For those against monthly payments in MMORPGs...

[Jaradu]

As a kid, I can no way afford the monthly payments over and over again. My parents? They'd do anything to get me off the computer, let alone on it more. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

While the payments annoy me, I guess they are necessary, so I'm not going to complain.

Well, I can always look on the bright side; I have four or five years of sanity and freedom left.

[Ivelliis]

Originally posted by Jaradu: As a kid, I can no way afford the monthly payments over and over again. My parents? They'd do anything to get me off the computer, let alone on it more. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Haha, same here. Now I go out quite a lot, but before I spent nearly all my time on my PC, which wasn't healthy. I make sure I go out at least twice/three times a week.

I did play an MMORPG a year or so ago, [URL=www.play.net/dr]DragonRealms] made by Simutronics. My dad had 2 accounts, so I used one while he used the other. He paid, which was the best thing
We stopped playing when they rose the prices without warning. It wasn't because of the money (which was why I didn't see the reason to stop) but the fact they said "Ok for this month you owe us $__", I think anyway.

Originally posted by Jaradu: Well, I can always look on the bright side; I have four or five years of sanity and freedom left.

Different to me. Living in my household I have no sanity any more [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Riftmaker]

The whole point of the developers is to get people to play MMORPGs for a long time, that's how they make their money. Subscriptions are the biggest money maker out there.

You can't just counter it by saying that a demo will decrease sales, and therefore decrease revenue. The only difference is that you'd be forcing a person to pay $50 for the the game, which they find out they hate, and then quit.

So as a developer / publisher, your goal is really to please your customers. If your customers want a demo server, give them one. You'd gain potential customers out of people that never heard of it before, and aren't willing to buy a MMORPG just to find out they don't like it.

Sure you'd lose those short-term $50 customers, but you'd easily gain at least that number back from the long term ones, or at least be able to absorb the losses from all those subscriptions.

Another thing to remember is that 99/100 times, you can't play cracked versions of MMOs anyway. So that argument doesn't really hold any water.

[Luvian]

Originally posted by Riftmaker: Another thing to remember is that 99/100 times, you can't play cracked versions of MMOs anyway. So that argument doesn't really hold any water.

Well I've seen free pirated servers for about every MMORPGS, but let's not get into that.

[Bahamut]

Well I can't afford it. I have better things to spend my money on AFTER I buy the game. [img]smile.gif[/img]

That's why I am a single player guy. I buy the games and play them to death. I am not about comaraderie anyway... I want to be alone, kickin' butt and saving the world.

I still think the inital price of the game should be toned down. If not that, then the monthly fees. Besides, I don't like the fact that some people are there just to hack your account and all that... sad.

[Luvian]

Originally posted by Bahamut: Well I can't afford it. I have better things to spend my money on AFTER I buy the game. [img]smile.gif[/img] That's why I am a single player guy. I buy the games and play them to death. I am not about comaraderie anyway... I want to be alone, kickin' butt and saving the world. I still think the inital price of the game should be toned down. If not that, then the monthly fees. Besides, I don't like the fact that some people are there just to hack your account and all that... sad.

There are no real hacks.

99% of the time, it's either a guy that gave his password to a net "friend" and had his password changed, or it's someone that downloaded a program that was advertised as an hack for the game but really just stole his password.

The rest of the time it's just some guy finding your password because you used a stupid easy one.

All of those can be prevented by being prudent.

[Kakero]

Originally posted by Luvian: The rest of the time it's just some guy finding your password because you used a stupid easy one.

I've heard that some people use brudeforce (sp?) to get your password. Don't know how's that done.

Also by visiting some shaddy websites and clicking links there your account may get hacks. I've heard visiting such websites alone is eenough for your accpount to be hacked.

[Luvian]

Bruteforce is guessing your password.

Or sometimes they can use program that try random combinations and words, but games have protections agains that now.

[RoSs_bg2_rox]

Actually, Bruteforcers are programs which automatically, systematically go through every available combination of passwords until they guess the correct one. These are often used to crack sites, but I have never heard of them being implemented in games, probably because of the protections Luvian mentioned.

[Luvian]

Yes, I mentioned the program approach, but some do it manyally and still call it bruteforce.