WWII Online gets publisher = no monthly fee??

[M. Bates]

Seeing as WW2Online (massive WW2 action internet game) has got a publisher, does this mean that WW2Online will be an off the shelf game, where you pay X money and can play multiplayer straight away?

Or are they still going to have people downloading for free from their website, and then paying to play people online?

I am asking the question, because surely the second model I described could it achieved without getting a publisher.

Personally, I would not have a monthly bill for a game no matter how good it is. Myth 2 never required a monthly fee, and that game is capable of hundreds of players at once.

[Chupacabra]

I think you're probably out of luck. Although I don't specifically know, and I'm too lazy to go to their website and check, I'm assuming it's going to work on the Everquest model. That is, you buy the front end for however much money, and then you pay a monthly fee for the service. That seems to be the way most MMO games are going.

Again, just a hunch.

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Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

[Manx]

I may be wrong - but my understanding of WW2ONLINE is that the game will only be available off the shelf and then you must pay a monthly subscription on top of that purchase to actually be registered to play online.

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COMBAT MISSIONS- CM News, Supplies & Resources

WWW.COMBATMISSIONS.CO.UK

[This message has been edited by Manx (edited 11-17-2000).]

[Maximus]

Personally, I am turned off by the whole "Pay to Play" thing. Hell I'd rather spend my dinero on a good porn site.

[stimpy]

Rumor is $50 off shelf... $30 a month... but this is rumor...

stimpy

[M. Bates]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Rumor is $50 off shelf... $30 a month... but this is rumor...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, I reckon that WWIIOnline will be a flop... paying to play is going too far.

The irony is that only "die hards" will pay to play a WW2 simulation on a monthly basis...

... and WWII Online is already shaping up to be a "twitch shooter".

Mark my words, there will be 70% pilots, 20% tanks, 10% as infantry and a lot of bored, unco-ordinated players.

[Samhain]

Pesonally, I haven't and won't pay monthly to play any game. For two decades, all the computer and video games I've bought have been paid for once up front and that's it. And now someone wants me to pay every month as well? It just feels both greedy and wrong.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't suggest the game will be a flop because of the monthly fee. Look at all the MMORPG's like Everquest, which are hugely successful. (Read the cover story of the latest US PC Gamer to see just how popular this offensive business model has become among publishers.) If it's a flop, it'll more likely be because of some element of the game design, or more probably, the lack of a substantial audience. RPG's are well suited to persistent worlds that you pay to explore and in which you build up a sophisticated character and set of relations over time. Not so a WWII combat game. Also, the most popular online combat games center on contemporary firearms and counter-terrorist actions (Counter-Strike, TacOps, Rainbow Six series, Infiltration, Strike Force, Delta Force series, etc., etc.).

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Hope you got your things together,

Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

[This message has been edited by Samhain (edited 11-18-2000).]

[Guest kking199]

$30 bucks a month seems awfully steep, it would have to be one Kick A game for me to even consider that, $10 is more reasonable. One thought I have on regular fee's is it "theoretically" should keep the casual and a majority of the disruptive players out. The higher the price per month the more diehard serious players you end up with. Imho.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

The worst part will be when some dude with SDSL driving a Tiger blows past your 56k connected Sherman and torches you. Lag is the curse of any realtime internet game. And if you do have cable, etc, you may still go through a bad line of servers that lags you out while others playing near you don't endure the same problem. Of course, once in a while it will be the other way around, but it will seem like a whole lot less of the time.

[M. Bates]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The worst part will be when some dude with SDSL driving a Tiger blows past your 56k connected Sherman and torches you. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good point. I play Rainbow Six on Gameranger sometimes, and it is always the "good" players in the clans who are on cable, and the casual not so great players are using 56k modems.

My argument "against" WW2Online, is that in reality dozens of infantry were needed and used as against a few pilots.

WW2Online will be the other way around: there will be as many, if not more, pilots than infantrymen. This is partly because aircraft are naturally more popular, plus there will be players switching over from Warbirds.

[Mr. Clark]

If it actually costs $30 a month to play I sure as hell hope it flops! I won't pay $30 a month for my Cable TV selection...

I already refuse to pay $10 a month for Everquest, etc.

If games ARE going to make you pay to play, then they should at least be handed out free... perhaps in gaming mags.

$30 a month is going waaaaaay too far.

[Von Brizee]

I played Ultima Online, and pay 9 bucks a month for it. It's kind of like the manly version of Everquest. It makes the world more real by including murder, robbery, massive war, looting, scamming etc. Hell, I ran a gang of highwaymen . Worth the money in my book, because I stayed interested in it for over a year and ultimately spent less money than I would have if I got tired of it.

As for WWII online, I have my doubts. I agree that there will be no infantry. Just by looking at their message boards, I can tell that the heavy stuff is going to be more popular. This is going to be an aircraft and tank simulator. I sure HOPE they go the realistic way instead of the "let's make all the equipment equal" route. I KNOW people are going to complain.

Ignorant patriotic boy: My Sherman shot that Tiger a mile away 4 times before he hit me once! And I died! This game SUCKS it's so UNFAIR. WE WON THE WAR. How come Shermans aren't good?

The aircraft boards seem to host some of those type too. I see people apparently believing that bombers can hunt down fighters "cuz they're bigger and have bombs and fighters only have guns"

As for infantry:

First, there won't be enough of them unless they:

1. Force people into the infantry or emply a rotation system where you switch roles every so often. Customers would complain.

2. Flesh out the infantry with AI controlled bots, which would kind of ruin the game.

Neither course looks good.

And for the guys who do want to be in the infantry at least half of them are hyper little boys who watched Saving Private Ryan a little too much. "SnIpUhz r00l"

Everyone and their mother wants to be a sniper. I actually witnessed a clan forming whose specialty as stated is "Sniper/Assault"

They are ALL going to be snipers and ASSAULT strongholds. Anyone else see something wrong with this?

WWIIOnline doesn't look good for me....

And lastly:

Friendly fire

They can disable it, which would then involve gamey overuse of heavy weapons with no fear of hitting your own troops.

Or allow it in which case people will shoot all their teamates on purpose.

[Subvet]

To those complaining about pay to play:

Do you realize there is a very real and high cost to a company running one of these MMOL games? When you make a regular game once it hits the shelves your cost are over for the most part (only patching and advertising remain really). With a MMOL game you pay for a full time staff running the game on your servers. You pay for a hefty amount of bandwidth too. If a company didn't charge a monthly fee then after a short time they would start losing money. Since the game is run on company servers then you as the customer would be SOL when the company shut everything down because of a loss of money. Would you rather buy the game, only be able to play it for a few months and then have the thing shut down? Without pay to play there will be NO MMOL games. It's like buying a car and expecting to never have to pay for fuel.

[M. Bates]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Do you realize there is a very real and high cost to a company running one of these MMOL games? When you make a regular game once it hits the shelves your cost are over for the most part (only patching and advertising remain really).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unreal Tournament, Quake 1,2,3, and many other games have servers which don't require a monthly fee for use.

People are entitled to say that a game's business plan is flawed, and that they won't be buying into the product as a result of that.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Just by looking at their message boards, I can tell that the heavy stuff is going to be more popular.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, it's going to be Warbirds With Tanks.

They are so obsessed with snipers, that no one will be moving in the open!!

[tss]

M. Bates wrote:

Unreal Tournament, Quake 1,2,3, and many other games have servers which don't require a monthly fee for use.

But none of those games has a persistent world. There's a huge difference between games where you just log in a server for few quick games on a map or two and games where the server has to store status information of each and every player. That costs money. A lot of money, in fact.

- Tommi

[Samhain]

Sounds like you're a TFC player

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Hope you got your things together,

Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

[Chupacabra]

Another cost in persistant worlds is moderators. Got to pay those folks a salary, and the games are absolutely unplayable without them. Of course, the games might be absolutely unplayable with them, but that's neither here nor there...

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Grand Poobah of the fresh fire of Heh.

[Subvet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M. Bates:

Unreal Tournament, Quake 1,2,3, and many other games have servers which don't require a monthly fee for use.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Those games are NOTHING like what we are talking about with a MMOL persistant world type game. You have to compare apples to apples here. Can you name one MMOL persistent world moderated game that doesn't charge a fee to play? Maybe you could tell me how a company could keep from losing money with such a game if they didn't charge a fee to play it (or a HUGE price up front)? Do you want advertising billboards scrolling across the top of your screen while you play?

[M. Bates]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>There's a huge difference between games where you just log in a server for few quick games on a map or two and games where the server has to store status information of each and every player. That costs money. A lot of money, in fact.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I can't see it myself. WW2 grogs = money on tap provided you give 'em what they want.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Another cost in persistant worlds is moderators. Got to pay those folks a salary, and the games are absolutely unplayable without them. Of course, the games might be absolutely unplayable with them, but that's neither here nor there...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There are always players who will do that for free, just so they can throw their weight around. bungie.net already has such people.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Maybe you could tell me how a company could keep from losing money with such a game if they didn't charge a fee to play it (or a HUGE price up front)? Do you want advertising billboards scrolling across the top of your screen while you play? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You sound very well informed, just give me a rough overview of what their running costs are and how many mouths they have to feed, and I'll get back to you.

[Razoo]

I think Everquest has somthing like 300,000 players? Your going to need lots of Mods to keep that bunch in check. Some of them will have to be payed and actually "work" for the company so they wont cheat so much. Giving volunteer players huge in-game powers is not a good idea It also costs money to keep all those servers up and running, then you have maintenance... Also the game needs to have programmers/Artists/whoever to add more things and fix other things in the game. Can't forget the out of game customer support. Im sure there many more things too. All this stuff is going to cost plenty of money.... Not quite 3million a month but it is a business afterall

And 10 bucks really isn't all that much. That comes to 120 a year and when you consider how much some people play those games you really do get your moneys worth. I know that when I played UO I wasn't spending anything on other games.

[PeterNZer]

Lets not mince words here M Bates, you're wrong.

These MMOL games cost a TON to run.

First, Quake and so on. Hell, I could host a quake server over my DSL connection and it would cost me nothing. These kind of servers are run by enthusiasts for fun, (mind you, you will note there are services out there which charge for their primo servers, or make money off advertising).

However, a game like UO or EQ or AC (or even warbirds etc etc) requires people to maintain the website, people to maintain the servers (24 hours), people to answer customer queries, (a call center and helpdesk), people to help with technical queries, people to manage these people.

Also they require multiple TOP OF THE LINE servers at 000s of thousands to buy and set up. You can't pull this money out of your ass, this is an EXPENSIVE industry. Why do you see so few home-run MMPOGs? This of course, ignores Muds and so on which generally require a bit of spare run-time on a campus server or whatnot. Also note there are text muds which charge a monthly fee.

Frankly this whole debate over monthly/not monthly fee is DULL and TIRED. I got over it some 4 years ago. If people don't want to pay, they don't have to. At the moment you wouldn't catch me paying for any online game because none enthuse me enough. WW2online might, Shadowbane might as well.

If I DO get enthused I am sure to get value for money. So far this year I have bought three games (over 100 pounds worth of games) and have only really played ONE (cm!). If i only bought one game and then payed a monthly fee and played it all year I'd be better off. And since 99% of these games offer an open beta of SOME kind, you all get to try for FREE before you buy. Clever huh?

I think ww2 online will be worth a look. If they do infantry well it could be very cool. Set yourself up a squad of tank hunters and go kill 'em. If they restrict what a tank commander can see and give infantry the realistic means to take **** out it would be great. Especially since planes will have a hard time spotting guys in buildings =)

Again, verdict is out. I have a friend in the beta who i should look up and bug, but until we see it who knows.

and hey, it might just be worth that money! Give it a chance! If the makers are sensible what will matter is holding ground, and really ONLY the infantry can do this eh.

We'll see.

PeterNZ

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"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." George W Bush -Saginaw, Mich.,

Sept. 29, 2000

[pzvg]

Hmm, if you think the price is too high you won't pay. Seems to me there's an issue here, but I can't see it, not like they're making you do anything.

Always strikes me as funny that the nation that is the model for Capitalism has the highest percentage of folks looking for a free lunch

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Pzvg

"Confucious say, it is better to remain silent, and be thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt"