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11/24/2004 9:27:08 PM
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Thoughts on Pay to Play games....

Whats up everyone. So, we all know that the trend in games is to charge each month to play. What are everyones thoughts on how this can be done fairly? Take World of Warcraft, Everquest 2 and games of that ilk. They charge over $10 a month each to play that individual game, which I personally feel is a rip off. Not that I am cheap, but the thought of paying $50 for a game, and then having to play $10-$15 a month to play seems stupid. What if I don't play for a month? And what if I don't know I'm not going to play for a month? I have this ridiculous revolving charge that I must pay if I hope to play this game. I believe if a game is going to charge you $300 a year to play online, it should have some single player component that does not require a monthly fee. XBOX Live is a good example of what I think is fair. I pay $50 a year to play every game the console offers online, period. I think it would be nice if gamers got together and made a statement with our wallets that we will not pay monthly fees for individual games. It is stupid. I am worried that being a player that enjoys many different games will end up costing hundreds of dollars a month if you really wanted to play. While I am far from broke, I will never set aside that much money in my budget to do something such as play video games. Gaming companies need to get their act together and find some way they can make their money (FAIR market value, not price gouging) and keep out of digging deep into our pockets. Another thing I worry about is as this trend continues, game theft will run rampant and cause a paradox of prices constantly rising. Learn from the music industry, when you charge consumers too much money, bad things happen to your industry. If CD distributors would have lowered CD prices into the $7-$8 range back in the very late 90's, their sales would have continued to rise and internet piracy would have never been the issue it is today. But instead, they charge MORE money for an old technology and use that extra profit to prosecute teenagers and college students who can't afford to buy $15-$17 CD's. There is good business and there is bad business. Taking your customers for all they are worth is very bad, stupid business. What do you guys think?
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  • Try Guild Wars. It's a MMORPG with no monthly fee whatsoever, though they will release expansion packs every month that you have the option of buying. They say not buying them will not make you any less competetive in the PvP component. Anyways, I agree with you but I think that even Xbox Live is too much. We're already paying around $50 a month for so-called "high-speed internet" (what a joke, they've got 60mbps connections in Scandinavia for $40 a month), we don't need to pay more to some folks just becuase they think we can't handle an open server network. So, I don't think MS should keep buying companies because games need to stay on PC where they have always been free, with the exception of MMO games and their server costs.

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  • Good point and it is well taken. Economically though, it seems they paint themselves into a corner as far as the volume of customers they will get. And lets not forget about the consumers who will buy this game and never play over the initial free month that comes with the game. I am sure plenty of parents will buy these games for their kids/teens and when they realize the monthly fee, will never purchase additional months. I do think it is OK to charge monthly fees, but I think there should be more value to paying $15 a month than the ability to play just one game. Like I mentioned with XBOX Live, you get the ability to play all games for that console. Hell, as far as this goes, I don't mind seeing Microsoft buying game companies because I know there market strategy will be much better than the fees for individual games. I think Publishers should develop partnerships with eachother so that when you pay to play one game, you also get a few other high quality games in the package. And I may only play the one of those games, but I will feel better about my purchase and be a happy customer. Or if that doesn't work for game developers, they need to lower their price. The biggest issue I have with this really is all of the expansions that come out for these type of games, instead of making all of this content available for download with thier monthly plan, they insist on bending us over every chance they get. It makes no since to pay $50 for a game, $15 dollars a month to play, and onn top of that, buy 2-3 Xpacs for about $40 each in the likely two years the customer will play the game. That makes for a total of $490 of a gamers friggin money. I'm sorry, but to me this is total insanity and I really think all it would take is for all gamers to draw a line instead of lining up like sheep to line a game developers pockets. Just my thoughts, I know it won't change anything, but I will never play such games and I think it is sad that they will continue to be popular among gamers. [Edited on 11/24/2004 10:09:44 PM]

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  • The large majority of the time, charging a monthly fee for an MMORPG is necessary to keep the servers running with thousands of people on them. A lot of people think they could just charge more initially, and sometimes, I bet they could. But most of the time, I don't think so. Besides the fact that MMORPGs are so incredibly time consuming and tedious that you probably don't want to play more than one at a time regardless, asking them to only charge money up front is akin to saying "I paid 50 bucks for my phone, why do I have to pay monthly for service?" It just doesn't make sense. Also keep in mind that many of these people will be playing for years, and will end up costing more money than they spent when they purchased the game.

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