[Newsbot]

Title: World Of Warcraft Now Free To Play
Category: Showbiz
Posted By: Scape
Date: 2011-06-28 16:38:56

[Bacardi4206]

The crackdealer offering free cocain.

[Proculation]

Nice plan.

[Praxius]

Bunch of jerks.

I bought that game about a year ago because I used to like the first two Warcraft games, only to find out that you had to continually pay for the game that you already bought, in order to keep playing it.... which is a crock of sh*t if you ask me.

And of course the guy at the store didn't mention this when I was buying it, and I didn't notice the small text on the bottom of the box noting additional fees will apply until after I opened the package.

I was so PO'd, I just gave my copy away to someone else.

Oh but now if you pay $20 for the game, you can now play it for "free" (you just paid for it, so it's not actually free) until you get to level 20 that is.... then have to pay more in order to keep playing a game you already paid for.

Oh but Prax, it's so that they have enough money coming through to continue to provide new content and features to keep the game & community interesting.....

..... crap I say... total and utter crap!

Valve, the company who made Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and Half-Life common household game titles have never once pulled such a damn stunt and yet, continually provided updates, add-ons, patches, etc. to these games for well beyond 10 years after they were released.... in fact, their current most popular title, Team Fortress 2 was released back in 2007, has continuous updates come out, sometimes twice or more each month, has just toppled Counter-Strike from it's top ranking/popular spot which it held for years..... and you don't even have to keep paying.

You bought the game once, installed it, and that was it.

In fact, just recently they made TF2 now free for everyone..... FREE!

All you need is a Steam Account, which is also free.... and you can now download/install and play the game as if you bought it yourself..... and they're still updating it.

Sure you can dish out money to get some neat weapons, hats, etc..... but you don't have to and all you have to do is play the game and after a while, it just starts randomly handing you these things.

World of Warcraft is the biggest money grab I have ever seen.... it's sick. If people want to be suckers and continually dish out their money for such a thing, go ahead... be idiots. Empty your wallets every month, see if I care.

This is also why I never bought an XBox 360.

If you already bought a game and if you already pay for your internet, why they hell does anybody think it makes sense to continually pay more for that game just to keep playing it.... or in the XBox's case, why continue to pay to get on the internet for most games & services when you already pay for the internet in the first place?

[Scape]

I bought it in 2004 and was aware then of a monthly fee. I also played SWG and knew it was also a sub fee.

Keep in mind a MMO is not something like CS or team fortress. The servers are worlds of difference and are far more expensive. The lag of a world where hundreds of people are playing at the same time is no where near the same as a game where you have teams of 30 on CS. You really are comparing apples and oranges here and these companies have start up costs and require business loans that will require a business plan. That means they need to show how they are going to pay it back and free to play has only come on stream recently because of these larger MMO's breaking trail showing that there is a demand and that people will pay.

You expect this all to be free from some kid software tinkering in a basement like CS was, seriously? Give your head a shake! Free to play will be the way games will head now but they will require a large base of players and at least some of theme (even if it is only 1%) to pay for some services.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

LOTRO went F2P as well but only to a certain level and with all kinds of caps.
I still pay $10 bucks a month to play it (which is a bargain for me considering how many hours over the course of a year I play it) but with that monthly fee I now get 500 Turbine Points/month on top of the otehr stuff I was already getting. Those points can be used to purchase useful items in their store, and even better, I can use them to purchase major expansions.
You can still can get points even if you don't pay by completing deeds in the game. It takes a lot longer but, if someone started when it went F2P, they could conceivably purchase every ex-pac with their points and only have to pay $10/mo to access the newer content.

I am kicking myself in the ass though. When I first started playing (pre-Warner Bros) they had a lifetime subscription offer for only $199, but I didn't want to commit because I wasn't sure how soon I'd get sick of the game (a serious problem for me) but after alomst 2 years of playing, it would have already paid for itself.

[Bacardi4206]

Praxius Praxius:

Bunch of jerks.

I bought that game about a year ago because I used to like the first two Warcraft games, only to find out that you had to continually pay for the game that you already bought, in order to keep playing it.... which is a crock of sh*t if you ask me.

And of course the guy at the store didn't mention this when I was buying it, and I didn't notice the small text on the bottom of the box noting additional fees will apply until after I opened the package.

I was so PO'd, I just gave my copy away to someone else.

Oh but now if you pay $20 for the game, you can now play it for "free" (you just paid for it, so it's not actually free) until you get to level 20 that is.... then have to pay more in order to keep playing a game you already paid for.

Oh but Prax, it's so that they have enough money coming through to continue to provide new content and features to keep the game & community interesting.....

..... crap I say... total and utter crap!

Valve, the company who made Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat and Half-Life common household game titles have never once pulled such a damn stunt and yet, continually provided updates, add-ons, patches, etc. to these games for well beyond 10 years after they were released.... in fact, their current most popular title, Team Fortress 2 was released back in 2007, has continuous updates come out, sometimes twice or more each month, has just toppled Counter-Strike from it's top ranking/popular spot which it held for years..... and you don't even have to keep paying.

You bought the game once, installed it, and that was it.

In fact, just recently they made TF2 now free for everyone..... FREE!

All you need is a Steam Account, which is also free.... and you can now download/install and play the game as if you bought it yourself..... and they're still updating it.

Sure you can dish out money to get some neat weapons, hats, etc..... but you don't have to and all you have to do is play the game and after a while, it just starts randomly handing you these things.

World of Warcraft is the biggest money grab I have ever seen.... it's sick. If people want to be suckers and continually dish out their money for such a thing, go ahead... be idiots. Empty your wallets every month, see if I care.

This is also why I never bought an XBox 360.

If you already bought a game and if you already pay for your internet, why they hell does anybody think it makes sense to continually pay more for that game just to keep playing it.... or in the XBox's case, why continue to pay to get on the internet for most games & services when you already pay for the internet in the first place?

They put up a monthly subscription fee as they actually spend money to keep the game working. Blizzard offers up the servers to play where millions of players actually play on. Blizzard has to keep a full time staff to make sure the servers are running smoothly, operational and bug free. If they offered a one time price, they'd actually be losing money. This is the cost of having to play a MMORPG. Every MMORPG is in general like this, others that are free to play and level as you see fit make money in other ways by selling you additional content, items, whatever.

Also TF2 is a entirely different story, TF2 is run by the community. People setup dedicated server box's and run and manage there own servers. Valve has to do nothing except fix any reported bugs and call it a day. Valve loses no money by having a one time fee as the community manages everything for them (this is why people like PC gaming better than console gaming as PC gaming allowing community driven servers which makes games last longer. Which is why a lot of those older games still have yet to die because the community still runs them. Valve sells items and gear in TF2 to still make a profit from it.

World of Warcraft has to have a blizzard hired staff to manage all there servers, a costly thing for blizzard so, so long as people keep paying for the game the servers stay up and managed. The whole thing is not ideal for the gamer who has to shell out money every month to pay a game he already bought. However these type of games like WoW are unique and there are good reasons why you have to shell out money every month to play it. People are happy to pay per month to play games like WoW or EVE Online because of the unique game-play experience that comes from a game with servers with over a million players all playing with you at the same time.

[Praxius]

Scape Scape:

I bought it in 2004 and was aware then of a monthly fee. I also played SWG and knew it was also a sub fee.

Keep in mind a MMO is not something like CS or team fortress. The servers are worlds of difference and are far more expensive. The lag of a world where hundreds of people are playing at the same time is no where near the same as a game where you have teams of 30 on CS. You really are comparing apples and oranges here and these companies have start up costs and require business loans that will require a business plan. That means they need to show how they are going to pay it back and free to play has only come on stream recently because of these larger MMO's breaking trail showing that there is a demand and that people will pay.

You expect this all to be free from some kid software tinkering in a basement like CS was, seriously? Give your head a shake! Free to play will be the way games will head now but they will require a large base of players and at least some of theme (even if it is only 1%) to pay for some services.

Whatever the reasons, I still don't "buy" it. What's the difference between World of Warcraft and, say, Second Life?

Second Life runs along very similar methods as WoW. Second Life is for the most part, free as well..... at least there's no continual monthly payments to be allowed to keep playing it.

And I'm not just talking about the original CS mod, or just TFC, but even the new ones, like Day of Defeat Source, CS Source & TF2 in particular.

Lag in a game like WoW isn't as big of an issue as games like FPS's... where you need to have a good ping in order to target and hit detailed modeled characters in very dynamic gameplays.

Sure you have hundreds of players in a very large world.... but do you really need to render and provide detailed information to a person's computer system of players who are so far away, that they're out of view in the game. When it comes to the details provided on a server, why isn't it just rigged to provide a grid layout of where each character (or IP) is located in a given area & let the player's own system do the rest of the work in regards to resources & how many people at such a distance are rendered/provided? And why would that be so heavy on resources that they'd need all kinds of money dished back at them from millions of players each month?

Startup costs and business loans? Sorry, but Blizzard has been around a lot longer then Valve and is well established.... but Valve isn't some kid in a basement business. The person who made the CS mod might have been, but I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about how Valve has sky rocketed into being a major player in the game development industry, has many many games under their belt now, have their own system, ie: Steam, which allows you to purchase & manage many games, even ones they never even developed themselves..... and they didn't have to gouge their customers with monthly payments like Blizzard has.

Based on how many people Blizzard has bragged about who have bought World of Warcraft since it's release, they sure as hell shouldn't have to be sucking more money out of their players to keep things running..... add on top the money have have been getting from monthly payments.

You make it sound like Blizzard Entertainment is barely breaking even and poor them.... but they sure seemed to have found the money to toss out piles of commercials with Mr. T and Mini Me pimping out the game on just about every channel in many countries, and I'm sure their employers are living a far more pampered life then say the employees at EA Sports.

So sorry, no I don't buy those excuses.

Bacardi4206 Bacardi4206:

They put up a monthly subscription fee as they actually spend money to keep the game working. Blizzard offers up the servers to play where millions of players actually play on. Blizzard has to keep a full time staff to make sure the servers are running smoothly, operational and bug free. If they offered a one time price, they'd actually be losing money. This is the cost of having to play a MMORPG. Every MMORPG is in general like this, others that are free to play and level as you see fit make money in other ways by selling you additional content, items, whatever.

Also TF2 is a entirely different story, TF2 is run by the community. People setup dedicated server box's and run and manage there own servers. Valve has to do nothing except fix any reported bugs and call it a day. Valve loses no money by having a one time fee as the community manages everything for them (this is why people like PC gaming better than console gaming as PC gaming allowing community driven servers which makes games last longer. Which is why a lot of those older games still have yet to die because the community still runs them. Valve sells items and gear in TF2 to still make a profit from it.

World of Warcraft has to have a blizzard hired staff to manage all there servers, a costly thing for blizzard so, so long as people keep paying for the game the servers stay up and managed. The whole thing is not ideal for the gamer who has to shell out money every month to pay a game he already bought. However these type of games like WoW are unique and there are good reasons why you have to shell out money every month to play it. People are happy to pay per month to play games like WoW or EVE Online because of the unique game-play experience that comes from a game with servers with over a million players all playing with you at the same time.

Yeah, sorry, I just never saw the appeal.... which is why I play Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion if I want to play a game like WoW. Sure I don't have thousands of real players to play against or with, but I also have piles of free add ons to the game that can keep the game interesting and on-going.

And in regards to the massive servers and such, again, what's the difference between WoW and Second Life?

Both in TF2 and Second Life, paying for things is optional, and while you mention the gear & weapons you can buy in TF2, that's still optional and 95% of what you can pay for, is still given to you over time, or you can create yourself by "Crafting" other items together to make a specific item you desire... or even trade with other members.

I'll admit, I'm not 100% experienced in the MMORPG games and how they fully function, but they sound a lot like Second Life and other similar online games and I bet there are many ways to make it work a lot better and a lot cheaper then how they're currently run.

One could even use a system of servers like what TF2 uses, ie: personally rented servers by members of the community. I imagine even in a game like WoW, you can only have so many people in one area.... why not have those individual servers such as those in TF2 set as designated territories or communities / lands owned?

If they go down, then that territory is off limits.... say it got raided by a bunch of dragons and burned the whole place down or something and will be rebuilt shortly & the trees will be grown.... I don't know. But to me it just seems like a really bad way of doing things.

Then again, I was never that interested in such games anyways.... mostly due to the continual payments you have to make.

My main issue about the monthly payments is that I work and have a relationship, thus other more important things to do in my life.... I'd probably get around to playing the game between 3-6 days out of the month and for only a couple of hours each of those days. To me, it just seems like I'd either be not getting my money's worth for what I was paying for.... or I'd have to say goodbye to whatever life I have to play such a game.

.... Which is what many playing WoW have ended up doing anyways

Help! World of Warcraft is ruining my relationship
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life ... 054851.ece

[Bacardi4206]

Regarding your idea of setting up servers for WoW, that will not work. MMORPG's and FPS's are completely different. FPS servers are designed to maybe equip 32 players max in most games. Along with dealing with minor map levels (compared to WoW).

To get the game-play effect of World of Warcraft (playing with over millions of people in one server). You need a whole farm of servers and people to manage them. There is no community or group of gamers that has the resources to accomplish this. To keep the same game-play going, gamers must rely on Blizzard or whoever to provide the means to fit all these players lag free in a server. To do this they spend tons of cash. Cash they take out from subscriptions, of course they also make some benefit money from it as well.

There are people who run private WoW servers (you can google them up). You gotta put in there server info in some text file and replace blizzards. They offer 100% free game-play (they have to as it's illegal for them to charge for it unless they like getting sued). However with this free server comes a price, the game-play just isn't the same. You got this huge world and it's filled maybe with 40 players on a good day and the more players it gets, the less stable the server is. If you run into a player at all, that's a miracle. You also get downtime, crashes, bugs to go along with it. To most, coughing up the monthly pay is just worth having the game-play the way they like it. As I said, MMORPG's are unique in there game-play and you have to pay top dollar to play it, one way or the other.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

I also think WoW went F2P because after LOTRO went that direction, a SHIT load of WoWers started playing, many of whom have stated in the chat that they found LOTRO to be a more "mature" game. So I'm guessing now WoW figures maybe they can woo some of their lost players back.
Going F2P also has one other benefit. I can't speak for WoW since I just won't play it, but a couple of others I
play(ed) made the switch to also bring life back to the "noobie" areas. When you have a bunch of veteran players that are at end game content(until the next ex-pac) and only a few noobs here and there starting out in the game, it's not much fun for them because they can't find people to team up with in the noobie areas. Nothing discourages a noob faster than getting stuck with tasks or quests that require more than a solo effort, but can't find someone to help them or have to spend an hour or more spamming the chat trying to find someone. It's also not much fun for the devs either as they're essentially wasting resources to keep areas up and running that are sparsely populated, but they also can't really remove those areas from the game.

[Scape]

Praxius Praxius:

Scape Scape:

I bought it in 2004 and was aware then of a monthly fee. I also played SWG and knew it was also a sub fee.

Keep in mind a MMO is not something like CS or team fortress. The servers are worlds of difference and are far more expensive. The lag of a world where hundreds of people are playing at the same time is no where near the same as a game where you have teams of 30 on CS. You really are comparing apples and oranges here and these companies have start up costs and require business loans that will require a business plan. That means they need to show how they are going to pay it back and free to play has only come on stream recently because of these larger MMO's breaking trail showing that there is a demand and that people will pay.

You expect this all to be free from some kid software tinkering in a basement like CS was, seriously? Give your head a shake! Free to play will be the way games will head now but they will require a large base of players and at least some of theme (even if it is only 1%) to pay for some services.

Whatever the reasons, I still don't "buy" it. What's the difference between World of Warcraft and, say, Second Life?

Second Life runs along very similar methods as WoW. Second Life is for the most part, free as well..... at least there's no continual monthly payments to be allowed to keep playing it.

And I'm not just talking about the original CS mod, or just TFC, but even the new ones, like Day of Defeat Source, CS Source & TF2 in particular.

Lag in a game like WoW isn't as big of an issue as games like FPS's... where you need to have a good ping in order to target and hit detailed modeled characters in very dynamic gameplays.

Sure you have hundreds of players in a very large world.... but do you really need to render and provide detailed information to a person's computer system of players who are so far away, that they're out of view in the game. When it comes to the details provided on a server, why isn't it just rigged to provide a grid layout of where each character (or IP) is located in a given area & let the player's own system do the rest of the work in regards to resources & how many people at such a distance are rendered/provided? And why would that be so heavy on resources that they'd need all kinds of money dished back at them from millions of players each month?

Startup costs and business loans? Sorry, but Blizzard has been around a lot longer then Valve and is well established.... but Valve isn't some kid in a basement business. The person who made the CS mod might have been, but I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about how Valve has sky rocketed into being a major player in the game development industry, has many many games under their belt now, have their own system, ie: Steam, which allows you to purchase & manage many games, even ones they never even developed themselves..... and they didn't have to gouge their customers with monthly payments like Blizzard has.

Based on how many people Blizzard has bragged about who have bought World of Warcraft since it's release, they sure as hell shouldn't have to be sucking more money out of their players to keep things running..... add on top the money have have been getting from monthly payments.

You make it sound like Blizzard Entertainment is barely breaking even and poor them.... but they sure seemed to have found the money to toss out piles of commercials with Mr. T and Mini Me pimping out the game on just about every channel in many countries, and I'm sure their employers are living a far more pampered life then say the employees at EA Sports.

So sorry, no I don't buy those excuses.

2nd life? You're serious? That is like comparing your grandmothers black and white 12' to a 60' HD 3D 1080P LCD and saying since you can watch the same shows on them that they are essentially the same product. WOW's patches gets its own theatrical trailers and Star Wars: The Old Republic will have hundreds of unique worlds with thousands of interactive NPC's that are all fully voiced. In manpower alone the size and scope of the games are worlds apart.

People pay for content and Blizzard has invested in quality that people want to invest upon. It was a lot of hard work to get there and a new start up will have to have major studio's behind them to even begin to rival what Blizzard has accomplished.

Changing the model to a free to play for them has been a very long time coming but for a very long time they were the only quality MMO on the market. They have the numbers and have become an institution upon itself. Rome wasn't built in a day, neither was WOW. If you want to complain about a monthly sub why not complain about cable then? People pay for that and then they pay for movie channels and HD channels. How is this any different?

[sandorski]

Still not interested.

[Scape]

Neither am I. The game is like crack.

[Praxius]

Well as I said, I'm no expert on the whole MMORPG or whathaveyou games.... from looking outside-in, it seemed to run along the same basis as Second Life (Which I only tried for maybe half an hour, once, and then uninstalled it)

I chalk up my reasons for not knowing more about WoW and similar games is the sheer fact that you have to keep paying to keep playing something you already paid for. Maybe there are justified reasons for it, but they're not enough justification for me..... to me, it feels more like renting a game for years on end, rather than just buying it and be done with it.

If others like it (obviously they do) then all the power to them.... spend away and play away...... but I'll never get into games like that based on the principles I already explained.

And maybe that's a good thing. I already get sucked into the games I already play, which take enough time out of my life as it is.

In regards to World of Warcraft..... I have to give props to South Park making an episode on the game.... I laughed my hole out.

[CommanderSock]

Great game, great like heroin.

It'll fuck you up long term.