Are we gonna have to pay to play this time??

[Chocobo King]

I just saw that there is already a FFXIV online comming out, are we going to have to pay to play this time??? That was pretty lame to do that on XI... Hopefully we wont have too

[Vyk]

It costs them money to maintain the bandwidth you need to play. So I imagine probably

[VeloZer0]

And the most important part, having a steady stream of income to play development staff to develop new content for the game.

[trancekuja]

What? People pay for their games?

[Yeargdribble]

I don't understand why people have so much trouble with this. Do the math sometime and you'll realize that paying to play an MMO is cheaper than almost anything else.

You go to see Harry Potter this weekend with a drink and a popcorn, you've payed for a month of an MMO. How about dividing out the amount of time you invest into an offline game vs its cost.

If you played FFXII for 300 hours and payed 50 bucks for it, then you're paying about 16 cents/hour.

If you only played FFXI for 2.5 hours a day on average, that would be about the same cost.

Most games you play, especially FPSs and platformers you may only get 10-20 hours out of. You're getting a hell of a lot less for your money any time you pick up the majority of single-player games.

On top of that, you're getting new content with decent regularity.


Not to be rude, but I figure this is more a complaint from younger people for two reasons.

1 - It's easier to talk mommy and daddy into buying a game one time than paying a fee.

2 - Young people aren't used to paying for things that have no solid real-world representation like car insurance, rent, etc. I sure wish I could pay my electric bill as a one time thing and not pay for it monthly.



Like someone already mentioned, you're paying for continuing development of your game in addition to paying to keep the servers running 24/7.

[Chocobo King]

Originally posted by Yeargdribble

I don't understand why people have so much trouble with this. Do the math sometime and you'll realize that paying to play an MMO is cheaper than almost anything else.

You go to see Harry Potter this weekend with a drink and a popcorn, you've payed for a month of an MMO. How about dividing out the amount of time you invest into an offline game vs its cost.

If you played FFXII for 300 hours and payed 50 bucks for it, then you're paying about 16 cents/hour.

If you only played FFXI for 2.5 hours a day on average, that would be about the same cost.

Most games you play, especially FPSs and platformers you may only get 10-20 hours out of. You're getting a hell of a lot less for your money any time you pick up the majority of single-player games.

On top of that, you're getting new content with decent regularity.


Not to be rude, but I figure this is more a complaint from younger people for two reasons.

1 - It's easier to talk mommy and daddy into buying a game one time than paying a fee.

2 - Young people aren't used to paying for things that have no solid real-world representation like car insurance, rent, etc. I sure wish I could pay my electric bill as a one time thing and not pay for it monthly.



Like someone already mentioned, you're paying for continuing development of your game in addition to paying to keep the servers running 24/7.


It isnt a complaint from younger people that dont have to pay for things because mommy n dddy pay it for them. I actually have to pay my own car insurance, had to save my own money to even buy my car, parents didnt pay a dime for it, and if I want to get something it has to come out of my own money aswell.

Im just saying theres alot of great online games out there that you only have to pay for the game and never have to pay again, and the only thing you have to pay is for the expansions. Im sure Square makes enough money from all its customers and fans worldwide to be able to host the servers so we dont have to pay again. Id be happy to pay for upgrades on it like new expansions, but we shouldnt have to pay a monthly fee.

[Ouch!]

Im just saying theres alot of great online games out there that you only have to pay for the game and never have to pay again, and the only thing you have to pay is for the expansions. Im sure Square makes enough money from all its customers and fans worldwide to be able to host the servers so we dont have to pay again. Id be happy to pay for upgrades on it like new expansions, but we shouldnt have to pay a monthly fee.
Are you kidding me? The whole reason that Square ever pursued the online gaming market in the first place was because they were nearly bankrupt from their endeavors with the Spirits Within.

As far as I'm concerned, it's absolutely ridiculous to expect Square to take a loss on FFXI just because they make money elsewhere. Think like a business-minded individual and try and justify that for me.

Further, the problem with charging for expansions only is that expansions--usually--are released rather infrequently. I'd rather pay a monthly fee and get the version updates and regular tweeks and fixes in place of one expansion pack every year and a half to two years.

[Chocobo King]

Originally Posted by Ouch!

Are you kidding me? The whole reason that Square ever pursued the online gaming market in the first place was because they were nearly bankrupt from their endeavors with the Spirits Within.

As far as I'm concerned, it's absolutely ridiculous to expect Square to take a loss on FFXI just because they make money elsewhere. Think like a business-minded individual and try and justify that for me.

Further, the problem with charging for expansions only is that expansions--usually--are released rather infrequently. I'd rather pay a monthly fee and get the version updates and regular tweeks and fixes in place of one expansion pack every year and a half to two years.

Thats fine, but im not talking about XI, im talking about XIV that isnt even out yet! And im not expecting them to take a loss, Do you know how long ago Spirits Within even came out?? Long time ago, besides that I highly dought they went bankrupt from that movie. They pursued online gaming because people thought it would be cool to have an online Final Fantasy, whether they were bankrupt or not what ever. Were all entitled to our opinion.

[Yeargdribble]

Im just saying theres alot of great online games out there that you only have to pay for the game and never have to pay again, and the only thing you have to pay is for the expansions. Im sure Square makes enough money from all its customers and fans worldwide to be able to host the servers so we dont have to pay again. Id be happy to pay for upgrades on it like new expansions, but we shouldnt have to pay a monthly fee.

Which ones? CS? TF2? L4D? FPS games don't require the level of upkeep and and you still pay dearly for DLC even if it's very minute. For all intents and purposes OFPS (or RTS like WC3) games are essentially single player games. The devs make the content one time and then tell people to just drop in often using the players' personal servers. There's very little upkeep and very little further developments (unless you pay for it which is the majority of cases).

I can't really think of any really good free to play MMOs. Any that are even half-way decent still have a large pay element to get past a certain level or to buy a piece of gear you want.

If there are other examples let me know about them.


Content is the name of the game in an MMO. Running 10 maps for an FPS where people (usually no more than 20 at a time) can use their own private servers instead of loading your servers is a joke. Running several extremely large persistent worlds that each accommodate 2000-4000 exclusively to their own server is a bit different. You have non-player characters in the form of shops and monsters. You have a ton of balance issues, you have to make a ridiculous amount of items, balance economies, etc.

Just from a design perspective it's a much huger task. Even though I think SE does a fairly shabby job, I still think they deserve to get paid for continued work on the game they are keeping up.

Also what Ouch! said is definitely true. You've gotta think from a business perspective. Even the F2P MMOs and similar online FPS are made to make money one way or another.

[NeoTifa]

Yea, I'm in college, have to pay for rent, insurance, cell phone, internet, etc. and can't afford to pay monthly for a game that I'm only gonna play on weekends after homework...

[Yeargdribble]

Well if you can't afford to pay for a game you won't have much time to play then payment shouldn't be the biggest issue anyway. Unlike offline games, MMOs keep going without you. FFXI is the worst of them, though FFXIV is supposed to be more casual, but if you've got a busy life then MMOs probably aren't for you anyway... to that point that paying or not shouldn't be an issue.


Perhaps its a consumerist attitude that we have of "If I pay for it then it had very well better be something I can hold in my hand that nobody can ever take away from me." Or maybe it's the ubiquitous pirate mentality where so many people think they shouldn't have to pay for what other people make.


I suppose you think you should only pay for your internet connection when you use it. Because if you're not downloading at max bandwidth 247/ you're not getting all of what you're paying for.

[Chocobo King]

I agree to that they need to get payed for their creations. I think they probly say "hey they want an online FF, lots of people did XI, and we can probly get a little money out of it."

But for instance GW is an online only game, and its free to play, I think its a pretty cool game, they have daily maintence, and update ver. often enough, MGO is free to play, they have maintence every week and have new things come out all the time.

Yeah ill probly end up getting it and more then likely pay to play it if it isnt to much. im not trying to offend anyone here, but theirs alot of other people that like and play FF a lot, and our money is tight because of other bills, so we cant always be able to end up paying for an awesome game we wish we could play.

[Yeargdribble]

Big difference between GW and other MMOs is that the GW world is not persistent. GW is an MMO the same way D2 is an MMO. From the sheer business side of it, upkeep isn't as money-munching for such a game. As I recall, GW, like most OFPS games only allows a very small number of people in a given instanced zone at a given time. Running the bandwidth to allow 24 people in a given instance is nothing compared to running a persistent world with 2000-4000 people.

Some people don't care that GW is a non-persistent-world game. Plenty of others do want that. They want the community that comes with a server being an entity unto itself with it's own people, the same people, every time.

MGO falls into a similar category of having a very small number of people per instanced game.


I also think if you compared the content developed for a game like GW to that of other MMOs, GW would fall far behind and you'd pay for 95% of it in the expansions.

FFXI isn't the best example of continually generated content, but they do have major updates (post expansion) that add quite a lot to the game. If you like at something like WoW, Blizzard is churning out a ridiculous amount of content at breakneck pace on top of maintaining several hundred servers which can each host several thousand players simultaneously.

TL;DR version. Bandwidth costs more for persistent world games and less for instanced games. Above all, you're paying for the bandwidth just like you would your internet connection.

[Ouch!]

Thats fine, but im not talking about XI, im talking about XIV that isnt even out yet! And im not expecting them to take a loss, Do you know how long ago Spirits Within even came out?? Long time ago, besides that I highly dought they went bankrupt from that movie. They pursued online gaming because people thought it would be cool to have an online Final Fantasy, whether they were bankrupt or not what ever. Were all entitled to our opinion.
First of all, Squaresoft suffered almost $94,000,000 losses from producing The Spirits Within. They had opened a completely new studio to produce the game and had to shut it down immediately afterwards because of the movie's massive box office failure. The beginning of FFXI's development also coincides rather closely with the movie's release and subsequent massive loss for the company. It's not a matter of opinion; MMORPGs are cash cows. You'd have to be blind to think that the massive failure of The Spirits Within and then the production of an MMORPG are unrelated.

At any rate, Yearg has already addressed why the games you've brought up as examples for your argument aren't valid comparisons, so I won't bother addressing that.

Also, you say you're not expecting Square Enix to take a loss on FFXIV, but then you jumped to my point about the Spirits Within, which was misdirected. Let's break down the costs of a persistent-world MMORPG.

First, you've got to pay the development team. For an MMORPG, I'd wager that group is likely larger than a dev. team for any offline title.

Second, MMORPGs have much more interaction between the producer and the consumer. This means that you've got to expand your customer service. While Square Enix's customer service for FFXI is most certainly some of the most ridiculous junk I've ever encountered, I can still assure you that it's expensive.

Third, perhaps you might lump this under customer service, but keep in mind you've also got to pay for your Game Masters--those in game whose responsibilities it is to settle disputes between players and Terms of Services breeches.

But wait, don't forget to add in the massive costs associated with servers capable of maintaining these kinds of worlds. That's a pretty penny all by itself.

With all these costs, I can hardly imagine that Square Enix can afford to not charge at least some sort of monthly fee. Expansions are too far and few between to sustain a game with such costs, and most people would balk at paying more than $30 for them anyway.

You can argue all you want that monthly fees might suck for the consumer (I'd argue that I get my money's worth, and as soon as I stop feeling that way, I'll stop paying), but it's hard to justify yourself from a business perspective. It doesn't make an ounce of sense. Companies aren't altruistic, and I can guarantee you the people who put the money up to make these games in the first place aren't doing it because their primary goal is to let you have fun. They do it to make money.

MMORPGs are not only expensive to make (as all games are these days), but they're also expensive to maintain. It would stand to reason that, as a result, they might be more expensive to play. As has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, as long as you play your MMORPG for a decent amount of time each month, it's potentially the cheapest entertainment you'll get from a video game.

[Dignified Pauper]

Point of the matter is, if you have other bills and can't afford to get an online game, then get your priorities straight. Games are a leisure activity. Bills are a financial responsibility.

It's about as bad as when people call and say "I can't afford my cell phone bill. It's too high, I can't even buy as much at the grocery." And said people have unlimited texting, data, and 900 minutes. I offer to reduce their services. "NO! I shouldn't have to, you should lower your damn price!"

It's just as ridiculous. Get a better job, or wait until you've got better handle on your bills.

[Yeargdribble]

As has been discussed elsewhere in this thread, as long as you play your MMORPG for a decent amount of time each month, it's potentially the cheapest entertainment you'll get from a video game.

This is always the biggest one for me. Most people just say from the start they don't like the idea of paying a monthly fee. I admit I felt the same way nearly a decade ago. Once you get past that and try the game rather that refuse it on principle, you may find you either really like that style of gaming or don't.

If you're a person that ends up enjoying MMOs you'll probably find yourself make the same mental comparison between prices you spend in a month for going to the movies, going out to eat, buying offline games, <insert random entertainment here>.

I'd just suggest that no one refrain from playing an MMO simply because of the idea of the pay per month. Obviously if it puts you in financial distress don't, but if it's just on principle maybe you try it out before saying no.

[Chocobo King]

Originally Posted by Yeargdribble ^

This is always the biggest one for me. Most people just say from the start they don't like the idea of paying a monthly fee. I admit I felt the same way nearly a decade ago. Once you get past that and try the game rather that refuse it on principle, you may find you either really like that style of gaming or don't.

If you're a person that ends up enjoying MMOs you'll probably find yourself make the same mental comparison between prices you spend in a month for going to the movies, going out to eat, buying offline games, .

I'd just suggest that no one refrain from playing an MMO simply because of the idea of the pay per month. Obviously if it puts you in financial distress don't, but if it's just on principle maybe you try it out before saying no.


Your right, people should rather try the game before saying no just because you have to pay to play, Im guilty of that myself, I would like to actually try XI sometime and XIV ill probly do the same. you guys have sort of helped me see this topic on another view of it, and your right... Sorry to have offended anyone here, but thanks aswell to helping me understand better too. ;)

[Yeargdribble]

Nah, you weren't offensive at all. I should apologize for being so quick to pigeon-hole your argument. That comes as a result of having heard the "it's too expensive" argument so many times when in reality it's not.

Personal anecdote for what it's worth... My wife and I have actually saved a lot of money since starting to play MMOs. When you get bored less often you're less likely to go spend money on random entertainment on a whim.

[gudkid]

i wanna graduate soon and get a steady job to be able to play this one... i've been a fan since i can remember... I WANNA GET A FREAKIN' JOB!!!! T_T waaaaaaaaa i'm already drooling from the thought of an online ff....

[Levian]

I can definitely see payment being a problem for the younger generation. I know I had this problem with FFXI. :p It only took me a week after I got my first job to get FFXI, and that's only because it took a while before I got a credit card. :D

[Ouch!]

FFXI is a significantly cheaper alternative to me. The year and a half I didn't play Final Fantasy XI saw me purchase nearly $2,000 worth of video games. Granted, that's the total value of everything I purchased. I avoided spending anywhere near that by utilizing trade-ins and such, but it basically wiped out all the money I'd received as gifts from high school graduation!

[Yeargdribble]

Not to be a douche (more than I already have been), but I wouldn't mind if younger people had more trouble playing. Little 13 year-old brats are a large part of what spoiled WoW for me so much. I would love if a game had 18+ servers that required verification. Sure a few kids would slip through on their dad's account or something, but at least it would be minimized.

That's what drives so many people to RP servers. It's not that they want to RP, but that RP servers are kryptonite to little boys with fragile egos because they are so uncool.

Before some tween comes in here and goes off on me, I'll say that not all kids are like this. I played with a very talented 14 year-old in WoW. His prepubescent voice was mildly annoying over vent, but he also didn't whine with it and was a great player.

The small, but vocal minority always seems loudest.

So yeah, for me, I'd rather never have to play with teens at all.

[Goldenboko]

It costs them money to maintain the bandwidth you need to play. So I imagine probably

Thread over.

[Depression Moon]

I wish it wasnt but of course you're going to have to pay monthly fees for a good MMO. They're just too expensive for me. I can barely afford one game a year, food, and transportation let alone with paying a retail price for a game along with a monthly fee. They're just too expensive.

[Chocobo King]

Originally posted by Yeargdribble ^

Not to be a douche (more than I already have been), but I wouldn't mind if younger people had more trouble playing. Little 13 year-old brats are a large part of what spoiled WoW for me so much. I would love if a game had 18+ servers that required verification. Sure a few kids would slip through on their dad's account or something, but at least it would be minimized.

That's what drives so many people to RP servers. It's not that they want to RP, but that RP servers are kryptonite to little boys with fragile egos because they are so uncool.

Before some tween comes in here and goes off on me, I'll say that not all kids are like this. I played with a very talented 14 year-old in WoW. His prepubescent voice was mildly annoying over vent, but he also didn't whine with it and was a great player.

The small, but vocal minority always seems loudest.

So yeah, for me, I'd rather never have to play with teens at all.


Lol, I know what you mean, I wish thatd theyd make servers like that too, the 13 year olds whining over a mic on anygame is annoying. But there is that very few that arent so bad. ;)

[H-Kazami]

Well, we'll know when it's released
Before that...I have to save up money for PS3 for the XIII and XIII Versus first><

[Markus. D]

Even free MMOs will have you paying (probably equal to a little more even) every second or third month for the VERY beneficial cash shop items (Using GE as an example: Getting into the easy leveling areas, Double Stance/Level EXP, getting a larger Warp Save space to skew walking, Unlocking unique (not overwpowering) characters like Vincente Rio).

Currently Maple Story is the biggest Cash Shop entity around the internet, hosting rather pricey items that only give required benefits at certain times (and more expensive versions that last even longer during those times), the required pet system and a bunch of, month lasting clothing that though extremely popular is absolutely useless.

You'll find p2p isn't actually that much compared to other "Free" MMOs.

[Apricoth]

Delay of gratification is the name of the game unfortunately. I am glad you saw the reasons for the monthly cost and the implications that are inherent with such an undertaking with games such as FFXIV. I think the SE team working on FFXIV is being paid in advance of projected profits of the game actually. So SE has to recover those pay check amounts in this endeavor. Think of it as making a movie. If the movie does well in the box offices all debt gets taken care of and then the profit comes in. However, if the movie tanks (Spirits Within as a perfect example) it creates significant losses and those pay checks that went to the actors/actresses are not recovered. Creates a nice massive hole in the monetary budget overall.

Hope that makes sense.

[Crimson]

On the brightside, the more money Square make, the better results we can see for future gaming.


Oh wait, more FF7 milking.


Nevermind, I take back what I said.

[TurkSlayer]

I can accept paying the monthly fee. I just wish my job payed me to do so. :cry:

[Zyuu]

Yes. 99% sure.

[Shlup]

Guild Wars doesn't charge a monthly free. I call shenanigans against all other MMOs!

Well, except Guild Wars is a CORPG. It's still a cool monthly-fee-free game though.

[Rostum]

Yeah. Guild Wars doesn't require the same server upkeep as an MMORPG. Not to mention they make up for no monthly fees with expensive expansion packs.

Also not to mention that Free-To-Play MMORPG's are NOT free. They usually require that you spend real life money on abilities and items which adds up to more per month than a Pay-To-Play MMORPG.

[Zyuu]

It's been confirmed in our interview at Gamescom that we'll have to pay to play,

FFXIVCore.com - Final Fantasy XIV Fansite (http://www.ffxivcore.com/index.php?/topic/484-exclusive-interview-with-ffxiv-producer-hiromichi-tanaka/)

I'm very happy with this, microtransactions are horrible.

[Loony BoB]

Just one thing to say regarding the rant about teens by Yeargdribble: I think I hang out more with 16-19 year olds on FFXI than I do the 25+ generation. I'm 25 myself. I can completely understand that if you had voice chat technology that this could make things different, but at the moment it's all about who is more fun for me. Of course, I'm lucky in that I know a bunch of both younger and older people who are all good for a laugh. :D

And I agree, monthly transactions suck.

[Quindiana Jones]

The only real problem I had with XIs monthly transactions is that a)they weren't 30 day subscriptions, they were literally for the month. Which is stupid. And b)I don't like direct debit things. If I want to resubscribe, I will. If I don't pay, just suspend my character until I do.

This might sound lame, but I'd like to see parts of FFXIV work a bit like Runescape. Sure, it's been years since I played it, but I remember two things that rocked about that game: the payment system, and the staff. You pay if you want membership, otherwise you don't get membership.

[Rostum]

That's been one of the major complaints about FFXI. The payment system is just the worst. As you said, you pay monthly, not for 30 days. So if you re-activate your account on the 25th of the month, you get full charges for that month and then you get full charges for the next month starting on the 1st.

Not only that, but there's been SO many cases where people have been double charged and when they get their bank to fix it, they get banned from the game! Square-Enix doens't budge either, their customer support is more like "Haha, bad luck mother fuckers!".

[Markus. D]

Yeah. Guild Wars doesn't require the same server upkeep as an MMORPG. Not to mention they make up for no monthly fees with expensive expansion packs.

This isn't comepletely true, GW has added standalone campaigns (as in, completely full games that can play without the original Prophecies campaign) and a single expansion for about half the price.

You can also buy them all together now for a less than what they use to cost by themselves (Just like what normal console/pc/GotY games do).




Also not to mention that Free-To-Play MMORPG's are NOT free. They usually require that you spend real life money on abilities and items which adds up to more per month than a Pay-To-Play MMORPG.

This is extremely 1000% true... I've spent $74+ on SotNW: Granado Espada within two months (and loved it <3).

[Rostum]

This isn't comepletely true, GW has added standalone campaigns (as in, completely full games that can play without the original Prophecies campaign) and a single expansion for about half the price.

You can also buy them all together now for a less than what they use to cost by themselves (Just like what normal console/pc/GotY games do).

I guess that's alright then! I was under the impression that you had to have the original to play all the others.

[JackNapier]

Quite a few people believe that since it's on PSN it won't have a monthly fee, but I don't know how that makes any sense. I would be very very surprised if they announced it as being F2P though, surprised and gleeful. Uematsu returns!

[Rostum]

Square-Enix have already said there will be a monthly fee.

[deadplayer]

Anyhow, I will give the game a try.

[Rad Bromance]

I had a problem with the concept of a monthly fee when FFXI first came out too, but that's because I was not yet an adult with bills and a credit card.

Now looking back, I realize how silly it is to expect to play an MMORPG without a fee and finding a fee unreasonable...I can understand the teenage perspective though! :D