Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How is it that MMORPGs can suddenly afford no subscription fee?
Guiyas
Member Posts: 1
Look at Guild Wars and Tactica. Both have no monthly fees. What revelations in the inducstry have suddenly led to people not charging a fee? Furthermore, can anyone outline the technology that allows it? I already know about instancing, but there must be other ways to keep bandwidth costs down?
Comments
sell lots of expansion packs. they used to be free. the real question is why did they all the sudden have to charge a monthly fee?
if you sell enough of the game itself, you can more than make enough money. if you make it free to play monthly, you get a vast VAST amount more buyers of the game.
there are plenty of mmo games that are free. the pay to play idea is more a new trend than it is to just sell the game at retail and maintain servers.
I know many of my friends wont play MMOs because of the subscription fee, they tend to gravitate towards Guildwars and WWII online since they have no subscription fee
its not a new thing, just many companies view it as a way to make more money and keep the servers up should the interest in the game decline as it inevitably does
The reason most of the big MMOs have monthly fees is because they are quite expensive to maintain. These fees, aside from the initial purchasing of the game, go toward server maintenance, bandwidth, customer service, advertising, etc.
Also the devs need to get paid (it is their full-time job after all)...some MMOs (like AC and SWG) have new content continually being put into the game (bi-weekly or monthly) as installments to drive the story and keep customers happy; patches and bug-fixing are being ironed out by tech crews...The money (aside from preorders) also helps fund preliminary expansion-pack projects.
So there's a ton of reasons why monthly fees are needed...and on top of all that, a profit needs to be made...that's how the company expands and continually provides entertainment.
What Anarchy Online does is have billboards with ads on them. They even have ads inside missions. The paying customers do not see them. Only the free players see them.
Its does detract from the immersion of the game to see an ad for Diet Sprite while you are killing monsters but what the heck the game is free.
Support Bacteria, its the only culture some people have.
First off- free to play will sell more games? OK....tell Lineage 2 and WoW that. They've outsold GW at least 5 to 1, I'm betting. At the same initial price point.
Second- the pay to play model was in place on MMOs from the beginning. The Realm cost money. UP has always had a subscription fee. EQ always had a fee. The trand has always been toward pay to play for anything worthwhile- even now, the only ones that can be considered decent and don't charge are AO and Guild Wars, and there's really no way to call GW an MMORPG- it's an action game. It's much closer to Planetside or Tribes than it is to UO or EQ.
And whoever said they have friends who play WWII Online because it's free- your friends will be surprised when they get a bill for $14.99 each month
Bite me, Turbine.
Stop. You missed something.
1a. There are litterally 20+ MMORPGs out. And ALL of them charge to play. You listed only 2. This means it is the exception to find a mmorpg that has no montly fee.
1b. GW is not 100% free. There is still a charge to get the game itself.
1. GW has just came out. GW is not yet a successfull MMORPG. IF Guild Wars ever makes it past its one year annaversary, THEN it can be said that it is a succesfull MMORPG that "does not have a monthly subscription fee". Right now GW is still an unproven, yet to be successful, experiment.
2. I have never heard of Tactica. Do you have any links to their main site? How many years has Tactica been out?
3. Right now there is only one successfull mmorpg out that does not have any fees. No monthly fee. No box fee. You do not have to buy it at a store. You pay absolutly nothing. It is free to download. It is free to play for up to 1 year. It is the revolutionary mmorpg Anarchy Online. And if you are wondering how they are able to do it? AO has ingame billboards, and ingame advertisements, for real life companies. For example the new movie "Batman Begins" has posters of it on the walls of the cities in AO. Same with posters for real life TV shows, cable shows, and other movies.
You also forget to mention that AO has reached the end of it's life cycle. It's old, and so won't attract any new customers if they have to pay.
But on the flip side if the let freebies in and let them get so far until "you have to pay to do this" appears. They may get a handful of new customers, which is worth it for them.
I think what he is saying is that there is a lot of gamers out there that just will not cough up the money to play a game ESPECIALLY after paying $50.00 just to buy the game. And I agree with that .... while lineage 2 and WOW has outsold GW I think that if the tables was turned and GW was out for a couple of months before either of them came out you would have seen the difference. Lineage 2 is building on a previous game and WOW is just building on a couple of games and had a hype that was second to none. GW is a completely new game.... it was a gutsy move and unlike SOE does not leave a bad taste in your mouth .
Time will tell if GW is successful, I for one think it is an OK game while not the best at somethings it is nice to know that I can take a week off or a month and it not cost me. I think a better business model is for a game to cost $20 then a monthly fee.
AO's in-game adverts are funny... rounding a corner while chasing a monster only to be confronted with a Motley Crue sign is funny... I like that idea but I think it would infringe on a FANTASY setting.
Witty saying to amuse you goes here.
1. The high price of buying the game CD.
2. The implement of a Cash Shop which allows users to buy better items than what free users can.
3. Have a special member service(like runescape)
4. Sell lots of expansions and make them p2p or sell expansions that have the 3 qualities that I just listed above.
These are some of the most common reasons why some MMOs are f2p.
Lol GW is not successful?? Well my good man GW is number 1 in sales in the US and Europe and you can guess what place it will be in the korean/asian charts (probably #2 because starcraft owns everything there
Guildwars is a massive success, only topped by WoW which has sold extremely well AND gets the company subscription fees.
Now how can they afford to be free? And free of fee they are, as is the question stated by the OP and not that it costs something to buy like every other game on the planet does.
They can afford that because of multiple reasons:
#1 reason why they can is that they dare!
plus
- they only maintain one single server because they have the world instanced 90%
- they don't guarantee bigger content patches (on the other hand they are delivering exactly that in the form of two new big explorable areas to come in the next weeks. which is definitely faster and bigger than Blizzard did for WoW...)
- they sell expansions every 6 months (about double the rate normal MMORPGs do)
- they sell more of the initial game due to not burden the player with A: a fee and B: forced longtime commitement to the game
We will see if they can keep up the game (=maintaining the server and providing good enough to be bought expansions) for some years as they stated or if they can't but judging from how the game fares and is supported right now, they are doing pretty damn good!
My guess is that Guildwars will stay for quite some time but due to it's non massive world style it will not be a challenger for true MMORPGs. And the good thing is that maybe some MMORPGs will lower their fees or try to scratch them too...
Well on this site youll hear a bunch of know it alls telling you that companies charge a monthly due to very high maintenance fees etc, these people are the ones who have absolutely no problem paying 14.95 and up a month, and claim that anyone who doesnt is a kid without a credit card crying, lol anyways the actual reason for companies suddenly having no monthly is that ther is no need for a monthly and never has been. You look at the a few years ago with online gaming with the diablo, icewind dale, NWN, warcraft, starcraft, C&C , these game never required a monthly why because server maintenance isnt very costly i work on networks on a daily basis, so i do know what i am talking about.
I feel the only reason why some companies have this insane monthly fee for ther crappy games, is either the ran out of funding money and released an unfinished product, they spent too much money making it and need to pay back funders or just pure greed, all i have to say is that if ther was a need for P2P then blizzard microsoft and every other pc game co would be extinct.
GW an tactica are probably the first major mmo' releases in yrs to have no fee, and they are right to do so just do the math people GW has sold how many copies so far 500,000+ at 50$ a pop, now if your trying to tell me that this isnt enough to keep the game going for free then do the math again, i also imagine that GW has sold more since the last time i checked and will definately continue to sell in the future due to No Fee. All i am saying is that dont listen to the Fanbois on here server costs arent that high and dev team paychecks shouldnt like a professional sports contract as long as thers no greed we will see alot of no fee games. but then again our sad world is full of it. peace
Guild Wars isn't an MMO. There is NO large MMORPG that is free. The problem with trying to make a real MMORPG free is that bandwidth goes up exponentially with more people in an area. By limiting game play to instanced zones, GW has managed to drastically cut gameplay compared to real MMOs where dozens or even hundreds of people will be actively playing the game together in a given area.
GW has also yet to prove it can pull this off over the long haul. It is unknown yet how the continued developement of the game will work. How well will CS be maintained? How frequently will patches to introduce bug fixes and other tweaks happen? How up to date will the game remain over the years? How much and how frequently will they have to release expansions to cover their costs? And, most importantly for other companies who might think of creating a similar game, how much of a profit does it turn for the company? For now, the answer to those questions will just have to wait.
Since when have you not had to pay for expansion packs? As far back as i can remember no MMO i've played gives away free expansion packs. Maybe DAoC have done but thats not USED to be free because they never did "used to be" in the first place.
Just so no one is confused here GW doesn't charge for updates and it also releases content for free as well (not to be confused with expansion packs). GW is releasing two new areas for free that players can explore over the summer.
The way they're going to get money is by providing expansion packs about the size of the original game every year. You don't have to buy the expansion packs and you can still play with your friends in the new expansion areas even if they don't have it (this is probably done by grouping with them and zoning in).
I think the real reason many MMOs havn't taken this type of payment system is because either:
1) Its a new system and it hasn't been tested and untested revenue systems + business don't mix
2) Theres no reason to switch to a system which generates less money.
I think we can all agree that the result of Guildwars success will determine wheather more businesses use this type of payment system.
-----------------------------
Want to get into the game industry? Read the game business advice guide.
Also read GameDev and Gamasutra
Download Impulse - Like steam but only DRM Free Games
Lets see, first thing, Guild Wars, it's already been mentioned about the expansion packs, lower maintenance, etc. Let's not forget the fact that NCsoft are the same people who bring us Lineage, with the 80 billion people subscribing to it in Korea, I don't think they'll have a money problem any time soon.
I remember when EQ first came out, I wanted to try it, but was vehemently opposed to pay a monthly subscription to play a game I just spent $50 on. I was into fps games, and was having a blast there doing the tribes and quakes and unreals that had no fees. I thought that if enough people didn't pay a monthly fee to play, maybe the idea would go away. Oops, didn't happen. I think it was about a year ago I read that Sony was making 5 million dollars A MONTH on subscription fees for Everquest! Thats about 325000 subscribers. FOR ONE GAME! Now I know bandwidth is expensive, devs need to get paid, maintain and update the game and all.... but ya think 5 mil a month gets spent on all that?? Once I heard that, I knew it was going to be the next big thing for gaming companies, because they are in business to make a profit. And as great as a lot of those fps games are/were, once they sold a box, they weren't getting any more money from that customer again. Unless they did a sequel. A lot of good companies fell by the wayside because they couldn't keep supporting a game a year or 2 after release.
So the pendulum swung towards every gaming company wanting to charge fees. They soon found out what a picky bunch of bastards we are.... hehe.... if the game doesn't have the latest and greatest graphics, sound, gameplay, we avoid it like a plague at best, or violently bash it in public forums. The mid level games with ok graphics and same ol same old game play, were not getting anyone to subscribe and biting the dust. So now perhaps the pendulum is swinging back the other way for games that aren't cutting edge. To get people to play an average game needs different revenue sources. Anarchy Online is at the end of it's 5 year planned story arc and has been bleeding players for awhile. The free to play for a year was interesting, and it's just been in the last month or two they added the billboards for the free people. I went back to check it out, I used to live in AO a few years back. The ads lagged my poor dialup connection something awful, and not many that I knew were still there. Not to mention it didn't seem like much had changed in the 'classic' AO, the expansions just added brighter and shinier things it seemed. But that is a different way to get revenue to continue their operation. And Funcom will be coming out with Conan, which seems to be high on everyones expectation list, so I guess it's worked good enough for them.
Guild Wars is an exception to the average game/no fee scenario, as Imentioned above, they are propped up by Lineage revenue, so they don't even have to sell expansions to keep it going. Since it's a seperate division or whatever, they will want it to stand on it's own legs, but if it falters a bit, they can still keep it going, no problem.
First of all not a single game you list here is an mmorpg. They are also all old games that required little server and bandwidth compared to today games. Those games also had no in game support, constant hacks, no updates, etc. So to compare WoW or EQ to those those games is a horrible comparasion. But then again GW might not be a good comparission because it isn't an mmorpg, but we will skip that for the moment.
GW has done its best to reduce their cost. They do not have multiple servers. They probably also have found ways to reduce bandwidth. Given how the game is done they will not need to provide billing or phone support. In game support is probably not as needed on other online games. They have less development staff and will probably keep it small. Lastly they have decided to make less money.
Now GW is not free. It has already been mentioned it costs $50. I would not expect that price to go down. Their expansion packs will most likely go for around the same cost. Their financial status will largely determine how often and how much they will charge for the expansion. But there is the hidden cost of paying for expansions.
Before I have all the fanbois point out they are optional I will admit you are not forced to buy than and you can continue to play, but this is what GW has said about it: "If you purchase new chapters, you will gain access to new regions of the world, new skills and abilities, new items, new professions, and much more." "You will have access to many more strategic options, due to the expanding nature of the skills, abilities, items and professions that you enjoy with each chapter. It would be similar to building a deck in Magic: The Gathering: The more cards you own, the greater the number of different playing decks you can choose to play. When you buy the chapters of Guild Wars, you will acquire a larger collection of skills and abilities from which to build your skill set."
So it is optional in that you can still play the game, but it is not optional if you are there to compete.
While there are free updates at the moment most of them are meant to address issues that have come up in the game. These are comparable to the fixes most online games have after the first few months of game play as well as bugs. I would expect as the game becomes tweeked that these patches will become rarer.
GW model is untested. I would not expect most companies to embrace this model. If a game sells for $50 and 500,000 people buy it then that comes out to 2 million a month. This does not take into account distribution costs, publishing costs, and retailer's cut. A company that has 200,000 subscribers at $15 a month will make 3 million a month. Since this is a buisness, then why would you pick one that will make you substantially less money? The only way this would works is if enough people left their current games and then bought GW or others. Then there would be a market shift. However, I doubt this would happen and it isn't just a profit issue.
The only way GW can survive is by selling expansions. If not the company will run out of money. Each expansion will therefore need to get most of its players to buy it. The fewer people buy it the fewer chances of their being anything free added to the game without expansion. Further the more likely that the project will fail and the developers will move on to other projects. So expect each expansion to be a must have. What this means in terms of content, items, levels, classes, balance, etc we will have to wait on.
If GW sells 2 expansions a year at $50. That will be the equivelant of paying $8.30 a month. So either way you are going to be paying. Whether it is every month of at the store, they are still going to get your money. And if enough people choose NOT to buy the expansion then the game dies. Talk about motivation to buy the expansions!
First of they're realeasing two new areas for free comming out this summer.
Secondly its only going to be 1 expansion a year around the size of the orginal game.
If it didn't make them money then they would have shelved the projects months/years back.
-----------------------------
Want to get into the game industry? Read the game business advice guide.
Also read GameDev and Gamasutra
Download Impulse - Like steam but only DRM Free Games
First just because they are adding new content now doesn't mean they will continue to do so. Further such additions could have been left over from development prior to the games launch and are meant as a way to show players what a good company they are for giving you extra content for free. Remember they are trying to attract and keep new players at the begining. So to assume after such a short amount of time this is going to be how things are done is a bad assumption.
Second, there is nothing on their site saying anything about how many expansions they will have. Further, if the expansions will be the main avenue for new content then they will have ample material to release more than once a year and probably should if they want to keep people interneted.
As for your last statement I am so resisting a flame here. Simply I will point out that I find it highly unlikely that a game can make money during development!
In the end, GW like every other game is out there to make money. The no monthly fee is simply their hook. Just like you have car insurance companies that give you the price of its competetors. It is a way to get themselves noticed and attract people to play the game. Given that most people will only play 1 subscription game and the huge amount of competition out there, then this hook might be the best way for GW to launch and make some money.
haha mourning seem to be doing a good job at it
I actually think not charging a monthly fee is a disturbing trend. Roma Victor will have no monthly fee (so they say) and it was recently discussed here how that might affect the future development of the game. Only time will tell, but its hard to see how they will run the game for years and give it the attention we all hope it gets on a shoestring budget... logic tells you it cant be done.
To say that companies have had no need to charge monthly fees they just do it to profiteer is nonsense Im sorry. EQ and EQ2 are the best cases in point. You could not as a company pay the salaries and hardware maintenance costs associated with either of these games, whilst releasing the massive amount of expansions and in game developments SOE does without charging.
Some of us in life expect a free ride, some expect good value and some expect to get what they pay for. All those values are expressed in this thread. Ultimately we will all get what we deserve.
Go play the free MMO's on the list (I have), then go play the top charging ones (I have). There is no comparison in terms of any standard you want to name to measure these games that the pay list doesnt blow away the free games on. If your going to say Enchanted Lands can even be mentioned in the same breath as EQ2 then Id put down the crack pipe if I was you.
+-+-+-+-+-+
"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
-+-+-+-+-+-+
"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Look lets clear up some of the BS here.. Heres some stuff i got off the GW site.
There is a difference between developement and content creation. I assume from the statements they have made that new expansions will only include new content rather then new features (I hope the GWs program will be upgraded to everyone).
Now think about that. How many guys do you think it will really take to make an exapansion for this game? I would say no more then 10 max (not testing i'm talking about creating the content) for 9 months of work.
The only way we'll know if this expansion business is working is if Guildwars is still running in a years time and i believe it will be, its a good game and not having the monthly fee allows you to enjoy the game instead of lying around thinking "why am i paying for this again?".
I think it will also attract alot more business then other MMOs can because of a factor that no one else seems to have realised. How many times have you heard the old "I love this game but i don't have a credit card for the monthly fee" routine? This is not just kids, i know alot of my friends don't own credit cards so this type of payment system is great for thouse people.
EDIT: Please delete the last two posts i made, something screwy happened when i was typing this one
-----------------------------
Want to get into the game industry? Read the game business advice guide.
Also read GameDev and Gamasutra
Download Impulse - Like steam but only DRM Free Games
No Guildwars is not successful. WoW is about to become successful. I do not know how old you are, or how many years of school you have, but I suggest you talk to your economics teacher/buisness teacher.
I will give you an easy example:
You have 5 movies. Batman = cost 100 million to make. Star Wars = cost 200 million to make. Bill and Ted = cost 5 million to make. Blair Witch = cost 100 thousand to make. Crash = cost 5 million to make.
Last week Star Wars made 100 million, Batman made 50 million, Blair Witch made 50 million, Bill and Ted made 40 million, Crash made 25 million.
Star Wars outsold all other movies. But it is still NOT a success. Batman came in 2nd place in sales, but it is still NOT a success. Blair Witch, Bill and Ted, and Crash are all successfull.
Guild Wars cost roughly 15 million to make (estimate based on comparing its game engine vs SWG (25 million to make). WoW cost roughly 15-20 million to make. (same estimate.)
WoW is on track to re-couping all its investment money. It gained enough players to have done it in 8 months. It is on the verge of its 1 year annaversary. It will definatly be making a true profit by then aka be a 100% bona fid successfull MMORPG. GW is on track to re-couping its investment money... but it has not done it yet.
so you works on network but can´t grasp the difference between C&C and WoW?
Sorry if i sound skeptical, but that is because i am.
C&C NEVER had a central Server systems supported by Westwood, NEVER. All games are supported by GAMERS hardware. all the bandwidth is YOUR Bandwidth. Same for all games you mentioned. Battle.Net is mostly just a form of match making, they do NOT provide servers hosted by THEM.
If that wasn´t enough, have you seen any content update in starcraft in the last 5 years? Yes? yep! and how often they come? how big they are? right, now i hope you get the point
It is not that i love Monthly fees, who, in their right mind, would? But i realize the necessity of them.
I appreciate companies finding alternatives source of revenues as well, but keep in mind there MUST be a source of revenue. Be it from monthly fees, in-game advertisement or just sheer box sales. Guild Wars is an experiment and only time will tell (and prolly not to us) if it was succesful.
In-game advertisement leave me skeptical.. do we really want ads in our games? As long as they are discreet, it is prolly ok (i actually like AO advertisement Billboards), but we all know it is gonna escalate.
Have a nice day.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
the monthly fee is instrumental in maintaining the server operations of a particular mmorpg. Some mmorpgs have well over 10 high powered servers staffed by IT technicians and Coders as well as other computer personnel.
Your monthly fee helps to maintain these servers and to pay the salaries of the men and women who deserves the pay as it took them hours, days, months, and years of tedious code sourcing to make a game enjoyable to play for years to come.
While I have nothing against Guild Wars whatsoever, Guild Wars is not a MMORPG in a traditional sense. It is more described accurately as a studio produced instanced world similiar to neverwinter nights multiplayer. The server stress on Guild Wars isn't as taxing as a server on a typical high traffic mmorpg.
Also, Anarchy Online, while it is free, has some stipulations. A. You can only play the original version of the game and B. The game is well into it's golden years and it was a genious marketing ploy to bring other members into the game....once they play it for free some will want to buy the expansion packs...thus starting the monthly 14.99 fee.
Free mmorpgs is not a trend at all. Do not expect mmorpgs to follow a free monthly pattern at all. These monthly payments pay for the developers costs, production costs, salaries of various people involved in the project as well as profit for the company as a whole.
Expansion packs further increase profits of a game that would otherwise die off (as a game typically have around a year and a half shelf life).
It's not a ploy and it's not an attempt to steal or take advantaged of players. It's simply the way and life of a mmorpg. It'll probably be like this for decades down the road. Mmorpgs have expanded over 300% in the last 3 years in terms of people playing them for the first time (with the fees) so it's here to stay.
Hope that helps
PS dont compare Diablo, C&C, NwN, and others to a mmorpg. that's like comparing Kool Aid to a hammer. They are two completley different types of software.
The previous was supported by player hardware and server information. Mmorpgs servers are stored in a central facility sponsored by the publishers. Also, their server room is comparable to that of a fortune 500 company's server room.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Maybe you are right and all those numbers are supported by facts but I tend to think that you are simply guessing here. And if you take into account the development of both SWG and WoW was multiple times longer than GW with a probably multiple times larger team needed to support a true MMORPG over the years, MY guess would be that GW's development and maintenance costs are drastically lower than those you mentioned.
Also I don't see any reason why the looks or type of a game engine gives any hint on how costly it's development has been.
Movies on the other hand indeed have immense development costs and large movies like you mentioned do need several hundred million $ of revenue to be in the black.
From mere guessing I would estimate the total dev costs of GW lower than 10 million $ (1 year of paying 30 people 50000$ a year comes to a mere 1.5 million $ and GW has been developed in under 2 years, plus I don't think Arenanet sports 200 employees)
BTW since we are calculating here right now: someone above stated that half a million sold boxes at 50$ retail price would mean roughly 2 million $ profit for Arenanet. Well in fact it's of course 25 million $ and they definitely sold over a million boxes since retail started.
But as said above, I am only estimating and stating an opinion based on guessing, so I don't say any of you are wrong. Maybe my guessing is so far off that I am totally wrong
Does anyone else think that sony games tend to be more expensive? Look at EQ2 for example they're milking that userbase for all its worth, mini expansions, /pizza, special servers which you can buy and sell items its getting insane over at the SOE front. I stopped playing EQ2 when /pizza came out so i dunno.
On advertising i am completely against it because like everything it starts off small and then business want more advertising in the game and more power over where there adverts are. It just leads to developers giving in to advertisers. This is probablly something for a new thread really.
If GuildWars had a monthly fee would that bump its status up to a MMORPG in some peoples eyes? I think it would.
I wish people would stop getting all pissy over what abbreviations people use to describe a game you should really get some prespective on whats important.
Whatever anyone thinks GWs is good for the whole MMOG scene as it brings more consumers into it.
To get back to the point of the topic....
Its not thats MMORPGs can suddenly afford it, there have be free MMORPGs for years. Some appear to be free at first but to attaully enjoy the game you have to put some cash into it, for example project entropia.
Alot of games offer a "free" monthly trial (I'm talking about the downloadable trail) for example SWG, but after you're trial has finished you can't just start paying monthly you have to go out and buy a box with an account key and incredible the price of the box for the orignal SWG hasn't gone down at all.
As for the free Anachy Online 1 year trial thing this is only for new players, i had played the game previously and wanted to start up my character again but with the free no monthly but adverts option. After logging into my old account i was tricked into purchasing a month of subscription. I emailed the company and they told me that this offer is only for new customers not exisiting accounts.
-----------------------------
Want to get into the game industry? Read the game business advice guide.
Also read GameDev and Gamasutra
Download Impulse - Like steam but only DRM Free Games