Discussions: Paying for Pain

[GeekGirl]

<font color="#5A0097">In your wallet, or curled up somewhere in your junk drawer is a gym membership. Admit it, you have one. You paid an exorbitant amount of money for the privelege of putting yourself into excruciating pain.

Same goes for MMOs

You pay, in some cases too much, to sit and kill things for the soul purpose of collecting pixels. *

So that could explain why the 'free' MMO's really aren't working. Anarchy Online, Guild Wars, Rubies of Eventide, Proj. Entropia, Second Life, I mean just look how many there are ~ <a href="http://www.gameogre.com/freemmorpgs.htm">LINK</a>

If you're paying for it, you're more inclined to participate. You need to somehow justify that $12 a month by sitting and actually playing the game.

If a game is free, even if it's still a box purchase and free online play, is the draw nearly as strong? You're not seeing that debit on your credit card bill every month, you're not worried about cancelling your account because you're not paying for anything. It'll be there when you feel like logging in.

Then why don't we?
I've played most everything out there, usually just in betas but even then, why is it so easy to walk away from the free games?

<b>Why isn't the emotional investment there without the monetary investment behind it to guilt us into caring? </b>

What do YOU think?





*don't start - I probably have more pixelated possessions than most! </font>

 

[Jakal]

I feel that if I'm paying a monthly fee, I HAVE to play it. It's not that I feel like it, or that it's a great game. It's just that it's costing me money so I should get the most out of it.

Another big thing is other people. If you aren't playing with a team or with some friends the experience is worse. I have my own guild on GW, but when my pc crapped out I couldn't play. I got on later and half of the guild was gone and the rest hadn't logged in in months. I love the game, I think the grahics and world are superior to WoW, but everyone's gone.

Also, novelty. If a game can't hold my attention I don't play it, and I know others are the same way. A lot of the newer games are so focused on graphics they let the gameplay slip. UT GOTY and Quake 3 are some of my favorite games, mostly because I can play them forever without it getting old. If companies keep pushing the way a game looks, then we'd need another game in 2 or 3 months just to keep thing interesting.

Another thing about free games, is that you get the younger crowd in them. Young teens can get on and can ruin your fun with their stupidity. The same goes with just about every other game genre out there. Seen the "Chocolate Milk", Xbox video?
<a href ="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7986309503803248571&q=xbox+live">Kid on Xbox Live</a>

The way the kid acts is rediculous and you get that a lot of that in free games. Yes, there's normal and mature people online but I've run across many a child playing.

I'll still play the games though, as long as the novelty hasn't worn off. As long as the gameplay keeps me hooked. If I could tell the game makers out there what to focus on that's what I'd say.

 

[Rob Williams]

Personally, I just haven't found free MMO's to be attractive. Cost has nothing to do with them.. the quality is just not there. Commercial MMO's are updated at a steady rate and have larger teams working on them. I could have had bad luck, but no free MMO has remotely interested me.

As for me, I don't really have a problem with not playing the game if I pay for it. Actually, I have three current MMO subscriptions and haven't used either for over two months. I like to throw my money away. :/

I know what you mean though. When you pay your fee every month, you are giving to the game. It rewards you, and you feel like you actually accomplished something.

 

[BlindMonk]

Another thing about free games, is that you get the younger crowd in them. Young teens can get on and can ruin your fun with their stupidity. The same goes with just about every other game genre out there. Seen the "Chocolate Milk", Xbox video?
<a href ="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7986309503803248571&q=xbox+live">Kid on Xbox Live</a>

What compounds that specific situation is the fact the Xbox Live service costs money.

Replying to the topic, I'd agree that money on the line demands activity and attention. But the energy and involvement with gaming is not diminished with the stand alone purchases. I do not (and for now, will not) pay any monthly fee and yet I'm very much involved in gaming and have been since I first started. My incentives to play are simply good, fun games. The fact that these electronic experiences don't shave away my funds on a monthly basis is actually a reason why I love them so -- that I can have free fun for years and years and years and years...

 

[fussnfeathers]

I play one MMO only, SWG. Been playing for a bit over two years, and while I've taken a few months "off" here and there, it's been pretty constant gameplay. For me, it's really two things. One, the game itself. If it sucks, I won't keep up the subscription. SWG has taken some pretty hard hits lately, due to SOE's ignorance of how an MMO should be, but the gameplay is still rather good. Two is the community. I'm fortunate enough to have picked a server that's mostly adults (25 and over), so there's very little juvie ganking around. Sure, there's some, but those people usually don't last too long. They wind up heading over to Bria, where most of the PvP l337 k1dz play.

Lately, though, alot of people have left due to the changes, so the community is taking a pretty hard hit.........so I'm not playing every night, and rarely for more than a couple of hours at a time. When I finally feel like it's not worth playing, ever, I'll not re-up my sub.

I would say, for free games, like Guild Wars (at least on the subscription end) it's easier to walk away because you're not tied into that "I just paid for the next two months, I might as well get my money's worth" mentality. But even then, alot of people have a hard time walking away.

If it's got the friendship aspect of a MMO community, it makes it more attractive. Without that community, it's just a glorified deathmatch server. Might as well play UT and call it a day.

 

[BlindMonk]

For what it's worth, I have yet to walk away from, say, the NES era.

 

[madstork91]

Games like guild wars really caught my attention while in development, however simetime between the first open beta event and the second, its developers seem to have started hitting lines of cocain pretty hard. The graphics dropped considerably, and took on a WOW cartoonish style feel to them. I lost almost all interest after that point, and when I loaded up my ch from the first beta only to find that my ELE/warrior combo sucked even more, and knight/monks were overpowered moreso the second time around, I was pretty dead set against the game. They literally took the main complaints about the first beta, ignored them, and made the problems worse. Thats a recipe for failure if you ask me. Ive heard that they fixed alot of balancing issues finally, but it was too lil to late as far as im concerned.

As for the other free from month to month MMO's out there, Ive heard simular horror stories... Ive learned in most cases you get what you pay for. Sure the month to month MMO's cost more, but there are a few of them that put more into development and effort after launch.