Moneyhungry *******

[P8]

I used to be very eager to get FF XI, but somehow i didnt thought about whether you had to pay for this game or not. Well, since its almost being released here in the Netherlands, I got the idea of maybe you had to pay, and DAMN, on the PlayOnline server I read 11,95$ a month. dammit, are they low on cash or something? It will be about 8 euros or something but still... It isnt that expensive to maintain a server is it?
I used to play a game called Ragnarok Online, also a P2P game. But lucky me heared from someone there was a server running for free. The people behind this game only wanted donations to keep the server running. It was a very good server and caused no lag. this server, if i remember correctly (which of course isnt the case) wanted 300$ for 6 months for a server which was able to support about 500 players.
Now my calculation: roughly about 2.000.000 people playing worldwide?
--------
costs:
2.000.000/500 = 4.000
so the server costs are 4.000 x 300 = 1.200.000 $ for 6 months for 2 mil players.
--------
incomes:
2.000.000 x 5$ (average income per sold cd worldwide?) = 10.000.000
--------
10.000.000/1.200.000 = 8,33
so only with the incomes of the game itself it can maintain the server for 8,33 x 6 = 50 months. thats more than 4 years!!


of course, this is only a rough calculation, and probably not very accurate. but that doesnt mean they have to charge 12$ per month to play, plus some extras if you want.

in my opinion, about 2$ - 2,5$ a month would be a nice price to play. but certainly not any higher, those moneyscrubbing bastards make hell of a lot money out of this.

any comments? :D

[Flying Mullet]

I'm glad they charge $12 a month. If they charged $2-$5 a month then they would be flooded with new people playing the game, which means that each server would be overloaded with people and they would have to set up many new servers to handle the crowds. All leading to a poor gaming experience.

The price per month more than covers their operating costs, but it also keeps the amount of people playing under check. It's much like a toll road, I drive on toll roads because I pay to not have to drive around a bunch of blithering idoits. And when it comes to FFXI, I pay so that I only play with people that are serious about playing.

[P8]

imagine this situation: your standing on a t-juntion with your nice BMW-7 and want to get to point B. Left is a toll-way right a normal. left is nice and quiet, right is filled with idiots. left charges 5$, right zero, both ways are 20 miles and end in point B, which one you choose?

exactly

however, shouldnt gaming be something that could be played by everyone? i simply havent got the money to play for 12$ a month. Its just way to high, and i think this game will deliver more money to Square Enix than all the other FF games combined.
damn capitalism.

[Flying Mullet]

No, it should not be played by everyone. Not because of equality or social justifications, but because it's just too many people.

If everyone played the game wouldn't be any fun. Every location would be crowded, the game would bog down do to all of the charcter renderings and data uploaded from the server. You would never fight any enemies because there would be so many people wandering around that as soon as something would spawn it would immediately be killed by someone else. And if you needed to kill a unique spawn for a quest it would be near impossible to do it because the enemy would always be camped.

I don't want too many people playing because it would detract so much from the game that it would make it unplayable.

[P8]

but dont forget everyone who plays it:
1) likes the game. you dont play a game you dont like and
2) already paid around 50 bucks for it.
and what ive heared there are enough servers, so it wont be that crowd. and besides, more players = more incomes = more money for servers

[Lionx]

here's your explaination: Why did Square-Enix make FFXI? To impress us? To let us have fun? To waste their own money? THEY MADE IT SO THEY CAN MAKE MONEY. It is so evil to make money :eek: True for every other single game, because these servers cost a whole freaking lot more than RO servers and has a reputation, given enough time i can make an RO server too, i did it before, and it costs nothing to mantain, hence why Gravity got Hacked :P

You also be surprised how overpacked some areas are, especially the central Jeuno area, major lag around the Auction House, and for every person that bought the game, alot leave, its not a constant customer base. There are over crowed areas because people refuse to level somewhere else and the place where you gather to do things is full of people. You never played so you dont know, but i am pretty sure ANYONE that went to Lower Jeuno or parts of some zones, there are alot of people packed there *cough Crawler's Nest cough*

They had to get over 200,000 people before they get any profit if i remember right. In fact they spent millions of dollars forming this game before it was introduced, so its a BIG investment, and then when they did release it after money invested in it, they still had to suffer losts because of course, it didnt become 200,000 people automatically so they had to bite losts before they reached their MINIMUM target players where they can even begin paying off their initial costs. All the while they have to pay for wages, GM team, tech support, electricity to run servers(like 20 expensive ones[prolly a few thousand to maintain], not shitty ones) that go on 24 hours a day, the bandwidth that people use and the capability that people log on and off everytime and everything has to respond accordingly as well as a development crew to keep expansions and events going on for us, else more people will leave due to lack of content. I would say, high calibur MMORPGs are always this way, why isnt anyone complaning about Worlds of Warcraft(i think there are lol)? EverquestII? How about Lineage II? Those all need pay to play structures to mantain everything, else its just another Blizzard Battle.net full of dumbasses, hacks/bots and etc. That does not reach point B, that reaches point C where alot of the good players leave the game, and the game is characterized and hated for a bad community, and therefore they LOSE more money too. Its not that simple.If you cant pay for it, you dont have to necessarily play, dont just bitch about it...theres plenty of other games like FFX-2, the new Zelda game to look forward to, and FFXII which i am already looking at, even Tales of Symphonia.

Sorry if i sounded rude, but alot of people just bitch and moan and all and dont know the MMO buisness and costs. This thread isnt the first thread i read throughout 2 years since we heard FFXI and their fees.

EDIT: They dont have 2 million players, all they got is half a million, that is the MOST players on any MMORPG.

[Flying Mullet]

Yeah, I'll second what lionx says.

I was trying to explain it from a player experience stand-point because the business reasons are pretty self-explanatory. Not that it hurt that you layed the reasons out lionx. :)

[Rostum]

but dont forget everyone who plays it:
1) likes the game. you dont play a game you dont like and
2) already paid around 50 bucks for it.
and what ive heared there are enough servers, so it wont be that crowd. and besides, more players = more incomes = more money for servers

So what you are telling us is that you don't know much about MMORPG's and you buy games without even looking into them?

My view stands on Lionx's side.

[Citizen Bleys]

Look at RO. Free = millions of ****tards bogging down the servers.

FFXI is so much better. Fewer morons, zero lag.

[P8]

They dont have 2 million players, all they got is half a million, that is the MOST players on any MMORPG.

hmmm, thats not very much i think.

but maybe your right, you convinced me for a part. but it still sucks for the people who want to play seriously but cant afford 50$ + 12$ p m
but thanks for your replies all. im done with this topic.

and lionx, you sounded a bit rude indeed :D

[Lionx]

Yea it might not sound like much but the subscription data never lies..>.>

http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html

and yes i know what you mean about the p2p thing, sometimes it does suck for those that cant pay for it, some of my friends are like that. But that just the way it goes..


and lionx, you sounded a bit rude indeed :D

x-x

[Rostum]

and lionx, you sounded a bit rude indeed :D

He wasn't rude, just informative.