A View From the Road: The Subscription Equation

[Caliostro]

hehe, all the people bawking about the quality of the game.. that's a matter of taste.[...]

But for the most part, most new games are made with 30-40 hours in mind. Much more then that and stuff starts to feel stale.

MMOs are designed with playing for years in mind.

Can you see the contradiction here?

You start by "bawking" that quality is a matter of taste, but then proceed to use quality as a point in favor of p2p mmos...

I dunno about you but quality is the sole reason I keep playing/replaying a game. Personally I wouldn't spend more than 2 hours clicking around on monsters before I got bored shitless of WoW, but for the sake of comparison I have to assume I'd spend as long playing wow as I do playing tf2. If you want to make a fair comparison you have to assume that if someone spends 90 hours a month in WoW, then are equally capable of spending 90 hours a month in Fallout, or TF2, or Grand Turismo...

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

or ya can get LOTRO for like $200 or so and have an mmo permanent subscription... never hafta pay a monthly fee ever...

I personally haven't done that. but I've been too absorbed in all my other games to bother...

EVE is one of those mmos I find to have a relatively minimal grind factor to them... I play it rather casually only loggin on a few hours a week, helping out with my corporation's wars and whatnot with scheduled attacks and such... I run some missions if we aren't at war... I let skills train in my time offline... not so much of a hurried game really...

 

[randommaster]

Now, on its own, $15 isn't all that much - that's what, three morning coffees?

Just how much coffee do you buy at once? A 20 oz. cup is about two dollars wjere I live and I'm not buying from any kind of crazy local place, either.

Spoiler

hehe, all the people bawking about the quality of the game.. that's a matter of taste. maybe MMOs aren't your cup of tea, and that's fine. The point of this article is people saying that 15 dollars a month is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for hours and hours and hours of gameplay that you'd otherwise want to play, is just silly.

And of course there are some exceptions to the "not getting your 96 hours out of your 60 dollar game" There are lots of games with a ridiculous amount of replay value - people are still playing starcraft and counterstrike religiously that they got years and years ago. But for the most part, most new games are made with 30-40 hours in mind. Much more then that and stuff starts to feel stale.

MMOs are designed with playing for years in mind.

Sorry, but I spent a big portion of my time when I had WoW thinking "Hey, I'm not playing, I'm wasting money here...."

If it was £15 for however many hours, great! Maybe a warning when I hit 6 hours or something, give me time to get to a reasonable point and bail to get some more "game credit". But if I'm getting charged when I'm not using it, count me out.

paying 15 dollars for 30 days, is about 2 cents an hour. That just seems silly to nitpick about.

Is your TV on 24 hours a day? If you have Xbox Live, do you play CoD4 24 hours a day with the latest episode of House MD running in Picture in a Picture? Are you also online on your computer every hour of every day? Can't waste any of that time you paid for with your internet bill.

I was going to yell at everyone about the cost-to-playtime not being the only thing that maters, but you got to it first, so instead of repeating you I just decided to yell at Funk about drinking too much coffee.

All of the games I own are either RPGs or Metroid and most of them were purchased secondhand. I don't even know what my total playtime is because I have reset those games a million times for various things, usually death. I have about 300+ hours on Pokemon Red, and that's the second playthrough. I have probably clocked more than 750 hours on that game and only stopped playing it because new versions came out. I like these games because most of them are on the GBA or DS and I can take them with me to various places, which is also the main reason I don't play that many MMORPGs, because I don't always have acess to a computer. The expected value for a game is more than just the time/cost ratio, so if WoW isn't fun for you, then the cost is more than that $15 a month.

 

[Nutcase]

Hours of game per hour do not equal "value". Most people value their time very highly and want to cram the maximum amount of good stuff in it. Consider the difference of:

- play a terrible MMO (let's assume it's one of the free ones) for 30 hours during a month
- work for one hour, buy a better MMO subscription, play that game 29 hours during a month

And if, like many people, you figure grinding in a MMO isn't all that much fun, then it's a no brainer to work for *two* hours and play something you actually like for 28 hours (and will stay on your shelf afterwards, too). Or work for one hour and visit the bargain bin.

 

[Jsnoopy]

Your article seems to be forgetting online play, which is important because most mmo's can't be played single player off-line like standard games. For me, I picked up CoD4 at $60 bucks and have spent 12-odd days in the online multiplayer alone, not counting the rather short single player.

 

[feather240]

I'm that person who won't pay subscriptions...

In his article he ignores the re-playability of single player games and one purchase or free MMOs. When I buy something I want to have it in-defiantly, but the issue isn't paying for the subscription as much as I have to buy the game too. It's like me selling you a car for full price, but you still have to rent it from me. By the way, anyone need a car?

 

[AvsJoe]

I love the article and can't disagree with the statistics, but I still won't pay for subscription fees nonetheless. It's just ingrained into my system; I inherited the 'frugal' gene from my father.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Maybe it's cheaper but it's not more fun. How many more rabbits must die at my hands so I can have a two by name instead of a one? But I guess some find it entertaining so more power to them.

 

[bue519]

or...I could spent 60 bucks on Halo or COD4...and get endless entertainment online...for free. Or at least cheaper then 15 bucks a month.

Ummm since when is XBL free?
If you want free endless online either PC or PS3 is a good choice.
On another note:
Did you cut out the time in WoW spent mindlessly grinding, flying from place to place, and searching for groups? Cause that might cut out a third of your total gametime, which might shift those numbers.

 

[Kilo24]

Hours as a measure of game value has always been a poor measure. MMOs are designed to maximize the hours spent ingame or between while keeping them enjoyable enough to keep the person playing (EVE would be one exception.) Comparing MMOs to New Retail Game X gives them an unfair advantage, relatively speaking -- the design philosophies are different, so in general the expectations should be different. I don't expect a great deal of grinding in most FPSes offline but I do for MMOs: it's part of the genre. There's also a huge amount of time spent interacting with other players in MMOs, which if you're fairly judging the value of the game... well, I'm not quite sure how to account for it.

There's also free/older/cheaper games, for when tossing down $60 for the latest new game isn't attractive (which I usually find to be the case, and the price is a small part of that.) On the hours/dollar spent evaluation scale, free flash games or more hardcore ones like Dwarf Fortress, Spelunky or Nethack are infinitely valuable. Even if you toss those out the window, not everyone's still spending $20 for Diablo 2 (an decent not-quite-MMO-MMO game) or the x amount of cash that Guild Wars costs with no subscription.

Ultimately, I think that the whole evaluation method is flawed enough to render the article's point irrelevant.

 

[G1eet]

I'd personally like Mr. Funk to add up his total /played time. Perhaps there are some hidden costs he's not taking into account

I cannot imagine the sheer immensity of time played on that game. As a recent WoW quitter, that'd send me over the edge.

Not as bad as Scanners, but you get the drift.

 

[Chipperz]

And how much grinding do MMOGs have, again?

If you're doing it right? None.

It's something even World of Warcraft has now adressed (and, as usual, Warcraft is actually the last horse to cross the post...) - EVERYTHING you do gets you experience and cash now, so you can officially do whatever the hell you want and level up from it. It's a choice to go into the woods and level up by killing millions of boars, and there are people who do that, but there are faster, more efficient and more FUN ways of doing pretty much everything.

 

[grmbl]

You must have known when you wrote this that comments wouldn't be so nice
Anyway, I had my share of WoW time until 3 year ago.

One of my main reason to quit and keep playing other games. Is exactly the opposite of what you're saying:

I rather pay 50 € of 15+- € (Braid, World of Goo) for any title that gives me a compact but great experience. If it's packed with free good multiplayer (Half-Life 2) it's an great extra.
The problem with WoW is like playing 4 or 8 hours on a nice weekend day (back then) and realizing you didn't achieve a thing. When you play about 4h of World of Goo, Portal, Left4Dead and if you liked the game.

You probably had a great time which gives a great feeling, about 1) a good experience and 2) Gaming time well spent. Everytime I play a bit of WoW again, it proves that you don't get 1+2.
You can have some fun with WoW but it's completely diluted by all the time idling, grinding, waiting for party members, starting a dungeon and people running off,...

Anyway, since I quit I played a huge amount of non-mmorpg games and I don't regret any of the special experiences (Indie games) or just great good looking gameplay (MAss Effect, Bioshock, L4D,....)

 

[AceDiamond]

or...I could spent 60 bucks on Halo or COD4...and get endless entertainment online...for free. Or at least cheaper then 15 bucks a month.

Ummm since when is XBL free?

Since when is roughly $4 a month too much?

And heck, going by logic presented here, if one were to calculate the cost of Xbox Live on a per-hour basis, used or not:

1 year for $50.

$50/365 days/24 hours = six-tenths of a cent an hour.

Oh man, so expensive. Whatever shall I do.

 

[samsonguy920]

It is true $15 is a fairly decent rate for subscriptions for MMO's, but with the single players we have coming out these days with more emphasis on replayability: Fallout 3, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty, Mass Effect, etc etc, it's a tough sell to try to say that the investment you make into WoW might be better than into one of those others, especially with the multiplayer one gets from a lot of the non-MMO's that one doesn't have to pay for(with the exception of XBox Live perhaps).
One might argue that you get more a community in MMO's, with guilds, clans or whatever. Try telling that to the groups that are all about Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, or Call of Duty 4, WaW, or MW2 soon to come, and others. I think that is one thing that Steam and LIVE helps provide, though they don't hold sole credit for. ICQ and IRC are still alive.
I enjoy playing some WoW, and some Eve online(which the expansions for have been free since day one and has been more dependable; take that, Blizzard!) But when I have to pinch my pennies, I am more than happy spending time on a TF2 server or L4D server, without any withdrawal symptoms, or impending sense of been there done that. I like to think I've paid for the Orange Box several times over now, and it still isn't collecting dust. Heck, just started another run through HL2 the other day. Maybe by the time I finish Episode 2 there will be actual news on 3. Maybe. One can dream.

 

[daviejjd]

I just don't see why people even play wow, i tried it and thought it terrible!
Also, playing a game for 1/6 of your total time seems silly

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

I'm not sure what to make if this article, if only because it's particularly weighted for subjectivity. For another mode of comparison, my current MMORPG would be Phantasy Star Universe for the PC, a game I have a total of, I want to say, 212 hours on over the space of roughly two years.

In the past week alone, I've played the title Mass Effect for about 25 hours. Looking at a cost-to-result ratio, that means:
PSU: $240, across 212 hours, is very roughly $1.30 per hour of play.
Mass Effect: $60, across 25 hours of play, $2.20 per hour.

The difference there is practically negligible, especially considering the comparative time I've had to play both titles. Once I finish Mass Effect, I suspect I'll have put around 32-35 hours into it for a single playthrough. Given my history with both Jade Empire and KotOR, it won't be limited to a single playthrough.

The end result is probably a comparable $1-1.20 per hour of play at the far end result for both the MMO and non-MMO. From a cost-perspective, it's really about how much the end user enjoys the game they're playing. For an FPS buff that could sink 5-10 hours a day on their game of choice, it is cost ineffective to pay for a subscription fee for something they'll rarely play.

For someone like my friend, who sinks roughly 6-8 hours a day in WoW (given the proper time allowances), it is very cost effective to pay for the subscription fee. It all depends on the user.

A good article to serve as a counter-point for serious users, but there's way too much subjectivity to make it accurate across the board.

 

[MajoraPersona]

The thing is, as much as you Americans love to complain about your economy, you're doing really well. $15 may not be much for you, but that translates to about $58, give or take, Argentine pesos. That's a load of money here, a country in which the economy truly is atrocious.

lol, an opinion other than "zomg I only have 80k$ (dollar sign purposely put on the wrong side of the number, well, for English anyway) with which to buy my house, pay my bills, and feed my cats!"

^That's my opinion of rich or upper-middle class people who live in large cities. Though, I myself am at worst lower-middle class, have a room filled with books, games, dvd's, toys, statues from my trip to Greece, possibly 2000 Yu-Gi-Oh cards, an 18 or 22 inch flatscreen monitor (with an apparently appalling dead pixel), two flashlights, a speaker set with a subwoofer, and $80 cash right in front of me. So, really, I have no right to judge.

BUT I WILL.

I know full well that I'm a selfish bastard who indulges in everything put near me. I'm quite inclined to feel it's a natural reaction, derived from the fact that human beings historically didn't have this much shit lying around and needed to fight for every scrap. But I'm fully aware that the 'recession' is next to nothing in comparison to the rest of the world. Though, I'm from Canada, and I think our recession ended a month ago or something.

I have more stuff in my room than some people twice my age will ever see. And I'm 19, almost 20. I'm weak, overweight, and have no skills to contribute to society. Society needs to take a step back and wonder exactly what the fuck it's doing here.

Sorry for the psycho-rant, but that's another part of the kind of person that evolves from a society of plenty. Not that I plan to do anything about it, I just like to complain. My only redeemable value is that I'm self-aware, so I want to make the most of it.

 

[Bat Vader]

I buy the 60 day pre-paid cards for WoW. I don't have a credit card.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

This article makes a good point, so much so that it makes me consider WoW. I had already considered it slightly but this has really opened a crack for me to peep my head in and see inside, even if it is into the financial sector.