Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Then you need to HOPE very hard. There is research (article posted on this forum a while back) pointing out that virtual goods are growing and a majority of MMORPG players do NOT pay.
Thus, cash shop is a growing trend.
Let me help you out.
There's this article, which shows substantial growth in the subscription market. The researchers also remark that subscription mmo'ers don't care for microtransactions. Oh wait, that doesn't show cash shops as a growing trend :P
It's one of the few articles I've come across which openly discusses real statistics of cash shops. Only a teensy, tiny minority of players in free-to-play MMOs actually spend any money. But when they spend, they spend really big.
But as per the first article I cited, subscription MMO'ers generally don't like microtransactions - especially on top of a subscription!
What has been the biggest, most successful MMO to be launched in recent years? Well that would be Aion, with their straight-up subscription model.
Even SOE's DCUO has backed away from their earlier plans to rely on cash shops, after they said they'd see how they worked out for CO. They're now talking about something more like a GW model.
And how many staff did SOE lay off, hot on the heels of the release of Free Realms?
So fail to see the "growing trend" that you do.
Both markets currently operate quite independently. Trying to mix them is precisely like trying to have your cake and eat it too.
Obvious you don't find all the relevant articles. Aside from the one i already quoted above .. and here it is again:
"The majority of the American MMO players do not pay to play but still a significant share of 46% does" .. 54% pay nothing.
"Many free-to-play MMOs rely on selling in-game virtual items using direct micro-transactions or a virtual currency approach, grossing another $1B in revenues."
"The study found that fourteen percent of gamers not currently playing MMORPGs would be interested in playing if they could play for free, while only two percent of gamers from the same group were interested in adopting an MMORPG with the traditional subscription-based model."
"While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States," Justin Smith, editor of Inside Network's InsideFacebook.com and InsideSocialGames.com, says.
This one more general than just cash shop in MMORPG. Nevertheless and i quote:
"while 15 percent of males aged 12-24 reported purchasing virtual goods, 15 percent of women between ages 35-44 did so, too. As Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, put it to me, the boys are getting virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while the women are buying virtual flowers on Facebook."
It's because their greed hurts our gaming value. The better the deal is for them, the worse it is for us customers.
Why is it bad that the Celestial Steed is in the cash shop? Well, because we can't play the game for it, and have to spend more money if we want it. That's a bad deal for the customers.
Why is it bad? If blizz makes the celestial steed cool enough so many (last time i heard, millions) people want it enough to pay $25 .. more power to them.
It's because their greed hurts our gaming value. The better the deal is for them, the worse it is for us customers.
Why is it bad that the Celestial Steed is in the cash shop? Well, because we can't play the game for it, and have to spend more money if we want it. That's a bad deal for the customers.
Why is it bad? If blizz makes the celestial steed cool enough so many (last time i heard, millions) people want it enough to pay $25 .. more power to them.
Instead of selling you in game items directly Aion offers you the paid subscription 'magazine' which comes with 'free' in game items, unless that got canned (I lost interest in following the game), didn't they also only offer certain event items as a seperate pay for item during their valentines event?
If game companies want to be greedy and people want to feed it, let them. Personally I've never found greed admirable, however it's disguised.
It's because their greed hurts our gaming value. The better the deal is for them, the worse it is for us customers.
Why is it bad that the Celestial Steed is in the cash shop? Well, because we can't play the game for it, and have to spend more money if we want it. That's a bad deal for the customers.
I almost agree with you Doubter, and this is coming from a person that doesn't mind cash shops at all. Personally I think that if we are going to be forced to have cash shops in P2P MMO's then these devs need to step up the cash shops. This may piss off a lot of people when I say this but this is what they should do, at least IMO.
If a P2P MMO is going to have a cash shop, then they should put everything in the cash shop. Anything you can quest for should be in the cash shop. This way you can either spend 50 hours trying to get that item or go pay a few bucks for said item out of the cash shop. This covers both the people that want to quest for their stuff and the people that dont. Im sure there are people reading this right now and saying that this is BS, what about the people that can't afford to buy items out of the cash shop? As I said, the items are still available for questing.
Honestly, I dont mind fluff items in cash shops. They are fluff and absolutely not required to play the game regardless if you feel that you really want that item but are unwilling to pay for it. In F2P games I think people should buy cash shop items and help support the game that they are playing. I have seen many F2P games go under simply because they didn't make enough money to stay afloat even with thousands upon thousands of players playing and liking the game.
It's because their greed hurts our gaming value. The better the deal is for them, the worse it is for us customers.
Why is it bad that the Celestial Steed is in the cash shop? Well, because we can't play the game for it, and have to spend more money if we want it. That's a bad deal for the customers.
Yeah, I was going to mention how great being greedy has worked out for soe. Who needs to focus on making quality games that are based on a passion to make fun games, when you can just design any piece of crap around a business model.
Paying for entertainment is really an interesting statement. I really thought the entertainment portion of mmos came from playing the game.
$25 for a mount is $25 not available to buy another game. Which is better for the gaming population?
That may be one of the worst lines I have seen.
If your playing wow and spending 25 bucks on that mount, your more than likely not playing any other game anyway so its not hurting the gaming population at all, your still a gamer and your still playing. MMO's are a special breed of gaming. They are meant for LONG TERM play. meaning your probably not going to be buying any other games for at least a year or more if you are really into that MMO. Regular single player games are completely different. I would gather that most gamers playing single player games probably buy on average 2-3 games a month. I know I used to when I played single player games.
So if we look at it from your prospective, then its not cash shops thats hurting the gaming population, its MMO"s in general. All those 10 million people playing wow could instead be buying 2-3 games a month and absolutely explode the gaming population. Sorry, to me thats like saying all those billions of people served at mcdonalds could have spent their money at all the other fast food places and it would have made them better.
It's because their greed hurts our gaming value. The better the deal is for them, the worse it is for us customers.
Why is it bad that the Celestial Steed is in the cash shop? Well, because we can't play the game for it, and have to spend more money if we want it. That's a bad deal for the customers.
Yeah, I was going to mention how great being greedy has worked out for soe. Who needs to focus on making quality games that are based on a passion to make fun games, when you can just design any piece of crap around a business model.
Paying for entertainment is really an interesting statement. I really thought the entertainment portion of mmos came from playing the game.
SOE is a special case. Until the clean house in their gaming division they will never have what I consider a true hit again.
But interestingly enough. If your not enjoying the game, you wouldnt be spending any money in the cash shop anyway. If you are enjoying the game and say you bought that cute little pet from the cash shop and always have him running around with you, did your enjoyment of the game go up? If so, then it was worth it.
For example. Back in City of Heroes/villians. They offered a booster pack that was like 5 bucks. It had a few new emotes and added some worthless spell you could cast on others. I bought that pack. One of the emotes in that pack, when you ran it, would start the earth shaking, steam coming from every joint in your body and you exploded into a pile of goo. it actually does KILL your character but you take no death penalty from it. I was playing and a bubble guy came up to me and he had his huge bubble turned on. I started shouting about how badly it was burning me and yelling for him to turn it off, then I set off the emote that caused me to explode. I freaked that guy out. He was appologizing like mad that he killed me and that it must have been some horrible bug. I LOL'd for 5 minutes. Just that ONE reaction alone was worth the 5 bucks. Now that IS entertainment you can buy and enjoy!
If your playing wow and spending 25 bucks on that mount, your more than likely not playing any other game anyway so its not hurting the gaming population at all, your still a gamer and your still playing. MMO's are a special breed of gaming. They are meant for LONG TERM play. meaning your probably not going to be buying any other games for at least a year or more if you are really into that MMO. Regular single player games are completely different. I would gather that most gamers playing single player games probably buy on average 2-3 games a month. I know I used to when I played single player games.
So if we look at it from your prospective, then its not cash shops thats hurting the gaming population, its MMO"s in general. All those 10 million people playing wow could instead be buying 2-3 games a month and absolutely explode the gaming population. Sorry, to me thats like saying all those billions of people served at mcdonalds could have spent their money at all the other fast food places and it would have made them better.
I think much of this premise is flawed, since it isn't based on any real data at all. (That said, I agree with what you're trying to say).
I haven't seen any data that says people that play WoW don't play other video games. I've seen data that shows that WoW players actually aren't MMO gamers usually, they're actually coming from playing games like Counterstrike and Call of Duty (at least when it comes to PC games). I imagine WoW gamers also buy other games in addition to WoW, but I don't have that data.
Regarding console gamers...gamers in general buy around 6 games or so a year. If you're buying 2-3 games a month, that's 120-180$ a month that you're spending on games...which is probably a VERY VERY small percentage of the gaming population, given the fact that most gamers only buy about 6 games a year.
I don't think WoW (or other MMOs for that matter) hurts the game industry at all, but it might keep players from buying some games, mostly because of their time investment into WoW on a continuous basis.
Games are cooking recipes. Minus the irrelevant costs of the physical box and DVD, you're paying for a specific combination of 1s and 0s which causes a game to be playable on your system.
You're already paying for "nothing", basically. Item shops aren't really that different.
The only thing that matters is whether the purchases compromise gameplay integrity (which they do in many F2P games.) That's the only thing worth getting upset at -- well you shouldn't even get upset really, you should merely treat them like you'd treat any bad game, by avoiding them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You buy something but they still own it and you are not allowed to sell it and to make it worse they even can take it away. Is this even legal? Cause in theory they could sell you something and the second they got the money take it back.
No different then your subscription, you pay to access these characters every month but you dont own anything.
Yeah but characters aren't deleted. If you worked on a toon for a few months and then found they arbitrarily deleted it, you would be pissed.
MMOs can go out of business and you are left with nothing. The skills, and appearance of your toons may change, but you still have access to them. So really, it boils down to determining the intentions of the people that sell you their "entertainment."
The scenarios I have mentioned may suck for you but people get less upset about them when compared to a situation where you were sold an in-game item and then the item was deleted after they took your money.
I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if I had earned it in-game, rather than buying it.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
True, and players ought to realize that only by supporting each other and opposing certain business practices, can we reverse or prevent them.
Tinfoil hat comments aside - it's us against them.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
If your playing wow and spending 25 bucks on that mount, your more than likely not playing any other game anyway so its not hurting the gaming population at all, your still a gamer and your still playing. MMO's are a special breed of gaming. They are meant for LONG TERM play. meaning your probably not going to be buying any other games for at least a year or more if you are really into that MMO. Regular single player games are completely different. I would gather that most gamers playing single player games probably buy on average 2-3 games a month. I know I used to when I played single player games.
So if we look at it from your prospective, then its not cash shops thats hurting the gaming population, its MMO"s in general. All those 10 million people playing wow could instead be buying 2-3 games a month and absolutely explode the gaming population. Sorry, to me thats like saying all those billions of people served at mcdonalds could have spent their money at all the other fast food places and it would have made them better.
I think much of this premise is flawed, since it isn't based on any real data at all. (That said, I agree with what you're trying to say).
I haven't seen any data that says people that play WoW don't play other video games. I've seen data that shows that WoW players actually aren't MMO gamers usually, they're actually coming from playing games like Counterstrike and Call of Duty (at least when it comes to PC games). I imagine WoW gamers also buy other games in addition to WoW, but I don't have that data.
Regarding console gamers...gamers in general buy around 6 games or so a year. If you're buying 2-3 games a month, that's 120-180$ a month that you're spending on games...which is probably a VERY VERY small percentage of the gaming population, given the fact that most gamers only buy about 6 games a year.
I don't think WoW (or other MMOs for that matter) hurts the game industry at all, but it might keep players from buying some games, mostly because of their time investment into WoW on a continuous basis.
Its not about wow but MMO's in general. They are (or used to be) an investment for players to build their characters and advance them along the story line in the make believe world. but now, since the wow generation, they are about short term, fast advancement with marginal enjoyment. Before I started my life in MMO's way back with M59, I bought lots of games, as I said, usually 2-3 a month depending on how hard they were to beat. But when EQ came, it was 1 1/2 years before I bought another game. And all of my friends were the same. We all bought lots of games till MMO's came out. The decline in the MMO's however has brought many of us back into the single player gaming world again. Or at the least, if its a good mmo year, buy 2-3 mmo's during that year, but that is getting extremely rare these days because the MMO industry has shifted from that original investment of a long term character to super fast paced action to be beaten and move on within a month or two of time.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
True, and players ought to realize that only by supporting each other and opposing certain business practices, can we reverse or prevent them.
Tinfoil hat comments aside - it's us against them.
The problem with this statement is that WE are extremely divided. There is those of us who want long term, meaningful gameplay and then there are those that want that super fast paced action and don't care about the character they create at all. And the problem is that the second group of US seems to be much greater of those of US that want the first part.
There is no us vs them and there never will be because WE are to divided amongst ourselves. It is the problem of the human race, everybody wants something different so the game companies try to make games for the majority of the ones that have the same wants.
The problem is the corporations are in charge of games. There is one motive for a corporation, and it isn't to provide a fun or fair experience. Its to suck up as much cash as possible via any means necessary.
These are the exact same guys that put the American people in the position we are in today, while they are still having profits numbering in the hundreds of millions. Corporations don't care about anything that isn't going to line their CEO's pocket with cold hard cash today. Because in 9 months they might be fired, because they ran their company into the groud due to their antics. These guys could care less about long term. Modern day vikings; rape and pillage.
$25 for a mount is $25 not available to buy another game. Which is better for the gaming population?
Oh, if there is money, i would much rather that goes to blizz. They make GOOD games ... diablo 3, SC 2 ... they haven't had a bad game yet, which is more than a lot of OTHER companies.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
True, and players ought to realize that only by supporting each other and opposing certain business practices, can we reverse or prevent them.
Tinfoil hat comments aside - it's us against them.
Let me know down the road. I'm completely and utterly interested in the game at this point. If by finished you mean a bare apartment should be described as fully furnished and move-in ready over one where they haven't even put the floor in...yeah, I still wouldn't call that accurate.
And I'd say AION is an example of how the "Hype it till it's in everybody's face" model is popular and functional, not that it's subscription matters.
Let you know what down the road?
The status of AION. How it's doing and all.
And did you mean to say 'uninterested' or was this a Freudian slip and you secretly sleep with both arms wrapped tightly around an Aion Collector's Edition box every night? :P
Typoes caused by going back fixing how I spelled it which was uninteresting, then adding some words to emphasize my lack of interest.
Aion really was in superb shape at launch. Uncharacteristically so in this market, eg. Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Darkfall, Champions Online, Age of Conan, Fallen Earth. Between WoW and Aion the only MMO I've played at launch that actually looked ready for launch was LOTRO. That admittedly suffered from some shocking memory leaks but the game itself was finished.
Nor was Aion overhyped. Having already been released in Asia there were plenty of accurate critical reviews of the game - which praised the good and spanked the bad. Again this was uncharacteristic for the market, eg. eg. Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, Darkfall, Champions Online, Age of Conan, Fallen Earth. I was a bit bewildered playing the game and finding it to be exactly what I expected.
Well, the game being put well together is one thing (and experiences may vary, while I didn't have problems with AION that I recall, LOTRO would simply not install for me without a horrible kludge of a workaround), but hype is another.. Sorry, but I found the game to be quite hyped. Hyped does not exclude critical reviews. Hype merely means they put a lot of money into their advertising campaing. If you thought I meant something else, sorry for the confusion, I merely mean they put effort into getting people to be aware of their game.
And personally, if you think AION was finished...yeah, it's like a barewall apartment might be finished. I wouldn't call it furnished though. Parts were I guess, but the rest...myself and my friends got very bored with it.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
True, and players ought to realize that only by supporting each other and opposing certain business practices, can we reverse or prevent them.
Tinfoil hat comments aside - it's us against them.
But how far are you going to take that? We all know full well that these companies do NOT need to charge £10 monthly fees in addition to the box price to keep their games running and updated. ArenaNet do fine without them. If you are against cash shops then shouldnt you be against monthly fees or a one off box price as well? Shouldnt it just be one or the other and not both? The fact that it has become an accepted standard, even for games over 5 years old is a joke. Paying extra each month to play a game on someone elses server when we have already paid the equivalent of a full price single player game is crazy. People say that they need this money to release new content......but then they often charge for that extra content anyway.
But of course people will never unite on anything. There are plenty of people that actually think these games with their additional subscriptions and cash shops are worth the money.......and while they do these business practices will continue to flourish. Such is life. Ah well at least decent looking games like Starcraft 2 are getting made as a result of all those extra charges.
You're not allowed to copy, edit or redistribute movies without expressed permission from the real owners, just like you are not allowed to with games. This carries over to whether you actually *bought* a DVD/Blu-Ray/X-Box game for home use or not - you don't own what is on the disc, you just own the disc.
Same applies to MMOs. You might have worked hard and acquired a wealth of items in your playtime, but the *owners* of the game have both the right to stop hosting it, and to kick you off for any breach of EULA - because you don't actually own any of it, and I'd love to see you request your virtual items via Fed-Ex after that. Or a refund for your time... because it's not gonna happen.
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Well, since there are no SOE games actually worth playing doesn't really matter what model they use to charge for them.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Obvious you don't find all the relevant articles. Aside from the one i already quoted above .. and here it is again:
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2010-03-10/americans_spent_3800000000_on_mmo_games_in_2009.shtml
And I quote:
"The majority of the American MMO players do not pay to play but still a significant share of 46% does" .. 54% pay nothing.
"Many free-to-play MMOs rely on selling in-game virtual items using direct micro-transactions or a virtual currency approach, grossing another $1B in revenues."
Here are some more:
http://www.edge-online.com/news/analyst-microtransaction-models-best-new-mmorpgs
And I quote:
"The study found that fourteen percent of gamers not currently playing MMORPGs would be interested in playing if they could play for free, while only two percent of gamers from the same group were interested in adopting an MMORPG with the traditional subscription-based model."
http://www.mmorpgf2p.com/2009/10/us-virtual-goods-market-to-reach-1.html
And I quote:
"While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to scale in the United States," Justin Smith, editor of Inside Network's InsideFacebook.com and InsideSocialGames.com, says.
... scaling in the US means growth.
http://gigaom.com/2009/07/30/12-of-americans-bought-virtual-goods-in-past-12-months-survey/
This one more general than just cash shop in MMORPG. Nevertheless and i quote:
"while 15 percent of males aged 12-24 reported purchasing virtual goods, 15 percent of women between ages 35-44 did so, too. As Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, put it to me, the boys are getting virtual swords for their MMORPGs, while the women are buying virtual flowers on Facebook."
There are many more such articles.
Why is it bad? If blizz makes the celestial steed cool enough so many (last time i heard, millions) people want it enough to pay $25 .. more power to them.
Totally! More money for the games industry
Instead of selling you in game items directly Aion offers you the paid subscription 'magazine' which comes with 'free' in game items, unless that got canned (I lost interest in following the game), didn't they also only offer certain event items as a seperate pay for item during their valentines event?
If game companies want to be greedy and people want to feed it, let them. Personally I've never found greed admirable, however it's disguised.
$25 for a mount is $25 not available to buy another game. Which is better for the gaming population?
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I almost agree with you Doubter, and this is coming from a person that doesn't mind cash shops at all. Personally I think that if we are going to be forced to have cash shops in P2P MMO's then these devs need to step up the cash shops. This may piss off a lot of people when I say this but this is what they should do, at least IMO.
If a P2P MMO is going to have a cash shop, then they should put everything in the cash shop. Anything you can quest for should be in the cash shop. This way you can either spend 50 hours trying to get that item or go pay a few bucks for said item out of the cash shop. This covers both the people that want to quest for their stuff and the people that dont. Im sure there are people reading this right now and saying that this is BS, what about the people that can't afford to buy items out of the cash shop? As I said, the items are still available for questing.
Honestly, I dont mind fluff items in cash shops. They are fluff and absolutely not required to play the game regardless if you feel that you really want that item but are unwilling to pay for it. In F2P games I think people should buy cash shop items and help support the game that they are playing. I have seen many F2P games go under simply because they didn't make enough money to stay afloat even with thousands upon thousands of players playing and liking the game.
Yeah, I was going to mention how great being greedy has worked out for soe. Who needs to focus on making quality games that are based on a passion to make fun games, when you can just design any piece of crap around a business model.
Paying for entertainment is really an interesting statement. I really thought the entertainment portion of mmos came from playing the game.
That may be one of the worst lines I have seen.
If your playing wow and spending 25 bucks on that mount, your more than likely not playing any other game anyway so its not hurting the gaming population at all, your still a gamer and your still playing. MMO's are a special breed of gaming. They are meant for LONG TERM play. meaning your probably not going to be buying any other games for at least a year or more if you are really into that MMO. Regular single player games are completely different. I would gather that most gamers playing single player games probably buy on average 2-3 games a month. I know I used to when I played single player games.
So if we look at it from your prospective, then its not cash shops thats hurting the gaming population, its MMO"s in general. All those 10 million people playing wow could instead be buying 2-3 games a month and absolutely explode the gaming population. Sorry, to me thats like saying all those billions of people served at mcdonalds could have spent their money at all the other fast food places and it would have made them better.
SOE is a special case. Until the clean house in their gaming division they will never have what I consider a true hit again.
But interestingly enough. If your not enjoying the game, you wouldnt be spending any money in the cash shop anyway. If you are enjoying the game and say you bought that cute little pet from the cash shop and always have him running around with you, did your enjoyment of the game go up? If so, then it was worth it.
For example. Back in City of Heroes/villians. They offered a booster pack that was like 5 bucks. It had a few new emotes and added some worthless spell you could cast on others. I bought that pack. One of the emotes in that pack, when you ran it, would start the earth shaking, steam coming from every joint in your body and you exploded into a pile of goo. it actually does KILL your character but you take no death penalty from it. I was playing and a bubble guy came up to me and he had his huge bubble turned on. I started shouting about how badly it was burning me and yelling for him to turn it off, then I set off the emote that caused me to explode. I freaked that guy out. He was appologizing like mad that he killed me and that it must have been some horrible bug. I LOL'd for 5 minutes. Just that ONE reaction alone was worth the 5 bucks. Now that IS entertainment you can buy and enjoy!
I think much of this premise is flawed, since it isn't based on any real data at all. (That said, I agree with what you're trying to say).
I haven't seen any data that says people that play WoW don't play other video games. I've seen data that shows that WoW players actually aren't MMO gamers usually, they're actually coming from playing games like Counterstrike and Call of Duty (at least when it comes to PC games). I imagine WoW gamers also buy other games in addition to WoW, but I don't have that data.
Regarding console gamers...gamers in general buy around 6 games or so a year. If you're buying 2-3 games a month, that's 120-180$ a month that you're spending on games...which is probably a VERY VERY small percentage of the gaming population, given the fact that most gamers only buy about 6 games a year.
I don't think WoW (or other MMOs for that matter) hurts the game industry at all, but it might keep players from buying some games, mostly because of their time investment into WoW on a continuous basis.
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Perfect World Entertainment
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I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if I had earned it in-game, rather than buying it.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Games are cooking recipes. Minus the irrelevant costs of the physical box and DVD, you're paying for a specific combination of 1s and 0s which causes a game to be playable on your system.
You're already paying for "nothing", basically. Item shops aren't really that different.
The only thing that matters is whether the purchases compromise gameplay integrity (which they do in many F2P games.) That's the only thing worth getting upset at -- well you shouldn't even get upset really, you should merely treat them like you'd treat any bad game, by avoiding them.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yeah but characters aren't deleted. If you worked on a toon for a few months and then found they arbitrarily deleted it, you would be pissed.
MMOs can go out of business and you are left with nothing. The skills, and appearance of your toons may change, but you still have access to them. So really, it boils down to determining the intentions of the people that sell you their "entertainment."
The scenarios I have mentioned may suck for you but people get less upset about them when compared to a situation where you were sold an in-game item and then the item was deleted after they took your money.
I can understand how you feel and if this was an ideal world I would be right there with you. But I understand companies are in this for the money and NOT for the gamer. It is a hard realization for many folks to understand. At one point I would say that companies were in it to make some money and to make the gamer happy, but I dont think that is really the case anymore. At least not on anything big budget.
True, and players ought to realize that only by supporting each other and opposing certain business practices, can we reverse or prevent them.
Tinfoil hat comments aside - it's us against them.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
Its not about wow but MMO's in general. They are (or used to be) an investment for players to build their characters and advance them along the story line in the make believe world. but now, since the wow generation, they are about short term, fast advancement with marginal enjoyment. Before I started my life in MMO's way back with M59, I bought lots of games, as I said, usually 2-3 a month depending on how hard they were to beat. But when EQ came, it was 1 1/2 years before I bought another game. And all of my friends were the same. We all bought lots of games till MMO's came out. The decline in the MMO's however has brought many of us back into the single player gaming world again. Or at the least, if its a good mmo year, buy 2-3 mmo's during that year, but that is getting extremely rare these days because the MMO industry has shifted from that original investment of a long term character to super fast paced action to be beaten and move on within a month or two of time.
The problem with this statement is that WE are extremely divided. There is those of us who want long term, meaningful gameplay and then there are those that want that super fast paced action and don't care about the character they create at all. And the problem is that the second group of US seems to be much greater of those of US that want the first part.
There is no us vs them and there never will be because WE are to divided amongst ourselves. It is the problem of the human race, everybody wants something different so the game companies try to make games for the majority of the ones that have the same wants.
The problem is the corporations are in charge of games. There is one motive for a corporation, and it isn't to provide a fun or fair experience. Its to suck up as much cash as possible via any means necessary.
These are the exact same guys that put the American people in the position we are in today, while they are still having profits numbering in the hundreds of millions. Corporations don't care about anything that isn't going to line their CEO's pocket with cold hard cash today. Because in 9 months they might be fired, because they ran their company into the groud due to their antics. These guys could care less about long term. Modern day vikings; rape and pillage.
Oh, if there is money, i would much rather that goes to blizz. They make GOOD games ... diablo 3, SC 2 ... they haven't had a bad game yet, which is more than a lot of OTHER companies.
No .. it is YOU against them. Do NOT count me in.
And I will enjoy it ZERO if it is not available.
So i would rather have the choice to buy it than not.
The status of AION. How it's doing and all.
Typoes caused by going back fixing how I spelled it which was uninteresting, then adding some words to emphasize my lack of interest.
Well, the game being put well together is one thing (and experiences may vary, while I didn't have problems with AION that I recall, LOTRO would simply not install for me without a horrible kludge of a workaround), but hype is another.. Sorry, but I found the game to be quite hyped. Hyped does not exclude critical reviews. Hype merely means they put a lot of money into their advertising campaing. If you thought I meant something else, sorry for the confusion, I merely mean they put effort into getting people to be aware of their game.
And personally, if you think AION was finished...yeah, it's like a barewall apartment might be finished. I wouldn't call it furnished though. Parts were I guess, but the rest...myself and my friends got very bored with it.
But how far are you going to take that? We all know full well that these companies do NOT need to charge £10 monthly fees in addition to the box price to keep their games running and updated. ArenaNet do fine without them. If you are against cash shops then shouldnt you be against monthly fees or a one off box price as well? Shouldnt it just be one or the other and not both? The fact that it has become an accepted standard, even for games over 5 years old is a joke. Paying extra each month to play a game on someone elses server when we have already paid the equivalent of a full price single player game is crazy. People say that they need this money to release new content......but then they often charge for that extra content anyway.
But of course people will never unite on anything. There are plenty of people that actually think these games with their additional subscriptions and cash shops are worth the money.......and while they do these business practices will continue to flourish. Such is life. Ah well at least decent looking games like Starcraft 2 are getting made as a result of all those extra charges.
*ahem* ~but it *is* like the movies.
You're not allowed to copy, edit or redistribute movies without expressed permission from the real owners, just like you are not allowed to with games. This carries over to whether you actually *bought* a DVD/Blu-Ray/X-Box game for home use or not - you don't own what is on the disc, you just own the disc.
Same applies to MMOs. You might have worked hard and acquired a wealth of items in your playtime, but the *owners* of the game have both the right to stop hosting it, and to kick you off for any breach of EULA - because you don't actually own any of it, and I'd love to see you request your virtual items via Fed-Ex after that. Or a refund for your time... because it's not gonna happen.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture