A Gaming God For Dollars A Day

Wired is reporting on the new "Gamepal" service, which offers up the chance to MMOG players of renting a character in an online world for only a few dollars a day. From the article: "GamePal customers pay a $300 deposit, $150 for the first month and $130 for each subsequent month for access to their choice of 50 accounts (available initially) for 14 popular MMOs, including EverQuest, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes and Ultima Online. Newcomers to these games who aren't sure where they want to devote their time are in luck: GamePal allows them to try out what they want."

Comments

Odd...

[MeanderingMind]

For incredible amounts of money, you can find out what characters you might be interested in!

Might I suggest these money saving tips to avoid such wallet emptying options.

A) Read the manual
B) Check out a fansite
C) Observe other players
D) Just play the game

It just doesn't make sense to me to pay what amounts to almost half a year's worth of MMORPG subscription fees just to see where you'd want to invest your time. Isn't half the fun in doing that yourself?

This is new?

[Crimson Dragon]

I always get a kick out of people being shocked over the financial gain in MMORPG commodities. The sale of in-game gold, powerleveling, and now character renting are more common then they ever were. This is a disaster for the MMORPG community.

I am an MMORPG vet. I spent many good hours of my youth, and now my adulthood, on UO, DAOC, EQ, EQ2, WoW, and the like. While the gaming experiences were different, a common element arises in this form of gameplay. You can ALWAYS tell the difference between a player at the maximum level who earned it, and a player who just picked up the account the other day on Ebay or through other forms of sale. You can always tell the difference between the person who quested for their items long and hard at the expense potentially of his/her sanity and the person who doesn't. It is that simple.

I could proceed to flame here. These players are less skilled, they decentralize the community attachment at the higher echelons of the game. They have no right to do this.

But they do.

Most of these account sales, sadly, come with the original product CDs. They are legal sales. Most of them carry the disclaimers the EULAs make them ("we own the account, not you. You are paying for the usage, not the ownership"). There is no law broken in the sales if done properly.

Do they eviscerate a previously elite community where you knew that every person earned their keep? Oh yes. Do they have a right to? Oh yes. People who don't know how to play have a right to play alongside the most skilled of players. We don't give people an IQ test to vote in democratic governments, do we?

If we can't apply it to the most basic of principles, we cannot apply it to an MMORPG.

I don't like it, you don't like it, but they have a right.

Re:This is new?

[mwvdlee]

Then again, having to fork out the dough for WoW or whatever just to see if you'd like this type of game is a bit expensive too.

I can see a market for this.

It would be nicer if the developers of MMO's would allow sort of "look around" accounts for newbees, say an account with limited abilities as to not affect the paying players too much but will allow the newbee to see if this is what (s)he would want to spend money on. (i.e. starts at level X, ends at level X + 2)

Re:Doesn't quite add up.

[Anonymous Coward]

The $300 is a deposit.

The 150 and 130 are separate.

Re:A deposit?

[Golias]

No no no!

I didn't say paying that much is a good idea... I said charging that much is a good idea.

Big difference there.

Re:There's a very easy fix to this

[FortKnox]

The game works on subscription. If you had permanent death, there would be a percentage (probably large) of people who simply quite after they lose a character that they worked over (at least) a month to get where they are.

People quitting == less subscription money

Less subscription money == angry EA execs

And nobody wants an angry EA exec...