Profile: hogscraper
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• • No more buying MMOs without trial or test account!

  • Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe
    

    And yet games are unique because they are an interactive medium. Just because a particular feature sounds good on paper, doesn't mean that it'll pan out so well in actual gameplay. Furthermore, many of the artistic limitations and conventions have been long established in passive modes of entertainment such as novels, plays and movies, whereas we haven't really begun to scratch the surface of what can and cannot be done with video games.
    You still want a free trial, that in MMORPG-time, is barely scratching the surface. Or are you saying that you seriously play MMORPG's for the great quality of writing that goes into the level 10 quests? Quests at low levels rarely even come close to the depth and scope of the quests that you will never see in a short trial. You say you want something because the alternative is lacking, yet what you want will bring you no closer to that experience than what is already out there. You would still be having to get people's opinions about the high level content as I know of no game yet available where a level 10 character can breeze through the top level quests on a sight-seeing tour....
    
    

    At this point you're implying that we are beyond being deceived because of our previous experience with games. You are making the false assumption that a good trailer = a good game and the equally false assumption that a good review = a good game. Screen shots can only show you how a game looks and not how a game plays. Again, games are interactive media and they require interactive promotion.
    Because sorting the bullshit viral marketing from the real deal takes longer than actually sitting down and playing the game.

     

     Again, the contradictions in these arguments... You're posting on a website dedicated to MMORPGs. The kind of person incapable of finding information they trust out of the millions of bytes of data out there for any particular game is the kind of person that can't make their way to a forum like this. You claim that you find it impossible to sift through the bullshit and are therefore claiming that you personally cannot find a source of information that you trust. You say a trial would alleviate this, let's go with a 14 day trial. Impossible to determine much at all in that amount of time. Take that against what you could learn about a game in just 3 hours online. I've played EVE Online, DAOC, EQ, EQ2, SWG, Guild Wars, AO and a few others. I can't say that I ever bought one of those games or any game sight unseen. I check them out from a lot of different sources. What you guys are claiming is contradictory to everything someone like me has seen first hand. When one trailer is good, you are right that doesn't make it a good game. But when dozen's of the sites I go to all give it a thumbs up, including non-commercial sites run by fans of games? There's a dam good chance that the game will at least give me a month or two worth of fun before I am done with it. Guild Wars is a perfect example. Mixed reviews when I looked into at first, and I got a couple months worth of decent play before I put it away for good.

    Look at it from the company's perspective. If you as the player can't be bothered to to spend a couple hours, over the months preceding and just after a game's release. looking into what information is out there, why should they bother spending development dollars making a limited free-trial or bother spending money on the code for a full-reign free trial? If you're incapable of determining what information is good and what is bs, an overly simple task, how much are they going to spend on CSR dollars when you can't figure out how to find your trainer at level one?   If you get a free trial instead of having to pay, guess what the company knows up front? That your money is already being spent elsewhere. If you're not willing to spend your cash on a game that a company has poured millions into, why should they care about your business? The development costs that go into a game are staggering, and here's some kid saying he wants to play the game for free and spend his cash elsewhere. Yeah right. You're so strapped for cash you can't afford to try the game? What is that saying about your ability to pay up month after month? Either way unless a game has a ton of players paying in already, (good clue its a good game), or is begging for paying players, (good sign its a bad game), it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's up.

    
    

  • Posted: 4/18/08 9:25 PM
    General Discussion
• • No more buying MMOs without trial or test account!

  • The guy above talking about media being a try before you buy industry was only partly right. Movies give you trailers so you get some idea of what to expect, but in the same vein, games release many many trailers, tons of screenshots, reviews and in depth web-sites that give information on what you can expect. Here's my major issue with free trials, even at launch.

    So to all of you guys demanding a free trial before you buy, you do understand why a company will more than likely not care about your opinions, right? You're coming out and saying that you are at least experienced enough with MMORPGS that you know what you like and what you don't like based on what you experience. You are saying that you are experienced enough with the genre to have played enough of those types of games to have been burned in the past. You are experienced enough and familiar enough with the genre, (MMORPGS), to have an expectation of how things should be done in an ideal world. And yet despite these claims, you then want the company to believe that you are somehow so incompetent that the dirth of information available, the miles of pages of reviews and writeups, the hours of videos, the 100's of screen shots and all of the things player's that have beta'ed and or played have said about it are somehow not enough for you to get a decent grasp on what to expect? LOL

    Make up your mind. Any player who has prequalified themselves by saying they know enough about the genre to have these kinds of informed opinions shouldn't try to pass themselves off as being inable to make an informed judgment about something that has the wealth of information available as an MMORPG. You have to have internet to play, so why not bother to research it?

  • Posted: 4/18/08 6:15 PM
    General Discussion
• • No more buying MMOs without trial or test account!

  • I would never buy a game that gave a free trial until well after it was going down hill anyways. Firstly, the only games that will ever do this are games that suck, and games that are starting to lose subscribers, (big warning sign). For you guys that think that sucky games wouldn't do this you're only partly right. They don't do this at launch. Couple months in when they realize that noone will support their crap with recurring monthly fees? Much more likely. The reason no good game will do this is that they don't have to. Big name games that know they are good have tons of players waiting in line to subscribe,(months and even a year or two beforehand) and the companies not only don't care about you, they don't NEED to care about you.

    Fiscally, they shouldn't care about you. Players that demand something free, without having to work for it, (whether in game-time put in or your money from your job), are the same kinds of players that jump ship the next time something a little shinier or new comes out. Why do people not jump ship from game to game every couple of months? Because of the costs involved. When someone works for something, they're much more likely to stay involved.

    That mentality has cost many companies big time and they realize that now adays. Take Dark Age of Camelot. The game had a decent population base then people starting crying. It took a lot of time and effort for players to get the gear they needed to be competetive. Most of that gear came from the expansion pack Trials of Atlantis.People cried about not wanting to put in what was necessary and they made new servers just for these players. What happened? The original servers, (now with a third less players), had populations that felt cheated because the chance of finding good action was killed. The crybaby players who were given what they wanted and should have been happy? Within 6 months half of them canceled their subscriptions. Today that game is in shambles because of one decision to placate people that wanted something, (RVR competetiveness), without paying the price. The old guard blames the whiners for splitting the population and lower the level of play, the whiners blame TOA because it somehow forced them to demand the changes that eventually ruined the game.

    I know you guys are talking about just a free trial, but something for nothing never works in the real world. Its always abused to the detriment of the people who came with cash in hand. As long as there are people ready to hand their money over without that freebie trial, players that want in without paying will always be left on the sidelines missing out on the fun.

  • Posted: 4/17/08 8:17 PM
    General Discussion