For players this doesn't mean crap, if you have fun at that game, $15 for a whole month is maybe the cheapest entertainment you can have, don't bring the word "free" in here because no serious developer makes a game focusing on people that will play it for free, you are either sheep to entertain the paying customers or you are a future consumer in their view, when you hit that level or area in which playing for free becomes inviable or ridiculously ineffective.

For companies what determines this is the player base, you need a minimum number to pay server costs and etc, sometimes the easiest (and only) way is to go free to play and let the rich addicts pay the server costs for everyone else. Because as mentioned, the price doesn't really matter if you started playing it and enjoy it and that's why you have people spending over $100/mo on a same MMO.

ok not quite sure what that means but i think i see your point  it does get pricey for servers and upkeep and what not but that also doesnt override the fact that someone who pays for the wow game and not the expansions pays the same price as a person who has all three expansions which seems to be a joke so basically that guy who cant or wont get the expansions is paying the full price when in fact he should be being charged less since he doesnt have the other games ie. he is paying the price of 3 games for only one and getting nothing else but to be told he must shell out another 40-50$ on more expansions still at same price if the acct only has one game on it then he should be being charged slightly less then if he had all three whats more is why i dont understand what your saying 150$ for all 4 gw games  and you never pay anything again seems better to me then to pay 150$ for three games and have to pay 30$ for a 3 month card i think its called greed since these numbers more then outweigh how much they are sending out and how much is coming in i understand profit and all but it seems to be more of a sham no i dont want crappy games and i certainly dont want to have to pay extra for said crappy games

Originally posted by EricDanie

For players this doesn't mean crap, if you have fun at that game, $15 for a whole month is maybe the cheapest entertainment you can have, don't bring the word "free" in here because no serious developer makes a game focusing on people that will play it for free, you are either sheep to entertain the paying customers or you are a future consumer in their view, when you hit that level or area in which playing for free becomes inviable or ridiculously ineffective.

For companies what determines this is the player base, you need a minimum number to pay server costs and etc, sometimes the easiest (and only) way is to go free to play and let the rich addicts pay the server costs for everyone else. Because as mentioned, the price doesn't really matter if you started playing it and enjoy it and that's why you have people spending over $100/mo on a same MMO.

true but could an mmo double its players by reducing that price by a third for example . it would and will be interesting to see if and when one does .

its bound to happen sooner or later .

To answer the question...  

The ones you enjoy.  I mean really, isn't that it?  Why the herd mentality that a MMO has to be good for every single individual on the planet?

Originally posted by Mortemia

Originally posted by Nixish

...and pay for a quality mmo subscription.

 

 I would, too bad there's just none available currently.

^ this and...

I have always thought 15 dollars was a great bargain for a good MMO ...you know the MMO that makes u cut back on sleep hours and lay out of work! 15 dollars a month for a good MMO is alot of entertainment value...I won't go into all the stuff like how much Movies,NFL, baseball games and bars cost for like a day of fun or 2 hours...hell you can sneeze at bar or gentlemens club ;) and it will cost you 15 bucks lol.

Originally posted by joker007mo

ok not quite sure what that means but i think i see your point  it does get pricey for servers and upkeep and what not but that also doesnt override the fact that someone who pays for the wow game and not the expansions pays the same price as a person who has all three expansions which seems to be a joke so basically that guy who cant or wont get the expansions is paying the full price when in fact he should be being charged less since he doesnt have the other games ie. he is paying the price of 3 games for only one and getting nothing else but to be told he must shell out another 40-50$ on more expansions still at same price if the acct only has one game on it then he should be being charged slightly less then if he had all three whats more is why i dont understand what your saying 150$ for all 4 gw games  and you never pay anything again seems better to me then to pay 150$ for three games and have to pay 30$ for a 3 month card i think its called greed since these numbers more then outweigh how much they are sending out and how much is coming in i understand profit and all but it seems to be more of a sham no i dont want crappy games and i certainly dont want to have to pay extra for said crappy games

Please use some punctuation, it's difficult to understand one long run-on sentence.

For simplicities sake, lets just assume that it costs Blizzard $15 per month to host a server for you (server maintenance, customer service, bandwidth costs etc). Whether you have the expansions or not, it isn't going to lower their overhead costs. It would cost them the same for you or anyone else to connect to the game (assuming you both have equal playtimes). Blizzard must've felt that the original WoW content justified $15 per month, so why should they lower the subscription for you?

Stock working at McDonalds lol @ $15 any MMO is the cheapest bang for buck entertainment around

These days ? None because the new mmos are not that good. I can play multiplayer online games for less and get better enjoyment out of it compared to what we have today. I also can go on my Xbox 360 and it only cost me $50.00 for the entire year to play any game online  as well. PS3 is free internet access. So tell me where the value is for my $15.00 a month fee+box price , especially now since companies like SOE and Cryptic are charging a monthly fee and getting you to buy using the RMT model. Some may say well $15.00 is still cheap and it is true but you are only getting value for your money if the mmo you play is any good.

I have paid a lot of subscription fees to a lot of games, but just yesterday I paid $20 to an item mall game, mainly for more bag space and a pet that was too cute to resist (and also on sale at half price). I may pay another $10-20 next month on the item mall. It's not the money. It's finding something that is still fun to play and feels like a good value, even though I don't have a ton of time to commit to it. I might not pay anything for 6 more months after that, but still log in a few times a week.  That's good value to me.

(I can totally see where $15 a month for full access to everything is a good value to other people, though, especially for people who play a lot. When I pay $15 and only play 5 hours a week... not so great a value.)

Re: the OP's point: The game I most recently paid to subscribe to was EQ1, when I recently returned for a stint around the new server release. That's a game that already has RMT architecture in place and would probably benefit in terms of numbers if it went f2p (though they have said that won't ever happen.) What f2p would do to that community is another thing entirely, and I think it is worth $15 a month to some people just to save themselves the flood of stupidity and constant community churn that sometimes comes with f2p.

Not quite your recieving only a 1/3 of what the other guy gets and still pays same price thats a scam anyway you look at it either get the other games which also rises the amount they make for that 50$ for an expansion then the initial 15$ the only thing that you can do is shell out another 100$ just to get the content everyone else has im not saying go free to play but eventually its going to wear itself thin and they will be making even less like say now when everyone is wanting to go to the new wow aion i realize that not everyone jumps ship to the new games but eventually you kinda want something else and in that case its going to be hard for blizzard whom makes plenty of money to be able to say its not capably worth it is a bs statement they have diablo diablo 2 warcraft warcraft 2 the list goes on and they still sell those games in warchests and what not but what did they do they merged them together at a cheaper price why cuz noone wanted them otherwise and those are all free to play online no subscription so saying they cant afford to run a server with a free to play wow is a joke at best  and this comes out as i see it in my head so excuse the fact that it has no periods and is one long run on sentence i dont read in punctuation anyway to be more to the point before my ranting gets too much one thing i must stress is you missed my point guild wars has never charged a sub and still gets along fine maybe not lotro or wow fine but well enough it can exist free of charge so think a bit because it looks like it could work just fine

your always going to run into stupidity with or without subthough i will admit that your more likely to have a bunch of morons running around a f2p then a sub game but then i have not statistics on that so i cant say for sure

I have purchased many many many single player game that cost me over $50 and lasted about 3 days. So $15 for a full month is great. How many single player games costing > $50 did you play for a full month?

A few, but not many. So the $15 month is actually a great deal.

...

Blizzard already POSTPONED SC2 to further polish this "bundling" of games to p(l)ay.

...

Just as a clarification, Starcraft 2 was postponed because the battle.net was not ready, not because Starcraft needed further polish.

"Blizzard cites the development of its upgraded Battle.net service (dubbed Battle.net 2.0) as the main reason for the game's delay. Blizzard has the following statement to make with regards to the delay: "Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game."

and

"Blizzard calls the new Battle.net an "integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward." Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said during an investor call today that the new iteration of Battle.net will likely be ready "early next year.""

first off the only game i have ever paid 50$ for was guild wars and that was because it was free online play but your saying single player games this isnt single player games we are discussing i thought since he asked mmorpg but i agree with part of it as i dont beileive most games today are worth their price tags most are rehashes of other older games or they are crappy slapped together watered down games i tend to stick to cheap bottom bin games so that i know what im getting into and i have played tons of good games that arent worth the price but were very good games titans quest was singleplayer and online multiplayer and i liked that game alot but i bought it when it went down to 20$ at walmart

see just another example of a game that is free to play online and will do quite well since i think alot of ppl like starcraft alot

Is a mmorpg worth $15 a month?   That works out to .50 a day for unlimited entertainment.  You can play it when you want, as long as you want.  Where in contrast these days you can go to the movie theater for about $7 and pay about $3.50 for popcorn, another $2.50 for a drink.  The whole experience only lasts for 2-3 hours.  You do the math.  I looks pretty worth it to me.

it depends on the person i happen to still like gw and alot of it has to do with the free online play my buddy on the other hand would rather actually spend his time playing football yea right i know what is he thinking my cousin on the other hand just wants something new to do he played wow for about 2 months and decided to go back to swat 4 and gw i think it also depends on someones wallet size as well if mommy and daddy are forking it over you bet they can afford it but someone else that barely makes minimum wage is hard pressed to fork over what could well be his lunch money for the week

Originally posted by Xasapis

I wouldn't mind paying even €50 per month for a captivating MMO.

You would pay 50 euro (70 dollars) for a vague discription like that?

Many MMO's are "captivating" and they are a lot less then 50 euro. "captivating" is pretty subjective and open to a huge amount of personal opinion.

The amount of the monthly fee guarantees nothing but a bank draft every month and access to the game.

Originally posted by arthen999

I think the answer is only a handful . We are starting to see companys acknowledge this by implimenting alternative payment models such as ddo or offering lifetime subscriptions ( the value of which are debateable but lotro did have a very decent half price model recently ) . The other viable option for older games maybe to offer lower monthly subscriptions (which may actually lead to such games becoming popular again and increace thier revenue ) lets face it when single players games get older thier prices tend to drop why should nt that also apply to mmos ? I sure some will try and argue against it here but in truth thier is very little in the way of logical arguement for thier not being lower subs for games like city of heroes and warhammer . It really common sence ( although i m well aware its not quality everyone has ) .Personally speaking i think theres only three mmos i ve tried that really are presently worth the 15 dollars a month  sub .those being eve online , world of warcraft ( which i no longer enjoy ) and lord of the rings . although i would like to mention i recently played age of conan on couple of 60 day time cards that i got for a bargain price on ebay and its much improved now but i still dont think its quite worth the price of the current monthly subscription .

That all depends on what you expect.

You pay a monthly fee for continued access to the servers. Anything else they can change on a whim. Read the EULA.

What you are trying to say is "value" is actually a service/access fee. You are responsible for researching the game and desiding if it has all the features bells & whistles you want before you pay the access fee.

IMHO, EVE and LotR are not worth the 15 bucks a month, so now what? EVE (or microsoft spreadsheet in space) should just sell ships and skills in a cash shop and be done with it and LotR is about as dull and grindy as any other unfocused PvE game out there.

Now we get into an epeen waving match about who's game should / shouldn't have it?

Originally posted by Arthineas

Is a mmorpg worth $15 a month?   That works out to .50 a day for unlimited entertainment.  You can play it when you want, as long as you want.  Where in contrast these days you can go to the movie theater for about $7 and pay about $3.50 for popcorn, another $2.50 for a drink.  The whole experience only lasts for 2-3 hours.  You do the math.  I looks pretty worth it to me.

An MMORPG is only 50 cents a day if you play it every single day. If you play in moderation, a few times a week and for a only couple of hours in a sitting, it's not much of a bargain anymore.

ok that makes sense they can pretty much take your money and run as long as they maintain a facade of actually doing something in reality those updates you get all the time could be no more then simple trees added or removed and they can close down whenever they feel like it leaving you with jack squat

The amount of time an average MMO player plays a game far outweights what the average console gamer will play for a game they bought.

Most console games have what? 5-10 hours to "finish" the game? Unless you don't go back to do the fluff you spent $60 for 10 hours of play.

Most MMO players will do probably 10 hours a week minimum, 4 weeks a month. That's 40 hours of game play for $15. Or 160 hours for $60.

Justified?

$15 a month is fine for a main MMORPG. There is a market for "Side MMORPG's" such as Guild Wars which has a 1 time cost and numerous expansions. The game is successful not because it is good, but because of it's payment model where someone can buy the game and play it without having to worry about monthly paying.

Originally posted by bonobotheory

Originally posted by Arthineas

Is a mmorpg worth $15 a month?   That works out to .50 a day for unlimited entertainment.  You can play it when you want, as long as you want.  Where in contrast these days you can go to the movie theater for about $7 and pay about $3.50 for popcorn, another $2.50 for a drink.  The whole experience only lasts for 2-3 hours.  You do the math.  I looks pretty worth it to me.

 

An MMORPG is only 50 cents a day if you play it every single day. If you play in moderation, a few times a week and for a only couple of hours in a sitting, it's not much of a bargain anymore.

True, but the point is its cheap entertainment that is there anytime you want.  I myself am a very casual player anymore.  I usually only play on the weekends and maybe a day during the week.  Thats still alot cheaper then going to the movies which only lasts you 2-3 hours. 

 Plus I have been saving money because I do not have to go buy a $30-$50 dollar game that will only last me a month.  I can't remember the last time I bought a regular game. 

A good mmorpg is money well spent in my opinion.  Plus the experience always changes.  You never know how your play session is going to turn out.  Its not static like regular games.

Originally posted by GreenChaos

I have purchased many many many single player game that cost me over $50 and lasted about 3 days. So $15 for a full month is great. How many single player games costing > $50 did you play for a full month?

A few, but not many. So the $15 month is actually a great deal.

I spent the $50 upfront on the MMO games I bought in boxes, and then paid for them again many times over, even when they were getting frustrating and when I was hardly playing at all. And then you can start to tack on what I have paid for expansions.

On the other hand, I do NOT buy many single player games, but almost all the ones I do buy are very replayable, and I play them for years without ever paying for them again. I will get on an Age of Empires 2 kick and play random maps and LAN games for weeks at a time, and then I'll be off playing something in the vein of The Sims or Tropico, or something of the Civilization sort. (I have a love/hate relationship with Civilization... That game makes me lose whole days.) 

And I might add that I just don't have time to play more than one game, so when I go on a single player (or LAN multiplayer) game, I don't play the MMO I'm paying for at all. That's why I am not quick to want to pay for any on a monthly basis at this point.

I think the end conclusion of this thread almost has to be that $15 is an absolute steal for some people, but is a waste for others, in terms of how much entertainment they are getting for their money.