Employee Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Ok well Sparda and I have been talking in vent about blizzard making you pay for the box and the server use on WoW (World Of Warcraft). My point is that Blizzard provides servers for Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Diablo II and Guild Wars for free. All of those you need to pay for the box but not the servers. Guild Wars also was made by a different company so they don't get money directly from the box. So my Idea is that I think its ok that they charge monthly fee and also charge for the box. Give me your point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barrytone Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 I don't play any of the aformentioned games, so I can't pass comment as easily as others may be able to. But, I imagine that perhaps the WoW servers require more maintainance than the other servers. Don't they employ people to play characters in the game or something like that? It's also possible that WoW requires more bandwidth etc (maybe because of popularity, or game content... Again I don't play it, so I'm not familier) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordban Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Maybe I just don't understand but you're saying it's ok for Blizzard to charge for the monthly fee and the box. Alright.. Hmm, well my opinion is BLizzard should do what they need and/or want to do, and if people don't like that then they can put their hard earned money else where. I mean what is there to debate? I bet you they make most of their money off of the server fees. If you think about it.. 6,000,000 players at $15 a month = $90,000,000 a month. Minus server fees, development, testing, etc. In other words I bet you they are making more money off of WOW then any other game, including StarCraft and D2. Plus they are one of the few game companies making every game Mac friendly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 If you don’t like it set up your own server using Blackstorm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLSS Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 my opinion is simple i wanna pay for my game , yes 1ce ! and no monhly fee , no ads ... simple as that ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Confuzed Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 Pay for the box: Yes Pay for online download: Maybe No Thats a summary of how I feel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari6502 Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 I understand the monthly fees. It costs to run the servers. I don't like the full price box that is essentially useless without a subscription.It's just a front end to get on their severs. You may be able to argue that it's not full price since you get a free month, but I think it still should be cheaper than other stand alone games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 When I was telling Nick about this I cited the example of Eve Online. The client for Eve online is free for download, and it's easy enough to get a 14 day free trile, you only have to pay once the 14 day free trial has expiered. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordban Posted June 30, 2006 Share Posted June 30, 2006 That's a damn good way to get people hooked. Give them enough time to really get into the game and then pull the plag and ask for coins. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 did you stop to think that the reasion as to why there talking about making you pay on a monthly bases is that there not actually making any money out of just selling the game. You have to remember that it costs them money to develop these games, it costs money to keep these servers up and running for you guys, they have to pay for the bandwidth, so if the feel that some of these costs should be past down to the consumer then i dont see anything wrong with it. Its not like there holding a gun to your head and making you play there games. If you dont want to pay for the service dont play the game, simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melodic Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 14 day free trial has expiered. sparda are you illiterate? (not being nasty) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordban Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 did you stop to think that the reasion as to why there talking about making you pay on a monthly bases is that there not actually making any money out of just selling the game. You have to remember that it costs them money to develop these games, it costs money to keep these servers up and running for you guys, they have to pay for the bandwidth, so if the feel that some of these costs should be past down to the consumer then i dont see anything wrong with it. Its not like there holding a gun to your head and making you play there games. If you dont want to pay for the service dont play the game, simple. I think you've missed the point of this discussion. Everyone here knows it costs a firm money to design, build, test, and advertise a game. Hell it costs them money to print out the final CD, box, and manual. We also know that if online play is in involved then this cost them more, they have to pay for the servers, etc. However, I believe counting bandwidth with these figures is like counting pennies. The point is the game developers, if they know what they are doing, have the ability to look at these things a head of time. This is why some games can be downloaded free and you only pay the monthly service. The developers of this game thought, okay so we don't have to pay for any materials (I.E cds, etc), we will get more people to TRY the game because it's free (and easily available online), and since it's paid for on a monthly basis we can probably get a good percentage of our trial users to at least buy one month. By that time they should be addicted enough (if we made a good game) to keep paying for at least a year or so. Maybe a company like this has less overhead then a company shipping millions of games out. I would think servers, and bandwidth would be much less then the production of all those games, even after return, and help from distributors. See the developers can weight out these things by looking at what the consumer wants and what they can do while making a profit. So really the most important thing here, is our opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 14 day free trial has expiered. sparda are you illiterate? (not being nasty) Probably. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melodic Posted July 1, 2006 Share Posted July 1, 2006 14 day free trial has expiered. sparda are you illiterate? (not being nasty) Probably. gah i ment dyslexic... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darren Kitchen Posted July 3, 2006 Share Posted July 3, 2006 should they charge for the box? yes. they are a company. they exist to make money so that they can employ individuals and pay them. the more the company makes, the more they can employ people and it's a good thing when people have jobs. would you ask this question if you had a job at blizzard? wouldnt it be cool to work for them? now, do i grumble when i see the sticker price on the box, then realize im going to have to download hundreds of megs of patches which will take hours, then pay $15 a month to wait in a queue for an hour every time i want to play? so yeah, i can understand the fustration behind your question, but it's kind of a loaded question. you know the answer is yes, the company should charge for the box because that's what the market will bear. and that wont change until a competitor comes into the market that doesnt charge for the box, or charges less for the box, and starts to lower their market share. but until then they're doing just fine and will continue to charge whatever they can get away with. i dont get upset that i had to pay for my cell phone even though i have to pay for service every month. sure i could have gotten a "free phone" with the contract, but i'd rather fork over some cash for my treo. <sarcasm> so, now that i've shared my mind i ask you, should hak5 charge for the show? ;) </sarcasm> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jordban Posted July 3, 2006 Share Posted July 3, 2006 I really hope that we stop purchasing games from the box all together. Why not save a few trees (dvds are made from trees ;)? A PDF will please those people who need a manual. As I said before I believe bandwidth and servers would be much cheaper then building the box, and selling it. Hopefully cutting costs down a little for the developers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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