xbox 360 fees?

[Pacpunk]

is there going to be a fee for people on xbox 360 fr xbox live? cause i know FFXI doesn't have a fee if you have a gold subscription, im just wondering, does anyone know

[Kyuu]

No, no one knows. It's likely you'll have to pay the Guardian's Fee regardless of your Xbox Live subscription level, though.

[Pacpunk]

i hope not

[Kyuu]

On 2006-08-13 20:12, Pacpunk wrote:
i hope not

Why? If you're paying for Xbox Live Gold already, then you're obviously getting your money's worth anyway, else why are you paying for the service? And if you have Silver, then you're not paying anything for the service.

Sega isn't going to provide content as well as update and maintain the servers for free, and Microsoft isn't going to develop content nor provide patches for them.

[Cross]

As far as I know, FFXI on the 360 does require a monthly subscription fee, and is basically completely independant of whether your XBL subscription is Silver or Gold.

PSU will almost certainly work similarly, and require a fee. That doesn't make it a smart move on their part, but then Sega isn't really known for smart business moves anyway so that shouldn't surprise anybody.

[A2K]

How is it not a smart move? Revenues have to come in somehow.

[Pacpunk]

that sucks ill just have to quit WoW then

[Kyuu]

On 2006-08-13 23:34, Pacpunk wrote:

that sucks ill just have to quit WoW then
That's something you should do anyway.

Two months clean and WoW-free for me! *cheer*

[Cross]

On 2006-08-13 22:30, A2K wrote:
How is it not a smart move? Revenues have to come in somehow.



I could go really in-depth on this, but then the post gets bloated and kinda boring to read. The short of it is, charging a monthly fee greatly reduces your potential playerbase. The number of game players who are willing and able to play monthly for a video game is relatively small to begin with, and that market is saturated (or close to saturated) already by WoW and every other MMO out there.

By making a game with a monthly fee, Sega is basically hamstringing the number of copies they'll be able to sell, and by extension, the amount of up-front revenue they'll receive from game sales. It's entirely possible to run a robust online service without a monthly fee since a well-made game can sell a lot of copies if it doesn't require a monthly fee; games like Guild Wars and Diablo 2 pull this off spectacularly. Other games don't even require an up-front purchase of the game, but survive based on optional, premium content and microtransactions (Second Life, Softnyx's games, etc), but that's getting a bit tangential to the thread.

The point is, there are other places that revenue can come from, and a monthly fee is universally bad for the customer, and occasionally bad for the developer, too.

[Ether]

The 360 version would probably sell a lot better if the online play only required a gold account. Xbox needs RPGs badly, and the addition of essentially "free" online play in addition to the single player game would be a great selling point

[hypersaxon]

It'll have a monthly fee just like every other version of the game, you'll just have to sucker up and pay the fee along with your 5 bucks a month for XBL, which in my opinion is no big deal at all. Or if you really care, you can go Silver and you'll most likely still be able to play the game. If not, like I said, an extra 5 bucks a month ain't too bad. You'll get to play PSU, along with other great XBL games.

[Kyuu]

On 2006-08-14 01:23, Cross wrote:

By making a game with a monthly fee, Sega is basically hamstringing the number of copies they'll be able to sell, and by extension, the amount of up-front revenue they'll receive from game sales. It's entirely possible to run a robust online service without a monthly fee since a well-made game can sell a lot of copies if it doesn't require a monthly fee; games like Guild Wars and Diablo 2 pull this off spectacularly.Up-front revenue from game sales is nothing compared to the amount of revenue you can get from monthly fees. Do you think WoW is making more money from it's sales of the game, or from the monthly fee that over 5 million people are paying? And WoW certainly seems to have a good sized player base.

Games like Diablo 2 and Starcraft can't be compared. Running multiplayer servers for those games is a much smaller and cheaper proposition than running servers for an MMO. Also, Blizzard didn't continually create new content for those games.

I honestly can't see why people think it's unreasonable for there to be a monthly fee. Sega has no obligation to create and maintain servers at their expense and then let us use them for free. If you've ever played an MMO, you should know that there are constant issues with the servers that need to be addressed. Then, everyone wants them to be vigilant against hackers. Then, everyone wants them to provide new missions, weapons, and items. And they're just supposed to provide the staffing and equipment to do all that for free?

[Cross]

On 2006-08-14 11:01, Kyuu wrote:
Up-front revenue from game sales is nothing compared to the amount of revenue you can get from monthly fees. Do you think WoW is making more money from it's sales of the game, or from the monthly fee that over 5 million people are paying? And WoW certainly seems to have a good sized player base.

Games like Diablo 2 and Starcraft can't be compared. Running multiplayer servers for those games is a much smaller and cheaper proposition than running servers for an MMO. Also, Blizzard didn't continually create new content for those games.

I honestly can't see why people think it's unreasonable for there to be a monthly fee. Sega has no obligation to create and maintain servers at their expense and then let us use them for free. If you've ever played an MMO, you should know that there are constant issues with the servers that need to be addressed. Then, everyone wants them to be vigilant against hackers. Then, everyone wants them to provide new missions, weapons, and items. And they're just supposed to provide the staffing and equipment to do all that for free?



That's (no offense) a really stupid comparison. Of course WoW is making more profit from monthly fees. WoW is pretty much the largest money-generating scheme in gaming, ever. It's also a completely singular case. The only (only) games with a player base that might be even a tenth as large as WoW are the Lineage games, and only because they were a huge sensation in Korea since their inception. PSU (or any other game, for that matter) is not going to be pulling in a playerbase or revenue stream even remotely close to WoW. Phantasy Star doesn't have the fanbase or public recognition that WarCraft does, and Sega only dreams about being as reputable as Blizzard with the general game playing public.

If PSU is extremely lucky, their subscriber base will be comparable to an MMO like City of Heroes/Villains, with maybe 1-2% of the players that WoW has (which will still earn them money hand over foot). It's just as likely (especially in North America) that they'll end up more in line with Blue Burst or Auto Assault, with only enough subscription revenue to really cover month-to-month cost, and not enough revenue from upfront sales or subscriptions to adequately recoup initial development costs (note that Blue Burst probably had no problem in that regard, due to being the sixth or so minor remake of the same game made in early 2001, but Auto Assault and many other games with those subscription numbers are in real trouble; PSU will not be as cheap to make as Blue Burst).
I don't think PSU is going to be a money sinkhole like AutoAssault, but the only real meaningful difference is that Sega is going to see a lot more sales generated from the offline portion of the game than people buying it to play online.


This is also ignoring the other thing I said, and the point I was trying to get across: subscriptions are sometimes good for game developers, and sometimes they're merely adequate, and sometimes they're huge disasters, but they are always bad for the consumer.
If I keep up a subscription, and play PSU one night a week for four hours, and some other guy keeps up a subscription and plays for twenty hours a week, I'm effectively paying five times the amount that he is. My only options for not wasting my money are to dedicate as much of my free time to PSU as I possibly can, whether I really feel like playing all the time or not, or to just quit the game altogether. Which do you think I'm going to do? Which do you think that the majority of gamers (not the majority of hardcore Phantasy Star fans) are going to do?

The server costs will not be extraordinarily high, either. PSU is more similar to Guild Wars in online structure than any other online game. ArenaNet not only kept Guild Wars running without a monthly fee, but they were a big success; enough to release a free mini-expansion in the game's first year, hold a worldwide PvP tournament with $100,000 in prize money, and still continue to work on new features and content for the game. I'm positive that PSU could have done the same.

In terms of ongoing revenue, there are also other ways to get it that don't dick the customer over as much as a subscription fee. Guild Wars stays profitable and successful (and has a lot more recognition in the general online gaming public than any version of PSO save for maybe Dreamcast v1 - the free one) from optional, biannual expansions. Softnyx games are free to play, but you can pay for optional items or whatever the hell those games sell. Other games use different business models based on paying directly for content, whether in large packages or microtransaction-style.

These business models are good for companies because players won't just quit the game once they aren't playing every week - they'll just play less (using less server resources), and quite possibly buy some content that they think looks fun. They're good for players because you can choose to buy (or not to buy) whatever you think is worth the cost, and continue playing regardless, as often or as seldom as you like, without worrying about whether you're playing enough to 'get your money's worth' out of a monthly fee. If Guild Wars puts out a shitty expansion, I don't buy it and I keep playing anyway. It's a mutual agreement between players and developers that they'll receive a good, constant revenue stream as long as they put out worthwhile content.


Is it unreasonable for them to charge a monthly fee? No, of course not. Is it the best thing to do from Sega's point of view? If the game is a smashing success, yes. Otherwise, no. Is it the best thing to do from the player's point of view? Absolutely not.

The increase in upfront sales may well be enough to sustain the online service for a good, long time, if they have the benefit of providing a good online service with no additional charge. If not, then optional content purchases are still the much preferable model to the player, and if the content is good enough, probably the preferable model in terms of profitability for Sega.

Here's another way to look at things: I've mentioned Guild Wars a lot in this post, and with good reason.
It's a game that provides an online service almost exactly like PSU's, a game world that's probably just as expansive, and has no monthly fee, yet still regularly gets new features (not to mention having a more than healthy amount of optional content that can be paid for).
If I am Joe Q General Gaming Guy, and not a Phantasy Star fan, then what, exactly, is PSU bringing to the table that warrants me paying monthly for it over a game like Guild Wars?

[zandra117]

The only reason that guild wars is free to play is because the company makes money off of the expansions, Guild Wars doesn't constantly update their servers with new content, instead they put those updates into the expansions and make you buy the expansion to get the new content. PSU however will be constantly supplying us with new content without us having to buy expansions, that is why there is a monthly fee.

[Ether]

On 2006-08-14 15:09, zandra117 wrote:
PSU however will be constantly supplying us with new content without us having to buy expansions, that is why there is a monthly fee.Please explain to me how they'll do that without hard drive support http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

[zandra117]

The bitmaps, character models, and stuff like that is on the disk all they have to do is put a certain code in on the server to arrange the raw data on the disk to make a new area. Basically the same thing they did with pso.

[Cross]

On 2006-08-14 15:09, zandra117 wrote:
The only reason that guild wars is free to play is because the company makes money off of the expansions, Guild Wars doesn't constantly update their servers with new content, instead they put those updates into the expansions and make you buy the expansion to get the new content.


New campaigns are in new expansions, yes. There's been plenty of free content, though. Last fall, Sorrow's Furnace was released. It was two large maps, and a chain of quests forming a story arc that ended in a fairly nice boss fight. For the obvious PSO comparison, it'd be like getting Episode IV as an update to your Dreamcast v1 disc. There was another series of maps that were converted into a high-level PvE dungeon earlier this year, and at the same time they added a PvP tutorial area and a training grounds for testing character builds. At Halloween, Christmas, and at the beginning of this summer, there were also mini-events thrown in that were generally more substantial than the PSO ones themed around Valentine's or Christmas or whatever else there was.


PSU however will be constantly supplying us with new content without us having to buy expansions, that is why there is a monthly fee.
PSO was supposed to be constantly supplying you with new content for a monthly fee, too. How did that work out for you? I know if I'd been paying monthly since 2001 when PSO came out and all I had to show for my $400+ of fees were one new area and less than a hundred quests (many of which were just added in Blue Burst to slow you down and make you replay the same areas in Episode 1 and 2 over and over before finally moving on; not really 'added content'), I wouldn't exactly trust Sonic Team's claims about keeping PSU constantly updated.

If something is already on the disk, that can't in good conscience be called added content. That's just charging you for the money to buy the game, and then charging you more money later for a part of the game they already sold you.

[zandra117]

they have to make enough money to keep the servers running somehow.

[Kyuu]

On 2006-08-14 14:48, Cross wrote:

That's (no offense) a really stupid comparison. Of course WoW is making more profit from monthly fees. WoW is pretty much the largest money-generating scheme in gaming, ever. It's also a completely singular case. The only (only) games with a player base that might be even a tenth as large as WoW are the Lineage games, and only because they were a huge sensation in Korea since their inception. PSU (or any other game, for that matter) is not going to be pulling in a playerbase or revenue stream even remotely close to WoW. Phantasy Star doesn't have the fanbase or public recognition that WarCraft does, and Sega only dreams about being as reputable as Blizzard with the general game playing public.
You missed the point of the comparison. You stated that charging monthly fees is bad for Sega because it drives customers away. The point of the WoW example was to demonstrate that this is, in fact, not the case. I've not heard of very many people who were on the fence about whether or not to start playing an MMO, and the deciding factor was the monthly fee. Generally, if a person is interested enough, they'll pay the monthly fee.

In any case, ten dollars a month isn't something to cry over. If you feel you aren't going to be playing enough for the month to make the most of your ten whole freaking dollars, then don't pay it. I actually saved a lot money while playing WoW, because spending 15 dollars a month was a lot less than I'd normally have spent on buying games to keep me occupied. A game like WoW, or PSU, can occupy enough of your time that you don't have time for other games, and so you save the money that you'd otherwise have spent.

[PhotonCat]

Sega isn't Microsoft and Microsoft isn't Sega. If you want Xbox Live you have to pay Microsoft for it. If you want to play PSU you have to pay Sega for it. That's how it is.
Do you expect Microsoft and Sega to get together and go "Oh, the poor little babies who are too cheap to pay need to have a break. Let's just charge them 1 fee and loose money!" It's not gonna happen.


The bitmaps, character models, and stuff like that is on the disk all they have to do is put a certain code in on the server to arrange the raw data on the disk to make a new area. Basically the same thing they did with pso.

That's if they think of everything they want to add ahead of time. Since there is no HDD support you can kiss NEW content good-bye. The stuff on the disk is only going to last so long before it runs out and becomes old.
IMO they should of required the HDD for the PS2 and 360 versions.

[Saner]

well Dreamcast PSO was originally a few months online plan, but it servers were still up 5-7 years after that because it was so successful. and that's just with 11 dungeons.


there will be new content because they said PSU will have exclusive weapons/missions, etc. online.

who knows maybe it's already on the disk but in any case there will be years of fun to be had as long as you pay attention to the present instead of thinking about the future, otherwise you might as well count the days before humanity becomes inevitably extinct, if you're that pessimistic. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[Ether]

On 2006-08-14 23:54, Saner wrote:
and that's just with 11 dungeons.


There aren't even that many stages in Blue Burst...

[Saner]

I mean forest 1,2 cave 1,2,3 mines 1,23 ruins 1,2,3

before the sequels.

[Ether]

There is no mines 3, it adds up to 10, you still fail http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Oh and no one considers those seperate dungeons

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ether on 2006-08-15 00:24 ]</font>

[Saner]

oh whoops. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

oh come on just because you can directly warp from like Forest 1 to Forest 2 doesn't mean they are not 2 dungeons.

they are 2 different maps that are loaded independantly. they are 2 dungeons despite sharing the same location name. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-15 00:26 ]</font>

[Crispin]

On 2006-08-14 22:52, Kyuu wrote:
You missed the point of the comparison. You stated that charging monthly fees is bad for Sega because it drives customers away. The point of the WoW example was to demonstrate that this is, in fact, not the case. I've not heard of very many people who were on the fence about whether or not to start playing an MMO, and the deciding factor was the monthly fee. Generally, if a person is interested enough, they'll pay the monthly fee.

In any case, ten dollars a month isn't something to cry over. If you feel you aren't going to be playing enough for the month to make the most of your ten whole freaking dollars, then don't pay it. I actually saved a lot money while playing WoW, because spending 15 dollars a month was a lot less than I'd normally have spent on buying games to keep me occupied. A game like WoW, or PSU, can occupy enough of your time that you don't have time for other games, and so you save the money that you'd otherwise have spent.



You seem to have missed the point by ignoring the rest of his post - any comparison of subscription online games using World of Warcraft immediately falls flat on its face when you consider that it's very much of a special case due to its fanbase and brand name. It controls over half (http://mmogchart.com/Chart7.html) the market share of current online subscription based games, so any comparison can't really make a direct translation. WoW is a singular, unique phenomenon. The name brand recognition and hype pushed it far enough that it's considered a social activity by the mainstream, and not just MMO players. EverQuest does not have that effect. FFXI does not have that effect. PSU will not have that effect. People will be driven away by the monthly fee.

While having a monthly fee could pour buckets of money onto your doorstep, with the current market saturation it's far more likely that you'll have poor initial sales and make just enough money to recoup the development and server costs. Hell, you just exemplified this point in the second part of your post; for a monstrously huge part of the gaming populace, that "other game" that people don't have time for is going to be PSU, in favor of WoW.

Contrary to what some people would have you believe, a fee is by no means necessary to recoup the monthly costs of server upkeep and development costs when you pull in enough initial purchasers. As Cross mentioned, here's where Guild Wars comes in. At its core, it shares a lot of structural similarities to the online Phantasy Star games, while being able to bring in much more new content compared to all the various iterations of PSO, all while requiring no fee outside of the initial purchase. So far, with no initial brand-name recognition, they've managed to pull in sales of two million (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=9761).

Now, some of you are going to come up and say "Well, Guild Wars has expansions that come out every six months, and that pays for the servers!" Well, the point that's being made is that there are other business models out there, and the one ArenaNet employs can not only be beneficial to the developer, but much moreso to the consumer than a monthly fee would be. Not just in the short-sighted "I'm saving $15 per month!" way that you're only capable of grasping right now (By no means an insult). Here's some food for thought:

With a monthly fee, you're more or less paying $10 or whatever per month, regardless of how much or how little you play. Sure, that additional fee may be some great value to the guy who sees online gaming as his life, but it doesn't match up for everyone, like, say, the guy who only has around an hour or three to play games per week. By only having an initial, upfront cost, you're not pressured into playing as much as you can to get additional value out of your dollar.

And now for the extra content, one of the common excuses for the monthly fee. While you're paying $10 a month for this mystery content, you have no guarantee as to its quality or if it's even something you'd bother with. Hell, the history of "extra content" with the PSO games has been highly suspect, typically consisting of stuff already on the disc that's just being unlocked - which is, admittedly, an inherent flaw that comes with not having a data drive of some sort to save new data. Here comes Guild Wars' business model, where new content comes in every few months to get the revenue stream going - the difference being that you have an idea of what the new content is, and if you don't like it you can tell the developer to bugger off, and continue playing the game you like without having to pay anything extra. This gives a massive advantage to the playerbase, because it gives the developers incentive to make something they feel the players will want to pay money for, rather than the same rehashes we've been getting with PSO over and over through the years. This can also be a huge boon for a console game such as PSU, since an expansion every few months sidesteps that problem with not being able to save data almost completely. You've just paid another $50-$60 for a brand-spanking new disc of extra content that isn't just unlocked or rehashed quests over the same old maps.

This isn't just about complaining about the fact that some people think it's a crime to pay a fee or whatever you're blindly assuming. The point is that there are alternative options out there that can be just as, if not more successful than the monthly-fee plan that WoW has been using, and everyone else is trying to emulate to copy its success (Which is never, ever going to happen.). The bonus is that such alternative options can have a very positive effect on the outcome of the game that probably never would have happened with a monthly subscription. Do you remember the playerbase of PSOv1 when it first came out? It was absolutely huge - there was no shortage of different faces for you to meet. Unfortunately, with such a fee in place, the playerbase is more or less guaranteed to never reach those kinds of numbers. The details such as that which endeared many of us in PSOv1 are probably never going to happen again with the current business model, which is another reason why people may prefer an alternate one.

[Emrald]

On 2006-08-13 23:34, Pacpunk wrote:
that sucks ill just have to quit WoW then




Just wanted to say that WoW sucks!

PSO was before it and PSO was better! IS better!

[Saner]

So basically people who don't want a fee are too cheap and lazy to pay for it, right? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

there will be a fee to pay for Sega's own costly servers for this game, so you are either in or out. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif

[qoxolg]

On 2006-08-15 06:33, Saner wrote:
So basically people who don't want a fee are too cheap and lazy to pay for it, right? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

there will be a fee to pay for Sega's own costly servers for this game, so you are either in or out. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif



Agree with that. I don't have a problem with fees, but I first have to be able to pay it... I don't have a creditcard, I don't need one and don't want one just to pay a MMO fee. SEGA could at least make pre-paid cards or a Paypal option so everyone in the world can pay.. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif but that got nothing to do with this topic.

That I don't care about the fee doesn't mean I can't discuss about it.

I am also a 360 owner, and pay for my Live Gold. I was thinking... allmost every 360 game uses Xbox Live and don't ask money for it.. so what holds sega back to do the same for PSU? new content? where? there is no new content for PSU, cause it's already on the disc.. so there is also no need to pay a fee for the new content cause it is already made and ready on the disc. There is no development team that has to get paid for creating new high quality content (new area's etc etc..)

stupid example: You bought the latest uber cool Sonic game and paid €60 for it. You are about to get to the last level to pwn eggman, the game stops and says you first have to pay cause that content is not unlocked on the disc..

If the 360 is not getting connected with PC and PS2 there will be no reason to use SEGA's own servers anyway... so why not using Microsofts servers? I think alot of XBL gold subscribers are dieing to play a good online RPG without paying any additional costs.

[Fleece]

On 2006-08-15 10:53, Crispin wrote:


On 2006-08-15 09:43, Triela wrote:
http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/avatar/0z9a-ps3-mieu.gif <----Saner | The Point----> .



Whenever someone reads a post larger than three paragraphs, an angel gets her wings. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif



Sexist.

Also whoever said its not new content because its already on the disc is a moron. Ok so youve been playing the game for a year and sega unlock some new weapons youve never used. Even though it was on the disc for years its STILL new content.....

[Pacpunk]

prepaid cards would save me!

[Saner]

how about pre-paid credit cards? you could get those at a store.

they are like prepaid netcash cards.

[Cross]

On 2006-08-15 06:33, Saner wrote:
So basically people who don't want a fee are too cheap and lazy to pay for it, right? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

there will be a fee to pay for Sega's own costly servers for this game, so you are either in or out. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif



No. This is an absolutely ignorant thing to say. If you don't plan on actually reading other people's posts, why are you on a forum in the first place?

Both Crispin and I emphasized that it has nothing to do with being "cheap and lazy"; it's a valid criticism of a business model that goes out of its way to be unfriendly to customers, and isn't even necessarily the most profitable for the developers. The situation isn't "love it or leave it". I can want to and be willing to pay to play PSU and still (rightfully) think that Sega collectively has the business sense of an autistic chimpanzee.

I'll explain this one more time for the "Poor, starving Sega needs to keep those impossibly expensive servers up somehow!" crowd, with real-world examples of games that set a precedence:

Guild Wars provides a secure, centralized server with instanced dungeons to play the game on, and frequent updates, with all data saved on their end. Dungeons & Dragons Online provides a secure, centralized server with instanced dungeons to play the game on, and frequent updates, with all data saved on their end. (Phantasy Star Universe's online component will provide a, god willing, secure, centralized server with instanced dungeons to play the game on, and frequent updates, with all data saved on their end. It's actually very similar to DDO, but that's not really the point here so I won't keep mentioning it.).
Guild Wars had absolutely no name-brand to speak of when the game launched. There was no franchise that Guild Wars was based off of. Many of the developers came from other, successful online games.
Dungeons & Dragons Online has a huge name-brand recognition; most people have some idea of what Dungeons & Dragons is, and almost everybody who plays video games online has a pretty good idea of what it is. It was based off of a very successful, decades-old franchise. The developers have a history of making MMORPGs.

In other words, both games provide very nearly the exact same service in terms of the scale and cost of the game servers. DDO has a quality name-brand behind it, and Guild Wars does not. All other things being equal, DDO should have an advantage, since lots of people know what Dungeons and Dragons is before they find out about the game, and there is no Guild Wars to know about outside of the game.
The point being, if there is any hype supporting either franchise, it's going to be in favour of the D&D franchise.
The key difference between these two games is the monthly fee. DDO has one, and Guild Wars doesn't.

Less than half a year after Guild Wars is released, 1,000,000 copies have been sold.
In approximately the same timeframe, DDO has sold 300,000 copies. As of the current numbers available, there are roughly 90,000 active subscribers to DDO.

Let's assume, for the sake of simplification, that buying a copy of the game gives the same amount of revenue to the developers as two months of paying a subscription fee. That probably varies based on a number of factors, but it's a reasonable simplification.

As far as Guild Wars is concerned, all the money is up front, and so we're not worried about a retention rate. In that case,
1,000,000 * 2 'months' = 2,000,000 'months' of payment.

For DDO, we do need to consider the retention rate. After half a year, a little under one third of the players who bought the game are still playing. It's a reasonable thing to say that there were more people playing in the first few months when interest in the game was highest, so the average number of players per month is probably 100,000. We can even imagine that there were a lot of players in the first month of billing, so we'll say 150,000 for that month. The first month is free, so we're talking about five potential months of billing.

300,000 * 2 'months'
+
150,000 (first month of billing)
+
100,000 * 4 months

= 1,150,000 'months' worth of revenue.


So in the first six months of their respective lifespans, Guild Wars has not only not had troubles keeping their servers up, but has actually brought in nearly twice the amount of money that DDO did, based almost solely on the fact that they sold more copies of the game because they didn't have a fee.

So you're thinking, "Well, yeah, but in the long term, a subscription fee will make more money." We're going to have to do some projection here, since DDO was only released less than eight months ago.

As of the last numbers available, 14 months after being released, Guild Wars has sold 2,000,000 total copies. In other words, in the eight months since they sold 1,000,000 copies, they sold 1,000,000 more. Now we're at:

2,000,000 'months' of revenue before
+
1,000,000 * 2 'months'
= 4,000,000 'months' of revenue.

So let's assume that in the next eight months, DDO sells a proportional number of copies, and doubles their total.

Let's also assume that their average subscriber rate goes from 90,000 to 200,000. This is being extremely generous to them. This is the list of games that have had an increase of that magnitude, in a similar timeline:
World of Warcraft
Ultima Online
EverQuest
Final Fantasy XI

The first two well-known MMORPGs, and the two with the most name recognition ever. So that makes:

1,150,000 months from before
300,000 * 2 'months'
200,000 * 8 months

= 3,350,000 'months' of payment


So in the highly unlikely event that DDO manages to more than double its userbase in the next eight months, and becomes one of the most meteoric MMORPG successes, it will still have provided the developers with less revenue than Guild Wars has in the first 14 months of its life, by half a million months worth of subscriptions.

In summary, if a game is well-made and well-marketed and does not have a monthly fee, it is absolutely possible for the game to provide more than enough revenue to keep the servers running and updated, because it will sell a drastically increased number of copies. PSU could very well have gone this route, and I think there's a good argument that it would have made the game a larger success, both among its players and for Sega themselves.

It's fine if you've got a reason to disagree, and have a valid refutation for the points (any of the points) I've made, but everything I've posted in this thread so far has apparently been completely ignored, and the same few variations on "They need to keep the servers up somehow!" and "It's not a lot of money, don't be so cheap!" have been repeated ad nauseum. If that's all you have to contribute, your post is worthless before you post it, and it'd be much appreciated if you saved us all the time reading it.



Also whoever said its not new content because its already on the disc is a moron. Ok so youve been playing the game for a year and sega unlock some new weapons youve never used. Even though it was on the disc for years its STILL new content.....

If something has been made two years ago since I bought a game, and it takes me two years to be able to use it, that's not 'new' to anybody except me. And if it's on the disc, it's not going to be 'new' to all the players anyway. Anybody dicking around with harmless, offline cheating can access it for free. How can you argue that it's worth paying $10+ per month for that?

[THEMOST]

Has anyone heard about PSO coming out on the DS? I'm not really willing to pay any fees for online after $30 went down the drain when I didn't have time to play PSO online.

[Ryudo]

On 2006-08-15 20:10, Cross wrote:
*snip*


Guild Wars keeps running because instead of having a $9.95 monthly fee, they release a $30 expansion every few months

but "Wait!" you say "You don't HAVE to buy the expansions to keep playing!"

Because the game is PvP aimed and each new update raises the level cap and adds essential new equipment, which you will need to get to make the game in any way worth playing.

so you can pay $9.95 a month or $30 every 3 months
It's still basically the same thing, Guild Wars just profited from the gullibility of players with its "no monthly fees" tagline, its only selling point.

[Cross]

Uh... No.

1) The expansions are $50 every six months, and the first expansion took twelve months to be released.
2) The expansions do not, and will not, raise the level cap or give more powerful new equipment. The equipment that was top-of-the-line in the first release is top of the line in the second expansion, and will still be top-of-the-line in the third expansion.
3) It has as many selling points as any random MMORPG you might be able to name. The degree of its success was based on the fact that it's got all of the qualities that most people want out of an MMO without a monthly fee, yes. That was exactly the point I was making.
4) My argument was for a business model that doesn't require a subscription fee. Not a business model that doesn't have any possible recurring sources of revenue.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cross on 2006-08-15 21:33 ]</font>

[Saner]

our post is worthless before we post it? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_salad.gif

this whole rant about the online fee is worthless. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif

as much as fee-haters think its unfair, Sega isn't going to change their mind. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif

[Polly]

It's a losing battle, Cross. :(

[Saner]

Maybe people should think about others instead of just themselves. nothing is really free. someone has to pay for it.

Companies live off of profits. Whether they demand too much out of you, that is debate that leads to nowhere. The fee is very reasonable considering things like 4 character slots at no extra charge (FF11 charges 1.00 added to the fee for every extra character), so Sega is generous in some aspects. But they shouldn't simply open the gates for free and let everyone in. That would do harm to themselves, and most people who don't wanna pay fees do not value the priviledge they are given, they completely takes things for granted. Fees on the bright side also filter outout some of the bad spoiled brats, no need to spoil thm further with free online play.
But in any case fees are more positive than negative for both sides. If you take a moment to stop thinking about just yourself, you would notice why.

All you have to decide is if you are willing to cooperate and pay to get what they created, maintain and offer.



If you don't think its worth it, there's the door. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

[Zinsian]

lol.. another xbox 360 fee thread. Sega and Microsoft need to live off of something. (Even though Microsoft does have enough money to conquer the US and pwn George Bush) http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

Heres my speculation of how xbox live yearly fees work.
money from the subscription fees is collected into the Xbox Live Department of Microsoft. some of this money goes to the employees and employers. some of this money is used to fund development and resources. most of it goes to the Xbox General Department of Microsoft. some of this money goes to the E&E of this department, some for funding, and most to Gaming Department of Microsoft. Repeat last step and most of the money goes to the unknown, never seen by anyone, mysterious higher ups, known as Bill Gates's minions. they get some percent of the money and the rest for Bill Gates so he can buy more Theatre Size TV's. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

its just my guess. im probably wrong though



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Zinsian on 2006-08-15 21:54 ]</font>

[Crispin]

On 2006-08-15 21:50, Saner wrote:
Maybe people should think about others instead of just themselves. nothing is really free. someone has to pay for it.

Companies live off of profits. Whether they demand too much out of you, that is debate that leads to nowhere. The fee is very reasonable considering things like 4 character slots at no extra charge (FF11 charges 1.00 added to the fee for every extra character), so Sega is generous in some aspects. But they shouldn't simply open the gates for free and let everyone in. That would do harm to themselves, and most people who don't wanna pay fees do not value the priviledge they are given, they completely takes things for granted. Fees on the bright side also filter outout some of the bad spoiled brats, no need to spoil thm further with free online play.
But in any case fees are more positive than negative for both sides. If you take a moment to stop thinking about just yourself, you would notice why.

All you have to decide is if you are willing to cooperate and pay to get what they created, maintain and offer.



If you don't think its worth it, there's the door. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif



Oh, come on. The concept can't be that hard to grasp.

The point that you continue to somehow fail to grasp that's being said over and over again is not that being forced to pay a fee is a crime against gamers or whatever you keep on assuming after ignoring people's arguments, but that there's other methods of getting revenue which can not only bring in even more money, but even have benefits that wouldn't be possible with a simple monthly subscription for both the developer and the playerbase. I'd list them out, but they've been posted enough times in this thread, and I don't know if they're being ignored or they're just not being posted in terms simple enough for some of you guys to understand.

[Ether]

For Cross:
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/9400/futilityjf8.jpg
On 2006-08-15 21:32, Saner wrote:
our post is worthless before we post it? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_salad.gif
In your case, yes http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_salad.gif http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/candycane.gif

On 2006-08-15 21:50, Saner wrote:
Fees on the bright side also filter outout some of the bad spoiled brats, no need to spoil thm further with free online play
History proves otherwise. A lot of people had this idea before PSO version 2 came out for dreamcast. People said the cheating would get better now that the game wasn't going to be free anymore

It got worse



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Ether on 2006-08-15 22:14 ]</font>

[Saner]

okay well maybe I'm just too dumb to understand what's the problem, http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif

I guess this topic was about the fee itself being the problem, and people are coming up with solutions that would help Sega still make good money and people don't have to pay a fee. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif

if I was in charge of whether there is a fee or not. With something like PSU, (which like PSO is not as popular as WoW, FF11 and other cleverly advertised games), I wouldn't take any chances.

I would rather slap on a fee than gamble on just game sales to make money back and more. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif FF11 and WoW are making money off of fees so why shouldn't PSU?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-15 22:16 ]</font>

[Saner]

Saner wrote:
our post is worthless before we post it? http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_salad.gif





Ether wrote:

In your case, yes http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_salad.gif http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/candycane.gif



hmph. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

[Cross]

On 2006-08-15 21:34, Triela wrote:
It's a losing battle, Cross. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif


Yeah, I'm starting to see how this might just be pointless. Well, I guess you can only bash your head against a brick wall for so long before you pass out. That's gonna happen soon.



On 2006-08-15 21:53, Zinsian wrote:
[Stuff about Xbox Live fee]


You're probably fairly close. To be honest, the Xbox Live fee isn't remotely like the PSU fee. For one, it's much cheaper; an annual payment of $50 works out to a little over $4, and the fact that it's paid once a year makes it a lot more convenient. It supports matchmaking across every game on the Xbox, even the ones that Microsoft has no hand in (and thus won't see too much of a profit from extra sales anyway, aside from a bit of licensing). It also subsidizes a lot of the other Xbox Live features. I have no problem at all paying for Xbox Live.

There's a good argument for an XBL fee. Not so much for a PSU fee.



On 2006-08-15 21:50, Saner wrote:
Maybe people should think about others instead of just themselves. nothing is really free. someone has to pay for it.

Companies live off of profits. Whether they demand too much out of you, that is debate that leads to nowhere. The fee is very reasonable considering things like 4 character slots at no extra charge (FF11 charges 1.00 added to the fee for every extra character), so Sega is generous in some aspects. But they shouldn't simply open the gates for free and let everyone in. That would do harm to themselves, and most people who don't wanna pay fees do not value the priviledge they are given, they completely takes things for granted. Fees on the bright side also filter outout some of the bad spoiled brats, no need to spoil thm further with free online play.
But in any case fees are more positive than negative for both sides. If you take a moment to stop thinking about just yourself, you would notice why.

All you have to decide is if you are willing to cooperate and pay to get what they created, maintain and offer.



If you don't think its worth it, there's the door. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

Thanks for posting this. Before, I wasn't sure if you were reading my posts at all!

Now I'm sure that you're not. I even included this:
It's fine if you've got a reason to disagree, and have a valid refutation for the points (any of the points) I've made, but everything I've posted in this thread so far has apparently been completely ignored, and the same few variations on "They need to keep the servers up somehow!" and "It's not a lot of money, don't be so cheap!" have been repeated ad nauseum. If that's all you have to contribute, your post is worthless before you post it, and it'd be much appreciated if you saved us all the time reading it.
I did! That was absolutely in my post, if you had read it. Just to be a nice guy, I bolded the relevant parts.

You seem to think I'm sitting here saying, "Oh gee golly I think Sega is really going to alter their business because of this!" I'm not. I hold no false hope that they'll improve their system. The point was to have a discussion. Because we're on a forum. A discussion forum.

When I say "your post is worthless", I'm not being an egomaniacal jerk and thinking of myself. I'm saying that my last few posts have all refuted everything you've said, before you even replied.

You say, "Companies live off profits. [...] Someone has to pay for it."

I've already given valid reasoning as to why companies can still get their profits and still pay for it without a monthly fee. My last post even used math. If you've got a genuine reason to doubt my math, then say so, but you're just repeating "Sega's gotta pay for them things somehow!" while ignoring the fact that I've already explained how there are other "somehow's" that they can use, that can earn just as much, if not more money, than a monthly fee.

It's not "opening up the floodgates for free"; in my ideal scenario the customer has already paid. They're not getting anything free. An individual player pays less, and Sega makes the same money because there are more players each shouldering a smaller portion of the upkeep cost. It's like a model for communism that works! And it does work. I've proven that.

Nobody is "valuing the privilege given to them", because playing these games is not a privilege. I don't know how you can think that. It's a service that you pay for, and there's more than one business model that affects the way an individual player actually pays. Don't fool yourself: A fee doesn't keep out anyone that wouldn't be kept out by any other payment method. You can, in fact, still be banned from a service even without a monthly fee. If you get banned from WoW, you have to buy another copy, and resume paying your fees as if nothing happened. If you get banned from Guild Wars, you have to buy another copy, and resume paying your fees as if nothing happened (except in this case the fee is $0).

If you're going to say something like "fees have more positives than negatives for everyone", you're going to have to actually give reasons for what you're saying, especially when I (and Crispin, and a few others) have given compelling reasons for why it isn't better for us, and might be worse for Sega as well.. You can't just say it over and over until it magically becomes true.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cross on 2006-08-15 22:20 ]</font>

[Saner]

okay so you have good ideas to avoid paying a fee and Sega would still profit, but you don't work for Sega. oh well. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif

[McLaughlin]

In some cases, optional content (that costs money) can be a bad thing. For instance, in Mech Assault (Not an MMO, but an example none the less) there are several mechs and maps available for purchase, and no monthly fee. However, not having this content limits the number of people you can play with (severely in some cases. Halo 2 forced you to buy the map packs or quit matchmaking). Now, I can't speak for everyone else's parents (myself being on a 0.00$ income at the moment) but my mom tends to deny me the money to buy said extras. With a monthly fee I can be assured (most of the time) that I won't have to pay anything ontop of the cost. Now instead of saying "Can I have 20 bucks to buy this content?" and being denied, I can just say "Hey mom, if I give you 5 bucks a month out of my allowance, can you put it towards the monthly fee for this game?" She sees the number immediately and doesn't really consider the long term. I have a running tab with her, and she frowns upon ne asking for money, but the smaller the number, the more likely I can talk her into it. 20 bucks at once or 5 dollars over 4 months. More convenient to pay it over a period of time.

That's just my unique situation however, and I suppose it can't really be considered in the debate. Hence, I thought of something relevent!

For one, You can play FFXI on Xbox 360 with a silver membership, which only costs you the 12.00$ a month + 1.00$ per extra character. PSOX costs 13.00$ (CAN) plus the Live fee. Problem with the FFXI fee? Nope, at least once a month there's some kind of maintenence or updsate going on, and that makes me feel like my money's being put to use. Problem with PSOX fee? Yes. I haven't seen the servers updated since November. We still have christmas lobbies. No new quests (and only 1 downloadable one over the span of PSOX's life). Not even server maintenence. They've gone to hell. The cheating it out of control (which is partailly Microsoft's fault for not banning the people I constantly report).

I guess the point of my ramblings is that I don't mind paying a fee, as long as it's used for more than lining wallets.

[Kyuu]

All I have to say is that the comparison of DDO to Guild Wars is rediculous. You are choosing to ascribe the difference in sales to the monthly fee issue when, in fact, you have no real data to support that conclusion. I, for one, would ascribe the difference in sales to the fact that most people who've played DDO say it simply sucks. Not to mention, I've already demonstrated one game that's outsold Guild Wars many times over even with a monthly fee: World of Warcraft.

Yes yes, I know you can come up with myriad excuses why World of Warcraft is an "exception" or some other bullcrap, but whatever. I have little inclination to argue the point.

[Crispin]

On 2006-08-16 19:23, Kyuu wrote:
Not to mention, I've already demonstrated one game that's outsold Guild Wars many times over even with a monthly fee: World of Warcraft.

Yes yes, I know you can come up with myriad excuses why World of Warcraft is an "exception" or some other bullcrap, but whatever. I have little inclination to argue the point.



How many games can you think of that have the potential to do even half as well as World of Warcraft? Can you also explain why it's a better game to use in a comparison with PSU?

[Ryudo]

On 2006-08-15 21:31, Cross wrote:
Uh... No.

1) The expansions are $50 every six months, and the first expansion took twelve months to be released.
2) The expansions do not, and will not, raise the level cap or give more powerful new equipment. The equipment that was top-of-the-line in the first release is top of the line in the second expansion, and will still be top-of-the-line in the third expansion.
3) It has as many selling points as any random MMORPG you might be able to name. The degree of its success was based on the fact that it's got all of the qualities that most people want out of an MMO without a monthly fee, yes. That was exactly the point I was making.
4) My argument was for a business model that doesn't require a subscription fee. Not a business model that doesn't have any possible recurring sources of revenue.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cross on 2006-08-15 21:33 ]</font>


$30 every 3 months $50 every 6 months, either way it's floating around the same cost per month as any MMO

It may be your point that it did well without a monthly fee, but when people figured out it basically DID have a monthly fee in the form of the expansions, it saw a sharp decline in popularity.
Just because it worked once for GW doesnt mean it will ever work again for any game ever. You can generally only fool people once.

so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?

[Saner]

about reporting people to ban, they could have worked against us.



reporting about someone cheating and wanting them banned, they would need proof, otherwise people could lie that you are a hacker and ST would ban you, no questions asked. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif


but ya I think PSOX servers wasn't really watched over by ST, they were busy with blue burst or something.


but ya if they give the cities holiday themes, hopefully they take them off when the holiday is over because I like these locations when they are in their default appearance and stuff.

holiday themes are nice but they kind of contradict the history and cultures of this new universe. This is not Earth. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif

[Crispin]

On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?



http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_frown.gif You guys aren't even bother to read, are you. It's been repeated Lord knows how many times, but let's try breaking it down into smaller parts to make it easier to understand.

When you're paying for the bulk content every few months, you can take a look at it and see if it's content that you believe is worth paying for. If you don't think this, you can continue playing the game that you've already paid for without having to pay more for stuff you never would have bothered touching. This gives the developers far more incentive to create content that the playerbase will genuinely want to drop fifty bones on.

The lack of a mandatory fee also helps by providing a larger playerbase; more people will be keen to pick up a game not requiring a fee, especially if they're already subscribed to another game that has a fee. It also keeps players in, since they don't have to worry about if the time they've spent playing is worth the money they have to spend to play (Which is different for each person). If they feel like jumping in for a few hours to see if they want to get back in to the game, they can do so worry free.

The expansion method also allows for greater flexibility when dealing with new resources when not using a hard drive (As is the case with a game such as PSU). Instead of reusing textures, maps, models, etc. over and over again, purchasable expansions allow for all new resources on another disc. This may very well not be without its flaws, but it does provide an avenue with more content than what PSO's been giving us in the past six years.

[Saner]

well I have an alternative for people who dont wanna pay a fee can consider choosing instead. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime1.gif

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/chipndale.php

well it is free. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-16 21:56 ]</font>

[McLaughlin]

It tends to be pretty apparent someone's cheating when you warp down to the Forest and there aren't any doors. >_<

[RuneLateralus]

On 2006-08-16 20:55, Saner wrote:
but ya I think PSOX servers wasn't really watched over by ST, they were busy with blue burst or something.



From what I heard, they haven't touched the Xbox servers in about 8 months. Apparently, the Christmas decorations and music are still up.

It is things like this that make me kinda want to avoid the 360 version, but at the same time, I would rather see the game in 720p rather than just progressive mode (although I am not sure if Sega has announced if the PS2 version would support it). Too bad the old PC isn't up to date...nor worth getting a new one until both Vista and Leopard come out.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: RuneLateralus on 2006-08-17 18:03 ]</font>

[mitchm]

well the 360 has HDD support... anyway Chromehounds has its own FREE server for the game and its made by Sega so why couldnt they just do the same thing. There are a ton of people on ChromeHounds at a time. It would be the same thing with PSU wouldnt it?

[Kers]

On 2006-08-17 19:32, mitchm wrote:
well the 360 has HDD support... anyway Chromehounds has its own FREE server for the game and its made by Sega so why couldnt they just do the same thing. There are a ton of people on ChromeHounds at a time. It would be the same thing with PSU wouldnt it?



I suppose Chromehounds is supported by your Gold subscription via Xbox Live, or doesn't require enough support to charge a fee.

Since PSU isn't only for 360, it has its own servers with their own fee for support.

[HyperShot-X-]

On 2006-08-16 21:26, Crispin wrote:


On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?



When you're paying for the bulk content every few months, you can take a look at it and see if it's content that you believe is worth paying for. If you don't think this, you can continue playing the game that you've already paid for without having to pay more for stuff you never would have bothered touching. This gives the developers far more incentive to create content that the playerbase will genuinely want to drop fifty bones on.



...how exactly would you do that without actually purchasing the expansion pack for $50 a pop and trying it out for yourself?
It only takes common sense to see it's more logical way to pay small monthly fee for frequent updates & new contents than waiting for 6-12 months for new expansion pack that u're not even sure if u will actually like it or not. There will be whole lot of ppl already quit the game by the time update arrives in a half yr. It's smarter & safer business strategy to go monthly fee, & it keeps users happy everytime new update is made.

It'd be the best to start out as monthly fee w/ free trial period to gain initial profit and pull in user base, and then maybe 6-12 months later release new expansion PSU v2. or something to attract even more users.

...try to take some advice & don't stress yourself writing a book about something u got no control of, it not only wastes ur own time but every1 else's on forum who are reading thru the whole lecturing only to conclude at the end that it's just nonsense B.S. basically & left w/ the feelin of anger to punch some1 on the face out of pure frustration for wasting of their precious time. ...don't mean to sound too harsh but u get the idea.

[Cross]

On 2006-08-16 19:23, Kyuu wrote:
Yes yes, I know you can come up with myriad excuses why World of Warcraft is an "exception" or some other bullcrap, but whatever. I have little inclination to argue the point.


First, I don't have to 'come up' with anything. In terms of its performance on the market, World of Warcraft has defied all convention.
And have you ever heard the expression "the exception that proves the rule"? The fact that every game on the market follows the same set of trends except for World of Warcraft proves that it's not useful to use it as an example to compare any other game to. I've posited a few possible reasons why it may be such a unique case, but whether I'm right or wrong about those doesn't change the fact that it does defy convention.
Geez, if you're going to argue that we can compare any online RPG on the market to the game that singlehandedly more than doubled the global player base in (what had been until that point) a largely cannibalistic market, you're going to have to give something a bit more concrete than "hay it has a monthly fee too".




On 2006-08-16 20:48, Ryudo wrote:
It may be your point that it did well without a monthly fee, but when people figured out it basically DID have a monthly fee in the form of the expansions, it saw a sharp decline in popularity.
Just because it worked once for GW doesnt mean it will ever work again for any game ever. You can generally only fool people once.

so your argument is against monthly fees but recurring fees equivalent to the monthly fee are ok?
Explain to me the difference between $8-10 a month for a game that's regularly updated with new quests and content and $50 every 6 months for a game that gets new content in bulk?



Gah. What sharp decline? You mean that it sold one million units in the first six months, and then it took eight months before they doubled that? You realize that generally every game ever has the biggest spike in sales and popularity in the first few months after it's released, right? For the sales to be sustained at 75% the rate of the first six months isn't what I'd call a 'sharp decline'. Nor was anybody 'fooled'. There are interviews, previews, and press releases from more than a year before Guild Wars was actually released outlining the exact business and gameplay model that they used. If anyone was misled about what the game would be, they were sure as hell filtered out in the first year, and yet the sales are still still going on at one hell of a good clip, especially for a PC game.
Oddly enough, I thought the difference was made abundantly clear between Guild Wars's model and a subscription-based game. In the simplest way I can put it: It gives the consumer leverage and power. The players play the game. If they don't want to buy the new content because they don't feel that it's worth their money, they don't pay, and continue playing the game. If they do buy the new content, then it's because it had worth to them. The expansions are completely optional to enjoy the game (I noticed that you completely sidestepped that argument after your original, absolutely wrong one was disproven; Nice one!), and ArenaNet gets zero money from an active player until they step up to the plate and put forth a piece of content that the player thinks is worth his fifty bones. If they dawdle around and release two twenty-minute quests in six months (like, say, Sega), they're not going to get shit. The player doesn't have to pay monthly just for the right to eat up maybe a gigabyte of server transfer in a month along with an unaccountable promise of "Yep, we'll have frequent new content... Just... Any month now... Wait and see... it's gonna be awesome... Promise..." They pay only when the developer has created what the player considers to be fifty dollars worth of content. And just for the record, your estimate of '8-10 dollars a month' is an extreme lowball. Only the unpopular budget games like Blue Burst charge anywhere near that. The average modern MMO charges between $12-15.



On 2006-08-17 21:59, HyperShot-X- wrote:
...how exactly would you do that without actually purchasing the expansion pack for $50 a pop and trying it out for yourself?
It only takes common sense to see it's more logical way to pay small monthly fee for frequent updates & new contents than waiting for 6-12 months for new expansion pack that u're not even sure if u will actually like it or not. There will be whole lot of ppl already quit the game by the time update arrives in a half yr. It's smarter & safer business strategy to go monthly fee, & it keeps users happy everytime new update is made.

Test the content on players by holding free events that give players a limited access to the main features of the new content, like Guild Wars has done (and continues to do). Play the game without the expansion for a few weeks, see some player reviews, decide whether you want to pay for the new content or whether you want to keep playing. For that matter, you seem to be confused. It doesn't matter if people "quit" the game in between expansions - that just keeps server costs down. If somebody plays for all six months between expansions, that's great because they're a loyal customer. If they quit a month later after playing through the main campaign once, then they got their money's worth. That doesn't mean that they can't come back to play again later whenever they feel like playing, and if a new expansion comes out that they think looks fun, they can buy it, hop back on, play for another month, or keep playing until the one after that. As for 'keeping people happy with every update', let's take a look at some popular MMOs. PSOBB is cheap; five months of subscriptions cost as much as one chapter of Guild Wars. In the last six months, the game has gotten:
- An Easter 'event' (Holiday events are done free in Guild Wars)
- Updated drop lists for some monsters (Also free in Guild Wars)
- Five 'War of Limits' quests (Quite a few quests in Guild Wars are free, but we'll give the benefit of the doubt to PSOBB and assume that this would be expansion content in Guild Wars, which I honestly doubt)
- One 'double drop rate' event (Would be free in Guild Wars)
- Two solo quests, and updates to one other quest (the update would be free)
So let's say Sega told you "Hey, we've got seven quests, in areas that you've already played. Two of them have new stories and stuff, but the other five are basically just a lot of killin' shit. You can play these quests if you pay us fifty dollars. If you don't want to pay, you can keep playing and you'll still get all the other updates and events; you just won't be able to play these seven quests. How about it? Fifty bucks." Would you give then $50 for those seven quests, or would you just keep playing until they had real content worth that amount of money? Let's take a look at FFXI; four months of fees in FFXI is equivalent to one Guild Wars expansion. With FFXI's fee (in other words, not including things that came with its latest expansion), you get:
- An 'Adventurer Appreciation' event (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A 'Linkshell community' service for guilds (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Chocobo raising (Would be free to at least PvP characters in Guild Wars, and possibly to PvE characters)
- The 'Mog Locker' was given increased functionality (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Storage, teleport, and Stables NPCs (would be free in Guild Wars)
- New Missions (would not be free in Guild Wars)
- New 'ranks' (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A new region (may or may not be free in Guild Wars; to give FFXI the benefit of the doubt we'll say that it wouldn't be)
- New equipment and quests specifically for classes released in the expansion (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Updates to the 'Besieged' game mode (would be free in Guild Wars)
- A 'festival event' (would be free in Guild Wars)
- Several new boss monsters and a rebalancing of boss monster difficulty (free in Guild Wars)
In this case, you'd be looking at maybe 2-3 new missions, one new region of the game, and maybe one feature available to some characters. If Square gave you the choice between playing for free, receiving every one of the minor updates and rebalances, or paying $50 for one new area, one new feature, and three missions, would you really be willing to pay that? I could do a check like this for World of Warcraft too if you're not convinced, but I think the point has been made. In contrast, this is what you get with your $50 in Guild Wars when you bought the first expansion:
- More than 100 minor quests.
- Two new classes.
- 150 new skills for old classes
- Two new (not more powerful, but different) armour sets for old classes.
- 50 new maps
- 20 Missions (13 for the main plot-based campaign, 5 for arcade/gameplay style challenges, 2 for competition that blends PvE and PvP)
- 4 new Guild Halls for Guild vs Guild matches
- An entirely new, large-scale PvP mode that affects which nation controls parts of the game world
- Two high-level 'elite' missions for organized, skilled PvE players
- Dozens of new enemies, bosses, rare items, new pets, etc.
- Free updates thus far have included two celebration events with their own limited-time quests and special visual rewards, mini-games, and a new temporary PvP mode, increased room for account storage, new features added to Guild Halls, an Alliance system for multiple allied guilds, mini-events for treasure hunting/rare items, increased access to elite missions, new modes for PvP characters, and countless minor updates for skill rebalancing, server maintenance, bug/exploit fixes, etc.
I don't know about you, but I don't really think that it's 'logical' at all to want to pay monthly just because they say they're going to give you frequent updates. It turns out those updates generally aren't really all that frequent, aren't very signifigant, or have been given for free in games without monthly fees! That is why the Guild Wars model is much more friendly to the players, and my earlier post about the sales and 'months of profit' is why it's friendly to the developers.



...try to take some advice & don't stress yourself writing a book about something u got no control of, it not only wastes ur own time but every1 else's on forum who are reading thru the whole lecturing only to conclude at the end that it's just nonsense B.S. basically & left w/ the feelin of anger to punch some1 on the face out of pure frustration for wasting of their precious time.

Sorry, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that your time isn't all that precious.

[trizzie]

God Complex anyone =3

wow has </3
- AQ guild transfers to a server where AQ hasn't opened... bliz pulls a fast one on Dentarg

THANKS FOR RUINING MY SERVER BLIZ

PSU show me the love.

[Zarbolord]

Would anyone know the cost in EU? I just hope it won't be like DAOC (10 euros a month, sheesh!) *remembers from a friends conversation about the game*. I've never done online before, so hopefully it won't cost too much this time.

[Pacpunk]

On 2006-08-17 19:32, mitchm wrote:
well the 360 has HDD support... anyway Chromehounds has its own FREE server for the game and its made by Sega so why couldnt they just do the same thing. There are a ton of people on ChromeHounds at a time. It would be the same thing with PSU wouldnt it?



i agree im already paying for a gold subsciption at least cut the 360 people a break we are paying already and i dont want to have to pay $50 a year plus whatever psu will cost that awill run me alot and if thats the case it better be the best damn game ever lol

[Saner]

all those game of the year awards magazines and websites hand out, really mean nothing. not everyone has the same taste.

so just try the 30 day free trial to see if it's right for you.


Microsoft and Sega are already being generous as it is. Consumers should do their part and earn the right to play it online.

Xbox Live Gold has nothing to do with maintenance and updating PSU's servers.

thinking that paying for LiveGold is enough is like thinking paying the water bill is enough and you shouldn't pay for the electric bill. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_lol.gif


everyone would like everything to be free but it pays to be realistic about the subject. There's no way around it.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-18 08:42 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saner on 2006-08-18 08:43 ]</font>

[zandra117]

If you get the PC or PS2 version will you cancel xbox live gold and change to silver? If you dont cancel then you will end up paying the same amount that you would if you had played on the 360 version along with the xbox live gold.

I'm just pointing that out to the people that are like ZOMG IM GETTIN TEH PC VERSHUN BECAWZE I DOWNT WANT TU GIT AN AD ON TU WAT IM ALREADY PAYING FOR XBOX LIVE!!!1!11

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: zandra117 on 2006-08-18 09:21 ]</font>

[Pacpunk]

evenb if there is a fee im still buying it but my friends wont thats why im worried

[qoxolg]

Disclaimer: I don't care about paying a fee, I am old and rich enough to pay it.. IF I can pay it, in Holland we don't use stupid crap like creditcards..


Xbox Live Gold has nothing to do with maintenance and updating PSU's servers.

thinking that paying for LiveGold is enough is like thinking paying the water bill is enough and you shouldn't pay for the electric bill.

Like ST said the 360 version will probably get voice chat over Xbox Live.. combine that with the fact that the servers will be seperated. That means SEGA won't use it's own server but the servers of Microsoft, which means SEGA got no maintenance for PSU360 making it not nessesary to ask a fee. If they really wan't you to pay for "new quests" they can use the MS credits that every other 360 game uses...

[Saner]

you just can't make a conclusion like that. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_razz.gif

No one really knows what they are going through while it's likely they may use MIcrosoft servers, Microsoft isn't going to maintain the servers themselves. That's still Sega's job if they care about the Xbox360 version's security and stability.

after all Microsoft didn't make PSU, they wouldn't know a thing about 'handling' its servers besides 'hosting' them.

and without maintenance, you can be sure if things get out of hand and the lights go out, there would be no one to turn them back on.

[Ryudo]

On 2006-08-18 00:06, Cross wrote:
Guild Wars sales pitch


Just because guild Wars has 2 million sales doesnt mean it has 2 million players.

A miniscule fraction of the number of people who bought the game ever actually play it. In fact, if all 2 million players all went and signed on now, do you really think their servers could handle it?
People play through the content, which doesnt take long, then they quit. They might even come back for a week to play the new content when an expansion comes out, but they dont stay long then either. Lets face facts here, GW is a game that prides itself on not having a grind and everything being accomplished in no time.

I'm not going to list everything every mmo with a monthly fee has added every month, frankly it was stupid and pointless enough that you did so for GW.
But the fact is, GW works because it's a game people play for a week or two, the same ssytem wont work for a gmame that people will play consistently for years.

Continue your denial of reality as you will, if you dont like monthly fees, stay off psu, you shant be missed.

[TonyDaemon]

On 2006-08-14 15:17, Ether wrote:

On 2006-08-14 15:09, zandra117 wrote:
PSU however will be constantly supplying us with new content without us having to buy expansions, that is why there is a monthly fee.Please explain to me how they'll do that without hard drive support http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

I read somewhere, don't ask me where I've forgotten, that new data, such as quests, will be saved to the PS2's memory card rather than a HD.

Kind of a silly idea, if I do say so myself. Expect to have either a empty memory card for just PSU alone, have two memory cards, one with memory, one empty, or two empty memory cards.

[Dingo]

Most of the quests, or parts of it should allready be on the game-disc. When you download a quest you're merely unlocking the quest that is allready present on the games disc, or you're only downloading a file which will bind enviroments, scripted events and dialog together, which should not be a big file to download. Quests weren't that big for PSOX anyway.

[HyperShot-X-]

On 2006-08-18 00:06, Cross wrote:

...As for 'keeping people happy with every update', let's take a look at some popular MMOs. PSOBB is cheap; five months of subscriptions cost as much as one chapter of Guild Wars. In the last six months, the game has gotten:
...


right off the bat u r making this ridiculous comparison that even a complete noob to pc gaming like myself would be able to catch off guard, now must i remind u how much u paid to download BB to start playing, oh, it was free, ok then, do they just hand out free copies of GW as well, ha?

i don't even need to read thru the rest of the krap that looks like some kind of sales brochure on a product that ain't selling much and no one is even bothering to look at.

if u got nothing else better to do to kill ur time, why not just go back n play that GW that u praise so highly of, or r u just bored to death waiting for that 3rd expansion pack not coming out til Nov. ?

oh, b4 u go, u deserve this for what u've done here so far, http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_bash.gif

[Ensong]

I'am looking forward to it on my Xbox360, although i'll need to get a new headset / mic for it, the one is comes with it god awful.

[BaZ2]

I really hope they take down the fee or reduce the price to at least 5.00 a month.

[DraginHikari]

On 2006-08-20 12:54, BaZ2 wrote:
I really hope they take down the fee or reduce the price to at least 5.00 a month.



It's extremely unlikely they'd lower the price that much I've heard closer to at least 10.00/month

[Dingo]

Seriously, the 'payment system' GuildWars utilises isn't too bad you know, it just can't work on the HDD-less PS2. The way servers are maintained up and running for GuildWars is to bring out new chapters every six months or so.

[BaZ2]

Well I know on xbox it was 8.95 shouldn't pass that , but i remmeber DC being 5.00 a month.

[Dingo]

5$ a month http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_eek.gif ... bring it back Sonic Team!

[Axios-]

Sonic Team has to pay for gas too.

[ultrastorm]

i hope you can pay your montly fee with microsoftpoints that would be good for me i don't have visa or mastercard so

i hope not

i now you need visa card to play final fantasy and ust free

[Blueblur]

You're probably gonna have use a credit card like with all the other pay-to-play PSOs.