i agree that there SHOULD be a monthly fee. not to get rid of the kids, i can care less about that. Hell, the more people playing the more money blizz would make monthly.
the reason i suggest a monthly fee is because they would be more devoted to do maintenance and updates.
sure its true, when the game comes out theyre going to be on top of things, but what about 2-3 years down the road?
look at d2, they dont "update" anything, the most they do is reset the ladder ever what, 2 times a year? botting has got out of hand, website spammers invade rooms, etc.
i believe that if there was to be a monthly fee (doesnt necessarily have to be 15 dollars) the game would be better taken care of, and in a much better state 2-3-4 years down the road, unlike diablo 2.
just be 2 pennies =P
Dude, it doesnt matter. It's not possible for there to be a monthly fee for D3. find the post Migs posted, youll understand. And plus, blizz makes $150 mill a month, thats MORE than enough.^_^
This thread is yet another reminder to me of the utter idiocy some people spew from their brains.
Let's see, benefits of Pay to Play:
1. Constant updates with new content.
2. Reduced hackers/spammers/dupers, and increased overall support
3. Servers require money for maintenance, bandwidth costs, etc. (More of a practicality than a benefit really)
Ok now let's address those issues.
1. Now where have I heard of this before...OH YEA! Valve's Team Fortress 2, Diablo II, and any number of games on the Xbox 360 and PC which give their loyal players extra incentive to keep playing, creating brand loyalty in the process, keeping people from pirating their games. For instance, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 is getting a free update with new maps and upgrades in a little while.
Secondly, why should you prefer a subscription service to a full-on expansion pack? With a subscription service, even those who cannot afford or are unwilling to pay for it are completely banned from playing. Whereas with an expansion pack the players who do not wish to have new content, cannot afford it, or are unwilling to pay extra, can have the option NOT to purchase it. And guess what? THEY STILL GET TO PLAY.
2. Who in their right minds thinks this kind of service requires extra payment on the part of the players? Diablo II was constantly attacking hackers, dupers, and every other sort of cheating all the time. I myself was banned for map-hacking a while ago. Any company that takes it upon themselves to offer online play must take into consideration that they have a responsibilty to keep their servers clean and healthy. Valve does it, Battle.net has been doing it for years, and I see no reason why you're OFFERING to pad their wallets with an unecessary cost.
3. This alone of the things I've mentioned bears any semblence of merit. With the ever-increasing volume of players in these past few years it has become increasingly costly to maintain a healthy server with enough bandwidth to sustain so many. $5 a month might be enough to keep them up and running.
AH. But I now counter my own point. And equally effective strategy which requires absolutely zero extra payment from US, is advertisement. Just like in Diablo II, the Battle.net lobby can have ad-banners which give Blizzard a constant stream of revenue while the players are online. I would personally rather have ads clutter my space than pay a monthly fee.
But what's more, I'm ideologically opposed to monthly fees for games. I've come to accept that certain services such as Cable, Internet, Phone, etc. have a monthly fee because they require constant service, attention, and cost on the part of the company. But a game is not a service, even when it has online play. I should never have to pay again for a product I have already purchased. There has to be a limit here. If Diablo were the only game I played, even 15 dollars wouldn't be much of an expense. But it isn't. I buy 2 games a month and I play them. I play a lot of games, because that's what I do, I'm a gamer. Diablo II may be my favorite game of all time but I'll be damned if I'm giving up a game a month just so I can play one I already own. Fuck that, fuck subscriptions, and fuck the whole pay to play system.
Na man, for a game like WoW you actually do need monthly subscribes. And those ad-banners you talked about wouldnt do the job. You saw how many realms they have??? and they keep increasing them, because thats ALOT of servers and those servers need maintenance and upgrades and ofc constant content. Blizz knew this was going to be expensive so they created this revolutionary pay2play system. ONLY for WoW. Now D3 is a whole different game.
First, not all 10 million of those players are active right now. That 10 million figure is the total number of accounts - loads of those people stopped playing years ago. That figure also includes trial accounts, and gold farmers who set up new accounts every day...
No, those are subscriptions, and not trial account. And plus blizz doesnt give a fuck if you don't play, but if you have a subscription you have to pay anyways. Unless your account is frozen then you dont pay ofc. But out of those 10 mill ppl, all those accounts are active.
My god, there are a lot of retarded people in here.
Allow me to explain something:
MMPORGs require a massive server infrastructure to keep them going. This costs a large amount of money, more than the box-price of the game.
Battle.net does not run game servers. All Battle.net consists of is a bunch of glorified chat servers, with some web and DB bits to make a nice interface for setting up games. The actual games themselves are done via Peer to Peer networking, and do not require any game servers on Blizzard's end.
The conclusion? Battle.net is much, much cheaper to run than an MMPORG infrastructure, therefore not actually requiring a monthly subscription to keep the servers running. Want more content? Buy the inevitable expansion pack(s).
Why the fuck would blizzard cannibalise it's sales by insisting on a subscription model, when it simply isnt needed?
Although a shit ton of money, figure in server costs, employee costs and about 50000000 other things.
That is true, but believe it, they still have alot of left overs after the server costs and maintenance and crap... cuz $150 mill is ALOT ALOT of money.
Blizzard is making millions. I mean do the math. There are 10 million subscribers now for WoW, each pay $15 monthly to play on their servers. Thats fucking $150,000,000 A FUCKING MONTH FOR FUCK SAKE! Plus the people that buy their games STILL everytime.
Well there could be a fee to play online, since starcraft 2 will have one (they confirmed this in a interview with the german magazine Gamestar june last year (2007). Cause they wanted money for the support from the server....:S
Are you fucking serious?? Give me a link to support your shit.
Lol, I wouldn't mind the monthly fee either. But hey, there won't be a monthly fee because the game will be playable online over the new battle.net. So I'm happy either way, ofc especially that I don't have to pay. Plus blizz makes a fortune from WoW already... so that would be just really really gay and greedy of them to subject D3 to a monthly fee.^_^
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Dude, it doesnt matter. It's not possible for there to be a monthly fee for D3. find the post Migs posted, youll understand. And plus, blizz makes $150 mill a month, thats MORE than enough.^_^
Na man, for a game like WoW you actually do need monthly subscribes. And those ad-banners you talked about wouldnt do the job. You saw how many realms they have??? and they keep increasing them, because thats ALOT of servers and those servers need maintenance and upgrades and ofc constant content. Blizz knew this was going to be expensive so they created this revolutionary pay2play system. ONLY for WoW. Now D3 is a whole different game.
No, those are subscriptions, and not trial account. And plus blizz doesnt give a fuck if you don't play, but if you have a subscription you have to pay anyways. Unless your account is frozen then you dont pay ofc. But out of those 10 mill ppl, all those accounts are active.
This dude explained quite right and thoroughly.
That is true, but believe it, they still have alot of left overs after the server costs and maintenance and crap... cuz $150 mill is ALOT ALOT of money.
Are you fucking serious?? Give me a link to support your shit.