Free MMORPG Forums

Jetskii · 05-19-2006, 01:35 AM

mmorpgs that r online should be free i mean y buy a stupid account or somethin when u just gotta keep payin and payin over and over u know.
i think its a load of crap i aint payin shit!!!!!!

cloud · 05-19-2006, 01:37 AM

ur very true there im not going to pay money to play a game its crazy but i do pay for one world of warcraft

Mazdra7 · 05-19-2006, 02:37 AM

Well its hard work to run a mmorpg why should they have there hard work be for nothing. Its all about money i guess. But i do wish all of them are free since i dont like paying for a game.

power_gamer_6 · 05-19-2006, 02:53 AM

Good MMOs can be free. I've hear RO is good. Anyway, the main reason you have to pay for the on-the-shelf MMOs is because of development costs and server maintenance.

Yukinari · 05-19-2006, 03:14 AM

That's where your wrong! There are MANY free mmorpg's that are good. The only thing is that they're not in english... I play em anyways

dacrazyboi · 05-19-2006, 03:20 AM

maplestory is good, and its free
i used to like ROSE a lot..but then it got boring easily...
iono, its just as repetetive as MS, but theres just something about MS that makes it unboring...
ROSE was a lot of fun...and the people were nice, but a lot were assholes who wouldnt help lol

Kilo · 05-19-2006, 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dacrazyboi

maplestory is good, and its free
i used to like ROSE a lot..but then it got boring easily...
iono, its just as repetetive as MS, but theres just something about MS that makes it unboring...
ROSE was a lot of fun...and the people were nice, but a lot were assholes who wouldnt help lol

Man.. Maple Story is a huge dissapointment, to me.

Right now im playing the Rose Online FREE 7 day trial.(for the 3rd time)

I MISS ROSE ONLINE SO MUCH, and its soo empty now. fun game but no one wants to pay to play it

Yukinari · 05-19-2006, 03:58 AM

You can always play a different languaged one. I think there's a free version of ROSE Online. It's better to play a full free version alone then playing a 7 day free trial alone.

skyR · 05-19-2006, 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yukinari

You can always play a different languaged one. I think there's a free version of ROSE Online. It's better to play a full free version alone then playing a 7 day free trial alone.

nope there are no official servers that are free.. korea, japan, philly, north america are all p2p =p

however there are private servers in the works..

FabianN · 05-19-2006, 04:45 AM

This I think should go more in the Free MMO section(or the P2P, but I don't really think so...) because it seems to pertain to the annoyance of MMO's costing, so I'm moving it.

Anyway, I'm going to quote the great tacotiger for the reason why:

http://www.onrpg.com/ftopic10370.html+p2p

Quote:

*pulls out his soapbox*

Alright. I'm really sick of this "I WANT AN AWESOME KICKASS GOOD GRAPHICS GAME THAT'S FREE TO DOWNLOAD AND IS GONNA BE FREE FOREVER" shit. I hate seeing post after post titled/containing that mindless babble. Then when they're told that such a thing doesn't (and probably never will) exist, they get all pissy. SO! I present to you the Economic Reasons of Pay-to-Play games. I'm going to use Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XI as an example. If you come here and flame me about how much this game sucks, you're a **** idiot. Despite how much it DOES suck, it's a good example.

Let's start with the basics: Power. Electricity isn't free. Why not? Because it costs money for the materials to make it. Power just doesn't come out of a magical fairy wand and spring into your walls or the power station downtown. Raw resources have to be purchased, and the prices of these resources go up as they are depleted (like oil and coal and natural gas), so power is only going to get more and more expensive. The average household (HOUSEHOLD) spends $1,400 a year on power bills (source).
Now, a big business usually takes a lot more money to run than a house. I'm going to take a rough estimate and say that their FFXI Server HQ is maybe... 4 times the size of a normal house. Final Fantasy runs roughly 30 servers. According to Desktop Support Services, an average PC costs about $72/year to run, only running microsoft office. Last time I checked, running a server that thousands of people connect to uses a lot more energy than a low-end PC on Office. I'm going to give it an estimate of $200/year, since they are an 24/7/365 (even during maintenance the servers are still on).

Let's do the math. 200*30=6000. That's $6,000/year for servers ALONE.
Giving the estimated size of the HQ, that's 1400*4=5600. $5,600 for extra power usage (they have to have lights, air conditioning is especially high for the heat the servers generate, a refridgerator for employee lunches, TVs in break rooms, snack machines, etc. I know how a company works.)

$6,000 + $5,600 = $11,600 per year. And that's just for POWER.

Now, let's take bandwidth into consideration. Doing some research, I found that the price of bandwidth varies. An online game uses a very high amount of bandwidth, and the lowest flat rate I could find was a flat rate 100mbps Bandwidth Line for $5000/year (source). Now, 100mbps wouldn't be enough bandwidth for 30 servers. I'll be generous and say that 100mbps would cover maybe 5 servers (while that's not true by any stretch of the imagination considering each has over 1000 people on it at any given time), so that would be at the very least $25,000 for bandwidth.

Let's tally our costs: $11,600 + $25,000 = $36,600/year, and we're not through yet.

These computers don't maintain themselves, do they? Robots don't keep the place clean and in working order. That's right, actual PEOPLE work at Square-Enix full-time to keep their game servers running. I really, REALLY doubt that they'd be making minimum wage for keeping everything in order. I'm gonna give an average sallary of $20,000/year to each server manager (they probably make more, computer techs and server operations personell are in high demand nowadays with the online gaming industry being as it is), and an hourly wage of $15/hour to tech support (Yes, tech support DOES pay that well). So, with 30 servers running at $30,000/year for each employee...

30*20000 = $600,000/year

Tech support is usually a part time job, so I'll have each employee working roughly 25 hours a week, with a week of vacation. My guess would be that they have about 50 to 75 tech support employees (I'll go with 50). They probably have much more, but I'm using that as an estimate.

15*25 = $375
375*51 = $19,125
19125*50 = $936,250

Now, it's time to add up everything.

$36,600 + $600,000 + $936,250 = $1,572,850

I'm not even going to get into the cost of the original production of the game, as well as paying the game's programmers and graphics artists, and so forth.

Are you starting to see just how expensive a game can be to run?

Time for a little more math. FFXI was $50 at it's release here in the US. It had already sold in japan, so I'm gonna give them 100,000-copies' worth. Now, in the US I'm gonna say that 250,000 copies sold within the first month.

at $50/each, and with 350,000 copies sold (that's a bit much, but it's a good example), that's $1,750,000.

So what's the problem? That gives them a profit of $177,150, right?

Oh, but that $1,572,850 is a REPEATING COST. Every year that's how much it costs to run the game! Is the game going to repeatedly sell like hotcakes year after year? The correct answer is: No. More games will come out, and people will leave to play other games. They charge the monthly fee initially to get a backlog of revenue, put towards any yearly charges in the future. Once the game stops selling so rapidly, the game sales alone won't cover the server and personell costs. Sure, Square has quite a stash of money because of their other games, but digging in with over $1.5 per year out of their pockets is a hefty chunk o' change.

Charging $10 - $13 each month is a very reasonable price for an online game. I believe I've proven that point.

Now, for anyone who's STUPID enough to say "But Blizzard doesn't charge for Diablo 2 or Starcraft!", I'll answer that right now. Do you know what battle.net is? Battle.net is a game browsing service, and a small IRC network. That Diablo II Cow Run you're playing isn't hosted on ANY of Blizzard's servers. All it does is make a tiny entry that lets others connect to your computer to play the game. That Starcraft Comp Stomp you just created is being hosted by YOUR computer. That IRC server and game tracker can be run on a single computer (or four in their case, for low-latency purposes), and doesn't use much bandwidth at all.

If you're willing to pull $1.5mil out of your pocket each year to run an online game of your own, that's your own business. I'll laugh when I see you filing for bankruptcy.

*picks up soapbox and walks off*

05-19-2006, 01:35 AM	#1 (permalink)
Jetskii Marios's Mustache Wax Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 4 Reputation: 10	y can't good mmorpgs be free mmorpgs that r online should be free i mean y buy a stupid account or somethin when u just gotta keep payin and payin over and over u know. i think its a load of crap i aint payin shit!!!!!!

05-19-2006, 01:37 AM	#2 (permalink)
cloud Detective Kirby Join Date: May 2006 Location: west philli like fresh prince of bell air Posts: 153 Reputation: 10	ur very true there im not going to pay money to play a game its crazy but i do pay for one world of warcraft __________________

05-19-2006, 02:37 AM	#3 (permalink)
Mazdra7 Dixie Banana Bar Join Date: May 2006 Location: Camp Pendleton, CA Posts: 298 Reputation: 10	Well its hard work to run a mmorpg why should they have there hard work be for nothing. Its all about money i guess. But i do wish all of them are free since i dont like paying for a game. __________________

05-19-2006, 02:53 AM	#4 (permalink)
power_gamer_6 Théoden, King of Rohan Join Date: May 2006 Location: The Realm of Rohan Posts: 7,465 Reputation: 186	Good MMOs can be free. I've hear RO is good. Anyway, the main reason you have to pay for the on-the-shelf MMOs is because of development costs and server maintenance. __________________ LAST.FM Check out my band!

05-19-2006, 03:14 AM	#5 (permalink)
Yukinari Lockhart’s are forever Join Date: May 2006 Location: Siren Posts: 388 Reputation: 10	That's where your wrong! There are MANY free mmorpg's that are good. The only thing is that they're not in english... I play em anyways __________________

05-19-2006, 03:20 AM	#6 (permalink)
dacrazyboi Link's a Hippie! Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 699 Reputation: 10	maplestory is good, and its free i used to like ROSE a lot..but then it got boring easily... iono, its just as repetetive as MS, but theres just something about MS that makes it unboring... ROSE was a lot of fun...and the people were nice, but a lot were assholes who wouldnt help lol

05-19-2006, 03:58 AM	#8 (permalink)
Yukinari Lockhart’s are forever Join Date: May 2006 Location: Siren Posts: 388 Reputation: 10	You can always play a different languaged one. I think there's a free version of ROSE Online. It's better to play a full free version alone then playing a 7 day free trial alone. __________________

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode