Why are MMOs so expensive?

Which of the following doesn't line up with the rest?

(1) Sink hundreds of hours into playing Battlefield 3 with a squad of your friends for one year? Total cost: $59.

(2) Sink hundreds of hours into exploring the nearly-limitless open world of Skyrim for one year? Total cost: $59.

(3) Sink hundreds of hours into ladder matches in Starcraft II for one year? Total cost: $59.

(4) Play The Old Republic or World of Warcraft for one year? Total cost: $219 ($59 for the game plus about $160 in monthly fees).

 

Regular games - Once the game is developed, that's their job done. If there are major updates needed then they'll release a patch every now and then, otherwise they just sit back and watch the $$$ roll in.

For MMO's - The game being released is not even half the job. In addition to having THOUSANDS of game servers up 24/7 , you also need to release patches and content releases almost every fortnight, as well as provide live support for MILLIONS of live players. All of that costs money.

Comparing an MMO to BF3/SC2 is like comparing apples & oranges.

If you have a problem with BF3/SC2, you post on their forum and hope you get a solution.

If you have a problem on an MMO like WoW, open a support ticket and a paid blizzard employee will personally answer your inquiry and ensure your issue is solved.

You pay for the support.

 

But Starcraft II gets patched every fortnight with balance changes required by evolving player tactics (which need to be monitored by the development team), and I can't imagine how many servers are up 24/7. I just logged on to battle.net, and there are 750,000 Starcraft 2 players online right now.

As for support, do we know for sure that WoW and SC2 have completely different tech support systems? They're both Blizzard games. And the tech support contact info for each game leads you to the same 1-800 number.

World of Warcraft: Blizzard Support
Starcraft II: Blizzard Support

 

Starcraft 2 is THE multiplayer game right now considering Blizzard makes a TON off of it (licensing for tourneys/broadcasting etc.).

I mean, there are still people playing starcraft 1 till this today, so imagine how long starcraft 2 will be played (guessing 7-9 years from now, including a competitive scene).

MMOs are maintained for a veeery long time and I'm guessing keeping servers up for them is a lot more expensive than for an FPS. I mean, there has to be ton of people working behind the scenes for WoW compared to SC2

 

u guys are forgetting that MMO's don't only update with balance, and bug, fixes. they are ever changing. one patch could open up a whole new world, new raids, new/harder dungeons, quests, etc. they can also add great amounts of content in the form of items, monsters, characters, classes, etc.

i have more games than i can really play. so many games that i haven't even started yet. systems that are just collecting dust. even though i have all of that, my gaming collection just doesn't feel complete without a proper MMO. Rift gave me a really nice (short) run, but it lost it's steam after my guild broke up. i'm patiently waiting for the next great MMO. hopefully Guild Wars 2 will satisfy my thirst.

 

One thing is server cost. For games like starcraft 2, the host is usually not the game developer themselves. For starcraft 2 for example, blizzard only provides battlenet the matchmaking platform, the hosting is done peer to peer.

 

I'm pretty sure the main reason is that people will tolerate paying for it.

 

It's server costs. EA isn't paying for the servers for BF3. Blizzard is paying for the servers for WoW.

It's also bandwidth. Imagine the pipes you need to handle all that data coming into your data centers.

 

This is making me feel better about possibly paying a monthly fee for The Old Republic. Some good points raised all around.

 

the costs were wrong in the OP also, games like Skyrim and BF3 and SC2 don't have 1 year limits, you can play for multiple years

 

I know you can play them for a decade if you want. I said one year because most people get tired of a game after a year of play. I could have played Neverwinter Nights over and over again for a decade, but I played through it with a couple different classes over the course of about a year, and then it started collecting dust.

 

DC online is cheap

 

Yeah and I can pick all sorts of games up for $5.99 on GOG and play them for a decade and get all sorts of super-economical results. But I tried to keep this to AAA new releases for all four examples to make the comparison fair. The fact is, with AAA new releases, for just about every genre besides MMOs, you're talking $59 and that's it. For AAA new-release MMOs, you're talking $59 plus a sizable monthly fee.

 

this. im not spending 200+ usd a year just for a single no matter how good.

 

For a lot of people it makes more economic sense in a way, though. My little brother, for example, plays WoW and nothing but WoW. Does he pay a couple hundred a year for his subscription? Yes, but if he were to buy half a dozen newly-released AAA titles a year instead and play each one of them through, the cost would be over $100 more. I'm not going to touch the arguments of getting variety in your games or the opportunity costs of throwing away so much of your life on a computer game, but from a pure economic standpoint it's more bang for your buck, and that's not even considering that many other forms of entertainment are far more expensive.

But the bottom line for me is this: If I'm going to spend that much time playing an MMO, I should probably be doing more with my life. Life's too short and precious for all that.

 

tell your brother theres a fabulous service called gamefly lol...

 

GW2 isn't going to have a fee, but I don't really think that's the point.

Most single player games can be beaten in a few days. I think the average length of most actual games these days is about 10 hours.

While if I'm playing an MMO I'm likely putting 2-3 hours in a day. So lets average that out to 2.5 hours. over the course of a month that's 75 hours of entertainment that I got for the $15 subscription fee. Which equals about $0.20/hour.

Lets say the single player game wasn't even a AAA title. Lets say it was discounted down to $40. That's $4/ hour of entertainment.

So now which seems like a better deal to you?

 

I'm not sure why you compare one year of WoW to buying 6 AAA game titles. As a pretty avid gamer, my spending for the past year was $120. That included a $20 purchase that I didn't give much thought to (what's the word for this?). I should have spent $100. My point is, it's pretty arbitrary to compare 6x $50+ titles over one year to a WoW subscription to justify its cost. A gamer could just as easily buy 1-3 titles at $50 and end up spending less, or dramatically cheaper if hunting for reasonable deals on titles. Some of the AAA games I bought over the past year were on sale for $10 or less when I bought them.

It's really hard for me to accept that WoW is a good deal financially (ignoring the other arguments as well). Basically, WoW is an extremely premium (and premium-priced) game. The only way I can imagine justifying that cost is by accepting that it is large and figuring out what unique thing it is that they deliver. For WoW to be a good financial, you would have to want to drop all other games to play WoW exclusively, AND be the type of person that would reasonably need to spend some $200 each year on games (you have to buy WoW, the expansions, and the sub. fee- if I'm not mistaken).

 

When I played WoW, I didn't really play anything else.

It also doesn't make much of a difference whether or not it's a good deal financially.

 

Maybe to you it doesn't matter. I was actually responding to someone who said that it was an economical choice for their brother.

 

I don't really see what the big deal is with spending ~$300 a year on an mmo and maybe a few other games. That's less than 1 month of car insurance for me, and I get a lot more enjoyment out of games in a year than driving my car for a month.

 

and then you have the MMO titles that don't charge monthly fees like guild wars, diablo etc etc. even though they are not technically MMO they are in the same class and direct competitors.

honestly the probably do monthly payments cause they make more that way.

 

Con's of an MMO - If you join a raiding guild you will have to put aside that time to raid every week otherwise you will be replaced. It was fun for a couple of years but after a while I realized it felt like a second job.

 

dang man $300 a month on car insurance... that pretty bad lol

 

Id only buy games if they had a great multiplayer, otherwise id borrow from friends or rent from gamefly.

I think this method is the most "fun-per-dollar" sorta thing.

@ACU, what kinda car do you driver o-O a new bmw?

 

It's not so bad when you don't have any debt. Plus insurance is rediculous in Europe.

And yes, M1_1x, I do drive a new BMW, lol.

 

I've got a mortgage, student loans, and two kids, medical expenses, car payments, etc. I have about a quarter-million dollars in debt between my house, my car, and student loans. No joke. I always look to cut expenses wherever it's feasible, in a way I didn't when I was just a single teenager. It's not that I literally can't afford the $15/month, but I do ask myself whether it's "really worth it" before I jump into a game like The Old Republic that would involve a monthly fee. I'm debating whether to try out The Old Republic in 2012 or just stick to single-player games with no monthly fee.

 

The thing about MMOs is that you can generally have "experiences" that you won't in any other sort of game. Sure there's some comradery while playing a BF3 TDM, but generally everyone goes their seperate ways once that match is over (save the 1-2 actual friends you might be playing with).

However, in MMOs you can develop actual relationships with people you've never even met in real life, and go on "adventures" that weren't tied into the main storyline. To me the most important things about MMOs are: pvp competitiveness closely followed by the community because I've always found that it's the people you either play with, or against, that make the experience, not the button mashing.

 

Honestly man, I have same type of responsibility as you and I wouldn't play any MMO because you're just going to waste too much of your time. If you don't join a raiding guild you really won't be getting the most bang for your buck. In the end it's up to you but after playing WoW for 5 years I look back now and realize it was a huge mistake to commit that much of time to a video game when I have kids growing up.

 

one must wonder whats your salary if you have no debt whatsoever and own a new bmw 0_0

own an M series?

 

Actually I think that is a big part of the 'mmo addiction' cycle.
Pick up mmo >
hey this is pretty fun >
I want to have the shiny armor like that one guy >
I need to join a guild for that >
I need to be a regular raider >
I am a regular raider and have ok stuff >
I have the shiny stuff now after a long time >
I'm kind of bored and want to quit but now the guild relies on me so I need to keep playing >
Oh hey look a new dungeon/tier is coming out >
go back to step 4

MMO's really do seem to trigger an actual addiction response in a lot of people... I know before I quit wow I didn't even know why I was logging in anymore, I just was. They're expensive w/ monthly fees because people will pay it, there is no simpler reason.

 

So true, so true. I know WoW tried to make it more casual but you still have to devote that time on a specific schedule. After I realized that the game became less fun for me...

 

My salary...lol. I'm borderline poverty level. I'm just smart with my money. I wish it was an M series. It's just a 128i, but still a nice ride.

^The above posts are why I liked GW so much. The game wasn't gear based, so you weren't required to "raid". If you did want the "Shiny" Stuff there were always multiple ways to get it. However, as I've previously stated, it's the pvp that keeps me going on MMOs though, and not the mindless pve grind where the only endstate is to grind enough gear to start the next grind. I never really understood the point.

 

Yeah, that's a good point. One of the nice things about single-player games is that I can dictate when I play and when I log off; I'm not "letting down the team." Last night, after I got the boys to bed, I did one side-quest in Mass Effect and then shut it off. While I think it would be fun to have a guild/squad/whatever with real friends, it just doesn't mesh well with being a parent, since you have to know when you're going to log on and you have to be on for a substantial chunk of time.