whyBish,Jan 12 2004, 03:05 AM Wrote:You wait for reviews/peer comment/ surf the tech support forums etc?Which is a perfectly valid argument. You are saying that the game and company aren't concerned with your market and as such you aren't going to pay to play a sub-par version of the game.
I am unlikely to buy the game. I am not against paying for using servers in principle (and actually agree with Ghostiger here), but I am against them in current practice.
My point was to respond to the people who are sitting there saying that since D2 is free to play there is no reason to ever pay-to-play since it's stupid. That's a shallow and ignorant point of view. Saying that none of the games out there are something you would want to pay for because they aren't in your interest (Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc) is fine. But to sit there and compare a single player game with multiplayer added to a massive social structure gaming world and then insist they are the same and that we shouldn't have to pay for it is foolish.
MMORPGs do make money. Some make them hand over fist. But how many out there are from small companies? Most are bankrolled by big corporations with lots of money willing to wait for a return on investment. It takes ALOT of money to start one. Maintaining it isn't too bad compared to startup costs, but you need quite a few millions to get one rolling. Bandwidth and servers are expensive.
And Bob, sitting there saying that a free "MMOG" that hasn't been released is perfectly valid because it has a good business plan is rather naive. How many dotcommers claimed to have great business plans to make money? How many failed? A business plan can look great on paper, but until everything is tried in the real world it is no more than an idea. I personally don't see how they plan on keeping it free and hosting servers for all their players without it being nothing more than a hobbyist\enthusiast keeping it alive. Hardly a business plan.