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No MMO is actually free, they all cost money
TheScavenger
Member EpicPosts: 3,321
Downloading an MMO costs bandwidth. Many people have to pay bandwidth or the internet company to download things. Many people have a bandwidth cap, especially those in Australia and parts of Europe. Some people, even in the US, have to pay extra for the amount needed to download. And to be able to play a game online, you have to pay the internet company money each month to do so.
Therefore, MMOs aren't actually free, even if they say they are. The MMO itself may be free, but to play it, it isn't. This is also true for digital download games (but you have to pay for those anyway), or games that require an always online connection (which costs a lot of bandwidth, especially for those of us in Australia).
So free is an illusion, as people have to pay money to play an MMO or anything else that requires an internet connection.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Comments
Which is why I am not a fan at all of F2P games.
They should be called:
"Cost kicked to serious players so we can have 6 million registered accounts and use it as 'proof' of the games greatness. "
What does that have to do with your enjoyment of a game?
You play games because of some "greatness" factor instead of if the gameplay is fun?
Whether or not I am playing an MMO, I am having an internet connection in my house. It is part of my monthly expenses regardless of what I am using it for. And for bills that I have to pay, it is the least amount each month by nearly half the cost of the next closest item, Dish....
With that logic you could add in the cost of the power usage while playing an MMO as well, because that isn't free, and the hardware/software/input/output device of your PC that allows you to thus play an MMO and factor the amount it cost by the % of total time on the machine running that you were on an MMO to get your real cost to see how much your gaming addiction(er..MMO) actually cost you over a set period through not sub/microtransaction fees, but I regress to much work for something I'm going to have regardless of the game being online/offline and since I'm not an accountant or counting my pennies to pay my bills anytime in future I'll just say a free MMO is a free game.
Thread is about cost not phun factor.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Not really, I pay one flat fee for my internet connection no matter how much or little I use it. (a monthly sub at that)
Sure wish my most of my games operated the same way.
But the good news I'm now playing a free shard instance that is costing someone money to maintain and update, but not me.
Guess it's a labor of love for them or something.
So yeah, for all intensive purposes, I'm playing for free.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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Holly crap, didn't know people pay for bandwidth. I thought everyone paid a fixed fee every month. Guess I will not move in Australia after all...
It is also not about "greatness" of games. You can digress. So can i.
Not sure you thought this through. Yes you need to have internet to play them, but if you didn't play games would you still have internet? I would, so I'm not paying anything extra that I'm not already going to pay. I could play every ftp game there is and not pay an extra dime if i didn't want to. The problem with most ftp games is ptw or they withhold content, classes, etc that make it not fun to play if you don't use cash shop. I had internet access before mmo's came out so no extra money coming out of my pocket.
Naw. It's about your point of view. To a dev, it is not free. To a player it most certainly can be free.
I have the internet allready, I am paying that bill allready, the game is irrelevant to my internet bill, the game does not impact my bill positively or negatively. The gross amount that I paid to play the game is 0 (because the bill was allready being paid), the net amount is 0.
So there are definatley games that are free, that did not cost me any money.
*SHOCK. People play more than games on the internet? I need to research that using Google to make sure it is right.
You are right though, the internet is woven into our existence now and shouldn't factor into playing a game.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
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F2P/P2P excellent thread.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/282517/F2P-An-Engineers-perspective.html
I'm surprised people still argue against this. They should really call it something else, free only fools the people who expect no one to ever pay anything.
I can play an MMO completely and totally for free. I have unlimited bandwidth on an Internet connection that I pay for anyhow, therefore the MMO doesn't cost me anything extra. My computer is on 24/7/365, therefore it doesn't cost me any more in power.
It's not an illusion. It's free.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
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Measure the amp draw on your computer while playing and at rest. It's not free :P
I remember in the paleolithic days of the internet, I used to go to the big mainframe and log into GOPHER. From there, I could log into any number of MUDs and MUSHs for free.
Back then, people put them up as a hobby. In fact, most of what we got was a scripting language and a random number generator, and the players themselves designed the rooms, played the roles and fleshed out the world.
Did it cost someone something, somewhere? If it did, it certainly wasn't anything anybody wanted to recoup.
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I don't understand the point of this thread.
There are people who don't pay for the internet that they are using, the power that runs their computer or the games that they play, whether they are free or not. Those people would be children, and to them, the games that they play are free in every sense of the word.
Anyway, in keeping with the "WTF?" nature of this thread, here is this guy:
You're welcome.
**
That's a picture of a guy with a baby coming out of his beer belly, while holding a beer. If you can't see the picture, it's because you haven't visited epicfail.com today (I think).
If you can't see the picture, just picture a guy at a bar, with a large beer belly and a baby coming out of it.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
This is so true. I've been against F2P from the start. This is one more reason.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Those are trick statements, friend. Everyone knows that all F2P games play exactly the same as all the others. Whether or not it is fun is irrelevant, because we have nothing else to compare it against. We play the "greatest one" because it's the only one with the chance of receiving new content and developer attention - because it is making money, because everyone is playing it.
Why not completely deprive the term of any meaning whatsoever, in any context?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver