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Reason why Subs dont work for MMO's now is because of vanilla WoW.
Isturi
Member Posts: 1,509
Good question. Lets go back to vanilla WoW the game made you progress in a story line that was entertaining. It focus on enhancing our game play as we leveled up we were introduce to end game that keep us all coming back for years. End of story since we all here know the rest. That was what 8 or 9 years ago. Lets fast forward to today's games.
Today:
Yes game graphics are nice and we have faster computer but that is not the issue. The issue lies with the DEVS of todays games and I also blame the hyper active kids that play MMO games today. For you see that today's games get made with DEVS thinking that only hyper active kids play MMO anymore and they are sadly wrong.
A Fluke:
Vanilla WoW was a fluke nothing more nothing less and it just so happened that it was a sub game and sub games were the norm back in the day. Why?
Good question. Because back in the day we did not have a ton of crap MMO games that had to keep up money wise. We had high quality gaming that gave us endless hours of entertainment. End of story.
If gamers say that P2P is gone. If they are right then this will be sad for that would mean that high quality gaming would be gone also.
Oh yes I know I did say for one reason and it was Blizz fault. Well if you think about it all these other reasons can be summed up to being Blizz fault also. They help contribute to the down fall of MMO gaming with WoW.
We need a new leader in MMO gaming. I hope a gaming company can step up to the plate soon or it will be to late. Im sick and tired of talking about a game that was in its prime 8 or 9 years ago. I want to talk in a few years from now about Vanilla (insert game title here)
Comments
Subs dont work for mmos today particularly because the games quite frankly just arent good. No one is going to pay a monthly fee for something that isnt good lol. I mean theres no need for any type of advanced long drawn out explanation. Thats what it is.
also.. this guy
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/7u16q6/the-final-bosman-lazy-rich-people-are-ruining-games
I think you might have a case of:
Please check the nearest medical institution for some dose of realism.
These days ALL mmos are made by cash-grabbing and villainous devs who only want to make their game into an object of suffering and despair. The only demographic they aim for are 12-year old spoiled kids that want instant goodies and this makes ALL recent mmos DUMB and STUPID!
OR IS IT?... (*drums*)
Maybe the sense of wonder and amazement that you had in your youth shriveled away like a raisin and the result is a nostalgic MrScrooge that is blind for the fact that games changed for the better?
"Isn't a raid plundering villages in WoW or something like that?" - Robert Desable
Every game since wow has copied wow that's the problem.
This is the chicken and egg argument.
If you look at what happened in China, they never had P2P MMO, all MMO there are F2P with very rare exceptions. This created the bad quality MMO, because a F2P company has to compete with other F2P companies and it's a race to the bottom to keep up.
In China an average MMO lasts 4 months and most of the servers get shut down, this is what is going to happen in the West and it's already happening, F2P MMO do not last, they die and get replaced just like single player games. This system creates the most amount of revenue for the developer.
Vanilla WoW + TBC was one of the best games I've ever played in my 25+ year gaming career, then came Cata + MoP that are like worst garbage I could imagine when it comes to MMORPG. I'd still pay for access to vanilla / TBC WoW server. So yes, vanilla WoW is kind of the reason it's hard to justify a sub fee in these new games.
I'm hoping the next leader is SOE with their EQ Next -game. If not, I'll probably play Wildstar and Repopulation while waiting something great to emerge.
Every kid has mispent youth. i played quality MMO's when I was younger. But as for changing for the better name one game that stood up to WoW?
rich lore bumped off from warhammer.
Agree 100 percent. TY It seems no other MMO has duplicated that to the success tha WoW has.
I think you have the right of it for the most part.
Though I wouldn't say it isn't because they aren't good. I would say it is because they "aren't good enough".
People will play them but there isn't a lot of reason to keep playing them for the length of time that they used to play them.
On top of that there is an influx of people who aren't looking to stay in these games for years and are content to play a few months and try something hew.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
So.... thanks for proving my point..?
We disagree on a fundamental basis.
You're saying F2P is the result of bad games.
I'm saying bad games is the result of F2P.
The only reason subs don't "work" is because publishers won't support a game that can't sustain 1+ million subs, an expectation that was indeed set with WoW but has nothing to do with game design. Publishers want the cashcow flow of regular income through either subscriptions (WoW), yearly releases (Call of Duty or any sports franchise), or both (So-called season passes to yearly release games).
If they can't fit the game into one of those three models, then they resort to the Casino model, which is basically a cash shop with some sort of gambling hook built into it (GW2 lockbox keys, SWtOR cartel packs, etc).
You make me like charity
On the first point, I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it certainly isn't vanilla WoW. A thousand walls of quest text that have little in common doesn't add up to a storyline, even if occasionally it strings together three or four related quests in a sequence.
For the second, Internet bandwidth used to be very expensive. If you're spending $3/month per player on bandwidth alone and your average player only pays $2/month because it's "free to play" and he doesn't pay anything, then you have a problem. If you're spending $0.10/month per player on bandwidth, then a "free to play" model looks more attractive. Bandwidth probably wasn't still that expensive by the time WoW launched, but earlier, it had been.
Generally the F2P model is just the outright bare bones. Enough to call it an MMO and just enough to charge you for it. Enough to get the people that only stay a few months at a time to pass through and drop a few dollars.
Epiphany
Target audiance for MMORPG's = Tourists
Subs still work,i play two games right now both subbed Eq2 and FFXI.
It works if the developer and the players think it is just.In case of GW2,it was more them tooting their own horn and bragging about it,but in reality they knew their game did not merit a sub.
I did see one comment by a GW2 rep that did make sense and imo is the factual truth to it all.He basically said that they went f2p because it would take a MUCH better effort to warrant the sub.Meaning that a slight better effort would not warrant one.
That is sort of in a round about way saying he knows GW2 is not top of the heap but it is when considering the no sub.IMO it is a nice argument,but also IMO i NEVER judge a game by it's sub fee,i jusdge by it's worth.It just so happens that every f2p game is very weak in total depth and content and systems,so i usually am skeptical about f2p before i even enter the game.
PS trying to fix so many typing errors so the grammar police don't complain .../sigh.My keyboard plain sucks,sometimes prints out letters 3 seconds late,so words end up all muffled.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
F2P here in the west with previsouly P2P titles happened because over time there were simply more simlar titles than players to Pay to play them. Each company created their own "WoW like" game apart from one another or they probably wouldn't have without changing some aspects. Even though the MMO industry is relatively new the wake of WoW sucess has not yet died down.
Edit
Alganon did.....
Free to Play is the result of bad games when we are talking about Subscription based gaming.
I think you're pretty close to the core of the issue.
AAA MMORPGs are just outright bad now. They do NOT encourage people to stay around long term and build communities. So, monthly fees don't make sense. People burn through content and leave, so now they just sell content.
MMOs today just aren't well designed, not built to last. And yes, it is WoW's fault, and the fault of publishers for not realizing WoW was a fluke.
For me personally, subs don't work because I don't play MMO's super hardcore like I used to. I'm not willing to pay a fee when might only play a game an hour at most each day.
No mmo could stop the juggernaut that is called World of Warcraft in its golden years (prob somewhere in Vanilla or during BC) that is a given. It quickly outgrew any possible competition and created a gigantic userbase for its time. Idiotic dev teams tried to copy the succes of Wow but failed miserably due to just copy-pasting Wow and not going their own way.
Having an mmo and making it profitable was very easy when your population was 'only' above 100.000, you were happy then.
Fast-forward to now:
Mmorpgs are million dollar (see SWTOR as a prime example) projects that need large userbases to survive due to stupid quota (set up by managers I personally hate).
A much more crowded market is present now and as a result much more competition. A competitive market is always good for consumers, but the companies don't make as much money when the demographic is split. Both these things result in a market where you either are VERY popular or CLOSE your doors. Low and small userbases are not acceptable even if the mmo would still make a profit to the company.
Let's now discuss the anomaly called WoW: WoW was a product accompanied with a lot of advertisements and using a well established IP. Due to this IP and the advertisements it became a juggernaut in the market. Its succesfull blend of good design parameters was also a factor but a factor that did influence alot of mmo veterans.
That was then. Now WoW is a bloated and faulty version of its Vanilla version (according to most Vanilla players) and most of them want a vanilla client back. BUT the demographic that was attracted by the advertisements and not by good game design is still present and is fairly stable.
SO WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE STILL IN WOW?
I've met a lot of these people and I'm quite certain that most of WoW's population consists of these idiots. I'm talking of course about the people that think the following: There are only two kinds of mmos on the market: WoW and a bunch of idiotic runescape-like knock-offs that aren't worth playing. For these 'causal' players this is easy to justify: These people never go to mmorpg.com to check on recent developments of the mmo, they only play WoW because they have no idea that any other mmo exists that is decent and might be even better than WoW in its current version.
And trust me, I've met a lot of people that think in this kind of way.
CONCLUSION: WoW became popular due to smart advertising and recognition in the minds of the common folks and p2p doesn't work anymore because of competivity and the big revenue that is necessary to make mmo's 'profitable'.
Anyone watching his money AND checking out this site will always find a f2p solution that is either much better than the p2p mmo or at least as good.
For the record: I played WoW in its first month of release but quickly realised that it was not for me, but my personal opinion is not really of importance here.
"Isn't a raid plundering villages in WoW or something like that?" - Robert Desable
I would say subs work fine, if the game is "good" and not the average crap we have been getting for years. People will pay a sub for a good game, but they appear to be far less willing to pay a sub for a mediocre or worse game.Sounds about right, Sov. That would explain why the games with 5-10 years of expansions under their belt seem to be able to retain players better than newer titles. When you subscribe to WOW, EQ, EVE, etc you are getting years of content, an extensive existing community and a wealth of resources built over the years to turn to if need be. Players quickly see the value they are getting compared to a newly released MMO.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
sigh, another endless sub, P2P, F2P, C2P, H2P, H2P, S2P, L2P thread.
If the game is good enough people will happily pay for it. That goes for past, present and future.