I think I know the answer for a forums like this one. This is meant to go on a free MMOG forums but until I find a good one to ask this I'll ask here. Buy to Play: This is how normal games works and in many opinions, how online games should work as well. You basically buy a ticket to get into a country and after that you may leave and revisit that country as you wish. Sometimes the country may have extra features that you must pay for (such as expansions). From our point of view we can easily fine this reasonable, this is exactly how all our other games work! Games like Diablo 2 and Guild Wars work like this. Micro-Transactions: Also known as Cash Shops and Item Malls. Seems innocent enough, the core game is entirely free but you can pay for conveniences and advantages such as; item that increases your experience gain, a stack of all sorts of energy potions that you didn't have to farm yourself, alternative weapons and armor, or just some meaningless items that just make you look cool. Games like Maple Story and Perfect World work like this. Premium Accounts: This is a hybrid of the first two options. The core game is free with the option to pay for conveniences and advantages. Only difference is that you don't by them individually, they are all tied into a into a payment; which is either a one time payment or a timely fee, which is explained next. Games like Runescape and Club Penguin work like this. Timely Fee: This seems the most stabled yet the most greedy and expensive out of all. You don't really pay for the game itself or anything in the game, but more like the right to play it. They could range from a monthly fee( the most common) or a yearly fee. Although having to continue for your right to access the game may seem like an outrage, everyone is on even grounds and the entire game and all the updates are included with the payment. Games like World of Warcraft and EVE online work like this. Everything For Free: I hope you get caught one day, pirate! :evil:
I think what we may start seeing in the future is more games like Quakelive and Battlefield: Heroes: free but supported through in-game advertising. As long as the advertising isn't intrusive, I don't think I would mind too much.
I think what we may start seeing in the future is more games like Quakelive and Battlefield: Heroes: free but supported through in-game advertising. As long as the advertising isn't intrusive, I don't think I would mind too much.
BlueBirdTS
I could get behind that. Most games I don't even notice the ads.
I like the method where they pay me to play it. I prefer one off fee, but for new games today that usually means what you buy is exactly what you end up with because they don't add content or anything, apart from companies like Valve, ArenaNet and a few others Honestly though my least preferred technique is pay to play monthly fees, reason being i never feel I own the game, plus if you are the player who plays a little at a time, it's very cost inneffective. Small transactions as long as they don't make rich players better is ok, but again prices should be sensible. Premium accounts I guess is a bit like a collectors edition, problem with that is that many MMOs die, thus you wasted far more than you could have paying monthly, also if it doesn't die you have no idea if you will still be playing it in 3 + months.
Wow, I'm the only one who voted for something else? :P Look at me, I'm a minority so I'm cooool! 8) I thought there would be at least one other person voting for a free to play payment because we are talking about mainly MMOGs here. Believe it or not some people are so cheap they don't even like Guild Wars because you have to buy it before you can play it. :P
I like the monthly fee system. First its cheaper for me than buying a new game every month and second, with a monthly fee I get more updates and support, better servers, and to be frank it tends to weed out a lot of the more annoying people who don't care that much about playing the game.
I perfer Buy to Play. I still get updates for free like Monthly Fee games, but thats because I play Valve or NCsoft games.
Free games with advertisements are fine and you usually dont notice too much.
Free games with cash shops usually are poor because, they require grinding or using money if you want to progress at anything but a snails pace. (though I did buy millions of platinums in Guildwars to buy multiple sets of 15k or FoW armor for my two accounts.)
Monthly Fee games are fine, but I could never imagine paying for more than one at a time and they're usually MMOs which I don't play.
Buy to play. I want to pay one price to get the whole full game to play as much as I want. I don't like monthly fees as you end up paying over a hundred quid a year for just one game which seems like a crazy amount for 1 game. I also don't like games that have a tiered system, whereby the more you pay the better the content you get. What happens is that unless you start paying extra you get left behind and get a worse experience. Also any updates made for the game are specifically designed only for those that pay more.
Buy to play any other method is stupid if the game's not a MMO or free.
Nerkcon
But we are talking about MMOs. :P Well I said it as in general, I don't really play MMO's :P I played WoW a bit but I mostly try some free ones with micro-transactions, but I do like how Guild Wars works and it's pretty good for a "free" mmo.
Buy to play any other method is stupid if the game's not a MMO or free.
DanielDust
But we are talking about MMOs. :P Well I said it as in general, I don't really play MMO's :P I played WoW a bit but I mostly try some free ones with micro-transactions, but I do like how Guild Wars works and it's pretty good for a "free" mmo. I was iffy about buying that.... I'll probably consider it now. Any tips? Also: Buy To Play rocks.
[QUOTE="DanielDust"][QUOTE="Nerkcon"] But we are talking about MMOs. :PGlyph13
Well I said it as in general, I don't really play MMO's :P I played WoW a bit but I mostly try some free ones with micro-transactions, but I do like how Guild Wars works and it's pretty good for a "free" mmo. I was iffy about buying that.... I'll probably consider it now. Any tips? Also: Buy To Play rocks. Can't really give any tips, I didn't play it more than 6 or 7 so I'm not really sure what I'm doing. It's good but I get tired pretty fast of games like this, but I'm sure there are quite a few on this forum that can give you lots of in depth information :P.
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