MMOs in general, and FF11 in particular - do subscriptions get on anyones nerves?

[Assassin_]

I would probably play lots of games like FF11, World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, if they didnt tie you into a contract that you have to pay like, a quarter of my income every month that you want to play, at least not when I dont even know how much Id play it, considering other games, social life, college/coursework, etc. It wood be so much better if the price of the game itself was just, twice as high or sumat, rather than having to subscribe.

[escobert]

FFXI is 12.95 a month, the most I've seen is $15 a month. It's really not that much. I use to bitch about it but come on it's $15.

[Germ Hamee]

I admit that it's kind of a bummer knowing I've paid twenty-five bucks on the game these past couple of months and I've only played the game once or twice in that time period. But, seriously, it's the most miniscule bill I have right now so I really can't complain.

[DMKA]

It bothers me to know that I'm paying for it when I don't feel like playing, because the monthly fee makes me feel like I HAVE to play every day or I'm just throwing money away.

[DJZen]

It's $15, I spend more money on gas per month than I do on MMOs, and I also play City of Heroes. If $15 is a quarter of your monthly income, I would suggest looking for a way to make more than $60 per month. I'm really not bothered by the monthly fees. It's not much of my paycheck and I can cancel at anytime if I don't feel like playing anymore. However, I pretty much always feel like playing. Also, the cost goes to helping maintain the game, which has to be a huge pain in the ass for them. Since I've signed on with the game, I've seen some pretty big revisions made purely to balance out the difficulty and keep the gameplay fair. You can no longer get MPK'd, and RMTs have been banned which has helped the in-game economy. Now that's a service worth paying for!

[Assassin_]

FFXI is 12.95 a month, the most I've seen is $15 a month. It's really not that much. I use to bitch about it but come on it's $15.

2 things

A) Im in Britain, we dont have $

B) Im a student, I get £10 a week.

[DJZen]

Wow, no kidding, that really IS a quarter of your monthly income then (according to XE). How many hours a week are you working?

[Yeargdribble]

It bothers me to know that I'm paying for it when I don't feel like playing, because the monthly fee makes me feel like I HAVE to play every day or I'm just throwing money away.

12.95/month
43.1 cents/day
1.8 cents/hour

This isn't too bad.

Now let's look at another game... saaaaay FFX. I'll assume you paid 50 bucks for it when it first came out. You probbaly go back to it and play a lot. You might even have several 100+ hour saves. So let's assume you've played 300 hours. So $50 bought you 300 hours of joy. That comes out to 17 cents per hour. That's 9.4x the cost of FFXI/hr

Let's go the even more extreme route and look at FPS like Doom 3. It was 65 bucks when it came out. You can probably beat it in 20 hours. You may have done some time trials and played through it several times. However, I doubt that you played it more than 65 hours but even so let's assume you played Doom 3 for 100 hours. That comes out to 65 cents per hour. That is 36x the cost of FFXI per hour.

These games run out of content and fairly quickly. You can have easily done everything there is to do in the time frames I used to do the math with. I've got a play time of nearly 200 days. That's 4800 hours and I've not even scratched the surface of the content in FFXI.

Now granted the math above is a little unfair because almost nobody plays FFXI every hour of every day. However, I would guess that an average of 3 hours of gameplay every day (You could say 2 every weekday and several more on weekends which is the case for most). This still comes out to a measly 14 cents per hour of game play. Hell... any hours you aren't playing this game you can play other games. You aren't exactly burning money. In a very realistic sense you are actually playing for 24 hours of every day.

When you list something on the AH or leave your character outside and logged on with a bazaar they are making money for you while you are away from the game so in that respect the game is still playing itself when you are away. You don't leave FFX on overnight and wake up with a lot of money on your file.






I've said all that to say this. The cost per month for FFXI is comparable and even lower than the cost of most other games especially if they are bought right when they come out. You might not be sure you'll play FFXI that much and you are afraid to make that commitment but look at it this way. If you do enjoy the game you will easily be playing it often enough to cover the numbers I mentioned above and therefore end up paying less than what you would spend per hour on offline games. If you don't enjoy the game it sucks and all but after playing for a good 3 to 4 months you'll know if you like it or not and you can cancel your account then. You will have gotten as much time as any offline game though in only playing 3-4 months I doubt you would get as much enjoyment but hey. 12.95/month isn't very outlandish.

[Miriel]

2 things

A) Im in Britain, we dont have $

B) Im a student, I get £10 a week.

A lot of things in life you pay through subscriptions. Cable bills, internet bills, phone bills, etc. It would be one thing if you paid the original fee for the game and that original game was the product you kept and played, but new things are constantly being added to the game. You're not just paying for the original game, you're paying for the upkeep of servers, for the added content and so on and so forth.

If you can't afford the monthly fee... well that isn't really Squeenix's fault. =/

[Assassin_]

Wow, no kidding, that really IS a quarter of your monthly income then (according to XE). How many hours a week are you working?

Employment, or studies? If you mean employment, Im not, because I have to much studying to do. The money I DO get, I get as benefits from a condition I have called Aspergers Syndrome.

Now granted the math above is a little unfair because almost nobody plays FFXI every hour of every day. However, I would guess that an average of 3 hours of gameplay every day (You could say 2 every weekday and several more on weekends which is the case for most).

No, for the same reason I dont work. If I played a single game that much, alongside my studies, that would take up most of my life, at least at the moment. When I was in high school mabey, or after I finish college, but not now. Well mabey several hours on the weekend along with homework and coursework wouldnt take up most of the weekend, but I woodnt have much time for it in the week.

And also, you havent taken into account that the game itself has a price, no different to those other games you mentioned.

[Gwelenguchenkus]

.

[Germ Hamee]

Employment, or studies? If you mean employment, Im not, because I have to much studying to do. The money I DO get, I get as benefits from a condition I have called Aspergers Syndrome.


No, for the same reason I dont work. If I played a single game that much, alongside my studies, that would take up most of my life, at least at the moment. When I was in high school mabey, or after I finish college, but not now. Well mabey several hours on the weekend along with homework and coursework wouldnt take up most of the weekend, but I woodnt have much time for it in the week.

And also, you havent taken into account that the game itself has a price, no different to those other games you mentioned.

It sounds to me like you don't have anywhere near the amount of free time required to get into this game. I'm sure that sucks, but if the game was full of free-loaders it wouldn't be half the creature it is now.

[Thoughtless]

I'm like a WoW addict and when I stopped playing it for 2 months (it costs $20AU a month) I bought Fable: The Lost Chapters, Civilization VI and Dungeon Seige II and finished them. Seeing I spent $300 on games while not playing for 2 months I think it's worth spending $40 ^^.

[Assassin_]

lol

[DMKA]

12.95/month
43.1 cents/day
1.8 cents/hour

This isn't too bad.

Now let's look at another game... saaaaay FFX. I'll assume you paid 50 bucks for it when it first came out. You probbaly go back to it and play a lot. You might even have several 100+ hour saves. So let's assume you've played 300 hours. So $50 bought you 300 hours of joy. That comes out to 17 cents per hour. That's 9.4x the cost of FFXI/hr

Oh yeah, that makes sense, because we all know FFXI the game itself is FREE! No one had to buy it plus the two and soon to be three expansions for $30 to $50 each on top of their monthly fee and internet connection and $100+ for all the extra PS2 crap if you're playing on PS2 to play it!