Blizzard doesnt have to worry about the competition because no p2p western market mmo
has ever consistently exceeded 1 million subs
but past mmos have had expansions that ruined games and caused players to leave games
- DAOC did it with Trials of Atlantis
- Everquest did it with Gates of Discord
I would like to point out that Tom Chilton was responsible for Two eipicly bad expansions, Age of Shadows UO and Wrath of the Lich king, Blizzard for some reason thought it would be a good idea to hire him again. I find it good practice to do something I call Follow the Devs on games like this.
yay it slowly dying. needs to go a little faster though. think people are starting to realize how much money, life, and brain cells they have lost on this POS game.
The current state of the economy should actually be pushing up the number of subscriptions to games (in general). It's a very efficient use of your money when you think about $/hour of entertainiment.
How is it an efficient use of your money?
The average sub fee is $10 to $20 per month per game. For the sake of easy math, let's say you play 50 hours/month (more than 10 hours/week) on one game that costs $10/month. That equals about $0.20 per hour of entertainment. That sounds pretty good right? But if you extend those numbers out over the span of 1 year, it starts looking less and less efficient.
50 hrs/month x 12 months = 600 hours per year of play time
$10 /month x 12 months = $120 per year for sub fees (this is after you bought the game....I'm not even including the initial cost of buying a title like WoW or EQ 2.)
You are still at the $0.20 per hour price.
Now look at a B2P game (either Online game like Guild Wars or console game like say, Call of Duty - you were generalizing about money spent on entertainment and I'll stick purely to video games).
The higher end of prices for B2P games right now is about $60 so I will use that. I will also use the same amount of hours played per year - 600.
$60 divided by 600 hours is $0.10 per hour of game time. In the case of Guild Wars or a F2P hybrid like LotRO, 600 hours is a decent amount of time to spend without worrying much about repetition in the game. In the case of Call of Duty, I'd say 300 hours would be my limit between getting all bonuses and playing multiplayer. So, then buy a second console game for $60 and play it for 300 hours and you've played 2 games for the price of 1 sub game. As time goes on, the hourly price of that sub game stays the same, but the price of the B2P continues to go down.
This is just comparing the different video games, not other forms of entertainment that you can do without spending much money....reading, watching tv or movies, riding a bike or many other outdoor activities, music...all of which can be done more cheaply than a sub fee for a game. And, since it's entertainment, it's one of the first things to be cut from a budget when money's tight.
It's efficient when you compare a WoW subscription and the hours of play you enjoy vs. other, non-computer activities that require money such as going to a movie, a "fun park" or just plain taking a trip to the beach for a day. If you are going to compare apples and oranges at least include the whole fruit basket.
Comments
Blizzard doesnt have to worry about the competition because no p2p western market mmo
has ever consistently exceeded 1 million subs
but past mmos have had expansions that ruined games and caused players to leave games
- DAOC did it with Trials of Atlantis
- Everquest did it with Gates of Discord
EQ2 fan sites
I would like to point out that Tom Chilton was responsible for Two eipicly bad expansions, Age of Shadows UO and Wrath of the Lich king, Blizzard for some reason thought it would be a good idea to hire him again. I find it good practice to do something I call Follow the Devs on games like this.
yay it slowly dying. needs to go a little faster though. think people are starting to realize how much money, life, and brain cells they have lost on this POS game.
I think it is a mistake waiting for "next WoW" . Imho there will be no next game that will dominate mmorpg market like WoW does.
There will be multiple games and each will take some of WoW subscribers and in next 1,5 years there are few big games coming...
It's efficient when you compare a WoW subscription and the hours of play you enjoy vs. other, non-computer activities that require money such as going to a movie, a "fun park" or just plain taking a trip to the beach for a day. If you are going to compare apples and oranges at least include the whole fruit basket.