[QUOTE="starwarsgeek112"][QUOTE="lokstah"][QUOTE="Johnny_Rock"]It's a lot of fun. If you can afford 15 measly dollars a month. Less than a movie and popcorn.... once a month. Just get a job. Seriously.LuffyTubby
It doesn't really work that way, Johnny--or at least not that simple. It's about value, and value is complicated.
You could tell me that a single stick of cinnamon gum only costs $5--I mean, what's $5 every now and then? Even if I could afford to drop $5 on gum every now and then, I'd prefer to stick with my usual peppermint, because it's excellent, and it costs under $1 for a big pack of it.
I've never played a MMORPG which is stunningly better than the best single player games on my shelf, and each of those cost me between $25 and $50... once. That $40 can carry me for months, or even years, if the game is top notch. So it's not whether or not I can afford $15 a month. It's whether or not I can afford to spend $15 a month (plus an original purchase price) for as long as I want to enjoy a game which brings me no more pleasure than the $40 game on my HDD.
Do the math. Buy it for $45, and play it for a year or so. You've likely spent over $200 playing WoW. Over the course of a year, $200 is no big deal next to rent, car payments, and so on, but it's astronomical when most of the best games out there cost a one-time fee of $40-$50.
Bottom line? It's not about affordability. It's about value. If WoW is really that much better to you than Company of Heroes, or Medieval 2, or Dark Crusade, or Half Life 2, or Guild Wars, then by all means, spend away. For me, it just doesn't make sense.
For you to understand MMO's you need to play one for some time. Part of the joy to be found in MMO's are in the community, after while it's like your playing with a family.
Thus I thought so for a while, but I have come to the conclusion that playing subscription based games, are garbage.
Community? And World of Warcraft? Of all god forsaken grinding games, World of Warcraft has the most lame un-cool bunch of 12 year olds that reigned supreme in Diablo and other Battle.Net products before WoW.
I got no problem paying a monthly fee, I played 3 MMOs at the same time for almost a year a while ago.
My analysis of the incompetence of MMOs is simple - I belive that the groundbreaking definition of game... In any sort of game. Not just computer games, but card games, board games, childrens game, mind games and all other kinds of games, is that the game can end and that it can be won. Not all games can be lost tho. But all games can end.
However, in MMOs like WoW it just does never end. It's already been discussed about many people. It's the fabled "carrot on a stick" syndrom. Your virtual avatar is chasing goals which can be conqured but never be realised, because it never ends. Therefore the game has no meaning.
Upon playing MMOs it's biggest force is the immersive feeling. Suddenly your in this other world, however while your immersed in this world you dont realise how much time you spent doing stupid crap and repetitive tasks - Doing things that you dont enjoy for ultimately getting a reward(a carrot). After getting the carrot you feel that your tedious time spent playing(grinding, moving around from point a to point b) was worthwhile because you got the reward.
I hate this. I think that every second you play a game that it should be fun.
The thing is that MMOs are just not fun. You do these things that are required of you - Tasks and challanges which don't test your brain or your eye cordination. It' has been proven in countless studies that playing hard strategic games or fast paced shooters can increase your capacitiy to think or help you concentrate, and that fast paced action games like counter-strike will improve your reaction time.
I'm not a subscriber to WoW so I don't know how the community is there, but when I played CoH, the supergroup I in was great and that was all the community I really needed. MMO's are fun for awhile, but when they require a lot of grinding sessions then yeah they can get tedious and boring. But like I said the community is what part of the fun comes from, for example when I was bored with doing missions in CoH I'd just spend time talking with random people and with my supergroup. 
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