Wow those look awesome. I always wanted to get into world of warcraft, is it easy for a noob to step in? I wonder if there is a demo so I can try it out before paying the subscription for it.
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Rikus - There's a 14 day trial available. If you wanna help out a friend, get them to recruit you from the website. That'll give them some bonus stuff.
Also, the game is very easy to get into. I know 50 and 60 year olds who play
I'd post my character but I haven't played for ages. Will start again when Cataclysm comes out though.
I don't mind the subscription fee on a game like WoW. Normally when a game comes out - it stays pretty much the way it is. Patches might come out, if you're lucky, that fix problems.
But with WoW a patch is sometimes just that - something that fixes problems. But a lot of the time you'll get a patch that introduces totally new stuff. And to me that's ok.
Though I must say I like the payment model of games like League Of Legends and Battlefield Heroes much more (micropayments).
I just think it's wrong. I want to pay my dues once, patches that fix functionality or problems should be free (and really the game should be fixed before it's released - something that bugs me with internet era. So many publishers ship out games before they should as it's OK for everyone to download gigs of patches ... was it ea that shipped a game that out the box did not work and required a multi gigabyte download to get it working?)
I do not mind paying once for add on packs, like Roller Coaster Tycoon add on packs (I love rct ). It's a one off deal. $15 to $13 a month for patches and an odd update to content? IMO thats just wrong and is using the addicted players as a cash cow.
IMO online internet play should be free. I will never pay for Live on my xbox 360 either.
I think you have to accept that some games have a payment model that requires a subscription. Most games that are single player (oblivion, fallout etc.) or multiplayer (battlefield, other fps games) either don't require servers or have the players create their own servers.
With online games this is not true. Using WoW as an example again, patches do more than just fix things and that requires a team and servers. And I know Blizzard make much more money from WoW than what is required for all these things but they're not a wellfare organization - they're a business.
But the bottom line is - some people find subscription fees acceptable, some don't. That's just how it is
Also - Guild Wars = Yuch...I bought it at like a 75% discount or so on Steam and I still regret spending the money. It's such a horrible game..
Some people will always be ok with it , and I personally think the subscription model is purely for business as they are not happy with just the profit from the game sale alone, and I personally think they do not need a subscription - it's just greed.
I just cannot see how Valve can maintain their entire infrastructure for free yet Blizzard mysteriously needs a subscription for what I am told is an addictive game. Valve has little content updates sometimes (like Portal with the radio sounds with slow scan TV images,and different ending) and patches are quite often.
I am just an old gamer and set in my ways. I think the cartridge era was so much nicer in many ways, had to play with real life friends on MP, games just worked (no updates!), one off payment and to be honest I think the gameplay is superb on a lot of old games .
For me nothing beats a game of bomberman with my mates
I hate subscription games because they force you to play. It's like a waste of money if you don't waste your time playing. I was thinking about getting Guild Wars, but Guild Wars 2 is almost out. I would pay for a game that charges you by hour, though.
Guild Wars is a PvP game, though. If you're playing to run solo or explore the world, you're not going to have much fun
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Originally Posted by ..::hagar::.. I just think it's wrong. I want to pay my dues once, patches that fix functionality or problems should be free (and really the game should be fixed before it's released - something that bugs me with internet era. So many publishers ship out games before they should as it's OK for everyone to download gigs of patches ... was it ea that shipped a game that out the box did not work and required a multi gigabyte download to get it working?)
I do not mind paying once for add on packs, like Roller Coaster Tycoon add on packs (I love rct ). It's a one off deal. $15 to $13 a month for patches and an odd update to content? IMO thats just wrong and is using the addicted players as a cash cow.
IMO online internet play should be free. I will never pay for Live on my xbox 360 either.
WoW is $15 a month. That's the only fee. Patches with bug fixes and such are free. Content patches, basically DLC, is free, and are released about every 4 months; These content patches often have dozens of new NPC models, dozens of new models for new weapons and armor, and hundreds of new spells (which are just scripts), and are generally considered to be worth much more than a new weapon pack or packs of old maps updated to have the newer graphics. Expansions do cost money, but those aren't strictly required to keep playing, and they only come out about every 2 years.
WoW is a big game. Hundreds of servers that need to support some 11 million players worldwide. Blizzard has a portion of their staff dedicated to simply monitoring and maintaining the servers and minimizing downtime 24/7. That's a lot of people and a lot of hours to pay for each day (and you know they're getting paid more than minimum wage for their CS degree). On top of that, they have a huge customer support staff to handle the entire worldwide network, with CS reps for every major localization (english, russian, italian, japanese, etc, about 10 total). Customer support needs to be available 24/7 too. Again, that's a lot of people who need to be paid. If WoW was a one time fee instead of a subscription model, then Blizzard would have gone out of business a long time ago.
(in response to Muz's post about paying by the hour) WoW in China does that actually. Personally I would hate it because it would stress me out because I would always have to spend the time doing something "useful" instead of just chilling and having fun
Edited by Phredreeke
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
How is Valve in business then? Steam is fairly big too (not that big average is about 2 million), and it makes it money from selling titles (and royalties from other games for using the Steam system). I would rather follow this model to be quite frank (NPC or spells do not appeal to me but then again I am not an RPG fan anyway, much happier playing LFD2 or Serious Sam HD ).
I also remember WoW being on sale in PC World ages ago (that could of been a bundle + subscription though).
Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
Anyway I am inadvertently hijacking this thread due my dislike of this payment model.
Steam is not an MMO, it's a content delivery platform
Originally Posted by ..::hagar::.. Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
That is capitalism for you. Blizzard, as every other commercial game developer, is out to make as much money as humanly possible to please their investors.
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
Originally Posted by Hayo According to my bro WoW is for nerds and you should play Guild wars all day long instead.
Couldn't agree more with your brother! WoW is rather brainless gameplay. Much like many mmorpgs but Guild Wars makes it so much more fun... brainless gameplay.
@ Phredreeke : yeah I know its a delivery system but I just making a point that companies can make profit even following the buy once model
On another note I also agree on games being dumbed down. Also modern games are so easy. A games not hard enough if you do not chuck the controller down on the floor hard .
Originally Posted by ..::hagar::.. Put it this way I am sure they are taking a FAR larger than needed profit margin. You mean to tell me it costs them $165 million per annum to do that?
WoW operates on 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of RAM. That's a lot of money spent just on keeping the servers turned on and keeping them cooled. On a patch day (content patch), the servers are pushing out nearly 5 petabytes of data. That's 5,000 terabytes of bandwidth in one day, each quarter of the year. Let's not even mention how much bandwidth is used on a normal day.
That's just for the servers. Worldwide, Blizzard employs 4,600 people. Their Cinematics department (aptly named, as they create all of the cinematics for Blizzard's games) is over 120 strong, with over half of them being artists. Each of their development teams--Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo--are made up of about 90 people (for a total of about 200). QA, handling localization and testing (amongst other things) has 250 people. Meanwhile, those customer support reps I keep mentioning? There are over 2,400 reps.
So, WoW does bring Blizzard some $165mil a month, but their profit margin isn't as large as you might think. Maintaining the WoW servers alone can easily cost tens of millions of dollars. Funding 4 projects (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, a new MMO), isn't going to be cheap, either; Games nowadays can cost up to $60 million (over 2-3 years) to develop, so having 4 projects going at once is going to take it's toll. On top of that, each year Blizzard sets up BlizzCon, which they pay for all on their own (BlizzCon has a narrow profit margin).
I just made that post about WoW's revenue, so I won't go into too much detail with this, but:
WoW isn't easy. Leveling is easy, sure. But the raids? Not so easy. Most fights are tests of execution, and it's so easy to have every die if someone does something wrong. Especially true for the hard modes. Also, the PvP is actually pretty engaging too, especially at higher levels of play.
Originally Posted by PhizzyPhan69 That is capitalism for you. Blizzard, as every other commercial game developer, is out to make as much money as humanly possible to please their investors.
- Ok, you must admit that was the most creative cussing this site have ever seen -
WoW is only an addiction if you're prone to that sort of thing. I played the game from the beta, to the release. Then about a year ago I decided the game wasn't fun anymore and I just quit. Blaming Blizzard for people getting addicted is like blaming beer companies for the existance of alcoholics.
Well I downloaded it last night and signed up for the 10 day trial and it is actually kind of addicting, I was very impressed with the streaming version were I downloaded a 3mb file and the game magicly started to boot up, very impressive.
I kind of want to play some more now
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Originally Posted by Rikus Well I downloaded it last night and signed up for the 10 day trial and it is actually kind of addicting, I was very impressed with the streaming version were I downloaded a 3mb file and the game magicly started to boot up, very impressive.
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... was it ea that shipped a game that out the box did not work and required a multi gigabyte download to get it working?)
). It's a one off deal. $15 to $13 a month for patches and an odd update to content? IMO thats just wrong and is using the addicted players as a cash cow.
Edited by Phredreeke
