MMOs

[FlamingDbag]

Retail:
$30 for full game
Free month
$15 for 30 days of access
*$$$ for ingame items
*$25x# for expansion(s)
*Optional Lifetime subscription is $300
Servers one day close, game is rendered unplayable (unless hacks and mods save the day)

Free to Play:
$$$ for ingame items (sometimes subscriptioned) (almost always beyond overpowered to anything that's free)
$15 for monthly gold subscription
*Free to play is actually worthless half the time, becomes pay to play to become any worth and get actual enjoyment in the end.
*Lifetime Gold subscription is $300
Servers one day close too.


Ok maybe I'm being overly critical (or highly hating any timed subscription fee of any kind) but please tell me I'm not the only one who hates this scheme? I'm ok with paying for items/feature increasers if they aren't necessary and are permanent (or something like money boosters, where it won't last forever but you keep what you earn anyway) but god, NOT IF I BUY A GAME AND EVEN THEN NEED TO PAY A SUBSCRIPTION FEE...
I hate the idea of subscription fees. For one, if you pay for a year it ends up nearing $200, and two, any time you aren't playing is still counted.
(edit: also it's pretty much unsellable after using the key. You can probably sell the disc as easy install/a quick back up, but beyond that no one is going to want it. It's a risk take on liking it or not if there's no trial...)

Why. Not. GAMEPLAY. HOUR TIME. DAMN IT?
Would you pay $15 for something like 40 gameplay hours or would you rather the normal 30 day scheme?


Also since for the past two weeks I've been looking into MMOs, anyone know any good, affordable MMOs similar to how Guild Wars is done? (Of which I still have yet to play...)

[eishiya]

Feel free to ignore this post. I have not actively played MMOs in a long time, and have no intention to play MMOs actively in the future. Found new hobbies.


Is the lifetime subscription thing a common feature? I've only heard of it once.

Ragnarok Online used to have an hourly scheme, but it has been abolished because it was unpopular and, by their new scheme, is useless. The price was something like $10 for 15 hours, so you can see why it was unpopular. It was mainly used for people's secondary accounts during WoE (so they'd only be used about 2 hours a week, making this option cheaper than the full-time subscriptions of $10~12/month).

Personally, my favourite subscription model has been the timed one, where you pay $5~15/month (and the game download is free, as are updates). Cash shops are fine as long as their benefits are either primarily cosmetic, or only so useful as to replace 1-2 players in a party, not things that put a player in a different league from people using non-shop items only.
I tend to be very on-and-off with MMOs, so when I pay, I play through most of the period I pay for, with my interest waning a bit near the end (then I know not to pay). No time is wasted.

I would probably not even bother with an hourly subscription-only game (though such an option is good to have), because it would be too difficult to know when exactly the subscription runs out and plan my gameplay accordingly. There's also always the nagging feeling that I have to conserve my hours, not afk in town with a "sell me this stuff" window, always log off if I'm taking a piss, etc. MMOs are mostly a social experience for me as I am not one for endgame activities, so I really like the (mental) freedom of lounging around for lengthy periods of time.


I can honestly see myself buying a lifetime subscription to a game I like though, even if it's not one I play constantly. Even if I don't use $300 worth of hours, I'll have the convenience never worrying about the fees again.

Definitely agreeing that paying you pay for the game AND a subscription is just a dick thing to do. I refuse to play any such game on principle (from what I understand, I'm not missing anything).

[Pinali]

I dabble in a bit of WoW but nowhere near as much as I used to... I tend to just log on and do a couple quests a day, and raid for a few hours a week.
I used to play a lot of Ragnarok, though. A LOT of Ragnarok, woaaah. My art sure took a dive during those days.

Anyway, I'd rather the usual 30 day scheme because of pretty much exactly what eishiya said. I don't want to be worrying about wasting my hours while afk taking a piss or sitting around selling items or looking for a group to do a dungeon. I'd feel like "every second I'm not actively exping/questing is wasted time that puts me closer to having to pay again," and that's not fun. I like being able to turn around and chat to my partner for 5 minutes without worrying about logging off the game. I like being able to alt tab and chat to people on MSN at the same time without OH NOES WASTING PRECIOUS GAME SECONDS.

The second option (ingame items you can purchase) usually happens with "Korean MMO" style where whoever has the most money has the most powerful character because of the bought items. If they're purely cosmetic, nowhere near as many people will buy them - I doubt any company running a decent MMO (frequent updates/patches, good customer support, fast stable servers, etc) could pay their employees with just the money from optional cosmetic items. If they are better than items you can get for free, though? People will be all over that.

[Amante]

You also to realize that games that get a monthly sub fee normally have some of the better support teams because now they have the money to pay these guys. Guild Wars never had the best support because the only money they're making is off of the retail. Also you can't really complain that free to play games have things to buy with real money, they need to make a profit somehow. Take League of Legends for example. The game is entirely free to play, though you can buy certain things like characters or character skins or boosts with real money (keep in mind characters can be bought with the in game currency as well). RIOT is making their money back with how many people are buying things. It's a good system.

[Rivana]

I had the same reaction as you about subscription fees initially. So I purchased Guild Wars (GW) as my first MMO. Was a ton of fun for a few years and I bought all their expansions. Incidentally, it's also the game where my comic storyline developed from Role Playing in Guild Wars (and it took me a long absence of 2 years from my guild -was dating my now husband and all so it's not a bad thing- and just decided to go back again and reconnect with my GW friends once I settled down, resumed our storyline then realized we got something good going on went back to drawing - a hobby I abandoned for 7 years - and decided to make a comic. Just wish I started it sooner lol)

Anyhow, I mentioned that 2 year hiatus from Guild Wars when I met my husband. He's played World of Warcraft (WoW) and we had a deal that he'd try GW and I'd try WoW. Took me awhile to take in the concept of a subscription based MMO, but now I realized that it is actually a good deal , depending on your lifestyle/situation. Not as good of a deal as Guild Wars where you just buy it once and it's free but content and feature-wise, WoW beats Guild Wars hands down. Despite that, I don't consider myself to be a WoW fangirl, I've just tried so many MMOs and still go back to WoW so it's a long process for me to come into terms to that >_>

We've tried many subscription-based MMOs (Warhammer, Aion, Age of Conan, City of Heroes/Villains, That other superhero MMO that I can't remember, recently tried Rift and unsubbed to that as well) and nothing gives you your money's worth aside from WoW at this point. They put in content, great support, a lot of things to do in game, good gameplay mechanics, add-ons, and so on (I used to hate WoW because I was a GW fangirl lol). My PS3 became a blu ray player for the most part because WoW kept me occupied in terms of my gaming hobby. So that also saved me money because I wasn't buying the latest PS3 games for USD60 that I'll probably play for less than a month considering how much time I normally spend gaming. (note: I said latest PS3 games because if I didn't play MMOs and just played console games, I will be up to date in the PS3 games and thus will have to buy recently released games at a regular basis)

$15 a month is not a lot as me and my husband discovered when we both unsubbed to WoW at some point. We found ourselves being bored in the weekends so what we did was go out. We spend at least $100+ a weekend on food and whatever leisurely thing we decide to do and then feel like crap afterwards. I am not saying it's bad to go out and all but it gets old and expensive if you do it every weekend.

Subscription based MMOs is cheap entertainment overall when you just want to kick back and relax on a weeknight after a long day at work or a lazy weekend. Like everything, MMOs should be played in moderation.

Of course there are other productive things you can do like drawing or learn to play a musical instrument instead of gaming on your free time. In fact, my husband unsubbed to WoW recently so he can work on his novel. I am renewing my subscription because a couple of my friends from Guild Wars are playing WoW with me on weekend nights when I am not busy. I don't game as much as I used to (I was in a hardcore raiding guild at some point in WoW)

On the other hand, I never liked the concept of pay to get extra features for an MMO. I tend to be competitive and I want a fair playing ground when I am gaming - where everyone has the opportunity to maximize their toons depending on their strategy/builds and the time/effort that they put in.

I hate being forced to buy something from a game I am already playing/purchased if I want my toon to be 'awesome'. It kills the gaming experience. It's like watching a movie and then getting interrupted having to Insert Coin if you want to see the ending. It breaks the momentum. I just want to pay and forget and get everything the game has to offer.

[Seven Rain]

Also you can't really complain that free to play games have things to buy with real money, they need to make a profit somehow. Take League of Legends for example. The game is entirely free to play, though you can buy certain things like characters or character skins or boosts with real money (keep in mind characters can be bought with the in game currency as well). RIOT is making their money back with how many people are buying things. It's a good system.

Yeah, I actually don't mind cash shops in MMOs. As long as there's no subscription I try not to complain. The only time cash shops bug me is when everything in them is temporary. (Like S4 League's. :C)
Seriously, if you want me to pay like 10 bucks for some armor and/or weapons, fine. It's like buying a digital action figure. But when you want me to spend my money on something that's going to be gone in a week/month you can fuck off. :D



Anyways I've played a lot of MMOs over the years, and have had mad fun with a lot of them too, though they never keep my interest for long.
Some of my favorites have also died off, which sucks. Exteel I wanted to go back to a while back only to discover it was canceled. Same with RayCrash... Even worse, There Online, the only social MMO I had crazy fun in, was canceled for a while and later became subscription-based, which made me rage.

I do plan on going back to S4 League sometime now that I have a nice comp, but it annoys me that they not only have no perm items in the cash shop, but made the default outfit uglier in a desperate attempt for more cash shop purchases. If you guys want me to feed you my coinage, give me a pair of pants that won't expire like a loaf of bread.
Luckily though you can get perm items via in-game lottery, so there's that. Probably insanely hard to actually get anything nice and perm, though.

[diceknight]

I've been playing MMOs since EverQuest, and the genre in general is a lot friendlier to the player than it's ever been. I just recently quit Wow because I got hacked, and I finally decided it wasn't worth the hassle. WoW was a lot like having a job, and to have all that work go down the drain in an instant didn't sit well.

By a huge margin, the game I got the most enjoyment out of was City of Heroes. I got heavily into the RP community on one of the servers, and spent a good five or so years there. I still plan to return when it goes F2P, mostly to hang out and RP with old friends.

Right now I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online. Their F2P module isn't terrible, but they have micro transactions for a little bit of everything. Inventory space, quest content, etc. One thing that irritates me is that I played the game a few years ago, bought a subscription. Now that it's F2P, I can no longer access quests that I could have done before the F2P transaction. It's like...Fine, charge new people, but don't take stuff away from people that were loyal customers before. Ultimately I don't like LOTRO's gameplay enough to be in it for the long haul, so I'm content to have my little house set up and RP. Though I'm weird like that, an RP community is a huge draw for me in an MMO. I couldn't care less about raiding or PvP, but gimme people to do story with.

[FlamingDbag]

Ragnarok Online used to have an hourly scheme, but it has been abolished because it was unpopular and, by their new scheme, is useless. The price was something like $10 for 15 hours, so you can see why it was unpopular.

Ohgodthatshorrible...

Yeah the hourly thing suddenly doesn't seem like a good idea now that you guys put it in some light (though it would be nice if it were there, or it only counted for times when you're doing actual gameplay)

Also you can't really complain that free to play games have things to buy with real money, they need to make a profit somehow.

I know that, and that fair enough. I just hate it when it feels necessary to get whatever it is.

Cosmetic items are ok (just as long you aren't stuck to one thing by default beforehand, or if you are at least give you choice in colour for the default.)
Balanced weapons for different tastes are ok. Slot purchases/certain feature upgrades/boosters/ect are ok too. If anyone likes the game enough they'll tend to buy something eventually anyway.


If I paid for a monthly subscription myself it would mean getting any other games at all would be an absolute pain in the ass to save up money for and I would be spending an entire rain of my cash on just a single game that's online only (I can't really play anything online most of the time because I tend to eat bandwidth extremely quick otherwise) in the end. Also MMOs are generally life consuming, and I'd probably end up wanting to eat up as much time as I have for the months.
Nope, that's not happening.

That's pretty much why Guild Wars is so appealing to me right now, I'm hardly a MMO gamer at all but if I can play with it as much as I want until the servers die and I'm able buy items when I actually want it and it's not timed (I'm actually already considering some of feature upgrade things if I like it enough), that sounds great.
Also the whole gameplay sounds like it's chaotic has variety and it's not mostly annoyingly only grinding for XP, but that's different...

[YakkitySax]

Though I'm weird like that, an RP community is a huge draw for me in an MMO. I couldn't care less about raiding or PvP, but gimme people to do story with.

I agree! I played WoW for a little over a year and was very heavy in the RP community. I was a captain of a pirate fleet that terrorized the server we were on. In the larger cities, with other guilds that wanted to participate, we even had bounties on our heads. Since the PvP system was a little unfair, we used a rolling system to determine who the winners were in a fight. It was a bit slower, but that way anyone in our crew who wasn't a high level still had a chance to make it out alive. I met some pretty awesome people on there. (Also RPd as a Murloc when a friend of mine bought me the Murloc suit for Christmas. <3)

I enjoyed raiding and even did a bit of the end game content before the latest expansion came out, but I did that on another server with some friends of mine. Any raiding our RP group did we did in RP form, which was a ton fun (since, you know, pirates + booze effect + raid boss).

[Nymine]

I honestly agree with DK and Yakkity! I've been poking my nose around MMOs a really long time, and honestly I'm always seeking out the fun people who RP.

FFXI....you know, there really wasn't any RP but I had a wonderful little social guild. You really needed friends in that game, and I had some pretty good ones. But I quit after realizing that it was pretty much a second job.

City of Heroes was a blast. Freedom had a lot of really interesting people with some pretty imaginative back stories(good and bad). I played an illusion witch by the name of The Lure who was a little naive and completely crazy about learning new spells. Doing good was sort of a side perk(also she had an irrational hatred for the Trolls). At one time I was besties with a stone statue that had the god Ra bound to it, his billion year old protector, a science experiment, a business tycoon who got incinerated and gained fire control(still not sure on how being burned alive gives you superpowers), three or four aliens who were stranded in Paragon for various reasons, a princess and a robotic patriot. Good times.

WoW was hit and miss.I remember specifically joining an RP server to RP, only to find that people who RP were treated like lepers. *sigh* Oh server choices. I found a guild and had a short bit of fun with my priesty(who was the world's most oblivious and fatty priestess with an irrational hatred for demons and constantly at odds with the resident possessed warlock), but that lasted only so long. The rest of the game infuriates me, so I no longer play. I really can't stand having the rules changed that much. *grump grump grump*

/brain died Ending there.

[diceknight]

I had a hit and miss experience with WoW, too. When it was good it was good, but sometimes things just broke down. I played on an RP server, and the community sometimes ranged from people that only rolled there to grief RPers, to RPers that looked down on anyone that wasn't a template lore character. Still, some good times there. I think the reason that CoH provided me with a better RP community is that the base game wasn't as focused on advancement. In CoH, if you take time off to RP, you're not really missing anything. It wasn't uncommon to log in for the sole purpose of RP. In WoW, it's like...gotta do dailies, gotta get in my weekly heroics, gotta farm mats for my weekly dreamcloth, gotta get my bowl gotta have cereal...

My webcomic is actually based on my time in CoH. TMBH was the name of our supergroup on Virtue, and most of the characters were ones me and my group played. Woot and Rusty were my characters, while Catbot, Pengi, and Wendy were played by my SG-mates. They still give me input and joke suggestions.

[Afrohawkman]

I haven't been exposed to an MMO in maybe a few years. The last MMO I played was probably Dungeons and Dragons Online, which was a great Free to Play game until you got to a certain level and couldn't level up in regular quests because the higher level quests required you to pay for them.

Nevertheless, I must agree with eishiya in that the Monthly payment thing is probably one of the best systems for MMOs. It's a little pricey but it gets the developers more money to keep producing updates and it usually provides the user with something extra like new worlds and new things to do. Runescape had a pretty good system going there; they introduce you to the game first with free things and then entice you with all of their newer objects and it only costs about 5 bucks a month to get the new items and worlds.

[JimLad]

Also they need that money to run the servers.

Best MMORPG I ever played was Star Wars Galaxies (before they ruined it).
It didn't have levels, but rather a profession system where you earn different kinds of exp for whatever skills you wanted to learn. So if you wanted to learn pistols you get pistol exp, if you wanted to be a doctor you get medic exp. And they had professions and skill trees for everything, marksman, melee, smithys, chefs, dancers, musicians, droid engineers, creature handlers, pilots...
Also there were player houses and the economy was completely player driven, it was a role player's dream.
It's just a shame they had to introduce Jedi, then replaced the skill system with a level system, then removed 80% of the professions and made it into a crappy third person shooter. Otherwise I'd still be playing it.

Planetside is another great game, the only decent MMOFPS that exists. I've been playing on and off for about 8 years now. It's a little dated but they are making a sequel which should be good.

Other than that I've given up on MMOs until they offer something that isn't a massive time sink.

[TerminalMontage]

Oh man, Star Wars Galaxies, before they ruined it. That was a cool game.


I've stopped with MMOs too, subscription fee or not. The grindy, skill-less gameplay is too retarded for me. And I don't like games that use that gameplay either, like Dragon Age II. It's like a single player MMO, how frikken lame. Now games like TERA look good, and I would be more than happy to pay a subscription fee for that. TERA looks like a game that takes actual skill, not just, TIME. Generic MMOs you run up to a rabbit, auto attack, and get attacked, you can try running away or dodging attacks, and even though the enemy may be a mile away, you still take damage. I don't understand it. TERA, you can dodge things, you may not be the right level to fight something, but if you can learn it's attack patterns you can still come out on top. That's a good MMO.

[Amante]

I'm just waiting for The Old Republic to come out. I could use a good Star Wars MMO action in my life. Totally rolling a bounty hunter too.