kenu12345 said:
Nocturnus said:
I don't understand the resistance to a subscription model.
Guild Wars 2 supports itself by putting all that shiny stuff for you to buy on the store, and it's not cheap either. A new armor skin is 10 dollars, and a new weapon can be about as much too. To even change your character's appearance costs 5 bucks, and don't get me started on how they managed to monetize the ever living crud out of dyes.
I, personally, don't like that. When I pay a subscription, I know that when I log in, I get all those weapons, all that armor, all the functionality and inventory space, everything for one cost up front. I don't have to play the "Let's roll the dice for the dye I want" at 2 dollars a pop. That dye will drop from a mob, in game, or be accessible to me through a tradeskill.
Subscriptions also give the company more peace of mind in the long run. They're more stable, easier to predict the bottom line of.
15$ a month is NOTHING, also. The cost of going to a movie for two hours of entertainment costs about as much. If the game is good, and has a wealth of content, you're going to spend dozens of hours a month on the thing should you have the time, and hundreds of hours a year, all for a little north of 100$ per year. Hell, a new game at launch costs about as much.
Again, looking for a good reason to rally so hardcore against something like this. If someone tells me that "They just don't get the time worth the subscription", I will ask if they have seen a film in the theater at all during that timeframe... because you just spent more for less overall entertainment.
You do realize you will also be paying that initial 60 on top of the subscription cost right
And I've done it for years.
Here's how it works. MMO's are not like any console game. Console games are a hole in the pocket of a company until they ship it, at which point they hope to god that it makes enough money to compensate the cost. If the game is good, it usually does, and then they continue the cycle using the extra as a buffer to make a new game.
MMO's? They are living, breathing, growing worlds. MMO's are supposed to grow in a linear fashion after the launch of a game. New content, new dungeons, new zones that add to the scope and scale of the game. You pay the 60 dollars to justify the cost of making the game at the start, and then the subscription fee is there to pay for that growth; to keep the development staff that built the game on to continue building the game, and adding in that linear growth. Most sub based MMO's that I've played have had a steady stream of new content, often upwards of several dungeons and progression paths, stories, etc, patched in at no cost to me aside from that subscription fee. It ends up working out nicely.
And before Guild Wars 2 is referenced as an example, I want you to stop and consider just how much the game as actually -grown- since it was launched. Most of their instanced and dungeoned content is not only using existing art assets (IE: Scaled down versions of a zone that was already made), all of it has been TEMPORARY. The game hasn't grown at all since its release, because nothing has been permanent. I returned to the game now a year after I left it, and guess how much linear growth that formula has produced. None whatsoever. No new, permanent dungeons for me to explore. No new starting areas or races. No new quest paths. It's all been this temporary stuff that lasts two weeks and then is taken out.
That has never been my experience with a subscription MMO. Even WoW, for all its feet dragging in terms of development time, has released a steady stream of content with their updates so long as you paid the subs. That content has stayed with the game, and has increased the size and scope of that game. EverQuest II, the same way. EverQuest, the same way.