D3 has been in development for 4 years so far, probably 6 by the time the game is released. Just imagine the development costs involved. Then when it's finally released people play the game 99% of the time on battle.net servers which isn't free to maintain. So try to think about it from their perspective and a subscription model isn't unreasonable.
Considering there 1 billion dollar take last year, they have enough to keep this game free and still make a considerable amount of profit
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My goodness, and my fortress, my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and He in whom I trust…
Just remember that Battle.net has ads. That is how they made their money with the previous SC, Diablo and WC games. In fact in the late 90s B.net was the only online gaming service that was making a profit even though it one of the few free ones.
With that regard I really don't see them doing Pay-to-Play, however if they do I doubt it would be higher than $5 a month.
Listen this is simple, Diablo has always had free online play, an i imagine it always will, paying to play diablo stops it from being Diablo, and turns it into World of Diablo..... or in the words of a friend of mine, Paying to play diablo would be a Epic Fail.
My problem with P2P for diablo 3, is it doesn't serve any function. They've said that the idea party size about 4 players, so there isn't any need for massive servers. The idea that you would get more frequent/more massive updates isn't really true either. Valve has been updating Team Fortress 2 like a motherfucker. They release a steam patch every week(which is great for Anti-cheat/anti-piracy). They don't charge a dime to use steam.
i'm sure blizzard marketing and finance departments got this all figured out when they decided to make D3. they won't just make a game if they know they will be operating at a loss (or very little profit).
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[THREAD LINK="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment"]List of Blizzard games for over a decade[/THREAD LINK]
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Fail entirely. Battle.net hosts free content. Theres your only reason why it WILL be free.
Considering there 1 billion dollar take last year, they have enough to keep this game free and still make a considerable amount of profit
6/29/08 - A date you will remember forever.
With that regard I really don't see them doing Pay-to-Play, however if they do I doubt it would be higher than $5 a month.
Open, Lan, and Solo should all be free.
Imagine the first day sales when D3 is released
especially if they sell ad space on bnet.
[THREAD LINK="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_Entertainment"]List of Blizzard games for over a decade[/THREAD LINK]