<!--quoteo(post=1582451:date=Nov 30 2006, 12:55 PM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DiscoZombie @ Nov 30 2006, 12:55 PM) [snapback]1582451[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> WoW doesn't really have less of a grind than other MMO's, but it DOES disguise it better than most. Most quests are well-written and some are imaginative, though of course you're almost always still killing things en masse. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think well written makes "bring me 10 emu spleens" any better than a badly written "bring me 10 emu spleens." You're still retrieving 10 emu spleens from emus who inexplicably don't have spleens 70% of the time.
Thinking back, I have played ONE genuinely fun MMORPG. Star Wars: Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed was great. It was all twitch based and basically you just flew around shooting people in space. Not much of an MMO, but hey, it was fun.
<!--quoteo(post=1582451:date=Nov 30 2006, 08:55 PM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DiscoZombie @ Nov 30 2006, 08:55 PM) [snapback]1582451[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In fact, I don't think I've ever had more than 40 people on my screen in any MMO besides WoW. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
As for WoW having well written quests... some are, some aren't. And Tycho's point about many of the creatures apparently missing vital organs most of the time was something that irked me no end. I still remember screaming in general chat "Oh my GOD! Threshers don't have eyes!!! they never have eyes!!! eyeless threshers everywhere!!!" and after some people laughing it turned into a full blown conversation with most people agreeing it was downright silly; goretusk boars with no livers came up too.
<!--quoteo(post=1582646:date=Dec 1 2006, 06:04 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 1 2006, 06:04 AM) [snapback]1582646[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
As for WoW having well written quests... some are, some aren't. And Tycho's point about many of the creatures apparently missing vital organs most of the time was something that irked me no end. I still remember screaming in general chat "Oh my GOD! Threshers don't have eyes!!! they never have eyes!!! eyeless threshers everywhere!!!" and after some people laughing it turned into a full blown conversation with most people agreeing it was downright silly; goretusk boars with no livers came up too. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually I remember reading a blue explanation for that somewhere. Supposedly the organs get damaged mid-combat, that's why you're always asked to bring "pristine" thrasher eyes or the like.
<!--quoteo(post=1582646:date=Dec 1 2006, 07:04 AM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 1 2006, 07:04 AM) [snapback]1582646[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Original EQ raid was much larger than 40 also. Setting up the plane raid was a major pain.
To be honest Rusty, the idea of organs getting damaged would be good if what you did in combat actually had any bearing on it. Backstabbing something to death only to find it has no eyeballs doesn't quite work <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
If using your most powerful spells and overkilling stuff altered your chances of finding stuff that'd be kinda cool. Imagine if you had a spell that could nuke the living heck out of things but destroyed them so utterly there wouldn't even be a corpse left behind to loot.
the idea of power coming at a price or having to carefully think through the use of your 'uber' abilities has forever been something that's escaped the minor wit of most MMO developers though :/ "LOLZ LETS JUST STICK A TIMER ON IT INSTEAD"
PSO Trial: Naff, never found any fun in it at all. Runescape: Fun for around a day or two. WoW: Fun until you know all the lower level quests. Then it's a pain in the ###### from level 30-50, fun from there PvE and PvP wise. Just alot of effort required.
<!--quoteo(post=1582646:date=Dec 1 2006, 12:04 PM:name=Geminosity)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Geminosity @ Dec 1 2006, 12:04 PM) [snapback]1582646[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Weren't most of those AFKers trying to sell junk? :/
where you saw AFKers, I saw window shopping and bargain hunting... THE JOY!!! :D you never knew when someone might sell something they didn't realise the true value of and hunting through those thousands and thousands of market stalls was half the fun ^^
As for lolfighter's post... Waii! I love Lina Inverse! She's one of my favourtist chars :3
As for the PSO trial... eww... PSOv1 on the dreamcast was where it was at. All the newer PSO-ey stuff is a shadow of it's former glory. Mind you ver 2 wasn't too bad as ultimate difficulty proved kinda fun. EPI&II was kinda meh and Blue Burst was plain awful. Most of us never discuss Episode III... most PSOers kinda disown it much like most people try to pretend the movie "Robocop 3" didn't exist.
I'm enjoying Phantasy Star Universe's Singleplayer at the moment but my few encounters with the multiplayer so far have left me non-plussed. On the upside my short jaunt on the xbox360 demo managed to get a complete stranger messaging my friend (who's account I was using because I don't have a 360) asking "are you a girl?". I couldn't help but giggle at him screaming "OH MY GOD!!! IT'S STARTED ALREADY!!! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO?". He was especially exasperated as he didn't even have a keyboard so I was somehow managing to attract that kind of attention with only emote chat and very very very slow typing with the joypad to communicate :3
You want grind? Go subscribe to RFo. Then you know grind...
Go out, kill one type of enemy. Get to level 3, kill another type of enemy... rinse, repeat... "OMG WHAT COORDS ARE THE LUNKERS AT?!?!?!?!" Pretty much every 15 out of 16 lines are people spamming for the coordinates of a spawning group.
The other 1 in 16 are people ###### about killstealing...
Not played enough WoW to make a judgment on it. When someone lends me their fully paid up account, then I might have to try it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
FFXI - Same again, only played about 2 hours of it, never really got anywhere, then my PC died, and it wouldn't work under x64, and Sony couldn't care less about it...
Blue Burst - Looks cute, but the trial period wasn't long enough to make a choice about whether or not to buy it...
Guild Wars - I'll be here all week with my opinion on Guild Wars. Buy it, play it, get the expansions, and actually learn to be creative with your builds, instead of having to fulfil a specific role, you can pretty much be what you wanna be, within class restrictions of course... Any GW people want an energy independent monk? I can do multiple knockdowns >: )
I never got a chance to play the p2p mmos (Wow, etc..) mainly because I refuse to pay money for something that I know i'll probably be bored with in a few months. Anyhow, I have sampled a variety of free mmos:
Flyff: fun and really cutesy. But the grind gets so boring after a while (you only have a limited number of attacks for some classes). My goal was to reach lvl 1xx but I lost the motivation after 72. Weekend lag is a killer in this game.
Knight online: I consider this to be pretty damn good game for a free mmo (graphics and gameplay wise) but a few things (hacks, dupes, 80% turkish community, and exploits) seriously f-ed this game up. The grinding is also horrendous and people fight for monster spawns :\
Silk Road Online: Played it for 20 minutes. Awesome graphics but its completely ruined by hackers, botters, and lag.
Xiah Online: Uhh its got cool graphics but its hardly updated and it lags bad.
Gunz Online: avoid plz. Cluttered action and hackers.
pay to play MMO's are actually one of the most economical kinds of game out there if you get into them for a long period of time... say you buy a final fantasy game and play it for like 100 hours for $50. I've played WoW for about 2500 hours for about $250. that's 5 times more economical than a final fantasy. getting addicted to a MMO may not be something to be proud of though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Well, I avoid any asian MMORPG like the plauge simply because I've played a few and decided to never again play them. What's the point in wasting your life on meaningless grinding which leads you absolutely nowhere in the game, has no quests to complete or anything whatsoever.
WoW isn't my type of game either since it is pretty repetitive, but it's a clear preference to any of the asian counterparts.
Found something rather interesting today, when looking on how to get Sudden Strike 2 working under x64 (which I still can't do <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> PM/email me if you know pl0x)
That thing has free trials to most popular MMOs, and might be a good starting place to check out how the other half live. I for one, am gonna be losing my next 14 days to (among other things), the WoW trial, just to see if my WoW-bashing is still topical.
Just a thought really, might be interesting, seeing as they have some of the free ones listed there as well.
*Ed* Sorry about the FilePlanet link, I know what sentiments people have about them, but that was the site I was on at the time <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> */Ed*
<!--quoteo(post=1583072:date=Dec 1 2006, 10:33 PM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DiscoZombie @ Dec 1 2006, 10:33 PM) [snapback]1583072[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> pay to play MMO's are actually one of the most economical kinds of game out there if you get into them for a long period of time... say you buy a final fantasy game and play it for like 100 hours for $50. I've played WoW for about 2500 hours for about $250. that's 5 times more economical than a final fantasy. getting addicted to a MMO may not be something to be proud of though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Words of truth. The only monetary reason not to play a p2p is not having a credit card, and with wow you can just buy a game card from your nearest geekstop.
That's kind of opposite of what I was saying... I mean when you're not playing, you're losing money. Thus giving an incentive to play(and like) the game.
<!--quoteo(post=1583072:date=Dec 2 2006, 04:33 AM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DiscoZombie @ Dec 2 2006, 04:33 AM) [snapback]1583072[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> pay to play MMO's are actually one of the most economical kinds of game out there if you get into them for a long period of time... say you buy a final fantasy game and play it for like 100 hours for $50. I've played WoW for about 2500 hours for about $250. that's 5 times more economical than a final fantasy. getting addicted to a MMO may not be something to be proud of though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Actually, it isn't. If you had played Final Fantasy for 2500 hours, you would STILL only have paid 50$. That would be five times as economical as WoW. You can't compare a game that you've played for 100 hours to a game that you've played for 2500 hours. Rather, compare like this:
If I had played both for 100 hours, which would I have paid more for? If I had played both for 500 hours, which would I have paid more for? If I had played both for 1000 hours, which would I have paid more for?
... and so on. It turns out that pay-to-play games are (unsurprisingly) the LEAST economic games. And the longer you play them, the less economic they become.
To illustrate: I played Planetside and Natural Selection for roughly the same length of time, seven months. Including purchase and subscription fees, Planetside cost me about 130-150 dollars, roughly. The exact figure doesn't matter. Now, Natural Selection didn't cost me anything, but that's not fair for the sake of the argument, so let's assume that it was priced at full retail, fifty dollars. I played both for the same length of time, but I paid far less for Natural Selection. Natural Selection, if priced at full retail, would have been somewhere between 2.6 and 3 times as economic as Planetside.
<!--quoteo(post=1583240:date=Dec 2 2006, 03:01 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Dec 2 2006, 03:01 PM) [snapback]1583240[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Actually, it isn't. If you had played Final Fantasy for 2500 hours, you would STILL only have paid 50$. That would be five times as economical as WoW. You can't compare a game that you've played for 100 hours to a game that you've played for 2500 hours. Rather, compare like this:
If I had played both for 100 hours, which would I have paid more for? If I had played both for 500 hours, which would I have paid more for? If I had played both for 1000 hours, which would I have paid more for?
... and so on. It turns out that pay-to-play games are (unsurprisingly) the LEAST economic games. And the longer you play them, the less economic they become. To illustrate: I played Planetside and Natural Selection for roughly the same length of time, seven months. Including purchase and subscription fees, Planetside cost me about 130-150 dollars, roughly. The exact figure doesn't matter. Now, Natural Selection didn't cost me anything, but that's not fair for the sake of the argument, so let's assume that it was priced at full retail, fifty dollars. I played both for the same length of time, but I paid far less for Natural Selection. Natural Selection, if priced at full retail, would have been somewhere between 2.6 and 3 times as economic as Planetside. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Er, what? You've got that wrong. Theoretical doesn't work with this. What's the point is saying "if you could play this game for this length of time", when you can't play FF for 1000 hours, but you can do that with an MMO. The better method would be buy games you're interested in until you've equaled your money spent on MMO. Which ever provides more fun, and more time spent playing, is the more economical.
That's speculative. You assume that a pay-to-play game will inherently yield more fun than other games, which I can't take at face value. And no, WoW alone doesn't count. One instance a rule doesn't make. For example, what about Half-Life and its myriad of mods? Most economic game ever, and not pay-to-play. What about Guild Wars? Has a healthy player base, no subscription fees. Plenty economic.
So you claim that one couldn't play FF for 1000 hours. Why not? Will the game crash after 255 hours?
Why is this even an arguement? If a game sucks it sucks, if it's alot of fun, it's fun. If a game costs more but is more fun, then the cost is justified. Not like $15 a month is a bank breaker, you can find that much in change each month if you look around. Anybody who has a job can easily spend that much, and if you don't have a job I guess you shouldn't be playing.
<!--quoteo(post=1583334:date=Dec 2 2006, 07:23 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Dec 2 2006, 07:23 PM) [snapback]1583334[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> That's speculative. You assume that a pay-to-play game will inherently yield more fun than other games, which I can't take at face value. And no, WoW alone doesn't count. One instance a rule doesn't make. For example, what about Half-Life and its myriad of mods? Most economic game ever, and not pay-to-play. What about Guild Wars? Has a healthy player base, no subscription fees. Plenty economic.
So you claim that one couldn't play FF for 1000 hours. Why not? Will the game crash after 255 hours? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Er, I never assumed that. I stated whichever achieves you more fun. Second, I never mentioned WoW once in my post. You seem to think to was arguing for MMOs, which I'm not. I'm entirely leaving it up to the buyer as to which they find more economical. HL? What if you don't like any of the mods? Reduces it's economical value vastly. Can't comment on Guild Wars. If you buy an MMO, gets many hours out of it, and enjoy, it's economical. On the other hand, you could buy it, play it for ages, and not end up enjoying it, means it's far less economical. It's pointless saying blanket statements that MMOs are more or less economical then other games.
You can't play FF for 1000 hours, because there isn't 1000 hours worth of gameplay. You will be max level, have all items, and finished the story line long before that.
Comments
WoW doesn't really have less of a grind than other MMO's, but it DOES disguise it better than most. Most quests are well-written and some are imaginative, though of course you're almost always still killing things en masse.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think well written makes "bring me 10 emu spleens" any better than a badly written "bring me 10 emu spleens." You're still retrieving 10 emu spleens from emus who inexplicably don't have spleens 70% of the time.
Thinking back, I have played ONE genuinely fun MMORPG. Star Wars: Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed was great. It was all twitch based and basically you just flew around shooting people in space. Not much of an MMO, but hey, it was fun.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
As for WoW having well written quests... some are, some aren't. And Tycho's point about many of the creatures apparently missing vital organs most of the time was something that irked me no end. I still remember screaming in general chat "Oh my GOD! Threshers don't have eyes!!! they never have eyes!!! eyeless threshers everywhere!!!" and after some people laughing it turned into a full blown conversation with most people agreeing it was downright silly; goretusk boars with no livers came up too.
you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
As for WoW having well written quests... some are, some aren't. And Tycho's point about many of the creatures apparently missing vital organs most of the time was something that irked me no end. I still remember screaming in general chat "Oh my GOD! Threshers don't have eyes!!! they never have eyes!!! eyeless threshers everywhere!!!" and after some people laughing it turned into a full blown conversation with most people agreeing it was downright silly; goretusk boars with no livers came up too.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually I remember reading a blue explanation for that somewhere. Supposedly the organs get damaged mid-combat, that's why you're always asked to bring "pristine" thrasher eyes or the like.
Not that I'm defending it, I do think it sucks.
you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Original EQ raid was much larger than 40 also. Setting up the plane raid was a major pain.
If using your most powerful spells and overkilling stuff altered your chances of finding stuff that'd be kinda cool. Imagine if you had a spell that could nuke the living heck out of things but destroyed them so utterly there wouldn't even be a corpse left behind to loot.
the idea of power coming at a price or having to carefully think through the use of your 'uber' abilities has forever been something that's escaped the minor wit of most MMO developers though :/
"LOLZ LETS JUST STICK A TIMER ON IT INSTEAD"
why hello thar 3 minute mages <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
"Doragon Sraaaaaaavuuu!" *kasplode*
PSO Trial: Naff, never found any fun in it at all.
Runescape: Fun for around a day or two.
WoW: Fun until you know all the lower level quests. Then it's a pain in the ###### from level 30-50, fun from there PvE and PvP wise. Just alot of effort required.
you didn't go to prontera in Ragnarok Online then... you'd easily get over 100 just by going near the central square <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Weren't most of those AFKers trying to sell junk? :/
you never knew when someone might sell something they didn't realise the true value of and hunting through those thousands and thousands of market stalls was half the fun ^^
As for lolfighter's post... Waii! I love Lina Inverse! She's one of my favourtist chars :3
As for the PSO trial... eww... PSOv1 on the dreamcast was where it was at. All the newer PSO-ey stuff is a shadow of it's former glory. Mind you ver 2 wasn't too bad as ultimate difficulty proved kinda fun. EPI&II was kinda meh and Blue Burst was plain awful. Most of us never discuss Episode III... most PSOers kinda disown it much like most people try to pretend the movie "Robocop 3" didn't exist.
I'm enjoying Phantasy Star Universe's Singleplayer at the moment but my few encounters with the multiplayer so far have left me non-plussed. On the upside my short jaunt on the xbox360 demo managed to get a complete stranger messaging my friend (who's account I was using because I don't have a 360) asking "are you a girl?".
I couldn't help but giggle at him screaming "OH MY GOD!!! IT'S STARTED ALREADY!!! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO?". He was especially exasperated as he didn't even have a keyboard so I was somehow managing to attract that kind of attention with only emote chat and very very very slow typing with the joypad to communicate :3
Go out, kill one type of enemy. Get to level 3, kill another type of enemy... rinse, repeat... "OMG WHAT COORDS ARE THE LUNKERS AT?!?!?!?!"
Pretty much every 15 out of 16 lines are people spamming for the coordinates of a spawning group.
The other 1 in 16 are people ###### about killstealing...
Not played enough WoW to make a judgment on it. When someone lends me their fully paid up account, then I might have to try it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
FFXI - Same again, only played about 2 hours of it, never really got anywhere, then my PC died, and it wouldn't work under x64, and Sony couldn't care less about it...
Blue Burst - Looks cute, but the trial period wasn't long enough to make a choice about whether or not to buy it...
Planetside - Hello 32 hour update.... *uninstalls*
Guild Wars - I'll be here all week with my opinion on Guild Wars. Buy it, play it, get the expansions, and actually learn to be creative with your builds, instead of having to fulfil a specific role, you can pretty much be what you wanna be, within class restrictions of course... Any GW people want an energy independent monk? I can do multiple knockdowns >: )
Flyff: fun and really cutesy. But the grind gets so boring after a while (you only have a limited number of attacks for some classes). My goal was to reach lvl 1xx but I lost the motivation after 72. Weekend lag is a killer in this game.
Knight online: I consider this to be pretty damn good game for a free mmo (graphics and gameplay wise) but a few things (hacks, dupes, 80% turkish community, and exploits) seriously f-ed this game up. The grinding is also horrendous and people fight for monster spawns :\
Silk Road Online: Played it for 20 minutes. Awesome graphics but its completely ruined by hackers, botters, and lag.
Xiah Online: Uhh its got cool graphics but its hardly updated and it lags bad.
Gunz Online: avoid plz. Cluttered action and hackers.
WoW isn't my type of game either since it is pretty repetitive, but it's a clear preference to any of the asian counterparts.
<a href="http://www.fileplanet.com/features/mmorpg/" target="_blank">FilePlanet's MMO Download page</a>
That thing has free trials to most popular MMOs, and might be a good starting place to check out how the other half live. I for one, am gonna be losing my next 14 days to (among other things), the WoW trial, just to see if my WoW-bashing is still topical.
Just a thought really, might be interesting, seeing as they have some of the free ones listed there as well.
*Ed*
Sorry about the FilePlanet link, I know what sentiments people have about them, but that was the site I was on at the time <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
*/Ed*
pay to play MMO's are actually one of the most economical kinds of game out there if you get into them for a long period of time... say you buy a final fantasy game and play it for like 100 hours for $50. I've played WoW for about 2500 hours for about $250. that's 5 times more economical than a final fantasy. getting addicted to a MMO may not be something to be proud of though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Words of truth. The only monetary reason not to play a p2p is not having a credit card, and with wow you can just buy a game card from your nearest geekstop.
I mean when you're not playing, you're losing money. Thus giving an incentive to play(and like) the game.
pay to play MMO's are actually one of the most economical kinds of game out there if you get into them for a long period of time... say you buy a final fantasy game and play it for like 100 hours for $50. I've played WoW for about 2500 hours for about $250. that's 5 times more economical than a final fantasy. getting addicted to a MMO may not be something to be proud of though <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually, it isn't. If you had played Final Fantasy for 2500 hours, you would STILL only have paid 50$. That would be five times as economical as WoW. You can't compare a game that you've played for 100 hours to a game that you've played for 2500 hours. Rather, compare like this:
If I had played both for 100 hours, which would I have paid more for?
If I had played both for 500 hours, which would I have paid more for?
If I had played both for 1000 hours, which would I have paid more for?
... and so on. It turns out that pay-to-play games are (unsurprisingly) the LEAST economic games. And the longer you play them, the less economic they become.
To illustrate: I played Planetside and Natural Selection for roughly the same length of time, seven months. Including purchase and subscription fees, Planetside cost me about 130-150 dollars, roughly. The exact figure doesn't matter.
Now, Natural Selection didn't cost me anything, but that's not fair for the sake of the argument, so let's assume that it was priced at full retail, fifty dollars. I played both for the same length of time, but I paid far less for Natural Selection. Natural Selection, if priced at full retail, would have been somewhere between 2.6 and 3 times as economic as Planetside.
Actually, it isn't. If you had played Final Fantasy for 2500 hours, you would STILL only have paid 50$. That would be five times as economical as WoW. You can't compare a game that you've played for 100 hours to a game that you've played for 2500 hours. Rather, compare like this:
If I had played both for 100 hours, which would I have paid more for?
If I had played both for 500 hours, which would I have paid more for?
If I had played both for 1000 hours, which would I have paid more for?
... and so on. It turns out that pay-to-play games are (unsurprisingly) the LEAST economic games. And the longer you play them, the less economic they become.
To illustrate: I played Planetside and Natural Selection for roughly the same length of time, seven months. Including purchase and subscription fees, Planetside cost me about 130-150 dollars, roughly. The exact figure doesn't matter.
Now, Natural Selection didn't cost me anything, but that's not fair for the sake of the argument, so let's assume that it was priced at full retail, fifty dollars. I played both for the same length of time, but I paid far less for Natural Selection. Natural Selection, if priced at full retail, would have been somewhere between 2.6 and 3 times as economic as Planetside.
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Er, what? You've got that wrong. Theoretical doesn't work with this. What's the point is saying "if you could play this game for this length of time", when you can't play FF for 1000 hours, but you can do that with an MMO. The better method would be buy games you're interested in until you've equaled your money spent on MMO. Which ever provides more fun, and more time spent playing, is the more economical.
So you claim that one couldn't play FF for 1000 hours. Why not? Will the game crash after 255 hours?
That's speculative. You assume that a pay-to-play game will inherently yield more fun than other games, which I can't take at face value. And no, WoW alone doesn't count. One instance a rule doesn't make. For example, what about Half-Life and its myriad of mods? Most economic game ever, and not pay-to-play. What about Guild Wars? Has a healthy player base, no subscription fees. Plenty economic.
So you claim that one couldn't play FF for 1000 hours. Why not? Will the game crash after 255 hours?
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Er, I never assumed that. I stated whichever achieves you more fun. Second, I never mentioned WoW once in my post. You seem to think to was arguing for MMOs, which I'm not. I'm entirely leaving it up to the buyer as to which they find more economical. HL? What if you don't like any of the mods? Reduces it's economical value vastly. Can't comment on Guild Wars. If you buy an MMO, gets many hours out of it, and enjoy, it's economical. On the other hand, you could buy it, play it for ages, and not end up enjoying it, means it's far less economical. It's pointless saying blanket statements that MMOs are more or less economical then other games.
You can't play FF for 1000 hours, because there isn't 1000 hours worth of gameplay. You will be max level, have all items, and finished the story line long before that.