Honestly does far from all MMOs use this method to earn money and most that do are smaller or mid sized companies (I think Cryptic was the first). [...]
I think I might have to agree with you here Loke, thought it seems we are the minority.
Mostly agree too, except I think I'd like to defend Cryptic for some (at least if you mean Neverwinter's "open beta with the in-game shop is open too for spending")
It's all about money and those dull ones who're easily parted... betas for money were always here, either through key farmers and bots (and the lower the supply, the higher they sold the keys), or through monthly subs /box purchases (when you could get beta invite because you play the developer's other game).
Companies simply saw the demand, and thought wth, if they're so eager to play our half-baked heap of code before everyone else, we could even charge them for it, worth a try... and instead of laughing in their faces, most players just throw money at them.
Neverwinter wasn't the first, PWE did that way before even they swallowed Cryptic, so did SOE, some weak kicked-to-start craps, etc. As Bill (Murphy) used to say, they can call it as they want, if it's open to everyone, taking money, and no wipes... that's a launch.
Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade
An "I want it NOW!" mentality.
Devs learned how to exploit it.
This. Even more with the e-peen measuring mentality of "here's the first video from the beta" or "check my very first stream of playing this" and stuff.
Myself i like the fact that i now have the option to test a game if i want to.. before if i wanted to test a game i would have to sign up and hope that i would get selected.
I have no issues paying for alpha or beta access.. but what really needs to be rammed home to people when buying into such things is that the game is not finished.. maybe big red warning letters popping up on their screen every time they start it.
Originally posted by Quizzical Game studios are in the business of selling whatever it is that players want to buy. A lot of people want to buy early access to wildly unfinished games, so of course there will be studios to sell that to them. But there are plenty of people who want more polished games, so there are studios that sell that, too. If you don't like early access, then just ignore it. Problem solved.
Remarkably sensible.
Except for an annoying tendency of game developers to gallop in the direction of the herd. One tries it, then five more, then (eventually) it becomes "the industry standard".
Originally posted by Quizzical Game studios are in the business of selling whatever it is that players want to buy. A lot of people want to buy early access to wildly unfinished games, so of course there will be studios to sell that to them. But there are plenty of people who want more polished games, so there are studios that sell that, too. If you don't like early access, then just ignore it. Problem solved.
Remarkably sensible.
Except for an annoying tendency of game developers to gallop in the direction of the herd. One tries it, then five more, then (eventually) it becomes "the industry standard".
They will predictably gallop towards the money. Thus the power is in the hand of the consumers.
Originally posted by nikhtas17 First i want to say sry for my bad english.I remember back in 2005-2006 and so on that developers begging us to try their games in a phase called BETA(not alpha)to send them reports for bugs and many other things that we saw then.And now?developers want us to PAY to try a game(to pay alot of money)and were this thing goes?release with full of bugs and why?cause ppl pay for a game that want to play not to send reports for the bugs that they saw.Old players that are 30+ know what gaming was those days.i just CAN'T bieleve what i saw these days with the gaming scene.Thank u and sry again for my english
Are you serious? I cannot recall a SINGLE time when developers "begged" gamers to to participate in beta. Players have ALWAYS begged to be included in BETA. Otherwise, how would a paid alpha/beta system even work? Sorry to say, but you're wrong. Paid beta and alpha were inevitable because of the demand for Beta and Alpha access.
Also, poor testing pre-dates paid betas and alphas, too. Remember that gamers aren't testers. Reports might have been better at one time because they could actually pick and choose their beta testers, but now they actually have a larger pool of beta testers, it's open to anyone willing to put some cash forward, meaning we get testing pools of millions (Destiny as an example) opposed to thousands. End result? Surprisingly not that different. We still have server-related issues at launch. We still have a LARGE number of bugs (also there were PLENTY of bugs in 2005-2006) at launch. Difference? Probably get some pretty good system stat information. We can sample against a wide variety of cards.
Finally, don't forget that "back in the day", because beta keys became a premium for which people WOULD pay money for, and that was evidenced by a surge of key sales through auction sites and other third party sites, beta sales have almost ALWAYS happened in one way or another. That's because it was exclusive. It was the "cool" thing to do (be in a beta). So I actually don't mind putting a few bucks into the pocket of a developer opposed to someone just capitalizing on their ability to submit their email to a form.
Oxymoron:
" I cannot recall a SINGLE time when developers "begged" gamers to to participate in beta. Players have ALWAYS begged to be included in BETA. Otherwise, how would a paid alpha/beta system even work? Sorry to say, but you're wrong. Paid beta and alpha were inevitable because of the demand for Beta and Alpha access."
"Reports might have been better at one time because they could actually pick and choose their beta testers, but now they actually have a larger pool of beta testers, it's open to anyone willing to put some cash forward, meaning we get testing pools of millions (Destiny as an example) opposed to thousands."
lol
Yeah, they used to pay smaller groups of beta testers, so it was like they begged the best critic's to join up and test it.
Now days, they get a bunch of crap feedback from a million angles, and don't know what to do, hence, opinion polling. All open pay to play alphas and betas do is give the developer money to play with, and the input they get is a secondary, oft ignored fart in the wind....
Naive payer-players are just hoping they can help them make a good game and want to offer financial aid to that cause, but judging by track records in the 2000's, they are the biggest suckers alive...
Yes, and system/config stats (for PC anyway), load testing, etc. That being said it still seems like server load is still an issue, lol.
I'm not sure where the oxymoron was. Maybe I wasn't clear with the point. Used to be that you could select a thousand people, for instance, from a list of requests based on whatever sign-up info you are looking for. Now, you pay to get in, there's no prerequisite, and there's an entitlement that goes along with it that "I don't have to do anything because I paid", so bugs are reported less and the bug reports are far worse. That being said, system configurations is one thing that's always been problematic, so they get a great sampling of that kind of data.
Not sure what "track record" you're talking about here. I'm looking forward to some more info, though, because I have seen information that is quite contradictory to that. We're just now starting to see fruit from crowdfunding, etc. and see what sort of results we'll get out of it.
Originally posted by nikhtas17 First i want to say sry for my bad english.I remember back in 2005-2006 and so on that developers begging us to try their games in a phase called BETA(not alpha)to send them reports for bugs and many other things that we saw then.And now?developers want us to PAY to try a game(to pay alot of money)and were this thing goes?release with full of bugs and why?cause ppl pay for a game that want to play not to send reports for the bugs that they saw.Old players that are 30+ know what gaming was those days.i just CAN'T bieleve what i saw these days with the gaming scene.Thank u and sry again for my english
Are you serious? I cannot recall a SINGLE time when developers "begged" gamers to to participate in beta. Players have ALWAYS begged to be included in BETA. Otherwise, how would a paid alpha/beta system even work? Sorry to say, but you're wrong. Paid beta and alpha were inevitable because of the demand for Beta and Alpha access.
Also, poor testing pre-dates paid betas and alphas, too. Remember that gamers aren't testers. Reports might have been better at one time because they could actually pick and choose their beta testers, but now they actually have a larger pool of beta testers, it's open to anyone willing to put some cash forward, meaning we get testing pools of millions (Destiny as an example) opposed to thousands. End result? Surprisingly not that different. We still have server-related issues at launch. We still have a LARGE number of bugs (also there were PLENTY of bugs in 2005-2006) at launch. Difference? Probably get some pretty good system stat information. We can sample against a wide variety of cards.
Finally, don't forget that "back in the day", because beta keys became a premium for which people WOULD pay money for, and that was evidenced by a surge of key sales through auction sites and other third party sites, beta sales have almost ALWAYS happened in one way or another. That's because it was exclusive. It was the "cool" thing to do (be in a beta). So I actually don't mind putting a few bucks into the pocket of a developer opposed to someone just capitalizing on their ability to submit their email to a form.
Oxymoron:
" I cannot recall a SINGLE time when developers "begged" gamers to to participate in beta. Players have ALWAYS begged to be included in BETA. Otherwise, how would a paid alpha/beta system even work? Sorry to say, but you're wrong. Paid beta and alpha were inevitable because of the demand for Beta and Alpha access."
"Reports might have been better at one time because they could actually pick and choose their beta testers, but now they actually have a larger pool of beta testers, it's open to anyone willing to put some cash forward, meaning we get testing pools of millions (Destiny as an example) opposed to thousands."
lol
Yeah, they used to pay smaller groups of beta testers, so it was like they begged the best critic's to join up and test it.
Now days, they get a bunch of crap feedback from a million angles, and don't know what to do, hence, opinion polling. All open pay to play alphas and betas do is give the developer money to play with, and the input they get is a secondary, oft ignored fart in the wind....
Naive payer-players are just hoping they can help them make a good game and want to offer financial aid to that cause, but judging by track records in the 2000's, they are the biggest suckers alive...
Yes, and system/config stats (for PC anyway), load testing, etc. That being said it still seems like server load is still an issue, lol.
I'm not sure where the oxymoron was. Maybe I wasn't clear with the point. Used to be that you could select a thousand people, for instance, from a list of requests based on whatever sign-up info you are looking for. Now, you pay to get in, there's no prerequisite, and there's an entitlement that goes along with it that "I don't have to do anything because I paid", so bugs are reported less and the bug reports are far worse. That being said, system configurations is one thing that's always been problematic, so they get a great sampling of that kind of data.
Not sure what "track record" you're talking about here. I'm looking forward to some more info, though, because I have seen information that is quite contradictory to that. We're just now starting to see fruit from crowdfunding, etc. and see what sort of results we'll get out of it.
You seem to have gotten the joke as I meant it, but I was sorta two-fold on that.
In the early days of BG:SoA/ToB, and similar 2D mostly DnD (classic) games, it was incumbent on a development team to seek good press. It was the age of magazine articles and some but not the horde of internet sites dedicated to reviews for the much smaller and select group of MMORPG fan's. UO, and Neverwinter, with a few other good titles began the trends you are talking about, but back then, the reporters were flown in, wined, dined, and given a comfortable lounge in which to sit in the dark and game. They catered to them, and not just reviewers. There was an actual career to be made in strictly test play, and the best game crackers got lots of loot just to play, because they flew through the toughest designs in days, and gave feedback on difficulties and honeypot glitches they exploited. That's how we got to challenging and rewarding play in the soon to follow flood of better games.
But the ever evolving industry closed the door on the beta niche just to thin the employee roster and to make money on the emerging paying alpha market players, because, hell! If the games that they developed in 1999-2002 were so great then I have to be in on the next one! Right?
The latter of my former post applies at that point. Now we have the masses joining up paying, and buying victory when the game comes out as a p2p and the companies are rolling in the money but not sinking it into enriching the RPG genres we loved, they are blowing it on developments that aren't really that fun, they are just pushing it to see what they can do now that they have the kind of funds they wish for in 95. Geeks (we love) at play! lol
But I wish they would retrovert a bit and come out a refined version of the development teams we are missing. I can handle sandbox, but call it MMO, don't lie about the RP elements. And they need to produce more classical RPG's that are less restrictive in classes and even have new classes.
It's been asserted already that a player driven world would be better and I agree, that there needs to be some games with actual human dukedoms, earldoms, baronies, and counties, while retaining an NPC king or emperor, who runs even when the deadasses aren't online to keep the server running smooth. Player shops, smithies, and environmental industry is also a theme in the game I want to develop, but there again, NPC's should lead that industry for the sake of player ease, so they can play and go to bed or work! lol
But there was so much left undone in the fantasy RPG settings, to just move on the grind, hunt, arena, and novelty games seems like a awful waste. 20 years from now there will be 30-40 year old men and women wondering what the hell they ever blew money on those games for. Or more factually, their parents money in most cases...
"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-
I mean be honest, duder's! The "masses" playing those alpha and beta games aren't pro gamer's with years of experience under their belts testing for bugs. They are kids who have the money to play.
PayPal and Credit records on the server's might point to an age 35-45 demographic as the main fan base, but that's because junior uses daddy's fundage to play.
Hence, the horsehit we call player demand...
"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-
You seem to have gotten the joke as I meant it, but I was sorta two-fold on that.
In the early days of BG:SoA/ToB, and similar 2D mostly DnD (classic) games, it was incumbent on a development team to seek good press. It was the age of magazine articles and some but not the horde of internet sites dedicated to reviews for the much smaller and select group of MMORPG fan's. UO, and Neverwinter, with a few other good titles began the trends you are talking about, but back then, the reporters were flown in, wined, dined, and given a comfortable lounge in which to sit in the dark and game. They catered to them, and not just reviewers. There was an actual career to be made in strictly test play, and the best game crackers got lots of loot just to play, because they flew through the toughest designs in days, and gave feedback on difficulties and honeypot glitches they exploited. That's how we got to challenging and rewarding play in the soon to follow flood of better games.
But the ever evolving industry closed the door on the beta niche just to thin the employee roster and to make money on the emerging paying alpha market players, because, hell! If the games that they developed in 1999-2002 were so great then I have to be in on the next one! Right?
The latter of my former post applies at that point. Now we have the masses joining up paying, and buying victory when the game comes out as a p2p and the companies are rolling in the money but not sinking it into enriching the RPG genres we loved, they are blowing it on developments that aren't really that fun, they are just pushing it to see what they can do now that they have the kind of funds they wish for in 95. Geeks (we love) at play! lol
But I wish they would retrovert a bit and come out a refined version of the development teams we are missing. I can handle sandbox, but call it MMO, don't lie about the RP elements. And they need to produce more classical RPG's that are less restrictive in classes and even have new classes.
It's been asserted already that a player driven world would be better and I agree, that there needs to be some games with actual human dukedoms, earldoms, baronies, and counties, while retaining an NPC king or emperor, who runs even when the deadasses aren't online to keep the server running smooth. Player shops, smithies, and environmental industry is also a theme in the game I want to develop, but there again, NPC's should lead that industry for the sake of player ease, so they can play and go to bed or work! lol
But there was so much left undone in the fantasy RPG settings, to just move on the grind, hunt, arena, and novelty games seems like a awful waste. 20 years from now there will be 30-40 year old men and women wondering what the hell they ever blew money on those games for. Or more factually, their parents money in most cases...
I remember when WoW went into Beta. A friend of mine got invited to test. He was like Geek King for the next year. It was ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that might be the one and only time when being in a beta got someone laid. That exclusivity, though, was key to making you try hard to actually contribute, because if you didn't you'd get the boot! Plus, if you did really well, you'd get an invite to test other games which, for Blizz, would have been awesmazing, in retrospect.
Nowadays I rarely test anything. I can't be bothered. I'll throw money at something, download an early beta, mid beta, and late beta and give it a shot but, ultimately, my time is more valuable now, so blazing through a game only to have my progress wiped just doesn't have the same appeal. I think that many "older" gamers probably have the same vision. It's why EA programs work, though, cuz we've got all the money.
I MIGHT like to see some traditional RPG elements. I loved Pillars of Eternity, have Tides and Wasteland 2 coming. However, I don't need the level of immersion you're talking about. I'd settle for people actually giving a crap about lore. At this moment, you could create a game based on a 1 square mile world where monsters simply spawn over and over and over, and as long as you dangled carrots of "World First" achievements you'd have thousands of people jammed in there just mindlessly bashing mobs. It's what happens right now anyway, every expansion.
You seem to have gotten the joke as I meant it, but I was sorta two-fold on that.
In the early days of BG:SoA/ToB, and similar 2D mostly DnD (classic) games, it was incumbent on a development team to seek good press. It was the age of magazine articles and some but not the horde of internet sites dedicated to reviews for the much smaller and select group of MMORPG fan's. UO, and Neverwinter, with a few other good titles began the trends you are talking about, but back then, the reporters were flown in, wined, dined, and given a comfortable lounge in which to sit in the dark and game. They catered to them, and not just reviewers. There was an actual career to be made in strictly test play, and the best game crackers got lots of loot just to play, because they flew through the toughest designs in days, and gave feedback on difficulties and honeypot glitches they exploited. That's how we got to challenging and rewarding play in the soon to follow flood of better games.
But the ever evolving industry closed the door on the beta niche just to thin the employee roster and to make money on the emerging paying alpha market players, because, hell! If the games that they developed in 1999-2002 were so great then I have to be in on the next one! Right?
The latter of my former post applies at that point. Now we have the masses joining up paying, and buying victory when the game comes out as a p2p and the companies are rolling in the money but not sinking it into enriching the RPG genres we loved, they are blowing it on developments that aren't really that fun, they are just pushing it to see what they can do now that they have the kind of funds they wish for in 95. Geeks (we love) at play! lol
But I wish they would retrovert a bit and come out a refined version of the development teams we are missing. I can handle sandbox, but call it MMO, don't lie about the RP elements. And they need to produce more classical RPG's that are less restrictive in classes and even have new classes.
It's been asserted already that a player driven world would be better and I agree, that there needs to be some games with actual human dukedoms, earldoms, baronies, and counties, while retaining an NPC king or emperor, who runs even when the deadasses aren't online to keep the server running smooth. Player shops, smithies, and environmental industry is also a theme in the game I want to develop, but there again, NPC's should lead that industry for the sake of player ease, so they can play and go to bed or work! lol
But there was so much left undone in the fantasy RPG settings, to just move on the grind, hunt, arena, and novelty games seems like a awful waste. 20 years from now there will be 30-40 year old men and women wondering what the hell they ever blew money on those games for. Or more factually, their parents money in most cases...
I remember when WoW went into Beta. A friend of mine got invited to test. He was like Geek King for the next year. It was ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that might be the one and only time when being in a beta got someone laid. That exclusivity, though, was key to making you try hard to actually contribute, because if you didn't you'd get the boot! Plus, if you did really well, you'd get an invite to test other games which, for Blizz, would have been awesmazing, in retrospect.
Nowadays I rarely test anything. I can't be bothered. I'll throw money at something, download an early beta, mid beta, and late beta and give it a shot but, ultimately, my time is more valuable now, so blazing through a game only to have my progress wiped just doesn't have the same appeal. I think that many "older" gamers probably have the same vision. It's why EA programs work, though, cuz we've got all the money.
I MIGHT like to see some traditional RPG elements. I loved Pillars of Eternity, have Tides and Wasteland 2 coming. However, I don't need the level of immersion you're talking about. I'd settle for people actually giving a crap about lore. At this moment, you could create a game based on a 1 square mile world where monsters simply spawn over and over and over, and as long as you dangled carrots of "World First" achievements you'd have thousands of people jammed in there just mindlessly bashing mobs. It's what happens right now anyway, every expansion.
There are exceptions to every rule, but who are the main carrot chaser's? The "you's" or the "them's"? lol
"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-
Comments
Mostly agree too, except I think I'd like to defend Cryptic for some
(at least if you mean Neverwinter's "open beta with the in-game shop is open too for spending")
It's all about money and those dull ones who're easily parted... betas for money were always here, either through key farmers and bots (and the lower the supply, the higher they sold the keys), or through monthly subs /box purchases (when you could get beta invite because you play the developer's other game).
Companies simply saw the demand, and thought wth, if they're so eager to play our half-baked heap of code before everyone else, we could even charge them for it, worth a try... and instead of laughing in their faces, most players just throw money at them.
Neverwinter wasn't the first, PWE did that way before even they swallowed Cryptic, so did SOE, some weak kicked-to-start craps, etc. As Bill (Murphy) used to say, they can call it as they want, if it's open to everyone, taking money, and no wipes... that's a launch.
This. Even more with the e-peen measuring mentality of "here's the first video from the beta" or "check my very first stream of playing this" and stuff.
Myself i like the fact that i now have the option to test a game if i want to.. before if i wanted to test a game i would have to sign up and hope that i would get selected.
I have no issues paying for alpha or beta access.. but what really needs to be rammed home to people when buying into such things is that the game is not finished.. maybe big red warning letters popping up on their screen every time they start it.
Remarkably sensible.
Except for an annoying tendency of game developers to gallop in the direction of the herd. One tries it, then five more, then (eventually) it becomes "the industry standard".
They will predictably gallop towards the money. Thus the power is in the hand of the consumers.
Yes, and system/config stats (for PC anyway), load testing, etc. That being said it still seems like server load is still an issue, lol.
I'm not sure where the oxymoron was. Maybe I wasn't clear with the point. Used to be that you could select a thousand people, for instance, from a list of requests based on whatever sign-up info you are looking for. Now, you pay to get in, there's no prerequisite, and there's an entitlement that goes along with it that "I don't have to do anything because I paid", so bugs are reported less and the bug reports are far worse. That being said, system configurations is one thing that's always been problematic, so they get a great sampling of that kind of data.
Not sure what "track record" you're talking about here. I'm looking forward to some more info, though, because I have seen information that is quite contradictory to that. We're just now starting to see fruit from crowdfunding, etc. and see what sort of results we'll get out of it.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
You seem to have gotten the joke as I meant it, but I was sorta two-fold on that.
In the early days of BG:SoA/ToB, and similar 2D mostly DnD (classic) games, it was incumbent on a development team to seek good press. It was the age of magazine articles and some but not the horde of internet sites dedicated to reviews for the much smaller and select group of MMORPG fan's. UO, and Neverwinter, with a few other good titles began the trends you are talking about, but back then, the reporters were flown in, wined, dined, and given a comfortable lounge in which to sit in the dark and game. They catered to them, and not just reviewers. There was an actual career to be made in strictly test play, and the best game crackers got lots of loot just to play, because they flew through the toughest designs in days, and gave feedback on difficulties and honeypot glitches they exploited. That's how we got to challenging and rewarding play in the soon to follow flood of better games.
But the ever evolving industry closed the door on the beta niche just to thin the employee roster and to make money on the emerging paying alpha market players, because, hell! If the games that they developed in 1999-2002 were so great then I have to be in on the next one! Right?
The latter of my former post applies at that point. Now we have the masses joining up paying, and buying victory when the game comes out as a p2p and the companies are rolling in the money but not sinking it into enriching the RPG genres we loved, they are blowing it on developments that aren't really that fun, they are just pushing it to see what they can do now that they have the kind of funds they wish for in 95. Geeks (we love) at play! lol
But I wish they would retrovert a bit and come out a refined version of the development teams we are missing. I can handle sandbox, but call it MMO, don't lie about the RP elements. And they need to produce more classical RPG's that are less restrictive in classes and even have new classes.
It's been asserted already that a player driven world would be better and I agree, that there needs to be some games with actual human dukedoms, earldoms, baronies, and counties, while retaining an NPC king or emperor, who runs even when the deadasses aren't online to keep the server running smooth. Player shops, smithies, and environmental industry is also a theme in the game I want to develop, but there again, NPC's should lead that industry for the sake of player ease, so they can play and go to bed or work! lol
But there was so much left undone in the fantasy RPG settings, to just move on the grind, hunt, arena, and novelty games seems like a awful waste. 20 years from now there will be 30-40 year old men and women wondering what the hell they ever blew money on those games for. Or more factually, their parents money in most cases...
"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-
I mean be honest, duder's! The "masses" playing those alpha and beta games aren't pro gamer's with years of experience under their belts testing for bugs. They are kids who have the money to play.
PayPal and Credit records on the server's might point to an age 35-45 demographic as the main fan base, but that's because junior uses daddy's fundage to play.
Hence, the horsehit we call player demand...
"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-
I remember when WoW went into Beta. A friend of mine got invited to test. He was like Geek King for the next year. It was ridiculous. I'm pretty sure that might be the one and only time when being in a beta got someone laid. That exclusivity, though, was key to making you try hard to actually contribute, because if you didn't you'd get the boot! Plus, if you did really well, you'd get an invite to test other games which, for Blizz, would have been awesmazing, in retrospect.
Nowadays I rarely test anything. I can't be bothered. I'll throw money at something, download an early beta, mid beta, and late beta and give it a shot but, ultimately, my time is more valuable now, so blazing through a game only to have my progress wiped just doesn't have the same appeal. I think that many "older" gamers probably have the same vision. It's why EA programs work, though, cuz we've got all the money.
I MIGHT like to see some traditional RPG elements. I loved Pillars of Eternity, have Tides and Wasteland 2 coming. However, I don't need the level of immersion you're talking about. I'd settle for people actually giving a crap about lore. At this moment, you could create a game based on a 1 square mile world where monsters simply spawn over and over and over, and as long as you dangled carrots of "World First" achievements you'd have thousands of people jammed in there just mindlessly bashing mobs. It's what happens right now anyway, every expansion.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
There are exceptions to every rule, but who are the main carrot chaser's? The "you's" or the "them's"? lol"Investment firms do not have that outlook on life. They need to know there is not only a return on their investment but also a solid profit at the end of it." tawess-