Darth_Moonshadow Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Why is every one so quick to say that? I stated I love the game.. Can't I just be curious? Curiosity killed the Jawa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Moonshadow Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 So you'll just pay you monthly subscription without hesitation and without wanting to know if that money is even going to the game you hold oh so dear to your heart? Yeah dude. I don't question where the 10 bucks I spend at the Redbox goes to. I don't ask where the 136 dollars I spend on groceries goes. I don't question the 50 cents I spend at the soda machine goes to. Why should anyone care where the money goes? You get what you wanted. Move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aramyth Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Depending on how much they have made back compared on what they spent we may still be paying for all the costs of making the game and the pay cheques of everyone involved. From the QA testers, to producers, to programmers, art leads, voice actors, web designers, hardware etc etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bennyhana Posted April 5, 2012 Author Share Posted April 5, 2012 http://givingpledge.org/#george_lucas? Lol, this must be it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bhaers Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 You are paying $15 a month for access to play a game you enjoy. What EA/BW does with it is none of your business. If you don't like the game stop playing it. If you do, don't worry about it. I really like that response. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bennyhana Posted April 5, 2012 Author Share Posted April 5, 2012 Depending on how much they have made back compared on what they spent we may still be paying for all the costs of making the game and the pay cheques of everyone involved. From the QA testers, to producers, to programmers, art leads, voice actors, web designers, hardware etc etc Best response yet, I guess I didn't look at it that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GalacticKegger Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) Lol, this must be it!Oh wait those mega-million$ come out of George Lucas' wallet, not EA/BW/LA's ... nvm. Edited April 5, 2012 by GalacticKegger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V-Serp Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Heh heh there is an easy way to find out actually. Legally, if you own even one share of a company, you are a part owner and can ask to see the books. The company may scoff and refuse, but if you insist they have no choice but to make you sign some confidentiality agreement but then show it to you. Or you can sue them and win easily and they'll then have even more eyes on it. Now I've never bothered doing this, because I don't really care. But if you really, really need to know, just buy shares and then ask their investor relations. I don't know if you can ask investor relations before buying shares, that is something I always wondered. Whenever I ask investor relations without owning stocks they never answer me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GalacticKegger Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Depending on how much they have made back compared on what they spent we may still be paying for all the costs of making the game and the pay cheques of everyone involved. From the QA testers, to producers, to programmers, art leads, voice actors, web designers, hardware etc etcQFT. Set aside about 8 minutes and play the credits to see what all goes into this game. Amazing stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bennyhana Posted April 5, 2012 Author Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) QFT. Set aside about 8 minutes and play the credits to see what all goes into this game. Amazing stuff. I was responding to the fact that they might still be paying for the original development of the game, not to who created it. Edited April 5, 2012 by bennyhana Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onyx Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) Let me start by saying I love this game and I don't have a problem affording the subscription fees, but what am I paying $15 a month for? Now I pulled up FY 12 financial reports for EA (since they have to post that stuff for share holders) but I gotta say I don't really know exactly how to find my answers if any one is willing to inform me. It can be found at http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=618768 Or if I am even looking in the right place. -server costs- is it justifiable in 2012 to pay a subscription fee to support and maintain the servers it runs on nowadays? Maybe back in the eq days.. (ie. early 90s) -patches and content updates- are we paying for the bug fixes, balancing tweaks, and maintenance?(obviously maintenance is required after a game release) Stuff that should honestly have been fixed or taken care of before the game was released. In any other genre games tend to get updates all the time that I'm not paying for. -new content- this is a little more tricky.. (almost every game that comes out with new content usually costs)I'm patiently waitin for 1.2 but how often do you think they will be coming out with new content after? Every 3 months or so?(So We're paying $45 for 1 wz and 1 new fp?) on top of possible expansion packs that we're going to most likely pay $50+ for? Or is our monthly fee just simply to fill their wallets?(not knocking a company that's out to make money) Also I know most f2p mmo's are garbage with cash shops but how is charging a monthly fee what makes a "good game". Now like I said above I am a little unfamiliar with reading the FY12 reports so I could be totally wrong and it could cost that much to maintain the game, but I highly doubt it. And lastly they just charging a monthly fee because we're willing to pay it? Sorry for the grammatical errors and the sporadicness of this post.(did it on my iPhone at work..) You left out the hefty licensing fees, for one. As far as servers go, the cost today is significantly more than "back in the EQ days". (I'm meaning the overall cost.) Every aspect is considerably larger--the data center space/security/monitoring/remote access, the bandwidth requirements, the hardware requirements, the number of servers per cluster, the disaster recovery requirements, and so forth. The "cost per unit" may be less than it was 10-12 years ago, but the overall total is exponentially more. There's also marketing costs and general overhead and operating costs including things like legal/contract services, accounting, billing system maintenance and upgrades, hard-copy production costs, website and forum maintenance/upgrades, necessary software and database licensing fees and upgrades, and much more. That's only the tip of the iceberg and hasn't even begun to touch on the ongoing development and QA or system support. I don't know how much finance and budgeting experience or knowledge you have, but doing some research on business overhead and maintenance costs might help answer some of the question. Edited April 5, 2012 by Onyx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nexdine Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Don't have the energy to read all the kwetching, but I presume somebody mentioned the well over $150 million that was spent on just creating the game already. Quite aside from the fact that they haven't stopped developing. I'm absolutely expecting to see levels 50-60 and 60-70, and I fully expect those levels and new quests and content to be fully voiced as well by the (mostly) brilliant voice actors they've already retained. So you have "keeping the infrastructure up", you have "paying developers and maintenance staff", you have "recouping a huge investment"... and of course you finally have sucking profit out of it to make others do other big investments in gaming down the line. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Ravenhurst Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) My guess: 14.50 are going into GLs Ferraripark. 0.50 are going into BWs Starwarspark. Edited April 5, 2012 by Lord_Ravenhurst Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiriensoul Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Hosting servers costs alot of money. Having developers working on Tech/Bug/Content/Changes costs even more. Bandwidth costs. Location costs. Paying me a healty amount of money eachnth costs, and i need my moneyz! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Ravenhurst Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 and 60-70, and I fully expect those levels and new quests and content to be fully voiced as well. Darth Vader: "Luke, I am... telling you that we'll have fully voiced sidequests about X rats you need to kill!" Luke: "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cial Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) The subscription model is an archaic relic left over from EQ, and adopted by current mmos because they want the same gravy train WoW sees every month. Within the next few years you will see a huge change of mmos adoping a F2P model with a micro-transaction/cash shop component. Off the top of my head in 2012 we have: Guild Wars 2 - F2P, Cash Shop The Secret World - F2P, Cash Shop Planet Side 2 - F2P And all the existing mmos that recently went f2p: EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, Age of Conan etc etc And of course all the f2p MOBAs like LoL, Dota etc. Then you have social gaming (Facebook games) which is the fastest, largest growing segment of the video game industry. And again: they're all f2p with a cash shop. Considering Tor is an EA title, and EA LOVES micro-transactions and DLC, my guess is Tor will go f2p with a cash shop by the end of the year. Edited April 5, 2012 by Cial Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeutschGamer Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Why are you making this argument on an internet forum? About SWTOR no less. This could go for any product, questioning whether what you pay is actually used in a proper manner. You can't actually watch where your money goes. Why don't you go complain about something useful like if charity money is actually being used for starving orphans in Africa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FCI-DK Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 Hosting servers costs alot of money. Having developers working on Tech/Bug/Content/Changes costs even more. Bandwidth costs. Location costs. Paying me a healty amount of money eachnth costs, and i need my moneyz! LOL well can in some point agree with server thing,, ohhhh,, they can actual cut down price with 80% then,, ITS GHOST SERVERS anyway,,, and for Dev team,, in our country you will have been without job for sleeping that much on work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidatwood Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 The subscription model is an archaic relic left over from EQ, and adopted by current mmos because they want the same gravy train WoW sees every month. Within the next few years you will see a huge change of mmos adoping a F2P model with a micro-transaction/cash shop component. Off the top of my head in 2012 we have: Guild Wars 2 - F2P, Cash Shop The Secret World - F2P, Cash Shop Planet Side 2 - F2P And all the existing mmos that recently went f2p: EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, Age of Conan etc etc And of course all the f2p MOBAs like LoL, Dota etc. Then you have social gaming (Facebook games) which is the fastest, largest growing segment of the video game industry. And again: they're all f2p with a cash shop. Considering Tor is an EA title, and EA LOVES micro-transactions and DLC, my guess is Tor will go f2p with a cash shop by the end of the year. I don't think it will. And if it does which I highly doubt I'm all set playing a game that milks money out of you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RabidPopcorn Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) I've asked this question quite a few times but I've never really got a satisfactory reply. Almost everyone here has heard about how GW2 will be The MMO killer; it's like so many people are saying GW2 is as good as SWTOR, only without a subscription. So my question is, objectively speaking (i.e. leave out stuff like 'just because you like the game' kind of replies), what are we getting from our subscription fees in games like SWTOR or WoW that a game like GW2 won't have? If the main difference is that GW2 uses a cash shop instead of a subscription, i.e. GW2 believes that, on average, their cash shop generates $15 per player per month, then I personally think that's a great alternative to a subscription (that's a whole other discussion). EDIT: because it seems that the premise behind $15 per month is that it's needed to support the game (if this premise is false, and if GW2 is as legit as SWTOR/WoW as an MMO, then the $15 per month that we pay would seem like it's just because we enjoy the game; not to mention that a subscription acts like a barrier to entry/filtration system, if you know what I mean) Disclaimer: I've never played any form of GW2 so I don't know what it's like; I did play GW1 but it felt more like battle.net than an MMO if you know what I mean. I'm also still playing SWTOR and WoW. Edited April 5, 2012 by RabidPopcorn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharee Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 -server costs- is it justifiable in 2012 to pay a subscription fee to support and maintain the servers it runs on nowadays? Maybe back in the eq days.. (ie. early 90s) I don't know, you tell me: Was server bandwidth only expensive in the early 90's, or is it expensive today as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharee Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 EDIT: because it seems that the premise behind $15 per month is that it's needed to support the game (if this premise is false, and if GW2 is as legit as SWTOR/WoW as an MMO, then the $15 per month that we pay would seem like it's just because we enjoy the game; not to mention that a subscription acts like a barrier to entry/filtration system, if you know what I mean) Money is always needed to support the game. Whether it is in the form of many smaller payments or fewer big payments isn't really relevant. SWTOR is not free to maintain. GW2 is not free to maintain. They just take your money in different ways. Neither of them is charity. Why people believe one form(paid expansions) is so much better than other(subscription) when both come out about the same in the end is beyond me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RabidPopcorn Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 (edited) Money is always needed to support the game. Whether it is in the form of many smaller payments or fewer big payments isn't really relevant. SWTOR is not free to maintain. GW2 is not free to maintain. They just take your money in different ways. Neither of them is charity. Why people believe one form(paid expansions) is so much better than other(subscription) when both come out about the same in the end is beyond me. I think expansions are cheaper, no? EDIT: plus games like WoW have expansions too, not sure about SWTOR... Edited April 5, 2012 by RabidPopcorn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Ravenhurst Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 My guess is you need to pay for GW2 expansions, but SWTOR expansions will always be free. That would be fair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tourette Posted April 5, 2012 Share Posted April 5, 2012 It all goes to fund EA's secret volcano lair where all the staff stand around laughing maniacally whilst wearing eye patches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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