pay to play or shut up fan boy!

[Sephiroth]

well there seems to be a new trend in gaming lameness. pay to play, meaning not only must you buy the game but you must pay to even play the SOB! games like everquest and planet side are a few i know of. it would be so bad if it was a yearly deal, say $10 or $25 and if the game also had a single player part(not sure about planetside, but i know everquest doesnt)
hopneslty i thought about trying everquest until i learned u had to pay to play. if the game was also distributed free i could see it.

personaly i think it is lame to do such a thing. I am glad a number of larger compaines dont do that, like Id. It is just a reason to milk money out of a game as much as possible.

I dont care how good a game is, lame tatics dont apeal to me. just makes me want to bootleg it more just cuase i can.

anyway what do u guys think of it?

i see nothing good and i only hope this trend dies real quick

[Fredrik]

Just stick to playing Tetris for the Game Boy.

[Amaster]

It's their game, they can charge whatever they want. You dont have to play it.
In other words, yes it does suck, but at the same time it's ok. Maintaining a network for a game like Everquest costs a lot of money (I imagine). So I dont see why people shouldn't be charged.
My real complaint is the focus on multiplayer gaming lateley.

[DarkWolf]

Pay to play is fine, if you're not charged too much for the software. $5-$15, IMO, is an adequate price range.

It would be nice though if games included an option to play on the company's server or a private one. Like Dreamcast games, I have a ton that are online capable, but from what I hear most of the servers have gone down already. It's a good thing I never got into the console online gaming stuff.

[Goat]

yeah, the only pay-to-play games that i know of are the online-only ones, like everquest. the reason ur paying is to maintain the servers.

i played ultima online from january 1999 to march 2002. i happily payed the 10 dollars a month and dont regret one penny of it. imo, it was the best game ive ever played.

[zark]

Some pay to play services are quite good though... over here, XBox Live, the online service for the XBox, costs £40 a year which I'd say is pretty decent.

[Sharessa]

There's a reason I think Battlenet is one of the greatest innovations in computer gamin ever. I dunno...look at it this way: you pay $40 for the game, then $40 a month on your internet connection. Then they ask you to pay another $20 a month just to PLAY their damn game that you already spent half a weeks pay on? Lame. This is one of the reasons I'm getting out of video gaming.

[Zell]

yeah thats the only reason my dad woudnt get me XBox live..to damn expesive(and i wanted to play so many games online..phfffff)

[Reisal]

Pay to play is gay as hell.

[Draconio]

I wouldn't play any game that I had to pay a monthly fee for. It's just not worth it. But as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), the only games that do this are MMORPG games, a genre which I dislike anyway.

[Fletcher`]

P2P sucks, that's why Bnet is cool.

Buy the game, pay the ISP, play online for free.

[EllipsusD]

For games like MMORPGs I don't see any problem with it. Due to the nature of the game, the company releasing it has certain expenses in order for everyone to even be able to play the game (servers, upkeep, etc.)

[Doom_Dude]

I hate the thought of paying a monthly fee to play.

Monthy fees for MMORPG's fails it.

[Gokuma]

I used to play Ultima Online. I stopped.

[DooMBoy]

I can understand a simple fee one time only, but paying monthly is not only costly after a while, it's also not worth it.

[fraggle]

To be honest, I think its probably more sensible for games where the company has to pay costs for running lots of servers.

With games like Quake 3, the only servers Id has to run are the master servers, and the actual game servers are run by the users, so the load is off Id's shoulders. For games like PlanetSide the servers are presumably centralised and run by the company. Therefore its not unreasonable to pay them to maintain the servers and for their bandwidth costs.

However, I dont think that if you're paying to play then there should be an initial charge for the software.

[sargebaldy]

i don't pay anything that's 'pay to play'. if you're going to make a game like that at least make it free, what kind of loser pays $50 for a game then an additional $10 every month... such a ripoff.

[Goat]

fraggle said:

However, I dont think that if you're paying to play then there should be an initial charge for the software.

then if it were free then a bunch of jackasses would just take like 10 copies for the hell of it. thats a lot to lose if theres a manual and the game itself. people would take them just for the sake of taking them kinda like people do with aol cds

[Draconio]

Goat said:

then if it were free then a bunch of jackasses would just take like 10 copies for the hell of it. thats a lot to lose if theres a manual and the game itself. people would take them just for the sake of taking them kinda like people do with aol cds

Ever heard of downloadable software?

[Goat]

thats an idea

[sargebaldy]

heh of course it'll cost something if you buy it packaged. i paid $10 for a copy of quake shareware once. i think making it freely downloadable and charging around $5 or $10 for people who want a manual or can't download it and then charging monthly is a fair deal. it doesn't make sense to have to pay for something and then keep on having to pay for it. one or the other should be sufficient.

and if the point is to pay for server costs, why not let people set up their own servers instead and just charge a regular price for the game?

[Aliotroph?]

sargebaldy said:

i don't pay anything that's 'pay to play'. if you're going to make a game like that at least make it free, what kind of loser pays $50 for a game then an additional $10 every month... such a ripoff.

That's like saying "What kind of loser pays $400 for a TV and then pays $30/month for cable... such a ripoff."

It seems to work. Would be neat to have an online game that essentially uses P2P software so there is no big network. The company's server would only need to maintain a user database. I guess that's pretty similar to most online games except for this the state of the game world would need to be updated for all the client users. Hmm...

[sargebaldy]

the first difference is, people can and will gladly run a server for free. whereas cable is a service that can't be shared for free. the other difference is that the game is worthless without a server, whereas a TV will still let you watch the basic networks with having to pay for cable (hell i don't have it).

[EllipsusD]

sargebaldy said:
the first difference is, people can and will gladly run a server for free. whereas cable is a service that can't be shared for free. the other difference is that the game is worthless without a server, whereas a TV will still let you watch the basic networks with having to pay for cable (hell i don't have it).

The thing is, (in the case of MMORPGs) there is a single world that thousands of people are playing in and people go from server to server to go to the different areas. Throughout, though, there needs to be a level of uniformity to all of the servers to insure that everyone is playing fairly. There are several reasons that people cannot run their own servers for these games. For one, the servers need to constantly be up and working properly. That means that Joe Schmoe who wants to run his own server can't decide that he wants to stop running his server and use his computer for other things... too many people depend on that server being up. You may say that that's just too bad for people, and that they should deal with it... but that's like saying that you should deal with the glitches in a game just because they only affect you some of the time. Secondly, servers are completely at mercy of the admin of the server. If an admin wants to act harshly against certain people, nobody can stop him. If an admin wants act favorable in an unfair way towards certain people, there is again nothing that anyone else can do about it. Since what you are suggesting completely relies on the voluntary support of individuals, there would be nothing to stop people from making their own servers and acting like that. Lastly, how many people can you think of that have servers capable of handling the kind of traffic that a game like that would have? We're talking about thousands of people passing through freely every day, which isn't even to mention the issue of connectivity between (servers) certain areas (what would you do if the guy running the server for the area you want to visit next decides to quit the game so he can look at porn?).

There are some situations where it's best to have individuals running their own servers, but there are also plenty of games (and most of the selection of games that make you pay to play them) where that just does not work. It's fairly ignorant to think otherwise.

[sargebaldy]

of course official servers are better, but some might not find them $10/month better, and it shouldn't be forced on the user to have to use official servers that aren't free. especially since they could easily run the servers off the profits of the game itself without the need to charge monthly fees, as evidenced by companies like blizzard.

[Sharessa]

Aliotroph? said:

That's like saying "What kind of loser pays $400 for a TV and then pays $30/month for cable... such a ripoff."

Ah, yes. But cable IS a ripoff. :)

[fraggle]

Aliotroph? said:

That's like saying "What kind of loser pays $400 for a TV and then pays $30/month for cable... such a ripoff."

This isnt a valid comparison. It costs money to manufacture a television. It doesnt cost money to make a copy of a piece of computer software.

[DarkWolf]

I have a friend who pays big bucks for those online RPGs, and I'm sure he has a ton of fun. But I have the same amount of fun with free MUDs and the like.

[Manc]

sargebaldy said:

of course official servers are better, but some might not find them $10/month better, and it shouldn't be forced on the user to have to use official servers that aren't free. especially since they could easily run the servers off the profits of the game itself without the need to charge monthly fees, as evidenced by companies like blizzard.

When you purchase the game, you are (or should be) aware of the monthly fee. MMORPGs will always have central servers, as Elipsus pointed out. It is just not feasible to have user servers for games like that all over the place. Games like this are 2 part, the software, and the world you play in. If you don't like the charge for part 2, don't pay for part 1.

Paying monthly for gaming isn't new, it's been around for years. MPlayer? TEN? You paid a monthly fee to be able to play games online on quality servers (in theory), OR you could run your own. That was back when dialup was still king of course, and running your own server was a less approachable option.

[NailGunner]

I agree. I tend to avoid the games that require a subscription "second half". Not that I'm opposed or for the concept, it's just not my thing.