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Its probably that they make more money cause how many people pay for 6 months but don't actually play that much? An hourly plan means you get every single bit of time you paid for and can use it whenever you want, but I think more people would play an mmo with an hourly plan.

Or at least more would pay for it in the case of MMOs with free to play modes.

15 dollars a mount, is frankly, a small amount compare to the average cost of an item.

In my first trip to GW, I spent more money then I have ever spent on WoW after 7 years of playing. 1 Baneblade alone pays for a single year of subscription.

$180 for one game for one year is not a lot of money if you play it quite a bit

They were talking for people who may pay on and off and not all the time an hourly plan would be more fiscally conceivable and they would be less pressured to play that game.

But yes, $15 a month is a very little amount of money if you have a job of some sort, even if you get minimum wage.

Karon wrote:$180 for one game for one year is not a lot of money if you play it quite a bit

They were talking for people who may pay on and off and not all the time an hourly plan would be more fiscally conceivable and they would be less pressured to play that game.

But yes, $15 a month is a very little amount of money if you have a job of some sort, even if you get minimum wage.

True, however, the amount of Entertainment I get a month from raiding in WoW greatly outweighs the 15 bucks I might spend on going to one 3-D movie.

I hate 3-D, it's overpriced garbage.

Aye, WoW costs me £2 more than my TV licence does each month, and I often spend more time in WoW than I do watching the telly.

I happily pay for both myself and Aurelia to play, and if another MMO comes out that was good enough to warrent play, I could happily justify paying for both.

I just spend less on games when I'm into WoW. For example, I'm just getting back into WoW atm after a lull of about six months ish. I went from buying around five games in the previous year before the lull while I was playing WoW, to picking up eleven games in the six months I've been off it.

Its just a case of moving the budget around for me, I'll be spending the money eitherway. Although even when playing WoW I won't skip on certain games.

Maybe I'll sound like a fanboy (I'm really not) but I think SWTOR has set a new 'minimum' for me and any game that's in development either needs a major rethink to imitate the storytelling medium or should just get shelved.

No way am I going back to reading scrolling text for quests...

Still, the premise of Dark Millennium as a third-person shooter is interesting, the gameplay looked a bit like BF:Heroes to me.

No doubt it'll just be a stupid grind, everything is... and I think Space Marine is one class?


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Alexzandvar wrote:

Melissia wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Karon wrote:Mhm. If they really do need an influx of cash, you can't get much better than releasing an MMO that a lot of people will play for years - assuming its well executed.

Which is why everyone is just churning out MMO's, every single one is hugely profitable and not at all risky.

MMOs are quite popular, yes, and THQ would be one of the last major producers to have one...

Dunno if this was considered sarcastic.

MMO's are still very very dangerous, Bioware is still under the water in SWOTR because of the MASSIVE amount of money they put into making it. The next big MMO that is sub based will be one that tries just a "little bit" to not be such a reskinned WoW clone. We will see if DMO is able to break the mold.

Are they? I have no idea how much they spent but they must have had a fair few million people buy the game and then go for their first subscription; surely that in itself would pay for whatever they spent?


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Edit: Sales are apparently over 2 million, no idea how many people renewed their subs, though, but that's a helluva lot of money either way.


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Then again:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/01/star-wars-old-republic-cost.html

Are they? I have no idea how much they spent but they must have had a fair few million people buy the game and then go for their first subscription; surely that in itself would pay for whatever they spent?

Reports say that TOR cost $150-200,000,000 to develop. We'll assume 150.

That means to break even you need to sell: 2,500,000 copies. That's just to break even. Now typically to be called a success you want to double your invest in games, so that means you want to sell 5,000,000. The idea that MMO developers make a profit off monthly fees is a complete myth. That money mostly pays for the back end, i.e. Server upkeep. When you have 2,000,000 people playing a game that's a lot of bandwidth and server space that needs paying for. Then there's the costs of ongoing content releases, patching, bug fixes etc. An MMO needs to not only sell copies it needs to keep people paying for two or three years before it can start to break even because once you've bought all those servers and bandwidth you can't just get your money back if it turns our you didn't need them.

LordofHats wrote:

Are they? I have no idea how much they spent but they must have had a fair few million people buy the game and then go for their first subscription; surely that in itself would pay for whatever they spent?

Reports say that TOR cost $150-200,000,000 to develop. We'll assume 150.

That means to break even you need to sell: 2,500,000 copies. That's just to break even. Now typically to be called a success you want to double your invest in games, so that means you want to sell 5,000,000. The idea that MMO developers make a profit off monthly fees is a complete myth. That money mostly pays for the back end, i.e. Server upkeep. When you have 2,000,000 people playing a game that's a lot of bandwidth and server space that needs paying for. Then there's the costs of ongoing content releases, patching, bug fixes etc. An MMO needs to not only sell copies it needs to keep people paying for two or three years before it can start to break even because once you've bought all those servers and bandwidth you can't just get your money back if it turns our you didn't need them.

However if you look at financial reports server costs are extremely low (relatively speaking), most of the cost of keeping an MMO running comes from paying the devs who work on patches and new content.

If it does come out, i hope that it doesnt sink like Warhammer Online

Supreme Kai wrote:If it does come out, i hope that it doesnt sink like Warhammer Online

Don't we all? EA or incompetent EA Mythic Developers aren't behind it, however, so it shouldn't be a problem.

>Assuming THQ doesn't get EA to put money into DMO to fund it.

Karon wrote:

Supreme Kai wrote:If it does come out, i hope that it doesnt sink like Warhammer Online

Don't we all? EA or incompetent EA Mythic Developers aren't behind it, however, so it shouldn't be a problem.

>Assuming THQ doesn't get EA to put money into DMO to fund it.

To be honest, if Relic went over to Activision Blizzard, merged teams and GW gave permission rights to the Relic-Activision-Blizzard team we would get a god level MMO, but that will never happen.

I'd rather they take all those resources and environments and make it Space Marine 2 (with some expansive coop) rather than an MMO.

Also, THQ has said they can't bring DM to market by themselves, so... who knows what is going to happen to it.

I really want to work at Vigil, and I'd bust my ass on a 40k MMO, but I still don't think it is a good idea.