General Discussion

$15 a month = $180 a year + retail cost and yet you're expected to pay for expansions even though people like Valve can keep updating their games without a monthly fee. Then on top of all that there are the micro transactions like the whole TCG type thing in mmorpgs such as SWG where if you want certain in game items the only way you're able to get them is by paying until you're lucky enough to get it.

Not only that but you're paying for features that should come as standard with your monthly fee like what WOW charges you for like changing your character name or transfering your character to another server. I mean to me that is something that you expect as part of the service you want under you montly fee and a standard feature you would want in mmorpgs. Most the time you meet people who play the same game as you but you're normally on different servers and yet your subscription fee doesn't cover that :\ People say oh but that $15 goes towards server charges..... WOW makes over $1 billion a year so really they probbaly could charge everyone $5 a month and still be making more than enough.

Yet soon we're going to enter in the territory where these companies start charging you $15 a month + retail + expansions + in game advertising + micro transactions + anything else they can think of and when are people going to say I've had enough of being taken a fool of? Guild Wars can survive without subscripton fee's so why don#t everyone else frop them if they expect us to pay for all this other crap? They still host every single server and still have to host every instance.

So, you're saying it costs me like $230 per year to play MMORPG's for an unlimited amount of time?  Yep, sounds like a pretty bad deal to me.

When will you learn that there isn't an amount of money that Blizzard 'deserves' to earn.  (or not earn).  They deserve to earn as much as they can milk out of their customer base.  If they could double the rates tomorrow and have everyone still pay for it, they would deserve it.

Its called free market capitalism and its how our economy works.

Now, my game, EVE does not charge me for expansions, so I guess I get a better deal?  But that's not why I play, nor would I care if they did charge, its just a nice perc.

In fact, if I was so motivated, I could go out and sell time cards for ISK , and spend even more money on this game.  Doesn't bother me a bit.

MMO's are the best entertainment value out there today, (cost me more to take my wife and son to the movies (40 bucks) last night than almost all 3 of my EVE subs for the month.

Agree with OP.

Its way cheaper than my subscription to satelite TV, thats for sure....

MMO's honestly are dirt cheap to play compared to other forms of entertainment. The most recent game I bought was gears of war 2 and that cost roughly 60$ and that lasted me about 2 days tops. So right there I payed about 30 dollars a day on that game. While an MMO I will roughly spend 80-160 hours a month depending on how motivated or how much free time I have. The initial box price is fine, hell I think i got my moneys worth for AoC and I didn't go past the free month. I did play about 40-70 hours of it and that covered the 50$ IMO.

hmm lets see,, I can spend about 30 US dollars on a craptastic over rated Hollywood movie full of pretty people who cant act, or I can spend my 15 US dollars on 30 days of entertaining gaming.

With todays Global economy in the crapper.... you can guess where my money is at...

simple solution, if you feel "ripped off" by them dont play them.

There see thats not so hard now is it?

I used to buy 2-3 PlayStation games per week from 1995-1999. I basically bought almost every game released in that time period. As soon as I got into EverQuest beta, I never bought a console game ever again lol. I've saved a small fortune playing MMOGS. 15 bucks a month is the best pound for pound entertainment deal on the planet.  I don't play any silly F2P games with micro transactions so I've never spent a single penny outside my subs. Love it!

edit- undecided to be frank. But I agree with many points from the OP and also some counterviews. So not sure make a poll next time

Originally posted by Wharmaster

 ok..you tards go ahead and spend $50 every two weeks on a new game, and see how fast that adds up.

I'd rather spend fifty cents per day on a game that I can play all year than fiffty DOLLARS on a game I get a week out of.

This really depends on the game, and since we are all on PC we know methods to get these games for free discount, that being said, Lets say you do spend 50 dollars a month on a new game, Well if its a game like FFXII or Fallout 3 and you can only get a month of game play out of them and finish everything..then damn you have way to much free time. If its a game like.. Sonic or something, yeah I can see your point being valid.

Including the mods and stuff, I managed to get 3 months of playtime out of oblivion before I grew tired of it. I actually got the real copy of that game, because it was that good and enjoyable, worth my money.

Also you got to think of the fun factor, In most mmorpgs you don't have fun the entire time you are playing, Farming is not fun, grinding is not very fun, but you do it a lot anyways. In a lot of single player games the adventure is enjoyabl story driven and fun much more so than in MMORPGs, so sometimes the game is shorter but you had way more fun in that time than you would with an mmorpg in a year. mmorpgs keep you entertained, but a lot are not really fun. (Points at the Korean Free 2 play cash shop games)

Originally posted by VirgoThree

MMO's honestly are dirt cheap to play compared to other forms of entertainment. The most recent game I bought was gears of war 2 and that cost roughly 60$ and that lasted me about 2 days tops. So right there I payed about 30 dollars a day on that game. While an MMO I will roughly spend 80-160 hours a month depending on how motivated or how much free time I have. The initial box price is fine, hell I think i got my moneys worth for AoC and I didn't go past the free month. I did play about 40-70 hours of it and that covered the 50$ IMO.

You just got ripped off. Don't pay for short 10 hour games like that. Rent them like I do unless you plan to play online. I've gotten over 3-4 days (100 hours) of playtime out of Battlefield 2142 for example

Of course you can always trade/sell the game for what $40 bucks.

Now you have a good point, an extreme hardcore console player will go through 2 games a month average. However, they often trade the titles to reduce their costs.

Plus, they are seeing new content every month versus an MMO player thats staring at the same dungeon for months straight.  Any console player can do that right, just kill the same mobs over and over to be fair