quote:
Zaza wrote this stupid crap:
(ruined economy, casual play, tradeskills, essentially EVERYTHING except raiding)
The economy suffered some pretty big inflation for a brief between PoP and GoD, but they got it ironed out. Tradeskills were fleshed out and done in a likeable manner, especially after they added recipes so you didn't get carpal tunnel clicking items around in bags. You're not commenting on issues that are relevant to the game at this point in time, only problems that existed when you left. That's not they weren't good reasons to leave a game, just that you need to educate yourself on the current mechanics of the game before making an argument.
The only real hurdle in EverQuest is that the gap between the haves and have nots is still to wide. They did a lot of things good in PoP by not requiring you to run across zones or bum ports to get to a raid location and then totally went back on it in GoD and OoW, which is a shame. The tiered content was also eventually worked out in a way that worked pretty well. PoP was a pretty good expansion all in all, subsequent high end expansions catered to masochists too much and swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.
As I've said, SOE understands EverQuest, it's their core product. They know what makes EverQuest work and EQ2 *is* the perfect game for people who enjoy EQ for what it is. They've ruined SWG trying to turn it into EQ in space and have neglected PlanetSide. They'll probably do the same with The Matrix Online as well, although I'm not sure that product had a lot going for it in the first place.
-H
quote:
Mr. Parcelan stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
Vanguard is...what
A distilled version of The Vision designed to appeal to the hardcore that love epeen.
What it did succeed in, and what always confused me about SWG when I got into it, was the use of vehicles. You could run people down in PS. You could jump off your ride while it was still moving. You could FLY A VEHICLE IN THE ATMOSPHERE.
SWG never had any of that. Even when they incorporated vehicles, they were pretty shitty vehicles. The starter car sucked, and then it was almost a necessity (when they finally after some time implemented vehicles you could put multiple people in, which came after I started playing) that every other person own a multi-character ride or else how were you all supposed to get to the missions you were doing?
In PS, you could have biker gangs, and use their hit and run tactics to your advantage on a massive battlefield. In SWG, you could be zipping past on your BARC and some shmuck would pick you off, and it wasn't like you could immediately get back on your bike. It wasn't even really like you had much of a chance at all if he hit you.
Personally, I think they should've cannibalized the whole "vehicle" element of Planetside and put it into SWG. I don't even mind the idea of stripping down some of the complexity of SWG. It wasn't EQ in space. In SWG you were actually encouraged to use ranged weapons.
Likewise, the idea of "no zones" was bad. It didn't get rid of any lag. If you had a horde of people in one area, you still got lagged heavily. You could have had huge "city zones" folded into battle zones like tesseracts.
My favorite things about SWG were, in this order:
1. Hanging out with the AV crowd. They were, for the most part, pretty cool people.
2. Space combat. But if I could've gotten online space combat like that elsewhere, I might very well have opted for that and not SWG.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
Hellbender was listening to Cher while typing:
The only real hurdle in EverQuest is that the gap between the haves and have nots is still to wide. They did a lot of things good in PoP by not requiring you to run across zones or bum ports to get to a raid location and then totally went back on it in GoD and OoW, which is a shame. The tiered content was also eventually worked out in a way that worked pretty well. PoP was a pretty good expansion all in all, subsequent high end expansions catered to masochists too much and swung the pendulum too far in the other direction.
-H
Actually, with the addition of guild ports within the guild hall with DoN, they fixed the transportation problem somewhat. You could buy a crystal that would take you to Barindu I think it was in GoD, or Walls of Slaughter in OoW. This was only available in your guild's personal hall, but frankly there are very few unguilded people in EQ.
DoN also made EQ much more casual friendly. The LDoN-like missions enabled non-raiders to get very good quality gear without having to give their lives to the game. The base items before augments were better quality than LDoN things, points were not tied to different camps as there was only one, and the crystals that you used as points could be traded. Plus OoW had some decent armor quests. One version that was Tier 1 could be accomplished with a single group. Tier 2 were the pieces that required light raiding.
I haven't had much chance to delve into DoDH yet, so I can't speak much for that expansion.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
quote:
When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Talonus said:
A distilled version of The Vision designed to appeal to the hardcore that love epeen.
The gap between WoW's raiding game and casual game is still too great for my tastes, really.
In what twisted world does wasting time doing pointless shit equate to fun?
quote:
Mr. Parcelan had this to say about (_|_):
The gap between WoW's raiding game and casual game is still too great for my tastes, really.In what twisted world does wasting time doing pointless shit equate to fun?
Brad McQuaid called WoW too casual in general. Yes, even the end-game is too casual according to him, especially since it has instancing, which he dislikes.
Every MMO has pointless shit. Some have more pointless shit than others. Vanguard will be built on a pile of pointless shit. Some gamers like that for whatever reason.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
Peanut butter ass Shaq Talonus booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Brad McQuaid called WoW too casual in general.
Cause everybody knows the REAL money is in the ultra-hardcore parents-basement-dwelling crowd, right?
Brad McQuaid is a complete and total idiot. People only think he's cool because they remember the early days of EQ1 through glasses that are so rose colored they're fucking opaque.
quote:
Everyone wondered WTF when Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael wrote:
...The starter car sucked, and then it was almost a necessity (when they finally after some time implemented vehicles you could put multiple people in, which came after I started playing) that every other person own a multi-character ride or else how were you all supposed to get to the missions you were doing?
.....
When I Started, the only things you got after creation was a crafting kit, a CDEF, dagger, the shirt on your back, about 1000 credits and a melon. 
This also predates AVM having a shuttle port, it really sucked makeing those runs between Agro and AVM.
And I really believe the SWG had no idea WTF they were doing. You didn't have to work on alot of fluff or back story or anything, Many more talented people have already go done and created it....and how does it show up? You see a few NPC's from the books and movies doing fed-ex missions. Put in vehicles...and you only put 3 lame ones. They put in fricking melee classes, WTF was that? And the killer was at a time they were doing well in combat till like rifle exploits happened.
And the setting was bad, Cornet is supposed to be a big bustling city, a hub of commerce what we get is a rather small city and with not many people to be seen. Same thing could be said about space. Shit in the movies Mos Eisly had more people on its street than you see in Coranet or Theed. Fucking a Theed palace is this huge building with nothing in it.
Then the in game items...so limited. you had a total of what 6 regular armors, 1 faction set, 2 super rare drops, 1 rare crafted and that was is till the CU, then they added another 5. Not a lot of variation though, same with the weapons, for all the pistolas and Rifles in game, only 3-4 out ever got used. Also as a crafter, I will say The crafting system they had in game Was very powerful, but also stressed the game. You could EXP and upgrade a gun to some heavy damage, then slice it to insane damage, and the same went with armor. And to craft was crazy originally, you need a huge money investment to run harvesters and gennys, and then a huge RL investment of time to manage power and maintenance and survey out the shit, and then you had watch over them for resource shifts. I could log in, and spend like 2 hours alone just to get on harvest going.
The biggest thing I can see killing both SWG (outside of the NGE) and EQ2 is server population, both games when I play give off a rather empty feel. They should have merged servers along time ago. Also hurts the PVP, forget about engaging in any Space PvP, be lucky to find a declared rebel.
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Maradon! thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
Cause everybody knows the REAL money is in the ultra-hardcore parents-basement-dwelling crowd, right?Brad McQuaid is a complete and total idiot. People only think he's cool because they remember the early days of EQ1 through glasses that are so rose colored they're fucking opaque.
Well I think you have 2 different views here.
View 1 is That power gamers are the prime source of income, they willing pay for like 3,4-8 accounts at time, investing unhealthy amounts of time and money in your game. Usually will go out and buy what ever Add-on you pop out, and do it for every one of their multiple accounts to. Downside is you need to either put rather large time sinks in the game that throw of casual gamers, and keep working on high level content ,less they get bitchy, to the exclusion of low level players, casual players and even ironing out bugs in the game.
View 2 is making the game playable to the casual gamer. Down side is that you do not have people willing to invest lots of time and money in your game, if you make an expansion, the casual gamer might not bother to buy it. And any power gamers you do attract, will burn through the game faster than you could come up with. The upside is that the casual gamer is still spending his money every month to spend less time playing, but are more content with the game, and will not burn through content as fast. The payoff is when you get a lot of players that play the game for less than maybe 3-4 hours a week, but are still paying the same amount as the guys doing the unhealthy 20-30 hours.
Peter fucked around with this message on 12-18-2005 at 06:35 PM.
On the whole Brad McQuaid thing, He gets good points on haveing the Vision that kept everything together and maintaining an over-riding idea to keep the game in line. He gets bad points for putting elitist snobbery in the vision, Ever see that Dexters Lab when they spoof DnD? McQuaid really reminds me of Dexter from that episode. Also the forced grouping really burns my bacon when I see it in a game.
quote:
x--PeterO-('-'Q) :
Well I think you have 2 different views here.View 1 is That power gamers are the prime source of income, they willing pay for like 3,4 -8 accounts at time, investing unhealthy amounts of time and money in your game. Usually will go out and buy what ever Add-on you pop out, and do it for every one of their multiple accounts to. Downside is you need to either put rather large time sinks in the game that throw of casual gamers, and keep working on high level content ,less they get bitchy, to the exclusion of low level players, casual players and even ironing out bugs in the game.
View 2 is making the game playable to the casual gamer. Down side is that you do not have people willing to invest lots of time and money in your game, if you make an expansion, the casual gamer might not bother to buy it. And any power gamers you do attract, will burn through the game faster than you could come up with. The upside is that the casual gamer is still spending his money every month to spend less time playing, but are more content with the game, and will not burn through content as fast. The payoff is when you get a lot of players that play the game for less than maybe 3-4 hours a week, but are still paying the same amount as the guys doing the unhealthy 20-30 hours.
On the whole Brad McQuaid thing, He gets good points on Have the Vision that kept everything together and maintaining an overriding idea to keep everything in line. He get Bad points for putting elitist snobbery in the vision, Ever see that Dexters Lab when they spoof DnD? McQuaid really reminds me of Dexter from that episode. Also the forced grouping really burns my bacon when I see it in a game.
No, you only have one view here and it's the view that casual gamers vastly outnumber hardcore gamers.
McQuaid gets points for sticking to his guns regarding his vision, sure, but he loses those points and so much more for having a vision of an extremely shitty game.
quote:
Maradon! said this about your mom:
No, you only have one view here and it's the view that casual gamers vastly outnumber hardcore gamers.
....
But casual gamers are a bit more skitish than the powergamer, they don't have much invested in the game, and will leave on a whime, a power gamer is more inclinded to go and pay a year in advance for the game. And I am pretty sure they make alot more money selling the add-on and software boxes then they get from accounts. WoW doesn't have the time under it's belt yet to see which is the more profitable view.
quote:
This insanity brought to you by Peter:
And I am pretty sure they make alot more money selling the add-on and software boxes then they get from accounts.
ahaahahahaha
Please exit thread now. This is not your strong subject.
It's not something people hear about.
quote:
There was much rejoicing when Peter said this:View 1 is That power gamers are the prime source of income, they willing pay for like 3,4-8 accounts at time, investing unhealthy amounts of time and money in your game.
My experience in EQ was that it wasn't the hardcore raiders that had multiple accounts. It was people who played a lot but didn't have that same need to progress and be the best. Most raiders had one char period or one char and an alt that they leveled up. Someone with 5 or so accounts wants those accounts to hydra their own group most times, and generally is more of a soloer.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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This one time, at Peter camp:
But casual gamers are a bit more skitish than the powergamer, they don't have much invested in the game, and will leave on a whime, a power gamer is more inclinded to go and pay a year in advance for the game. And I am pretty sure they make alot more money selling the add-on and software boxes then they get from accounts. WoW doesn't have the time under it's belt yet to see which is the more profitable view.
Casual gamers are the ones more likely to stay around. It's the powergamers that chew through all the content and whine for more. Casual players are content and progress at their own rate.
I was a casual gamer for 5 years in EQ. I spent more time online than my friends who were hardcore raiders, and got every expansion as it came out. It's point of view that makes a casual gamer, not played time.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
quote:
Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about (_|_):
They've done fine with EQ2. They made it an enjoyable game supporting a variety of playstyles that doesn't have to be tedious to be good.
And now they are introducing PvP too...
Hoorah for the return to the gankfests that were the Zek servers
Fairly equal balance of power between the Empire and the Rebels, room for Jedi to start appearing in slowly-increasing numbers now that Luke has become a new Master.
There's plenty to be doing, rebuilding on both sides, shoring up in the wake of devastating losses or trying to secure a permanent foothold on a victory that's yet to cool.
The books, as it's been said time and again, aren't considered to be canon, so there wouldn't be many breaches there to worry about, and even then, there's nothing preventing SWG from taking characters from the books and putting them in the game (The name of the grand admiral escapes me, he was in the series set right after the end of the trilogy).
EDIT - Jargum gave me the right name, it was Thrawn. Khyron fucked around with this message on 12-18-2005 at 08:53 PM.
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Cavalier- enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
And now they are introducing PvP too...
Hoorah for the return to the gankfests that were the Zek servers
Need to attract more customers somehow. WoW owns most PvE players right now, and the hardcore of the hardcore PvE are looking to Vanguard. On the other hand, PvPers are really without a game right now and only have Darkfall on the horizons. Even some of the hardcore PvPers, namely those who've reached rank 14 in WoW and are bored out of their minds, are looking to EQ2 with this announcement. Considering EQ2 isn't doing anywhere near as well as SOE expected, I wouldn't say the introduction is a bad thing.
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Mortious stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
SWG made the mistake of continually making Jedi too easy to get and thus weakening the profession until it was laughable. I would've been happy to not be a Jedi at all if it meant only 2 or 3 people per server could become one and they were extremely powerful.
Implementing Jedi was a mistake period. Talonus fucked around with this message on 12-18-2005 at 09:00 PM.
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Mr. Parcelan's account was hax0red to write:
You need PvP. PvE can't keep anyone going.
I'd disagree. Balancing PvP vs PvE is an issue that will plague games that choose to go both ways. If you can do one or the other well for casual and hardcore gamers, a game will do well enough to survive. Its not necessarily going to take on the juggernaut that is WoW, but nobody can right now and attempting to do so is silly.
EQ2's issue was that their PvE wasn't good enough. Its improved incredibly since release, but that first impression killed the game. Hopefully SOE isn't planning to take on WoW with EQ2 with the PvP implementation, as they are trying to do with the implementation of the game change to SWG (according to Smedly at least). EQ2 will never compete with WoW, but if PvP is done well it could secure some longterm longevity for a game that had a shitty release.
What I hated was the way it was done in EQ, with all its loopholes. You could level to 50 (originally) then "splat" yourself back to level 15-20 (to get around the level limit on PvP) but retain your skills at level 50 equivs.. then go around ganking newbs.
There was an asshole Halfling dr00d that used to do it CONSTANTLY in Nektulos newbie zone, then run off and hide in the river with his waterbreathing spell while the high-levels searched for him. Soon as they left, he was back and gank-fest recommenced.
While you run the risk of being a level 20 getting killed by 60s in WoW, the newb zones are generally gankfree (because of the "Home Zones" idea. I've found that, overall, ganking tends to happen less that I saw it in EQ... and while it is done by the same immature kiddies that plagued EQ, at least in WoW they congregate into the same guild(s) and prey (mainly) on the same zones... and thus you can avoid them by moving your hunting/grinding zones (something that was less possible in EQ).
quote:
Talonus thought about the meaning of life:
EQ2 will never compete with WoW, but if PvP is done well it could secure some longterm longevity for a game that had a shitty release.
I always found it amusing that the whole premise of EQ2 was the "good" of Qeynos (oh the irony of SonyEQ being "good"...) pitted against the "evil" of Freeport... but with no way of actually having any fights between the two..
what was the point of having good and evil sides if you cant fight each other??
I bet Lobarror or whatever his name was, for the Kashyyyk Bladestick quest is still falling to the floor of the Rryatt Trail. They kept threatening to do an all-bug fix publish, but it never occurred. I wonder if they ever fixed the spawning bugs in the Warren?
There were times when I actually dreaded SWG patch days more than I anticipated them, because you just "knew" that half the stuff that went into a publish wasn't going to work, and the items that did work were usually the nerfs. Then there'd be a heartfelt Dev post saying "We're sorry about the issues with Publish X; don't worry, we'll fix them soon, and this will never happen again..."
The whole notion that there was "too much reading" in SWG... that couldn't have been a SOE viewpoint, considering all the text that was in EQ and EQ2....
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Cavalier- Model 2000 was programmed to say:
And now they are introducing PvP too...
Hoorah for the return to the gankfests that were the Zek servers
Again, do your research. In the current PvP system in EQ2, you purchase a champion (orc, goblin, etc.) and fight it against others champions in arenas with FPS-style game types that basically equate to deathmatch, TDM, or CTF.
-H
quote:
Mortious stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
SWG made the mistake of continually making Jedi too easy to get and thus weakening the profession until it was laughable. I would've been happy to not be a Jedi at all if it meant only 2 or 3 people per server could become one and they were extremely powerful.
That's an utter design nightmare Mort. So you have those three guys per server, what do they do? You can't make content for them since there's so few of them, you can't have them share everyone else's content since they'd just farm it solo, you can't make them PvP enabled since they'd be able to flatten whole cities by themselves, you can't make them even borderline balanced since no one would even want to be one if they were that hard to get. SWG would have done well enough as a post-ANH game with no Jedi at all or a pre-ANH or post-ROTJ game with something like 'Jedi Padawan' or 'Force User' as a basic class. Having a true to canon Star Wars game in which Jedi masters, Stormtroopers and Wookie pottery experts are supposed to interact as equals is pretty much impossible.
Also 'hard' in mmogs is far too often confused with 'tedious'. I really hope that one day someone will make one of those that is HARD but tedium-free. Guild Wars was a huge step in the right direction and doesn't get nearly enough credit for all the genere hangups they at least partially shed (good PvP, no monthly fee, actual storyline, unified server for everyone, actual character customization, ...). I hope some game will pick up where Guild Wars left off and make an on-line RPG that is hard and yet 100% treadmill free, with rewards only being handed out for completing situations that actually put you at risk(i.e. no grinding). Putting 60 levels of suck before the actual game to guard it from players who would dare to play it should be a thing of the past by now and probably would be, had EQ not cornered the market early.
quote:
From the book of Mod, chapter 3, verse 16:
Also 'hard' in mmogs is far too often confused with 'tedious'. I really hope that one day someone will make one of those that is HARD but tedium-free. Guild Wars was a huge step in the right direction and doesn't get nearly enough credit for all the genere hangups they at least partially shed (good PvP, no monthly fee, actual storyline, unified server for everyone, actual character customization, ...). I hope some game will pick up where Guild Wars left off and make an on-line RPG that is hard and yet 100% treadmill free, with rewards only being handed out for completing situations that actually put you at risk(i.e. no grinding). Putting 60 levels of suck before the actual game to guard it from players who would dare to play it should be a thing of the past by now and probably would be, had EQ not cornered the market early.
A true MMORPG without monthly fees would be impossible to run without spamming your userbase with ads, and we all know how annoying that would be.
GW is free to play because it isn't really a MMORPG at all. The entire world outside of cities is instanced, so you'll never see anyone else outside of your group. I can only make guesses as to how, but this certainly translates into huge savings on server costs. So, they can pass this on to the players in the form of no monthly fee required. I think GW is better compared with games like Diablo 2, and not WoW.
GW is overall a very good game, with the PvP combat being especially awesome. It is not a MMORPG, however.
quote:
Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Hellbender who doth quote:
Again, do your research. In the current PvP system in EQ2, you purchase a champion (orc, goblin, etc.) and fight it against others champions in arenas with FPS-style game types that basically equate to deathmatch, TDM, or CTF.-H
Haaaaahahahaha
quote:
When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Hellbender said:
Again, do your research. In the current PvP system in EQ2, you purchase a champion (orc, goblin, etc.) and fight it against others champions in arenas with FPS-style game types that basically equate to deathmatch, TDM, or CTF.-H
Uh...what?
quote:
Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Mr. Parcelan who doth quote:
Uh...what?
Pokemon Arena! Fantasy style!
quote:
Maradon! had this to say about dark elf butts:
Pokemon Arena! Fantasy style!
I play my orc in attack mode.
Draw your cards.
quote:
Maradon! had this to say about pies:
Pokemon Arena! Fantasy style!
Dark Elf Necromancer, I choose YOU!! Cavalier- fucked around with this message on 12-19-2005 at 01:12 AM.
*throws a red and white ball into the ring*
quote:
This insanity brought to you by Cavalier-:
And now they are introducing PvP too...
Hoorah for the return to the gankfests that were the Zek servers
He means in the projected February expansion Kingdom of Sky, Tok.
As for the proposed PvP, it's on separate servers. They had a poll going for a bit asking what we preferred and that was the runaway winner. So PvP won't ever come to the servers now, but I imagine they'll make some sort of char transfer available.
And I seriously doubt this is in competition with WoW. EQ had seperate PvP servers and people have been yelling for it for over a year now. Lyinar Ka`Bael fucked around with this message on 12-19-2005 at 01:28 AM.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Cavalier- thought this was the Ricky Martin Fan Club Forum and wrote:
What I hated was the way it was done in EQ, with all its loopholes. You could level to 50 (originally) then "splat" yourself back to level 15-20 (to get around the level limit on PvP) but retain your skills at level 50 equivs.. then go around ganking newbs.
I haven't heard anything yet about the PvP servers not having EQ2's no xp loss on death system. We only get xp debt on death, never xp or level loss. So unless they do implement it there (highly doubtful, it just doesn't fit EQ2's system) then this won't be a problem.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Cavalier- stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
I have no problem with PvP as it is done in WoW. I play only on the PvP servers there.What I hated was the way it was done in EQ, with all its loopholes. You could level to 50 (originally) then "splat" yourself back to level 15-20 (to get around the level limit on PvP) but retain your skills at level 50 equivs.. then go around ganking newbs.
There was an asshole Halfling dr00d that used to do it CONSTANTLY in Nektulos newbie zone, then run off and hide in the river with his waterbreathing spell while the high-levels searched for him. Soon as they left, he was back and gank-fest recommenced.
While you run the risk of being a level 20 getting killed by 60s in WoW, the newb zones are generally gankfree (because of the "Home Zones" idea. I've found that, overall, ganking tends to happen less that I saw it in EQ... and while it is done by the same immature kiddies that plagued EQ, at least in WoW they congregate into the same guild(s) and prey (mainly) on the same zones... and thus you can avoid them by moving your hunting/grinding zones (something that was less possible in EQ).
EQ2 is closer to WoW in gameplay than it is to original EQ. Your ignorance is showing.
quote:
Ruvyen attempted to be funny by writing:
A true MMORPG without monthly fees would be impossible to run without spamming your userbase with ads, and we all know how annoying that would be.GW is free to play because it isn't really a MMORPG at all. The entire world outside of cities is instanced, so you'll never see anyone else outside of your group. I can only make guesses as to how, but this certainly translates into huge savings on server costs. So, they can pass this on to the players in the form of no monthly fee required. I think GW is better compared with games like Diablo 2, and not WoW.
GW is overall a very good game, with the PvP combat being especially awesome. It is not a MMORPG, however.
Actually instancing is huge increase in server load. Instead of one Guk with 40 players and 120 NPCs the server now has to store four Guks with 10 players each and say 340 NPCs total, since in instanced dungeons players usually don't camp the same four spawns and more enemies need to be up at any given time for them to fight. Not to mention the fact that you have to carry 'dead' instances for some time before despawning them, since you don't want a group that zones out for whatever reason to lose all their progress, with each instance carrying a whole bunch of NPCs you have to track with it.
The argument that monthly fees are absolutely vital to keep some or most MMOGs afloat may be true to some extent for some games, but it is also a fact that at the current 15$ standard rate many MMOGs are incredibly profitable. Keep in mind that bandwidth, processing power and storage prices have plummeted since EQ went live and yet prices have risen over 50%. Blizzard keeps Battle.net afloat just fine without barely any non-Blizzard ads to generate revenue and while battlenet ist not a full-fleledged server network, it does provide character storage and some amount of verification to Diablo 2 and possibly other games, which is most likely a significant drain on server resources just due to the sheer amount of Diablo 2 games up at any given time.
So don't see the current financing model for MMOGs as god-given, it's not. The monthly fee may have been set up to only cover server cost back when a subscription based game was incredibly risky business, but right now a 15$ fee is just a fee like any other. There's nothing wrong with profit and at 15$ for even a casual 10 hours per month you get more value out of a MMOG subscription than pretty much any other way to spend that little money for fun, however do keep in mind that those rates are not a lower celling, given enough competition in the market they could come down.
But I fork over the fee every month, and unless I'm seriously pissed off, I'm likely to keep doing it. You guys think that casual gamers are more apt to get pissed off and quit, I think casual gamers are more likely to just shrug and plod along if they aren't strapped for cash.
Now I could see where someone who had the Access pass for just SWG and EQ2 would be seriously considering downgrading to just the EQ2...if leaving the Pass didn't mean you'd forfeit some of the advantages of having the pass.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
quote:
Mod impressed everyone with:
Actually instancing is huge increase in server load. Instead of one Guk with 40 players and 120 NPCs the server now has to store four Guks with 10 players each and say 340 NPCs total, since in instanced dungeons players usually don't camp the same four spawns and more enemies need to be up at any given time for them to fight. Not to mention the fact that you have to carry 'dead' instances for some time before despawning them, since you don't want a group that zones out for whatever reason to lose all their progress, with each instance carrying a whole bunch of NPCs you have to track with it.
Not if the instance only runs on the individual players' computers, not the main server. Again, I can only make guesses as to how GW does it, but that would allow the company (forget its name ATM) to save big on server costs and bandwidth, and thus go completely without monthly fees, getting money for the game entirely from software sales.
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The argument that monthly fees are absolutely vital to keep some or most MMOGs afloat may be true to some extent for some games, but it is also a fact that at the current 15$ standard rate many MMOGs are incredibly profitable. Keep in mind that bandwidth, processing power and storage prices have plummeted since EQ went live and yet prices have risen over 50%. Blizzard keeps Battle.net afloat just fine without barely any non-Blizzard ads to generate revenue and while battlenet ist not a full-fleledged server network, it does provide character storage and some amount of verification to Diablo 2 and possibly other games, which is most likely a significant drain on server resources just due to the sheer amount of Diablo 2 games up at any given time.
1. Blizzard gets hosting deals with their servers, if I'm not terribly mistaken. The servers and bandwidth aren't really their concern.
2. All of Blizz's games, except of course for WoW, have been P2P-multiplayer. When you start up a game, you leave the BNet server entirely. The only time data is sent back to the server is when your account changes somehow, like you save your Diablo 2 character or win a StarCraft game. The games themselves are run entirely on the machines of the players. This keeps server costs really low. Also, storing a Diablo 2 character can't take terribly much space, as you can pretty much store all necessary information about a character in a text document. No, it isn't very secure, but it isn't like anyone can just waltz into a closed server and start editting their character.
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So don't see the current financing model for MMOGs as god-given, it's not. The monthly fee may have been set up to only cover server cost back when a subscription based game was incredibly risky business, but right now a 15$ fee is just a fee like any other. There's nothing wrong with profit and at 15$ for even a casual 10 hours per month you get more value out of a MMOG subscription than pretty much any other way to spend that little money for fun, however do keep in mind that those rates are not a lower celling, given enough competition in the market they could come down.
Honestly, the $15/month fee kinda sucks, and I wish it would miraculously go back down to $10/month. I doubt that'll happen, however. The reason the monthly fee is so high, is because MMORPG companies have found that people are willing to pay that $5 extra a month to keep playing.
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Ruvyen wrote this then went back to looking for porn:
Honestly, the $15/month fee kinda sucks, and I wish it would miraculously go back down to $10/month. I doubt that'll happen, however. The reason the monthly fee is so high, is because MMORPG companies have found that people are willing to pay that $5 extra a month to keep playing.
Guild Wars instances work the same way as WoW instances, nothing is hosted on the player's computer, you even download the whole client from their servers as you play if you bought the game on-line. D2 does validation since without it cheating would be rampart on closed bnet, you could just tell a fake client to report a Windforce or whatever as having dropped once you had the protocol figured out, cheaters have done harder things to break a game.
Every single one of those companies gets 'deals' on their bandwidth and most run their own datacenters. That was my point about the fee, if more games went the GW route there would be actual pressure on other companies to lower their fees, right now we have fallen into a going rate of per month of 15$ that most of the industry seems to respect.
Y.O.T.C fucked around with this message on 12-20-2005 at 02:32 AM.
