Pay to play or free to fail?

[Grug]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

@ Durin: Yes. It is that hard to find a job. I've been looking for over a year.

@ Valmy: I agree with some thing and disagree with others. Metagame transactions should only give metagame benefits. You shouldn't be able to pay money for a bigger stash or extra item or access to a secret zone. I would support paying for renaming, getting more character slots, or establishing a guild, because none of those affect gameplay.

 

[musikbob]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I like the free to play idea of the last 2 games. If they went against that then they might lose me as a customer. I'm tired of mmo's for the time being and finally have quit wow permanently.

Fact is that this is an multiplayer online, not massively multiplayer, and as such means that we won't get half of the stuff in a pay to play. The biggest thing being in chat room before you start a session, as they have already decided that this will be. I'm expecting gameplay similar to D2 based on that, and I wouldn't have payed to play D2. There isn't as much depth in free to play games, period. There's not going to be mounts, professions, 3D environments with movable camera. Diablo has never been about hording items, so you really don't need bank space, since you just upgrade as you go and sell the rest. The economy isn't like a pay to play either. I remember doing countless runs in D2 for chipped stones to trade for sojs just to buy better gear from people in the starting chat room. From what I've read so far, there's probably not gonna be some auction house, no way for you to unload gear that you pick up that might be useful to someone else. I don't think they are gonna push parties so much as conventional like in rpgs. It'll probably be like 90% of D2 players and everyone attacks/uses pots or something to heal themselves. My point is that it's a very different experience than with a pay to play. Not that it's a bad thing. I played D2 for 3 years. I liked paying for expansions because it adds content.

 

[Fox VII]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I'm not going to go into the arguement of Diablo being on some downward spiral, since it isn't generating billions of dollars per year through monthly fees. There are other successful games that use expansions to generate follow up profit and still remain hack free with good servers. Instead, I'd like to point out that Blizzard is practicing price discrimination in order to maximize profits and it will support the game even if it turns out unprofitable.

Some people are simply unwilling to "rent/p2p" a game. Those people like ownership and will not get sucked into a vacume of monthly fees. That same group doesn't mind buying expansions, because they know what they're getting for their one time purchase.

In order to have a bigger market share, game companies need to target both customer groups. Doing so introduces new players to the companies quality and increases the odds that some of those "cheap" non-p2p people might get converted into a p2p customer with another Blizzard game.

Anyways, my point was that the company determines the quality of the servers/hack provention/ect. and the company strategizes as a whole to maximize profits. Would it be a good business practice to capture new non-p2p market share customers and then not provide a quality game?

No, and so they will if necessary use MMORG profits to support non-p2p games in order to maintain market share and have a better chance of converting those "cheap" customers into monthly credits with their next big MMO.

For these reasons, Diablo III will not be "free to fail" even with no montly fees. It would be stupid marketing not to support thier new fans.

Have you heard about the upcoming patch for D2? When was that non-p2p game first released?

 

[cyberdemonnecro]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I'm just interested how many players would like to pay to play and thus have quality online gameplay.

hmmm, i guess Battle.net was absolute crap because it was free?

 

[musikbob]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

Who else here is married? My wife and I both play games together. I was paying $30/mo. to play wow for 5 years straight? That's $1800. That isn't "cheap". You can't assume that people who don't want to pay to play are cheap. I quit games because they get boring. I quit D2 because I got tired of doing countless meph runs for upgrades or cow level run and seeing myself grind up 50 levels. There's minimal content. I quit wow because after you hit lv 80 pretty much you do daily quests constantly, and pray you get into a great geared group to do some raid instances for a small chance to get an upgrade. I'm sorry, but I just got bored with months on end spending hours upon hours trying to hard for one piece of loot. Two games, one similar outcome.

Let's just pay for content. If they produce a stellar product, then people will want to buy the expansions. LoD expansion was great. It added more classes for people to level up and they were great. I wish they added more than one level, but I always thought that they would make another expansion which they didn't, sadly.

With gas supposedly going back up to $3/gal. by summer, seriously how many adults are looking at pay to play as something they don't need? How many parents are looking at it as something their child doesn't need? How many want to be called "cheap" if they don't want to pay for little content?

 

[Valmy]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

@ Valmy: I agree with some thing and disagree with others. Metagame transactions should only give metagame benefits. You shouldn't be able to pay money for a bigger stash or extra item or access to a secret zone. I would support paying for renaming, getting more character slots, or establishing a guild, because none of those affect gameplay.

True point.

Uhm... and what if you can imbue your own item changing his appearance? I think this is then a metagame benefit and better than give you a free item.

Anyway, I agree with the idea of adding benefits without affecting the gameplay.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

It's possible the situation reverts sometime in the future and metagame elements becoming the predominant feature of premium services. But unfortunately the tendency so far is for game content and access to special features which give an edge to paying customers. This is old in fact. It started on MUDs, back in the early 90s and spread to browser games before it hit MMORPGs right from their onset.

I'm divided on the issue. I can see the merits of content-based premium services. Could discuss it in more detail, if asked. What I cannot surely agree is to pay for other people mistakes.

The notion it is actually being suggested that we pay so that Blizzard implements anti-hack features is a slap in the face of any honest self-conscious paying customer. It's burning the manuals of Customer Care and Quality Control and spit on the face of Customer Rights. Let us be clear about this, Blizzard has an obligation to provide a safe, secure and fair playing environment to its customers and to the best of its abilities and at all times. Commonsense dictates this is not always possible or possible only to a degree. Any conscious player should know this and understand the technological limitations and, even more important, the open-ended nature of the computer and internet technologies. But the obligation of the game service provider is there, it is real, and I'd pity the gaming company that wouldn't be proactive in its application.

 

[Telzen]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

hmmm, i guess Battle.net was absolute crap because it was free?

Pretty much. If it had been bringing in money they would have had teams activly fixing bugs and fighting dupes/hacks. Wasn't there only like one guy working on patches for D2 over the years. I don't play anymore, but from what I've read there are current known bugs that have not been fixed for years. If we were paying $5 a month they would use this money to fix the bugs and improve the game, in fear of losing our cash every month. Some people say that Blizzard should and will support the game even if it isn't play to play, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way. I just don't want their new MMO or something to come out 3 years after D3, and since its making them a killing D3 is thrown to the side and forgotten like D2 was.

 

[Killafornia]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

Yes, now we just have to wait for the special Diablo 3:Founder's Offer.

 

[MYK]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

Pretty much. If it had been bringing in money they would have had teams activly fixing bugs and fighting dupes/hacks. Wasn't there only like one guy working on patches for D2 over the years. I don't play anymore, but from what I've read there are current known bugs that have not been fixed for years. If we were paying $5 a month they would use this money to fix the bugs and improve the game, in fear of losing our cash every month. Some people say that Blizzard should and will support the game even if it isn't play to play, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way. I just don't want their new MMO or something to come out 3 years after D3, and since its making them a killing D3 is thrown to the side and forgotten like D2 was.

There's a lot of "if" statements in there. I feel that sort of discussion introduces a lot of fiction into creating a factual argument.
So, here's what I know:

Lately they've shown at least a little interest in battling hacks by updating and running Warden, which banned a crap load of accounts and characters a few months ago.
Also, Bashiok posted that there will be a v1.13 patch which more or may not contain new content based on player feedback(They've got a thread running with a zillion posts/requests/suggestions in it by now).

To take a trip back into the "if" realm; I think a lot of the problems with hacks and cheats can't really be banished due to the design of the game engine. I think the engine itself sort of became ancient before they realized how broken it was, so band aid fixes have been all they can throw at it and hope for the best.

If we were paying $5 a month they would use this money to fix the bugs and improve the game, in fear of losing our cash every month.

This argument meets it's "if" counter: If they were going to charge $5 per month they might not generate enough of a player base to even worry about. That, or people will get upset at the broken game that their playing and paying for and quit.

Again, the "If" game just throws all sorts of uncertainty into it.

So, whatever. :wave:

 

[Tanksaabas]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I'd consider playing on bnet if I get paid 5 bucks a month. Otherwise thats one cesspit I'm avoiding.

 

[LawStudent]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

What? No $60 a month option?

 

[NoisemakerArrow]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

The only reason I even play D2 on battle.net is because it allows me to mule and gives me access to some ladder-only items.

If D3 is pay to play, I'm out.

Hahaha. Dude, look up ATMA and RWM.

 

[Durin]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I'm not going to go into the arguement of Diablo being on some downward spiral, since it isn't generating billions of dollars per year through monthly fees. There are other successful games that use expansions to generate follow up profit and still remain hack free with good servers. Instead, I'd like to point out that Blizzard is practicing price discrimination in order to maximize profits and it will support the game even if it turns out unprofitable.

Some people are simply unwilling to "rent/p2p" a game. Those people like ownership and will not get sucked into a vacume of monthly fees. That same group doesn't mind buying expansions, because they know what they're getting for their one time purchase.

In order to have a bigger market share, game companies need to target both customer groups. Doing so introduces new players to the companies quality and increases the odds that some of those "cheap" non-p2p people might get converted into a p2p customer with another Blizzard game.

Anyways, my point was that the company determines the quality of the servers/hack provention/ect. and the company strategizes as a whole to maximize profits. Would it be a good business practice to capture new non-p2p market share customers and then not provide a quality game?

No, and so they will if necessary use MMORG profits to support non-p2p games in order to maintain market share and have a better chance of converting those "cheap" customers into monthly credits with their next big MMO.

For these reasons, Diablo III will not be "free to fail" even with no montly fees. It would be stupid marketing not to support thier new fans.

Have you heard about the upcoming patch for D2? When was that non-p2p game first released?

At last someone with intelligent approach. That's what I thought as well until I realized there is a huge MMO-related community of players looking forward to play D3, and I am not talking about WoW community this time :] The only thing which makes me doubt is the next-gen MMO in development.

I know Diablo III will not fail even if it's free :] ( it's Blizzard game ) I said that to provoke those free2players :] However I am sure it will not be supported as WoW is, if it becomes Free to Play. I would like to enjoy D3 at least for 5 years. If there is going to be only 1 expansion then I guess it will become boring after 2 years which is sad and poor. Don't forget it's 2009 today and gaming has changed, you cant make D3 in the same manner as D2 was made and expect the same success, that is the main reason why D3 is so revolutionized.

 

[Scudstorm]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I don't see the point of the p2p vouchers. If you want a new Blizzard MMO, wait for WoW2. We Diablo serie players have waited enough for D3, we will not suffer it being ruined by WoW fans.

 

[musikbob]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

I feel bad if they go p2p because I don't think the game will be as big as it would be if it was free. P2p route, everyone plays for a couple of months and quits because they aren't getting what they are paying for. I don't want to play another wow. The gameplay is different. The depth of the game is different. I just think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they forced pay.

I don't think you can label game fans so generalized as "mmo community". I've played and enjoy tons of different genre of games. I wouldn't call myself a member of the mmo-club, because I don't exclusively like mmos. So just because people like mmos, they are gonna want to pay to play an mo? That's not likely. There's tons of free mmos out there that have similar gameplay and about as much content in them as D2.

I played D2 for 3 years. It was great. It started offline, then found the online part far better. You can't expect to play a game like this as long as a huge mmo. This is likely a game inbetween now and the next-gen mmo. You can see from the poll at the top that most fans agree it should be free. You seriously cannot compare the time you'll play in this game to match that of the big dog wow. This game you get in, you get out. I just think it's gonna be D2 revamped honestly. They say no recurring classes except for Barb, but let's face it, wizard IS the sorc class from D2. WD is necromancer from a different perspective. You can bet that you will have a similar gameplay experience too. No professions, no auction house, no actual world, just generated maps. I'd rather install D2 again then pay for D3.

I just got one question. What warrants a monthly fee? Don't tell me blah blah blah hackers/botters cause they are everywhere even in the games we all pay $15/mo to play.

 

[Brother Laz]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

From a business point of view, assuming the game costs €50 and you need to pay €10/mo, and the average player p(l)ays for 1 year (€120), they need to attract only 50/(120+50) = 29.4% of your f2p playerbase to come out ahead.

If Blizzard imposes a monthly fee, they can afford to lose 70% of their playerbase and STILL win.

I'm surprised they haven't publicly made this calculation for themselves.

 

[slickr]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

so the only way to have a good online experience is if you pay a monthly fee?

Meh this is silly, why choose paying money, when you can get it free!?

 

[NASE]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

If Blizzard imposes a monthly fee, they can afford to lose 70% of their playerbase and STILL win.

Because it's not correct.

 

[Krugar]

Re: Pay to play or free to fail?

From a business point of view, assuming the game costs €50 and you need to pay €10/mo, and the average player p(l)ays for 1 year (€120), they need to attract only 50/(120+50) = 29.4% of your f2p playerbase to come out ahead.

If Blizzard imposes a monthly fee, they can afford to lose 70% of their playerbase and STILL win.

I'm surprised they haven't publicly made this calculation for themselves.

All of a sudden everyone in here is an expert in running a gaming company and has a PhD in economics.