with the Europeans. I haven't seen any complaints from Europeans who want to play with Chinese either. Nope, everyone wants to play with the Americans... except the Canadians of course. But then again, they get stuck on the same North American servers.
Honestly, I pity Blizzard. They're just a game company trying to cut down on lag. Instead they're seen as evil for trying to "keep everyone out of America" or something like that. Peh. I'm happy to play on local servers.
I'm a gnu world man.
Except that most users can't or won't deal with a 1-2 gig download, and want to have the CDs.
You can't cut the retail stores out of the picture. Store exposure is an important method of selling a game, even one that can only be played online. Download-only games tend to have smaller distribution and thus smaller player-base.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Thus the ~$15/month charge.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
You still can, but tunneling sucks ass.
It still doesn't make sense, since 16 player matches on Halo 2 run fine, hell 32 player matches in Star Wars Battlefront run fine.
But any time I've been in a Halo/Halo 2 tunneled game, it's been laggy and shit with 3 or more boxes connected.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
UNICEF are good. I've seen their work.
Hell, I even work for them. Of course I say it rocks.
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.
Let me get this straight, you spend $1600 a year for two EQ accounts? That's $67/mo. in recurring fees per account? Is it just me or does that sound way too high? Granted, I played EQ a long time ago, but the recurring fees were only like $12 or something!
Let's say you had 2 EQ accounts with ALL the bells and whistles (the all access package EQ, PlanetSide, and EQ2) that's $22/mo. I know for a while they had an additional "journal" type service that was another $10/mo. so say you signed up for that too. Total that out over a year and it's $768 total for two accounts for the full year. What on earth did you spend the remaining $832 on?
Hi, yes please. I have the latest client via bittorrent now. If you're able to arrange a trial, can you email a trial key to drxym AT yahoo.com. Cheers! I'd like to give it a go although I can't make any guarantees as to whether I'll stick with it.
It's AOL/Time-Warner. Warner Bros. is very much in the business of selling cd's.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
So upgrade your fucking machine. I bet your the type who stills jerks off to 70's porn, Cause he it's tits right?
oogly boogly!
expansions.
:-)
You forgot the cost of the games themselves. And the cost of expansions (one about every 3-5 months). And if you dont buy the expansions, you might as well quit. Which is why I did