Any1 else wanna know what were paying for?

[Vylentqt]

Please explain how cheap hosting is for us.

 

Let’s take the most expensive number – that WoW upkeep costs $200 million over 4 years (it’s 47 months actually). On average, that’s $4.25M per month.

 

That number seems extremely high considering that there are only ~2.5k servers (~730 realms worldwide) utilized. Until that is, you read this:

 

“That’s $200 million for the total cost of upkeep since the game’s November 2004 release (presumably not including the initial cost to develop the game). This includes payroll for the entire staff, hardware support, and — apparently the biggest infrastructure cost — customer service.”

 

That makes more sense: the biggest upkeep cost in that $200 million figure is customer service. So, that $4.25M per month figure is probably a lot less now considering that there have been significant numbers of lay-offs in the WoW offices and support teams, and that the server count has pretty much remained the same since the announcement.

 

Also, some Blizzard employees have stated that they have reduced yearly operating costs by $500,000 and have introduced new policies that have resulted in multi-millions of yearly loss reduction. (Link)

 

So it’s safe to say that all World of Warcraft operating costs are at max $4.25 million per month. Realistically though, it’s probably half of that amount or less now.

 

Keep this figure in mind, it’s important for another post that I’ve been preparing.

 

 

Just to give you an idea.

[Nategray]

And the upfront cost of the game doesn't cover these costs? Its not like im saying it should be 100% free... im saying should be one or the other, either they ask me to pay for a game, or they ask me to pay to be a member of a game...

 

Look its so painfully obvious you have no clue how IT works so let it go already.

It costs lots of money to have the bandwidth available to allow a million people to play, its a monthly cost.

Server equipment and routers also cost monthly maintenance fees for support.

those are just a couple of the things they pay for monthly.

 

Is your internet free????

Neither is theirs so enough with your idiotic posts about things you have so little clue about its frightening.

[Hellbrass]

 

And it doesn't matter WoW is a micro-transaction game with a subscription. How can you ignore that fact?

 

You are right it is, and its one of the reasons why i stopped playing that game, before Activision implemented any more game ruining money making schemes.

 

Quite what that has to do with TOR, a subscription only MMO however is up to you to explain.

[Pizza_Tha_Hutt]

It is what it is though, if I don't want to pay, I don't have to. It just does make you wonder why we have to pay for a server when they are already making a TON of money off of the game. And then the game ... what is on the three discs? I saw the instruction manual online and I am able to play via the game client that I downloaded from this website. So, can someone tell me what is on the discs? Or did I just pay for the Activation Code? Edited December 28, 2011 by Pizza_Tha_Hutt

[MVPddark]

They also... the publisher, not the running company of guild wars. Aion is made and produced by ncsoft west. Not another company, which has no relation to guild wars.

 

And it doesn't matter WoW is a micro-transaction game with a subscription. How can you ignore that fact?

 

Only other person on this thread that talks sense lmao

 

They keep dismissing the fact that Guildwars IS an mmo which HAS masses of people playing and IS free, with the only microtransactions taking place having NO affect on making one player better than another.

 

You can keep posting about how i believe everything should be free, but if you've read the other posts you will know thats not what im getting at. The fact is your paying so much for a game and so much more to play it when there is no need to do this at all, and untill u understand this fact ul keep on paying and wasting ya money =]

[Chrisamcnicholas]

It is what it is though, if I don't want to pay, I don't have to. It just does make you wonder why we have to pay for a server when they are already making a TON of money off of the game. And then the game ... what is on the three discs? I saw the instruction manual online and I am able to play via the game client that I downloaded from this website. So, can someone tell me what is on the discs? Or did I just pay for the Activation Code?

 

You paid for the activation code and a physical copy of the game client that you can install as many times as you want.

[Chrisamcnicholas]

Only other person on this thread that talks sense lmao

 

They keep dismissing the fact that Guildwars IS an mmo which HAS masses of people playing and IS free, with the only microtransactions taking place having NO affect on making one player better than another.

 

You can keep posting about how i believe everything should be free, but if you've read the other posts you will know thats not what im getting at. The fact is your paying so much for a game and so much more to play it when there is no need to do this at all, and untill u understand this fact ul keep on paying and wasting ya money =]

Hey, why don't you go play guild wars? Not trolling or trying to be a dick but seriously, you seem to love the game. The rest of us are happy and financially able to pay $15 a month, show your distaste by taking your money elsewhere.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Chrisamcnicholas

[Iga_Fudoshin]

Entertainment plain and simple.

 

It's no different than going to a movie, ballgame, watching TV, or anything else we pay for on a daily basis to be entertained.

 

I don't complain and want my money back if I see a movie I don't like or go to a game where my team lost. I've bought games in the past I thought I would like and they turned out horrible for me, so instead of complaining I just didn't buy from that company again.

 

Nobody forces me to buy the game or to pay a subscription fee. I choose to because I enjoy the game and for less than what I would spend on one night out I get unlimited play time for a month.

 

So if you don't find the game entertaining then don't play it. It really doesn't get much simpler than that.

 

If you bought the game and don't like it then just don't buy from BW/EA again, lesson learned.

 

It's just a game and it's just for entertainment.

[RuthlessKorrupt]

Honestly you could ask the same question about any MMO on the market. The real question is, what are you making out of the time that you pay for?

[jdridens]

Do you have any idea how much development costs? I mean just inside the world of programming the prices become astronomical. There are entire sections of literature devoted to making the work it takes more efficient so that a business doesn't waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on wasted development.

 

At the same time you have artists to pay, musicians, writers, analysts and a whole slew of other people just so you can produce the next patch, the next big block of content. And this stuff is all just for future content.

 

Now we also expect these same developers to keep track of bugs, balance issues, connectivity issues, provide in-game, online and over the phone support. We want community integration, online services, security enhancements, as well as be provided with extra's to the game (guild housing, achievements, dual specs, public api).

 

All this while we want dedicated servers, never mind the cost of maintenance, much less what it costs to optimize them, prepare them for upgrades, and expand the total space. Oh and they do have to pay people to keep those things running, if they are lucky maybe they will save on repair costs when the equipment eventually starts having errors.

 

But I guess some people still have to ask what they are paying for. I guess we should ask if they can meet all of these expectations without some sort of monthly payment, I mean heck other MMO's provide this same support for free right? I really don't think they do, free to play games largely receive little support, or their developers have another means to make the money (micro transactions of some sort). Maybe they pull a Blizzard where one game provides enough money for the development and support of other games.

 

Fact is these services are not free, and they choose to want a monthly payment method. If we didn't pay monthly you could be damn sure that fixes and support would be worse or we would see some sort of huge micro transaction service get put in place.

[Mr_Crueak]

They keep dismissing the fact that Guildwars IS an mmo which HAS masses of people playing and IS free, with the only microtransactions taking place having NO affect on making one player better than another.

 

 

which is their way of offsetting the running costs of their infrastructure, basically microtransactions whehter it has affect on gameplay or not is just another form of a subscription fee, it just isn't forced on you with the idea that they know people will pay for the vanity items.

 

Every company has their idea of a business plan, Every compan wants to make a profit from that buisness plan, EA/BW is purchase cost plus sub. GW is purchase cost + microtransactions. I don't see the difference here. It is simply 2 different ways to reach the same conclusion.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Mr_Crueak

[MVPddark]

Hey, why don't you go play guild wars? Not trolling or trying to be a dick but seriously, you seem to love the game. The rest of us are happy and financially able to pay $15 a month, show your distaste by taking your money elsewhere.

 

because i played the game for many years, and was able to be the best i could be at it without paying for anything other than the disc's to play it. The facts the same, i dont hate on people who pay to play this, the same way as i dont hate on people who play WoW ect im making the point that this game, like guildwars can be very successful and very profitable without making you guys pay extra money... simple

[Nategray]

Only other person on this thread that talks sense lmao

 

They keep dismissing the fact that Guildwars IS an mmo which HAS masses of people playing and IS free, with the only microtransactions taking place having NO affect on making one player better than another.

 

You can keep posting about how i believe everything should be free, but if you've read the other posts you will know thats not what im getting at. The fact is your paying so much for a game and so much more to play it when there is no need to do this at all, and untill u understand this fact ul keep on paying and wasting ya money =]

 

No it doesn't have masses of people playing.

You can keep claiming 10-maybe 50k or so it comparable to 1 million + but its not.

I work in IT so let it go sonny you have no idea the costs required to run something like a server farm or the netscalers or the routers much less the bandwidth.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Nategray

[ThiborF]

And the upfront cost of the game doesn't cover these costs? Its not like im saying it should be 100% free... im saying should be one or the other, either they ask me to pay for a game, or they ask me to pay to be a member of a game...

 

$300m (supposedly) spent in development. Plus marketing. Plus distribution. Plus profit per unit sold for retailer/reseller. Plus Lucas Arts & EA's share of profits and/or for ongoing license usage.

 

BUT, for argument's sake, let's just take $300m minus the other stuff and let's pretend (even though it's not the case) that the full $60 per unit sold goes directly to Bioware. They stated in a press release that over 1m people had logged in since they launched. Now personally I think that if it was over 1.5m or closer to 2m you would have seen those numbers used. So I'm going to toss out a conservative guess at 1.3m

 

1.3m X $60 = $78m. And for arguments sake lets bump it to an even $100m to cover the extra some folks chose to pay for Deluxe/CE versions.

 

Now, let us suppose they maintain 1.3m for one year. Hard to say if they'll go like WoW and blow up huge or be like other games and start to tank after 3-6 months.

 

1.3m subs x 11 months (remember no charge for 1st mo) is 14.3m monthly charges and let's just assume they're all at $15 instead of trying to figure how many bought multi-month cards for a slightly reduced rate.

14.3m x $15 = 214.5 million

 

Add that to the $100 mill from box sales and you get a whopping 314.5 million. So after ONE YEAR it looks like you made a 5% profit.

EXCEPT:

Taxes paid on it along the way

Staff salaries/benefits for the last year

Server upkeep/maint for the past year

Utilities (broadband, electric, water, sewer, etc.) for the past year

 

And then consider the other things I said to leave out like EA's profits, Lucas Arts profits, etc etc

And maybe, just maybe, you'll get an idea that BioWare isn't trying to be greedy. They're just trying to secure the longevity of the project.

 

You want to make your argument, make it when they've broke even maybe in a year.

 

And last, consider this ...

Star Wars Galaxies, released in 2003, was one of, if not THE first MMO to have a monthly subscription at $15.mo. That was 8+ years ago and that price, despite inflation in so many other areas including both services a company pays for and staff salaries, has not gone up.

 

Perhaps you should feel lucky they're not charging $25/mo.

[Chrisamcnicholas]

because i played the game for many years, and was able to be the best i could be at it without paying for anything other than the disc's to play it. The facts the same, i dont hate on people who pay to play this, the same way as i dont hate on people who play WoW ect im making the point that this game, like guildwars can be very successful and very profitable without making you guys pay extra money... simple

 

You called people idiots a couple times because we choose to pay the sub. We know that quite a bit of it is going to be profit and that's okay because we enjoy the product and feel like they deserve to profit off of it.

[DarthSeer]

Before u all sit there going troll.. troll.. troll, think about it... what is that £9 a month ur paying actually buying you that the £45 you paid to get the game didnt.... ur not getting any benifits, any added content or anything like that just teh ability to play the game you already bought

 

The £45 bought you the game, plus one month's free playtime. The continued subscription pays for the continued growth and development of the game, plus the maintenence of the servers you're playing on.

 

It's the same model used by every subscription based mmo, ever.

 

Thanks

[Kolzarr]

If you had half a brain you would of discovered before purchasing the game that there are monthly costs, so no good moaning about it now.

[Thradar]

So don't play and go play something else.

 

Do you think posting here will make one iota of difference?

[_Corth_]

I stopped reading at the use of "coz".

[Nategray]

Please delete this thread it serves no purpose and is not necessary.

If the post starter is unhappy no one is forcing them to stay and pay the monthly fee and his attempts to make comparisons are so far off base and he refuses to accept the costing reality of upkeep for a game of this scale and making comparisons to a game with a fraction of the upkeep cost.

[Deffin]

What bothers me is why the OP who is clearly 11 years of age due to this HORRID spelling and grammar is even playing this game. I was under the impression that this game was rated T+ which means you must be 13 years of age or older. So either OP illegally bought the game or his parents lack the ability to read.

 

That is what we should be discussing in this thread! Think about the poor children who are exposed to the violence in this game!!! (Like OP).

[TitanJJ]

you could always get a 2nd paper route or have mommy up your allowance a bit...

[Syas]

fact is there r games out there which r also mmo's that can do the same but for free, it seems that u all just like to throw ur mums money around without a thought of what ur actually doing with it lmao

 

if hosting is so expensive then y is it that guildwars can let you play for free and give you content? And with other things you pay for you can buy the game and still play without having to pay a subscription.... most games come with an OPTIONAL fee that gives you added benifits, like with xbox.. you can still play the games you buy without having to pay to go online.

 

like i said it comes down to greed.

 

Actually most studies agree that the amount a player invests in a "Free"-to-Pay game far exceeds that of a subscription model. DCUO and LOTRO for example are making MORE money as F2P then they did as sub models.

 

You understand that those F2P games charge you for basically everything, right? LOTRO being the worst (IMO). "Oh cool, I found a new zone... why are there no quests here? Oh, I have to pay $5." "How come I can't carry more than 5g? Or I have to pay $5" "I want to PVP as a bad guy... $5" and on and on. Keep in mind most of those things you are paying for are per character.

[Mr_Crueak]

What bothers me is why the OP who is clearly 11 years of age due to this HORRID spelling and grammar is even playing this game. I was under the impression that this game was rated T+ which means you must be 13 years of age or older. So either OP illegally bought the game or his parents lack the ability to read.

 

That is what we should be discussing in this thread! Think about the poor children who are exposed to the violence in this game!!! (Like OP).

 

maybe he got it for christmas and daddy didn't realize it was sub based and so no more after the 30 days are up?

[Pirate_Ron]

because i played the game for many years, and was able to be the best i could be at it without paying for anything other than the disc's to play it. The facts the same, i dont hate on people who pay to play this, the same way as i dont hate on people who play WoW ect im making the point that this game, like guildwars can be very successful and very profitable without making you guys pay extra money... simple

 

NCSoft has no Game Master support for Guildwars, so there's no hourly wages that have to be spent on that. The fact that there aren't major content patches means that save on bandwidth costs. NCSoft states that it can cost them over 1 million dollars when one of their P2P games has a content patch due to the bandwidth spike for everyone to download it.

 

Guildwars while a good game, doesn't come with the backend support, and it's because it is F2P. You pay for what you get.

 

Seriously. Seems to me that you want to live in a utopian society where everyone makes quality products for you with no expectation of compensation. While that would be nice, without motivation people don't make quality products.