General Discussion

This has been bugging the crap out of me. This is the only video game genre where companies are starting to get off on thinking they can charge a monthly fee for a game in beta still. It makes me absolutely sick.

They know damn well it isn't near a finished product, yet they say to themselves, "Hey, we might as well get paid 15 a month while we make the game, eh?" Under no circumstance should a company think they can sell a half-assed product and get paid while they fix it. To be honest, monthly fees are a rip-off anyway. Multiplayer games like GW, Diablo 2, and tons of FPS games profit who provide dedicated servers for FREE. Yet, games like Tabula Rasa charge an initial fee, plus a monthly fee for a game that should still be in alpha? Its an utter insult to all gamers that some people actually pay for this garbage. At least garbage is what it says it is. Half the features on the boxes of MMOs arn't even in the game when you get home and start playing, they add them months later, maybe never. False advertising anyone? Oh, well as long as they add "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" they can do whatever they bloody want (different rant, maybe later =/).

I'm using TR as my example because it demonstrates this well. The graphics and UI could have well been pulled off in 2003, and the end-game content is, well, non-existent completely, plus the current game has the depth of a spoon. All things are relative, so let's look at other games. It takes just as long and just as much effort to create an MMO as it does to make an in-depth FPS like, say, BioShock, or even a giant RPG like Oblivion or Mass Effect.  A game like that is developed thoroughly until it is almost totally perfect. In this case, 60 bucks seems fair. Yet, a game with equally as much development effort/money, and 1/10th the quality thinks they can charge 15 a month when they game isn't even close to finished. It's unacceptable. I hate to say it, but WoW is an example of a great MMO. Want to know why? Well, they released a finished friggin game. I know that should be a given, but  in this abomination of a genre, it really is not always expected. WoW released a finished game, and added on to it continuously for a long time simply on monthly fees. The amount of added content was beautiful. Even though they did add a dreaded expansion, they waited a good while.
 

Then, on TOP of that, they add some minor addtions and charge $50 and call it a bloody expansion pack. (Cough, EQ2). So, we pay an intitial fee for the development, 15 a month for new additions, then, wait, what? 50 more a year for some new quests and zones? I'm not sure what's more pathetic; people who actually pay for this monkey business, or the game companies who act like its okay to conduct business in this manor.

MMO's have gone down the john, and my rant is over. I, and others, are refusing to pay money for incomplete products.

I haven't played TR, so I can't comment on that game.  The only game I found to be god awful was Vanguard, I just could not justify spending money on that game in the state it was in.

Everything else has been acceptable so far.  I even enjoyed EQ2 when that launched, for a little while.  I understand that these games are probably the most expensive kind to develop, and are extremely complicated and hard to test.

The answer to your question is perhaps that gamers have massive amount of patience and the willingness to go on faith.  Faith, that the game will eventually be a complete game if they just stick with it.

Look at the game Dukenukem forever. The game has been in development for how long?  Yet if you go onto the DN4 forums and read the posts then you will see how long a game company can string a game base along on nothing but faith.

A more modern example of this is EVE.  When EVE was released it was missing 60% of all the promised features and was bugger than vanguard. (Yes it actually was)

How ever we stuck with CCP on nothing more than the Faith that EVE would eventually become the game we had been sold.  Well for some then yes four years later it did, for others the game that was sold to them and what EVE has become are 180deg apart but in any case EVE has almost became a complete game.

Thus the answer to your question, MMO companies charge subs for their betas because they can. They can because there are enough of us gamers that have enough faith in a game(s) that as Oveur (CCP) said “we can be led along with a carrot until the items we were waiting on are implemented”  

Also that is one of the things that the WOW haters really do not get. WOW was a complete game when released, this meant that you did not have to be a fanatic gamer to get behind it and keep the faith; all you had to do was buy the game and start playing. 

Originally posted by LeJohn

 

Thus the answer to your question, MMO companies charge subs for their betas because they can. They can because there are enough of us gamers that have enough faith in a game(s) that as Oveur (CCP) said “we can be led along with a carrot until the items we were waiting on are implemented”  

 

That's it in a nutshell (though I think it's more about desperation than faith). Major MMOs don't get released very often (even if free/item shop titles seem to come out every week), and many of us who have been around for awhile and played most or all of what's out there are willing to suffer through a bit of inconvenience as long as we enjoy what the game has to offer. There's a line beyond which things are just too unfinished to even bother with, but I'd rather be playing something a little buggy than nothing at all. $50.00 for a new game really isn't that much to me if it shows some promise, but the game has to be built on strong ideas and show frequent signs of progress for me to maintain a subscription to it.

Also, I really don't think the developers are trying to scam anyone. I think they're subject to the financial situation of their company, which usually relies on outside investors to stay operational. If a game doesn't launch by a certain time, that money can get pulled, projects can get shut down (as we've seem many times), and studios can close. That's the reality of swimming with the sharks. MMOs are big business now, not the niche market full of artists and visionaries they used to be. I suppose I'm part of the problem, however. If nobody bought games that launched too soon, games would stop shipping early. I just don't see that happening, though. Large studios that do their own publishing are the only ones with the resources to wait for a "finished" product these days.

Originally posted by LeJohn

The answer to your question is perhaps that gamers have massive amount of patience and the willingness to go on faith.  Faith, that the game will eventually be a complete game if they just stick with it.

 

I can agree with that. Heck, I've been following Darkfall for a LONG time. However, I am not paying them while I watch and they create. I have faith in games,  but my point is that we should not pay while they complete it. We should pay once they complete it.

 

Look at the game Dukenukem forever. The game has been in development for how long?  Yet if you go onto the DN4 forums and read the posts then you will see how long a game company can string a game base along on nothing but faith.

 

I have no problem with games taking a long time to make, but Dukenuken Forever did not release a game to the shelves in its current state. DN4 isn't charging people WHILE they make the game. like a lot of MMOs are.

 

A more modern example of this is EVE.  When EVE was released it was missing 60% of all the promised features and was bugger than vanguard. (Yes it actually was)

 

How ever we stuck with CCP on nothing more than the Faith that EVE would eventually become the game we had been sold.  Well for some then yes four years later it did, for others the game that was sold to them and what EVE has become are 180deg apart but in any case EVE has almost became a complete game.

 

I did not play EVE during that time, but from what you just said that's horrible. Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't seem right. They could of held more interested gamers if they polished EVE more.  I'm sure a lot of people payed for EVE at that time, then left and never came back because it felt like a ripoff, which killed it for lots of gamers. It's just not a good way to launch a game. The people who are NOT faithful unsubscribe. If they simple completed it, they would actually have a lot of subs.

Thus the answer to your question, MMO companies charge subs for their betas because they can. They can because there are enough of us gamers that have enough faith in a game(s) that as Oveur (CCP) said “we can be led along with a carrot until the items we were waiting on are implemented”  

 

Also that is one of the things that the WOW haters really do not get. WOW was a complete game when released, this meant that you did not have to be a fanatic gamer to get behind it and keep the faith; all you had to do was buy the game and start playing. 

for major developers this makes no sense at all to released a half done game.

however the exception would be a long running indy game when it's funds run out.  I'm pretty sure the fanbase will typically understandstand entering into a payed phase.

Tabula Rasa is just fine.

No problems at all yet.

I've only seen 2 bugs, both of which have been fixed in the first post launch patch, and they were very minor bugs.

But as to why MMO companies "think they can charge monthly for a beta" is because people will pay for it.

Also, it makes sense. Get the game out the door, start making money instead of just spending it, fix things and add things as you go.

Honestly, if you haven't gotten used to this cycle yet, maybe MMOs aren't for you? What game has been released that was 100% good to go? Every MMO has patches, every MMO has bug fixes.

I wouldn't expect anything to change.