Widescreen Gaming Forum

i think games that require paid subscriptions are totally not worth it...think about it....like WoW...costs $50...then u gotta pay like $15 or $30 per month...that's stupid...if the game was FREE...and u had 2 pay less than $10 per month....i would've thought about it...but then again...think about...$50 at the beginning...then $30 per month....say u play for a year....30x12=$360 per year JUST to play online...then the initial $50...so 360+50=$410....that's BS!!!!

Go ahead and try it. It seems to have piqued your interest so why not give the free trial a shot?

Luck,

I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers... I don't know of any MMO that costs $30 per month. I would say that different MMO games have differing amounts of value, just like "off-line" games.

Guild Wars is around $40 for the game, and then no monthly fee. That's pretty easy math.

COH/COV are $40 or so each. I played COH for a long time. My defunct SG site can be found at http://www.assaultrecon.com COH dropped a new "issue" about every two months. This added new powers, new enemies, new missions and new areas. And these were major upgrades. So, you basically got a "free" expanion every 60-90 days. Considering the $15 a month fee, you get all the online play (and there is an expense to provide that) plus the new content for about $30. Sounds about like the price of an "off-line" game expansion to me.

WOW is still something like $40, and then you have the $15 fee. They just had their first major expansion, after about 14 months. WOW is a great game, and if you put a lot of hours into it, then I believe the monthly fee is still worth it. A lot of off-line RPGs say something like "40+ hours of play." If the game costs $50, that's about a $1 an hour. Say I play WOW 2 hours a night, M-F. That's about 40 hours a month, and plenty of people do that (and then some). There is your $1/hr. But, in that next month, you get another 40 hours for only $15. That is $.375 per hour.

Even if you play "slow" on your off-line RPG, and get 80 hours out of it. That's still about $.50 an hour. The MMO ends up being a better deal. Now, some people might say what about the online play for FPS and RTS. Well, the game dev/pub usually doesn't host the FPS servers. Those are hosted by fans, clans and other companies. They host servers (of varying quality) for free, or some make you pay. RTS are usually hosted by the dev/pub, but that is a whole lot less bandwidth, and there is no persistent world to maintain and no additional content to develop.

Every expansion I've seen for an FPS or RTS has cost more money. Not so with many MMOs. Now, the Sony MMOs break the mold on this and you have to pay for the monthly and the expansion. That can get expensive if the monthly is too high, or the expansion is expensive and/or doesn't have a lot of content. Sony has helped to alleviate this by offer multiple games (Station Pass) for one price. You're monthly fee then goes down to $3-$5 per game, but you have to buy each game and they pump out expansions. EQ has what a 100 expansions? :lol: EQ2 already has one or two, and SW has three I believe.

In the end, it's a value proposition. How much will you play the game? Will you play enough to play for at least a couple of months and get your cost per hour down? Do you play a lot of other games that might take you away from the MMO?

Personally, I really liked them. At the moment, I just don't have the time (or a computer in the case of GW or COH) to play them. I hope to again, soon. My favorites were GW and COH, over WOW.

Also, I'd really like to see some WSGF guilds on the MMOs, especially since they all seem to support widescreen.

I still remember the days when the games would cost $50 in the States and £35 in the UK, but would then have monthly fees in the States of around $15-20, and yet the UK fee would be anything from £15 to £25. ($20 at the time was about £11...)

If I lived in the States, I'd play MMORPGs, and I wouldn't have a problem. :) Things (ie: prices) have got better, and with Guild Wars, I'm very tempted indeed... ;)

I go through MMO phases. I can get really into one and play it for around 2-3 months non-stop. But inevitably, I will grow bored and move on. The MMOs I have played the most are SWG and CoH/CoV. I have quit and rejoined both of these games numerous times. I am now finally giving WoW a shot, although it seems exactly like EQ2 to me. From everything that I had read, people were vehemently stating that WoW was a much better game than EQ2, but so far it is damn near identical as far as the game mechanics and quest mechanics.

The great thing about Guild Wars is that you have no pressure to play the game. Whereas a subscription fee based MMO does. When you're paying $15 dollars a month to play a game, you feel obligated to play it.

I would love to play WOW....

but i play too many different games to be stuck playinig one all the time, id feel i had to play it cause i was paying. And that would spoil other games for me.

I did play planetside for a few months... but got bored, and didnt really play it enough to warrant the monthly fee.

The great thing about Guild Wars is that you have no pressure to play the game. Whereas a subscription fee based MMO does. When you're paying $15 dollars a month to play a game, you feel obligated to play it.

That was the one issue I had with WOW. I was playing COH when I had plenty of free time and a great Supergroup. But, WOW came out after I had a kid. It started to feel like a job. GW helped a lot with that aspect.

I really like the ideology behind Guild Wars. It's like the spiritual successor to Diablo and Battle.net but with a much more MMO type of feeling to it. The money that they hope to gain is simply through software sales and releasing expansions.

This accomplishes 2 great feats (at least in theory).

1. The "No Pressure" play mentioned above.

2. You know that the developers will be working on substantial and meaningful expansions in order to make money. Some MMOs seem to stagnate for long periods of time before developers begrudgingly release new content (that is often broken).

We shall see where Guild Wars will rank amongst the other MMOs in due time. But for now... I love it even though I don't play it constantly.

CoH rocks, man. I had a toon named "The Vacuum Salesman" and he was a cigar smokin creep in a suit. :)

But I play EQ2 now.

Try it. The character creation part is awesome.




Aloha to you haoles.

I play WoW and used to play DAoC. Both were very good. The subscription price was worth it to me