Pay to Play vs. Free To Play Games Debate

Pay to Play vs. Free To Play

  • Game Client should be free. Expansion and subscription should be paid for.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Game Client, Expansion, subscription should free. I don't mind paying for skills & equipment

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Game Client, Expansion, subscription should free. I don't mind in game advertising

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Other... Please Post

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    4
Pryo, WoW is based off of the warcraft series...It's not really meant to have a story line. It just kind of follows the warcraft series a bit.

Anyway, I see where you are coming from by wanting more out of the game. But you still have to look at the big picture. Any MMO you will get a lot more game play hours than most other genres. So monthly prices are expensive..but it's still cheaper if you look at the cost per game play hour
 
Firstly I find playing MMORPG works out cheaper for me that playing stand alone games.
I might be paying for a client. However i am strong believer in "you get what you pay for". However normally in that client, you are pay for a disk and playier's reference manual and the most of the time the first month of game time. I do find that it's a little cheap of the programmers where they get people to pay for the game and then pay again for the first month of play.*

However when you look at stand alone games these pays, they are getting shorter and shorter. 15 years ago, I used to pick and expect about 20 hours or so of play before beating it. No days, most stand alone games you will be lucky to have any more that 8 hours of play before beating the final boss. In the mean time, you are still pay top dollar to play this games. However lets be realistic here and say that i do have a life away from by computer. So lets say I finish the game in 2 weeks after purchasing it. After 2 weeks, I am looking for another game to play. Therefore i need to folk out more money.

As for MMORPGs. I might be stuck paying for the client. However if that it the case, I am expecting that manual, disk, the first month paid for and maybe a special limited edition in game item for pre-ordering or what ever. However after that, I am paying a subscription week where i have vast open areas to explore, countless hours of play. And even when you finish about 99% of the quests, the MMORPG developers always have something new to coming out with patches and expansions.

New stand alone game is about $50
US$50 x 26 fornights per year = $1300

MMORPG subscription is about $15 per month
US$15 x 12 months per year = $180.

So if we weigh up the price differences between a me playing an MMORPG for 1 years vs me purchasing a new game every 2 week, it does work out far cheaper. Even if I am paying another $50 for the MMORPG client.

As for my views on the clients. Personally i do feel that the clients and expansions should be for free. Especialy when the devs seems to make more money alone on the subscription than they do on the game. However if I am paying for a expansion, they better have some thing like a new class, a vast reigon to explore and a higher level cap. If I am also paying for client, I really wish that the devs would bring out a 14 trail account before having to fork out real money for a game that I am not sure if I am going to like or not at the end of the month.

For those people that want to complain quality of the free2play MMO clients. I do feel that they have no right to complain about ingame items needing to be paid and not so nice looking graphics. At the end of the day, you do get what you pay for.

* The only expection in my experience has been Phantasy Star Universe and that because there is no serial number to activate your online account. Plus there is the offline story mode too.

I see how this works out. But in a lot of stand alone games they have online play which you could do for months. As leveling lets say in COD4 it takes a little a bit of time unless you don't do anything else all day. I vote Pay for subscription and not the game or expansions.
 
I only considered EVE...

And I never payed for it.

Sadly the 14 day trial account is not enough to really sink your teeth into that MMORPG. Onlay give the trial ago if you know that you are going to have a few days to try it out. The learning curve is steep.
 
You know I don't mind paying for all 3 if the game is high quality with huge continued support/events/etc.

Trying to play all these F2P mmo's gives me a headache because the design/animation/content quality of All of them is clearly amateur compared to the heavy hitters. I can't swallow it.

In most cases you get what you paid for. I'll take Final Fantasy 11 Online as an example because it's my drug of choice. I've got around 166 play days into it, so just shy of 4000 hours in the past 4 years. Subscription fees, expansions and game client bring it to around 850$ ish. Considering I usually only get around 12 hours out of a 50$ FPS game, maybe 20 our of a single player RPG and 6-8 on other games, i say that equals out pretty good. Plus the money I saved not going to the bars to sponge up my free time is phenomenal.

As far as my views on paying for all 3, the quality of continued support is incredible. 9 times out of 10 you just end up with a better product, one I don't mind paying for for 4+ years. FFXI is probably pushing 7 years old now, and it gets the same amount of support now as it did on release. Still gets huge updates every 3 months. Extra DLC, expansions. Hold's events on every holiday. Continued in-game support and added features as well as prompt fixing of any bugs. Though you're hard-pressed to find any.

The overall design quality/animation is a cut above free to play games. WoW is the same, as is Age of Conan now that it's out of that wicked bad launch lol. Massive support and redesigning helped it immensely.

I'll be moving to FF14 online when that comes out, hopefully it get's the same support 11 did.
 
there are these things called private servers.
they are awesome... once they fixed major bugs ect.
i never pay for games any more -__- dont feel like squandering what money i have left of entertainment.

but other than that. games should be pay to subscribe that's it. dont pay for anything else.
 
Pryo, WoW is based off of the warcraft series...It's not really meant to have a story line. It just kind of follows the warcraft series a bit.

Anyway, I see where you are coming from by wanting more out of the game. But you still have to look at the big picture. Any MMO you will get a lot more game play hours than most other genres. So monthly prices are expensive..but it's still cheaper if you look at the cost per game play hour

Your second part isnt necessarily true. some of the best FPS games (i.e. halo COD gears) are just as time consuming if not more than some MMO games. even some of the older games (CSS) still are played more than quite a few MMO games and people are on just as much.

It all depends on the demographic of the people you are asking. Die-hard MMO player would of course agree with you but the Die-hard FPS fans and even sport game fans would disagree with you completely.

Now dont get me wrong i LOVE MMO games i played runescape for years before they screwed it up and ii still play diablo 2 (my personal favorite...ever) but you have to remember that this debate is based in the MMORPG Gaming form if you want to get the other side of the argument post a link to here from FPS forums

But ive gone off on a tangent. I think that the game and expansion should be paid for even if its a little more than the average game and the subscription should not be paid for. AND as long as they fix the biggest bugs in the games (duping hacking and all around cheating) right away or as fast as possible, then i dont mind updates coming around only once in a while it doesnt bother me as long as the game is fun. some games update to often and it tends to ruin the game (Most famous example for me is runescape)
 
I rather play the Free to Play games beacause it's worth it. you get alot of good stuff in most of the free ones.:D


Wow I really want to know which free one your talking about?:big_grin:

The only free game I like is Silkroad online but I only manage to play it several time because the server are always full and I get kick of off the server a few times as well and still haven't got a clue why.
 
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