Future for old MMORPG's

[Lothar]

What are some peoples thoughts on what will happen in say 5 years or so when the current genre of MMORGP's is but a faded memory. Do you think we'll still have to pay for old games? or can we truly just throw them away, because no way no how are you going to pay 12 bucks a month to re-subscribe, for old times sake.

My guess is that we're going to see many more underground server emulators, and corresponding lawsuits to shut them down.

Here's to hoping for free online play, again in the near future. When game developers realize that monthly fees hurt game sales, and create animosity toward game developers trying to cash in, on the new fad.

It's total crap to have to pay per month for updates on a crappy incomplete piece of software. It ends up that the players are paying to develop/beta test, the game for them. What's wrong with this picture?

I hope that some day the hundreds of thousands of players can join together, and create the perfect online mmorgp. Create our own software corporation, hire dedicated programmers that work for us. We'll know who's on the payroll, and how exactly where our money goes. Honestly, for 10$ a month for a market of 200,000+ players, if we could just pull together. What kind of company could we have for 24+ million dollars a year?

I know I just like to talk a lot of talk, but aren't you sick of paying a monthly fee for service, you don't get? How much will our servers cost? How much for our fake castle to display our game at E3? Who cares right, just pay your monthly fee and wait and see what happens whenever WHOEVER decides to throw us a new patch.

Wouldnt you just like to know where all that money goes? On paper, how does that monthly fee breakdown? Shouldn't we all receive a proxy vote on new issues, say new crappy graphics engines that are going to be just as incompatible as the current. We get jack...sit and wait...

Even if it was just a global RPG guild, that was used to control/direct new game development.

Can you imagine where gun control laws would be without the NRA? We get united, before it's too late. Next the government will be taxing our mmorpg's, & we wont be there to say no.

comments anyone?

[Hammer]

I think the truth is it is very expensive to develop and maintain an MMORPG. Most games expenses, stop or are drastically reduced shortly after they are released. Take Tribes 2 for example, the development studio was basically shutdown a month after the games release. With games today you have a 24-36 month period where the game is developed and no revenue is generated. Think about what it cost to provide office space and equip 20-50 people for 2 years with no revenue being generated? Advertising and deals to get your game on retail shelves, etc.. There is usually more than one company involved as well, all trying to get there cut(developer, publisher, distributor). And with this genre you have to gamble even more. You have to guess at your average daily load before you sell the first copy and make sure you have enough servers and bandwidth to cover that. You need network admins, database admins in addition to the programmers, artist, and administrative staff to run your company. As a gamer I would love to see games of this type offer free play, but from a business perspective I understand that's not possible. It is a business, and businesses exist solely to make a profit.

[Jammer]

Hammer hit the nail on the head. I can see where folks get frustrated with the bugs, but my gut feel is Mythic is doing about as well as can be expected for the price they charge. To have the perfect gaming nirvana that we all would love to have would price 95% of the gamers out of the picture. That makes it virtually impossible.

I try to look at it this way. I probably average about 2 hours a day playing DAoC. That's 60 hours of entertainment a month for what? 12.95 at the highest rate, right? Well, 60 hours of going to the theatre for movies would cost close to $250.00 a month and I would still bitch that most of the movies suck. So, all in all I figure DAoC isn't such a bad deal. And, it's like any other entertainment purchase I make. When it ceases to be entertaining (apparently when I hit level 50 :)), then I will start spending my entertainment dollars elsewhere.

Just my 2 cents.

Gondolfrendel

[Jing]

Server emulators are out also

Consider the massive slowdowns you get on a RvR battle becuase there are massive groups of people coming online. I don't think anyone has that sort of server capacity just lying around unused. And it would certainly be noticed if it suddenly became busy, especially with what is 'illegal'.

RvR with 10 people across 3 realms on at once, with a rotating server audience of 50 some people will hardly be interesting... And SP well, we all know how fun SP is. At least you wont have to contend with camping...