Subscription based games.

[J T]

I don't understand why people pay for these. Why pay for the "privilege" to play the game you already paid for?

Now, I do buy digital download games, which some people worry will one day no longer be useable if, through some unlikely chain of events, Steam goes under and they don't provide a way to unlock your purchased games. I'll place my bets on Steam lasting for a good long while, but I can understand why people are cautious about joining the digital distribution revolution when there is no absolute gaurantee that you will be able to forever keep your games.

But with subscription based services, you can only play your game as long as you continue to pay for it and as long as the company continues to offer the "service".

Why do people voluntarily sign up for that? It must be a different kind of gamer than me. I play a little bit of a lot of games. I like to sample a lot of them, but only occassional do I get into a game long enough to complete it. Actually, I often don't play them for more than an hour or two before I'm onto the next game. I might come back to the game in another month or two if it was good. I can't imagine dropping change for every month I want to play a game.

So, who pays these subscriptions? Is it the type of person that devotes themselves to whatever their new game is? Is it just because I'm a collector that I don't see the appeal? I don't get it.

[MrPopo]

I used to play WoW, so I can try and give you an idea of what my mindset was. Here's what I got for my money:

1. Server space for thousands of simultaneous players
2. 24/7 in-game support
3. Continuous content updates

I can't speak for other MMOs, but WoW did a very good job of giving you value for your money. I also was playing it pretty constantly, so the cost was negligable compared with time played. And it wasn't like I was playing a lot because I was paying. When I first was in the beta I found myself hooked.

[Ack]

You mean, as in many MMORPGs?

Well, having played quite a few MMOs, I can come up with a few things. First off, they're usually longer in terms of content than the average game, and can take a long time to fully explore everywhere. Eventually folks get it down to a science and do it quick, sure. There's stories of folks hitting the max level in WoW in, what, a couple of weeks? But when you start, it's nothing like that. It's hours upon hours of continual play.

Second off, since many are multiplayer, there's the ability to play with friends and go on various quests and the like with them, giving it an adventurous edge that many multiplayer games don't have beyond deathmatch and maybe a glorified capture the flag.

Third, consider how much some of us pay for a new game every month, then consider how much less a lot of these folks pay per month to keep playing their same game. And many of these games have monthly updates. While that's not such a big deal for some, I've played other games where the storyline of the MMO would change at the start of each month, based on what the players had done in the last. Basically the players drove the plot. It kept things interesting and fresh, and since they did a good job of making it effect everyone, even at low levels you felt like you were a part of it. Good times.

[Inazuma]

It makes sense to pay monthly fees for online games that are constantly being worked on by the developers. In addition to maintaining servers capable of supporting tons of players, they are always working on fixing bugs, improving things and coming out with additional content. All of these cost money to do, so paying $10 a month or whatever it happens to be, makes it possible.

There is another way to justify the cost of subscription games. Often times you will find that these constantly improving MMO's easily take up all of your free time and are highly addictive. You can play them all day everyday and never get bored. Because of this, you don't need/want to buy other games. Just pay your monthly fee and you can save money overall.

MMO Gamer
- plays one $10/month MMO for 160 hours each month.
- cost per hour = $0.06

Everything Gamer
- buys two $60 games/month and plays 100 hours each month.
- cost per hour = $1.02

If you are the type of gamer who moves on to a new game very often, of course a monthly subscription type game isn't for you.

[Hatta]

You can play them all day everyday and never get bored.

Grinding is boring. Give me a single player RPG any day, where my time investments are at least rewarded with progression of a story instead of merely increases in stats.

[fastbilly1]

I have only paid for three MMO's past the 30 days I get for the initial purchase: Planetside, Earth and Beyond, and Ultima Online

Ulitma Online just let you do things that no other game* at the time and it enraptured my curiosity. It let me just explore and there was (at the time) no shortage of groups willing to go do quest. Main server is still active, but private shards are common aswell - Lord Blackthorne is one of the few figures on my desk at home.

Earth and Beyond was damn near everything I wanted out of a flight sim MMO. It had a rock solid arcade styled combat system (think Xwing or Freelancer) and had support for 100s of people dogfighting at once. It was the closest Ive found to a game that gave me the adrenaline pumping that the battle of Endor/Death Star II did the first time I saw it. EVE doesnt even compare in my book. E&B was simply Xwing vs Tie Fighter but HUGE and had joystick support. Westwood killed the servers before EA bought them but there is a fan group working on bringing it back.

Planetside came out in 02 and gave me 200+ person battles in a scifi FPS with vehicles. Being a twitch cowboy that was too good to let go. I ran an elite group of cloakers for six or seven months. We would get tells from our sides actual commanders to do recon or move in and take a point first. My favorite capture ever was one where we all drove our invisible ATVs to the next point our team would have to fight to get to, made our way down to the hack point, left 2 guys, then did the same at another two locations. So when our main force finally took the first point, the enemies were pushed back three locations instead of one. That one got us in trouble... Its technically still alive.

No other game really grabbed me when I played a demo, free trial, or a buddy's account. So I understand the not wanting to pay for a game past the first time, but some of them have been worth it. I mean Ive got so many stories about those three I could write a book.

*I am not counting MUDs, Rogue Likes, or the like in that statement.

[Inazuma]

You can play them all day everyday and never get bored.

Grinding is boring. Give me a single player RPG any day, where my time investments are at least rewarded with progression of a story instead of merely increases in stats.

I have a little story to share with you.

In Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst, I played as a magic user and the best weapon for it, the Psycho Wand, was horribly rare beyond the point of absurdity. It was a 1 in 205 drop rate from a rare plant monster that would only appear in the caves area for some players (depending on what name they picked for their character).

If you run through the caves area normally, there aren't that many plant monsters, so you wouldn't come across the rare version of it that often. But you could load up a special quest for the caves that would have lots of plants right in the first 2 rooms.

So I would start an instanced room, load up the quest, go down to the caves, clear the first 2 rooms which would take about 2 minutes, exit out and repeat. If I kept this up, I would find 1 rare plant monster every 2.5 hours or so. The process was incredibly tedious, boring and lonely.

I kept this up for 6 fucking months. Finally the Psycho Wand dropped from rare plant monster #160. It took me 400 hours of constant reloading of those first 2 rooms to get it.

By the way, it was well worth it. I was the strongest magic user in the game and never saw anyone better than me.

[MrPopo]

It was a 1 in 205 drop rate from a rare plant monster that would only appear in the caves area for some players (depending on what name they picked for their character).

What.
The.
Fuck.

Rare drop from a spawn is normal. Rare spawn is something that was really big back in the day, but at least in WoW they dialed it back (rare spawns are for one achivement, and then there's one that has a drop of a different skin for a certain mount) and regardless it was pretty normal back in the day to force people to camp a spawn for a drop. But being locked out of a spawn because you picked the wrong name? That's juts fucked up.

[fastbilly1]

PSO had super rare drops based on your name. There were something like nine elements and depending on your characters name that was the element you were assigned. Each element had a different drop ratio. I remember naming a character so they would get the yellow element so they would have better meseta (gold) drops.

Neat in theory, annoying in practice. It was the only way to get the best gear in the game - namely the Eggblaster

[Inazuma]

It was a 1 in 205 drop rate from a rare plant monster that would only appear in the caves area for some players (depending on what name they picked for their character).

What.
The.
Fuck.

Rare drop from a spawn is normal. Rare spawn is something that was really big back in the day, but at least in WoW they dialed it back (rare spawns are for one achivement, and then there's one that has a drop of a different skin for a certain mount) and regardless it was pretty normal back in the day to force people to camp a spawn for a drop. But being locked out of a spawn because you picked the wrong name? That's juts fucked up.

PSO had about 8 completely different item drop lists. Depending on the name you picked for your character, you would be assigned one. The idea was to encourage trading among players since you couldn't find everything on your own.

I got all the items I wanted from my first character's drop list, then I'd make a new one and get the items from them, and did that many times till I had every item useful for a magic user. Pretty annoying system. I would have preferred to have every item available to me.