I played City of Heroes/Villains for about a year. I would say that it was worth every penny. Rarely do I find a game that I want to play that much. It's just insanely fun when you're with a good group of people.
But on the general topic of pay to play games, I look at it like this:
If you go to two movies a month, that's at least $15. $15 for 3-4 hours of entertainment. I could easily play 3-4 hours of City of Heroes in one night. For a dollar per hour comparison, depending on how much you end up playing, a pay to play game is going to actually be way cheaper than most any other form of entertainment out there.
Another point: Over the course of a year, I played a total of $325 for City of Heroes. $35 for CoH, $50 for CoV and $240 in monthly fees (I'm Canadian.) Compared to non-pay to play games, that equals about 5 new games (at $65 each). Even if there were 5 games in a year that I wanted (there definitely isn't because most games are complete crap now), you looking at an average of 20 hours of playtime per game for a total of 100 hours. Again, pay to play gives you far more bang for your buck.
I guess if you're into certain games like BF2, Counterstrike, etc you get unlimited replay value for free, but for myself, I'm not into those types of games.
As far as I'm concerned, pay to play, as long as it's a game you're going to play a fair bit (you probably will anyways since you're paying for it) are definitely worth the money. Also, at least with a pay to play game, you're kindof assured of getting constant support. Look at how many games get released and might get a patch or two and then support is pulled. Hell, some game sbarely get out the door before they're canned. Hello UBISoft and VUGames!
|