Comments on: Universe at Price War

By: tacticus

tacticus — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:27:22 +0000

Jigglybean when the frak do publishers host the game?
the closest i have seen is releasing a free server for the game and getting gamespy to host a matchmaking service

By: Dean

Dean — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:29:09 +0000

I suspect one of the reasons WoW can’t work on a non-sub basis is it’s such a massive, sprawling thing with millions spent on development, that Blizzard had to sell a whole bunch of copies to break even. Server costs were probably factored into subscription income, so more cash could be spent on up front development.

Also, if what the preview of Guild Wars says is true, it could produce an interesting dilemma, see even if your netcode is mega-efficient, there are still costs. But it’s manageable for GW as the sub numbers are reasonable. If GW2 somehow managed to do the sort of numbers WoW did, you’d need more servers and more bandwidth and more GMs and more tech support and suddenly you face the possibility of the whole thing collapsing.

I don’t think there’s anyway WoW could be run without a sub fee, as the sheer scale of support needed is incomprehensible.

Oh and as for micropayments, annoying in something like this – not bad for games as a whole though, as a matter of principle. Guitar Hero, Rockband, etc where you only pay for the songs you want, would be a good model.

By: Rook

Rook — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:31:23 +0000

Not true. XBL stores all the lobby data, and hosts quite a few dedicated servers. Best of all, it hosts game demos, videos, and all the downloadable content. The latter is for free. You can’t imagine how wonderful that felt after going through the “download a demo hunt” I’ve been doing on the PC for years. XBL is a great service.

Yes, quite a few dedicated servers would be pretty equivalent to most games not having dedicated servers, maybe if you could subscribe to certain games online on a game by game basis based on the quality of the service provided that might be worth something. But with everything else being free with xbl silver, you’re essentially paying to press the online button.

Personally, I don’t find having to check out gamershell or gametrailers that difficult and certainly don’t want to be spending to £40 a year to get around that.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:39:21 +0000

Mr Pink is right, or at least that’s what they claimed when I interviewed them.

We wrote a little piece about GW2 over here and the possible impact it may have.

(I suspect that dropping bandwidth costs also helps, making subscription fees actually more profitable. It strikes me a little like magazines – originally when they started doing CD or DVD covermounts, it was very expensive. However, as time progresses, the costs fell hugely – so while sales were going down, the profit margin increased in a way which helped compensate)

By: Mr Pink

Mr Pink — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:30:37 +0000

I’m not 100% sure sigma. I think I read somewhere that they say that they spend time writing very efficient net code, which means that the running costs of servers are drastically reduced. As you say, they release plenty of expansions, and if enough people buy them then I guess that must cover the costs…

By: sigma83

sigma83 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:59:39 +0000

As a business model I really don’t see how that works. Servers need a buttload of electricity and water to keep running, and all that payment has to come from somewhere. They do knock out plenty of expansions, that generates some revenue, but how do they pay the pills?

I totally meant bills.

By: cliffski

cliffski — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:59:05 +0000

I don’t see how micro payments for non MMO games can ever work. If its an attempt to defeat piracy, it won’t work because the moment one person unlocks the content, everyone will be downloading it from some dodgy site.
micro payments wont work in games requiring balance like an RTS or FPS, because people will feel like its unfair. I guess what I’m saying is that there are a lot of us happy to pay our £35 for a decent RTS game, without a lot of monkeying about with micro payments. Just make a game we like, give us a free DEMO, and put it up for sale on-line so we can buy direct from the developer and be playing on day 1.

By: Mr Pink

Mr Pink — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:31:55 +0000

sigma83: I think you’ll find that GW2 is going to have a persistent world, and still no subscription. Should be interesting for the MMO genre.

By: sigma83

sigma83 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:21:30 +0000

MMO-_like_, not MMO-true, unless GW2 has somehow snuck in the ability to do persistent worlds without my noticing. In which case, fie!

WoW vanilla had 12 major content patches before expansion, and this expansion has already had 4. Since expansion they’ve added 3 new raid dungeons, a new fiveman, 2 new zones, which isn’t as much as the expack, obv, but still plenty of stuffs.

By: RichPowers

RichPowers — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:25:57 +0000

The argument that subscription fees or microtransactions are needed to support servers is total crap. If Guild Wars 2 can offer MMO-like elements sans subscription fees, what is WoW’s justification other than profit? Because Blizz still charges for most new content, in the form of expansion packs.

By: Veerus

Veerus — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:00:26 +0000

Imagine Starcraft being released for free as it was.. with a full campaign and stuff. The only catch is that when you go to play multiplayer on battle.net, you have access to only one race (assigned randomly and permanently so you can’t switch and to ensure that all races are being played). If you want to play the other two races, you pay money.

By: Noc

Noc — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:57:24 +0000

Mohmortehsuh?