Home › Game Forums › Huxley
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Cost per month?
pudding11591
Member Posts: 30
in Huxley
Will we need to pay per month, also how much will it be? Does anyone know the exact release date for the game yet?
Comments
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.
I hate this argument, mostly because it's used by kids who can't get their parents' permission to use their credit card. Whether that's your case or not, I don't care nor want to know.
Without funding, in the form of monthly subscriptions, the game won't generate enough revenue by itself to make any profit, not to mention there would be no budget for continuing updates. Huxley isn't being made by one of the huge MMO powerhouses, (at least in comparison to NCSoft, SOE, and Blizzard, etc) so they don't have the monetary support to provide a free to play game without charging $70 for the box. Guild Wars does fine because it's made by a reputable gaming company with the pockets to produce a game that won't necessarily bring tons of cash. Sure Guild Wars makes some profit, but not enough to support the whole company, and NCSoft wouldn't be much worse off without it. If a game doesn't bring in monthly revenue, it can't "go the same ways it would if it were pay per month." Without constant revenue, it can't move forward and progress like every other pay to play MMO. Most people, at least the ones who have any previous MMO experience are usually turned off by the prospect of a free MMO, as they are almost always of lower quality than pay to play MMOs. A subscription cost tells customers that the devs (in all cases excluding SOE) are constantly working hard to provide an ever evolving, always improving gaming experience.
Somebody should sticky "The Pros & Cons of 'Free to Play' vs 'Pay to Play' MMOs" drawn out in a chart so people who can't read (not referring to you, Pudding) can at least see how much longer the "Pros" list for Pay to Plays is compared to the one for Free to Plays.
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.
The cost will be $49.99 a month to keep out the newbs. And it has already been released to the cool kids, everyone else will get in in the year 2012 right before Planet X crashes into the Earth.
Oh wait, what have I been drinking.... NO they haven't said how much a month, nor have they given a release date. Guesstimates are around Q3 07.
--------------------------------
Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com
Actually, I think the argument of "pay-to-play" originated from those of us who are tired of keeping up 5 or 6 different subscriptions to play the games we want to play after shelling out $50 just to get them. I'd like to see the pay-to-plays distribute the clients for free via internet if they want to charge a monthly fee. In response to the profiteering argument, check out Silkroad: free to download and play, and (sadly) better than half the mmo's I've payed good money for.
I do expect to pay a monthly fee for this one, though, as the stress of an mmofps strikes me as too taxing to allow Webzen to skimp on the server hardware configuration, and I suspect they will be constantly cycling and updating these servers.
Do the math, seriously. Even at 10k people playing the game at any one time the bandwidth needed is huge so you all dont lag into oblivion. Then you have the cost of maintaining servers, rent on the office, paying the janitor, development, patching etc.... well you get the idea. Supposing 100k people spend 50 bucks for Huxley and it is F2P. Yay they have 5 million dollars. Now your paying for all of the extra things that keep an MMO up and running with that 5 million dollars and no new revenue to show for it. How long do you honestly think the servers would remain up and running in the black? My guess would be 12 months tops before they are in the hole and just shut down. Now your not even talking about making a profit there, just staying afloat. What do companys do? Thats right kids, PROFIT. P2P is honestly how a good MMO gets made, there are of course your DnL flops to go along with it but even silkroad is a mediocre at best MMO and it's one of the best F2P's out there.
For those of you who don't want to play another P2P game because your already paying for 6 accounts well then tough. You really don't have much choice as this game will NOT be F2P I promise that. Sack up and drop a game, pony up the cash for yet another account or don't play Huxley it's about as simple as that.
I think we should do like an online strike to make it free. That way we pay like $60 bucks for the game and play for free. Then provide all the evidence that Huxley can actually accomplish what it wants to accomplish all it takes a good brain.
Originally posted by kimosabe
Guild Wars does fine because it's made by a reputable gaming company with the pockets to produce a game that won't necessarily bring tons of cash. Sure Guild Wars makes some profit, but not enough to support the whole company, and NCSoft wouldn't be much worse off without it. If a game doesn't bring in monthly revenue, it can't "go the same ways it would if it were pay per month." Without constant revenue, it can't move forward and progress like every other pay to play MMO.
Perhaps you should make an attempt to refute a point before disregarding it entirely, eh?
kimosabe knows exactly what he's talking about, you'd do yourself well to re-read what he said.
Guild wars is bringing in a profit, you say? Please, feel free to elaborate. How much does Guild Wars bring in each month? How much is this profit in comparison to Lineage 2 and City of Heroes/Villains? What are the statistics? The monetary logistics? The fact is you're ignorant on the subject.
lol @ paying for xbox live, sounds to me like your problem is with Microsoft, not Webzen.
You feel you've got such a rock solid point, eh? Why don't you go ask Microsoft to pay your monthly subscription - you pay them enough, right?
I'm gonna have to talk to my internet provider about paying for any online games I play - I pay them so I can play games online, afterall.
Good luck. Like I said, re-read what Kimo said, if you had any idea what he was talking about you wouldn't be asking the questions you are.
Allright here it goes again:
GuildWars only brings in a tiny profit, microscopic compared to normal MMOs, and it only stays out of the red because its servers are somewhat static. Sure there's basic maintenence, but there's no hotfixes or live events, and only the most basic of updates. GuildWars doesn't have highly dedicated devs because the game doesn't go anywhere, and that means they don't need to pay employees to work on it, which translates to free game time for you. You could buy the GuildWars disk for 1.50, the box it comes in for a few nickels, and all the booklets/pamphlets for another dollar or so, giving you a grand total of about 3 bucks, a bit more for manufacturing costs. Now if they want to reduce losses due to unsold games, they boost it another dollar or so. To pay off shipping/stocking/etc they raise it a few more. To get a bit of cash for keeping the servers and bandwidth up, they raise it to 2ish like other MMOs, then they slap you with another 30 on top of that for what would normally be a two month subscription for the tiny amount of profit they do get. All that is also assisted by the amount of revenue they gain from their myriad other MMOs on the market.
Pay to Plays are constantly updated, maintained, fixed, stabilized, and there's usually a swarm of dedicated people constantly working on code or setting up events or acting as CSRs. This large amount of attention means a lot of cash shelled out by the company to pay these peoples' dues. Your subs, much like a newspaper, magazine, cable tv, electricity or plumbing subscription, are needed to keep things out of the red. Just think how much service you'd get from any of those other utilities if you didn't pay them every month. Not much huh? Webzen needs Huxley to bring in some buffer-zone revenue so they can improve the quality of their upcoming games, meaning one of those might become a Free to Play.
You're right, people are attracted to free things, but this must be taken in context. As I said before, anyone who's halfway serious about playing MMOs, at least the tolerable ones, are drawn towards Pay to Plays, as they usually mean better quality, better service, better updates, and a better overall experience. Free to Plays are mostly static, unchanging, and usually low-quality. GuildWars is an exception, please follow an elaboration of the previous analogy:
NCSoft is a thriving Electrical Service company. They've grown to include not only electrical services, but cable TV, and internet service. Due to recent success, the NCSoft higher-ups decide they're going to expand to the plumbing business. A huge corporation such as NCSoft can afford to provide insanely cheap plumbing services because they draw revenue from so many other sources. Webzen, on the other hand, is a growing electrical service company. They don't have the financial strength to offer dangerously cheap services, and must compete with NCSoft through quality and revenue. Both of these factors mean that Webzen charges a standard fee for their service, and does the best they can to provide superior service insead of a cheaper one of lesser quality.
Webzen has a trustworthy name already, and SOE has been notoriously "evil" long before the unfortunate days of SWG. All that aside, I'm surprised you know you're sure of exactly how Webzen should go about their business.
-Edit- I thought this thread would've died by now. I mean come on this argument is going in circles.
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.
Je mettrai l'amour sur dos de moi.