Shamus Young said:
I can't afford to pay for that sort of content. Not when Valve is giving away the same sort of thing, only better, and more often, for free.
I was thinking the same thing when I read the question.
Though I am looking at this from an all game stand point, since I don't have many shooters, just Halo and Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box.
I've been on an MMORPG kick recently, paid for and played LotR for three months near the beginning of the year, I finished up my free 10 day trial for WoW a few days ago, and also downloaded the demo for Star Trek Online through Steam and played it a couple days ago.
There is one thing I find disturbing; a lot relatively new MMOs, like Star Trek Online, are using a system where you by the game and pay a subscription fee and would have to pay special in game content if you wanted it. I believe there should be a formula line drawn for companies that make MMOs. They either have it where you pay for the game and have a subscription or pay for the game and have no subscription but have a game store for special content. Ideally it would be like Guild Wars where you pay for the game software and everything else is free.
STO is 20 dollars on Steam, and the subscription rate is the usual 15 a month, but then I looked at the small amount of content that is for sale for it in the Cryptic store. Seriously, if I actually bought and played it, they would have to seriously slash prices in the store if I would ever consider buying in game content. For example, they have the modified Galaxy class starship from the final episode of The Next Generation for sale for in-game use, but the price is 25 dollars. That is some serious money grubbing to sell a small piece of in-game content like that for more than the player paid for the software copy of the entire game.
I was happy when I heard that LotR was going to a free to play system in the fall, but then I face palmed when I found out that it was going to be some kind of mutant monster form of free play where you will pay for the game and then you only get one character for free and will only be able to play in four of the areas (Most likely The Shire, Bree-Land, The Elf/Dwarf area, and the Low Lands) then if you want to unlock the rest of the game you will have to pay the subscription, oh and there will also be in-game content for sale in the newly created LotR store, like permanent stat boosts, mounts and other items.
I'm the type of person that if I actually had the bundles of cash I would pay for lifetime memberships of all the MMOs I wanted to play and get myself out of all the crap that the companies have created. But I'm being the nearly penny-less person that I am and looking at the problem from a realistic prospective; the majority of the MMO world is not for people that don't have the money to throw around at these companies.
