|
08-26-2004, 03:53 AM
|
#1 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
MMORPG's (Cheap Bastard Warning)
Hi havent seen too many people talking about MMORPG's. I played Ultima Online for an eternity but finally got bored after doing the boat/house thing. I'm now looking for my next online game.
Being a cheap bastard I usually only play games that have free shards (Private servers), any suggestions? I'd prefer a p2p game that has free servers than a free online game as I got sick of conqueronline quite quickly. Thanks for any suggestions you can offer, by the way flaming me about not paying to play will not work, I really dont care. Thanks Again!  |
|
|
08-26-2004, 04:52 AM
|
#2 (permalink) |
|
C'mon, just blow it.
Location: Perth, Australia
|
If you want to try something different, give MUDding a shot. It requires a bit more imagination than MMORPGs, but the possibilities are endless. And nearly all of them are completely free.
__________________
"'There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,' says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex." -- From an IGN game review. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 05:03 AM
|
#3 (permalink) |
|
Psycho
Location: Yellowknife, NWT
|
I think almost all of the free MMORPG's have some way that will eventually force you to pay in some form. Project Entropia is a good example. Free to download and play, but you can buy credits in game with real cash. And its next to freaking impossible to get anywhere in the game without purchasing some at the beginning.
There is an mmorpg coming out that you dont pay monthly fees in, though for the life of me I can't remember what its called and if its supposed to be fun. The way I justify monthly charges is like this. If my wife and I stay home one night playing a game, and dont go to the theatre, its paid for itself for the month. This may not apply to you, but it works fine for me and the wife
__________________
"Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit; your house is the last before the infinite, whoever you are." |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 05:09 AM
|
#4 (permalink) |
|
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
|
The way I justify MMORPGS:
Think about this. In FPS games, you play multiplayer through player-hosted servers. Guess what? That's why the multiplayer is free. Players around the world have the bandwidth to host 12-64 players. MMORPGs are a bit different. Most MMO's have between 500 and 5,000 people playing on a single server at one time. Can you imagine the Internet connection required to support that? Only the actual developers and producers for the MMO have the money to host a server with 5,000 players. With 5,000 players constantly downloading information from their server (maintaining any connection with the game at all is still constantly downloading), the bandwidth bill is probably terrifyingly huge. I see the monthly fee as payment for their insane bandwidth bill as well as patch/update/tech support fees. If you think about it, it's a pretty damn good deal. -Lasereth
__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 06:43 AM
|
#5 (permalink) |
|
Custom User Title
Location: Lurking. Under the desk.
|
Charging for online play is really a flawed usiness model, until they drop the price.
Consider that most of your target buyers are on a budget (high school, college kids), how many are going to drop $5 a month for more than one game at a time? Maybe two games a month, perhaps three if they're lucky. That means that the really popular titles (everquest) will just crowd out the not-so-well known ones, especially if not many people are paying to be on anyways. Who wants to party in an empty club? My hope would be they charge $20-30 for the game, and then charge $2-3 a month for the online service. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 06:44 AM
|
#6 (permalink) |
|
Custom User Title
Location: Lurking. Under the desk.
|
Charging for online play is really a flawed usiness model, until they drop the price.
Consider that most of your target buyers are on a budget (high school, college kids), how many are going to drop $5 a month for more than one game at a time? Maybe two games a month, perhaps three if they're lucky. That means that the really popular titles (everquest) will just crowd out the not-so-well known ones, especially if not many people are paying to be on anyways. Who wants to party in an empty club? My hope would be they charge $20-30 for the game, and then charge $2-3 a month for the online service. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 07:27 AM
|
#8 (permalink) | |
|
Custom User Title
Location: Lurking. Under the desk.
|
Quote:
I'm quite the cheap bastard too!Besides, it's a matter of having X entertainment dollars (we're on a budget, after all), so how are we going to allocate it? With so many "pay as you go" services cropping up, I'm just getting fewer and fewer games to play for PC and PS2 and playing the old ones longer. Heck, I just spent several hours playing moo2 last night. For free. Anyone remember the short-lived Divx DVD model? Hopefully, the monthly pay service for MMORPG will follow suit. |
|
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 09:48 AM
|
#10 (permalink) |
|
Knight of the Old Republic
Location: Winston-Salem, NC
|
I don't understand everyone saying that it's a "flawed business model" by charging for online games. Do you want the MMORPG companies to fail? How are they supposed to pay the bandwidth bill for 100,000 people downloading thousands of megabytes from them per month? It's impossible to do that and not lose money. MMORPGs wouldn't exist without a monthly fee.
If ya think I'm bullshitting, take a look at the examples. Ragnarok Online, a popular MMO, used to be in the open-beta stages for quite some time. Thousands of people played the game...but there was one problem. The lag was unbearable. Lag constantly interfered with the free game. Then RO went live and charged a monthly fee. They now had the money to pay for the bandwidth being used and the lag disappeared. MMORPG companies can't simply not charge. If they don't charge, then customers lose technical support, get very laggy games due to bandwidth issues, and will probably never get anything more than a minor update. MMORPGs aren't regular games...they're games that last for a very long time that require constant support from developers and producers. It simply won't work without a monthly fee. I'll add to this what others have said as well...make a fucking turkey sandwich one night instead of going to McDonald's. There's your $10 a month. -Lasereth
__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 10:13 AM
|
#11 (permalink) |
|
Banned from being Banned
Location: Donkey
|
^^ He speaks the truth!
There's a lot involved for MMORPGs and goes way beyond the simple multiplayer of other games, like FPS/Diablo II/Warcraft/etc.. There's a constant world with a virtual economy and thousands upon thousands of players on at any given time. That's no easy task. $10 a month to play on those servers is NOT a lot to pay! Even when I was a jobless 9th grader with no money, I could've still afforded $10 a month by simply avoid the other various things I wasted my $$ on. The funny thing is, people won't pay $10 a month to play the game, but they'll go drop $100 on new shoes, or loads of $$ on designer pants/shirts :P Instead of buying a new CD, download it  (ok, bad advice, but still..)Ah well.. but in any case, it's not flawed. It certainly isn't going away considering there are hundreds of thousands of regular subscribers to each service.. Everquest, FF11, Ultima Online, etc.. so they must be doin something right.
__________________
I love lamp. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 11:18 AM
|
#12 (permalink) |
|
Insane
|
Some people have already made good arguments about why paying for MMORPGs is neccesary. But what I don't think they even mentioned besides the server costs is the fact that these types of game often continue to provide new content on at least a semi-regular basis while other games do not, without the help of a $50 expansion. I'm not counting patches which usually just fix bugs... Most companies RARELY put in serious new content in a patch, like Blizzard for example.
I am a pretty frugal guy too, but really paying $10ish a month to play for a MMORPG is not that bad. Of course you have to get over the stigma of "omg I'm paying for something I already bought, fuckers!!", but once you do, it's not that bad of a cost. Worst case scenereo is you're working some minimum wage job, which rounds out to about 1.5-2 hours of work to pay your game bill for the month. Considering that its a MMORPG, chances are you will be playing heaps, so it is worth it. You need to suck it up and just pay for the service. I know it might be difficult at first because you're used to pirating all your music, movies, and games for free, but it can be done! Hopefully somebody reading this thread will realize that it isn't so unreasonable! |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 11:38 AM
|
#13 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
They're not flawed, because they make a TON of money. The business model has been priven many, many times over.
I'm not saying I AGREE with monthly fees... I'm just saying people need to stop saying the business model is flawed. If it was, it wouldn't work. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 11:46 AM
|
#14 (permalink) | |
|
Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
|
Quote:
It does work, but it's a big gamble. If I recall correctly there's a few MMORPGs that are not going to see the light of day because the developers decided that the risk was too high. |
|
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 11:50 AM
|
#15 (permalink) |
|
Insane
Location: Toronto
|
I'm waiting for Guild Wars... No monthly fee...
http://www.guildwars.com/
__________________
- Thriolith |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 01:26 PM
|
#16 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
Cynthetiq, that's not a bad point (about so many MMOs being canned recently), but that's just because the the genre is way, way overcrowded right now, and it's only going to get worse. So many companies were making so much money with these games, that everyone else decided that they wanted a peice of the mmo pie too
Hardly sounds like a failing business model to me. Any other aspect of gaming or media wouldn't be able to support that much product either. Let me give you an analogy: since Lord of the Rings was wildly successful, you can be sure we're going to see a lot more fantasy 'swords 'n sorcery' type flicks in the next couple years. We already have. Since there's going to be such a deluge of them, some of the ones that don't break new ground or aren't as quality will bomb. That's ONLY b/c of the newfound popularity of the genre though. Some of them failing is a testament to their overwhelming newfound financial viability; everyone is getting involved. On the surface it might look like the fantasy genre is floundering, in reality it's much more successful than it ever has been. The same is true of MMOs |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 02:00 PM
|
#17 (permalink) |
|
Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
|
you could say that about any genre....FPS, MMORPG, Side Scrolling Shooters, etc... everyone of course wants to catch the wave on something that is profitable.
In my opinion the MMORPG infrastructure is just too expensive vs return of investment (ROI) since it is directly tied to sales. There's also shelf life of games, games that don't hit well, get put into the bargain bin within weeks. Those with staying power can stick it out for sometime and can collect some profitability ala Warcraft Battle Chest and Diablo Collections, but again, those are few and far between. Obviously the game market is very lucrative which is why Hollywood is trying to get a piece of it for themselves, ala Viacom's Sumner Redstone owning 80%+ of Midway games. Also, the example I use of Blizzard's infrastructure, both games make use of the same infrastructure so the overhead is minimal and each game on top of it in the future just takes advantage of what's already been invested in shortening the ROI curve. Once the companies that can afford to continue to support the backend commodities, then and only then will the model become something more mainstream and companies will be willing to take more risk, even say licensing use of those infrastructures ala colocated internet hosting services. |
|
|
|
08-26-2004, 08:42 PM
|
#18 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
Wow thanks for all the replies.
hulk I already play a MUD called Achaea, I've sank quite a bit of money into it as well  however they are not pay-to-play but sell 'credits' to make your character stronger. I dont mind donating money to good servers, but I dislike being forced to pay on a monthly basis as most of you know, you can go months on a tight budget where that $10 is needed (Well over here in Australia the exchange rates make it a little harder)I had a feeling this thread would go off on the usual tangent of stop being a cheap bastard. However if you look at games like Enemy Territory, you dont pay to play, and some servers stay up 24/7. Most of these servers sell small things like your exp stored permanently and such to keep maintained. At the moment I am checking out a shard for Ragnarok that sells in-game items to keep paying their server costs, if I like them I might donate or buy an item. I've gone quite nuts with finding a MMORPG to play, I've got the everquest trilogy to check that out, as I'm hoping like Ultima Online, an old game means alot of areas and heaps of stability and also.. free shards  Any other games people can offer that are like Evercrack or Ragnarok? Cheers, Korzen |
|
|
|
08-28-2004, 05:30 PM
|
#19 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
Sorry Korzen, I didn't even read your original post, lol. Regarding free MMORPGs, there ARE a handful. Here's a couple to check out (use google, and if you can't find a DL quickly then post and I'll find the site for you):
Fairyland (very cool, I promise. A lot like Ragnorok. Ignore the name) World of Pirates Monster and Me Gunbound (not an MMORPG, but still the best free online game out there. |
|
|
|
09-01-2004, 06:36 PM
|
#21 (permalink) |
|
Custom User Title
Location: Lurking. Under the desk.
|
Sorry about the delay in replying. Guess my point is with pay-per-month service, you could wind up paying upwards of $100+ for a game, which seems to be a rip-off IMHO. That's not counting the inevitible "EXPANSION PACS" you just MUST get.
|
|
|
|
09-05-2004, 03:37 PM
|
#23 (permalink) | |
|
Insane
Location: Virginia
|
Quote:
But if you are looking to give something a try I'd say DAOC while some will say EQ. Or you could wait for World of Warcraft (WoW).
__________________
This revelation is the death of ignorance tangled in a state of suffocation slave to self righteousness damnation is on your lips |
|
|
|
|
09-05-2004, 03:38 PM
|
#24 (permalink) | |
|
"Afternoon everybody." "NORM!"
Location: Poland, Ohio // Clarion University of PA.
|
Quote:
Hulk, what MUDs do you play?! I never thought any sane person actually played those things. (Me, being insane, of course, do.)
__________________
"Marino could do it." |
|
|
|
|
09-06-2004, 05:23 AM
|
#25 (permalink) |
|
C'mon, just blow it.
Location: Perth, Australia
|
Sane is a rough estimate of my mental level. I go insane in Imperial Conquest, formerly Galactic Rising (but don't tell the Imms I told you that). Find it at edgeod.com:1600. SWR-Based awesomeness. We're newly online, so we're looking for a Playerbase, hence joining now leads to all sorts of awesome powahs once it gets going =)
__________________
"'There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,' says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex." -- From an IGN game review. Last edited by hulk; 09-06-2004 at 05:28 AM.. |
|
|
|
09-08-2004, 10:31 AM
|
#26 (permalink) |
|
Upright
|
I have played almost all the MMORPG's , UO the longest. I have been playing DAoC for several years but quit a few months ago, also because of Trials of Atlantis.
IMHO Wow, in is its current state (beta i know  ) is nothing but EQ+ with a few bells and whistles borrowed from other games. If Blizzard dont add something special to WoW before release i think they will miss a lot of the hardcore MMORPG'ers.Regarding the flawed business model, i think the it hits the software pirates the hardest.. |
|
|
|
09-08-2004, 11:29 AM
|
#27 (permalink) |
|
Insane
Location: Charlotte, NC
|
Try Neverwinter Nights. It's free to play Multiplayer online. It doesn't have the same scope as UA or EverSmack, but where it lacks in server population it makes up for in variety. There are probably several hundred "PWs" (Presient Worlds) that try to mimic the feel of a MMORPG as much as possible. One of the best is CoPaP (Confederation of Planes and Planets). They have something like 12 linked servers that all follow the same rules. So... if you are tired of plaing on server X then you can 'port' to server Y for a bit. All for FREE! All you gotta do is buy the Neverwinter Nights Platinum Edition package and DL about 400 MB of updates.
Check out these sites for more info... http://nwn.bioware.com/ http://nwvault.ign.com/index2.shtml http://www.neverwinterconnections.com/ Only game worth playing... IMO. DB.
__________________
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens of Titan |
|
|
|
09-08-2004, 06:34 PM
|
#28 (permalink) | |
|
Crazy
|
<insert huge list of RPGs that I won't quote>
EVE-Online also has a 14-day free trial available from MMORPG.com ... And now I'm fucking hooked. 
__________________
Quote:
|
|
|
|
|
09-09-2004, 04:19 PM
|
#29 (permalink) |
|
Insane
Location: The Eng
|
To say its a rip off aint taking into account how many hours some people play on that game. I played everquest for 6years pretty regulary, and for a tenner a month thats bargain entertainment, what else gives you hours of entertainment a night for that price? pretty much nothing. And when compared to other games, for example i bought Deux Ex 2 recently, it was a brilliant game, but once i played it through a couple of times thats about it, for a lot less value for money than a MMORPG.
As to free MMORPGs ive had friends who like the NWN online worlds, someones given more details above me anyways.
__________________
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." |
|
|
|
09-09-2004, 05:49 PM
|
#30 (permalink) | |
|
Insane
Location: Toronto
|
Quote:
__________________
- Thriolith |
|
|
|
|
09-10-2004, 02:55 AM
|
#31 (permalink) | |
|
He's My Girl
Location: The Champagne Douche
|
Quote:
__________________
The fortunes of war favored Hrothgar. |
|
|
|
| Tags |
| bastard, cheap, mmorpg, warning |
|
|
