Blizzard/WoW

YES, first reply...

Back to bussiness.. You have obviously done your research, but remember, a lot can happen in the world of Games. The public may no longer want that particualr genre (look at Halo. That started out as a RTS, but because of number of existing rts games, it was trasformed into the game we all know and love). Thats why the probably delayed Diablo games

The reason that WoW isn't free is beacuse they are probably trying to regain some of the millions they spent to devolping the game. The other free MMORPG's are probably only free to undermine the competitors.

Give Ubisoft chance

well i agree with you that blizzard put a lot of attention to Wow and did not release any more good RTS o RPG, but is they want to put a price in their product and never make it free is fine i mean no one force you to buy it. Go and play a free one. If people plays Wow despite the fact that free MMORPG's are out there it must be for something i mean 8 million people can be that wrong. Plus ubi makes games but not all of ubi games are good. Blizzard games are all good.

Just because one company follows one business plan doesn't mean another has to follow suit. In the end, if WoW is worth it to you, then you pay and play. If you think it's overpriced then you don't pay and don't play. Wishing for it to be free or something like that is silly...

As for the other MMOs you mentioned, Anarchy Online and Shadowbane in particular, it makes sense that as they are much, much, MUCH less popular, the cost of running the required servers is also much, much, MUCH lower than of WoW which has to support a ton of different realms, many of them reaching their full player capacity.

Blizzard is not using WoW as an excuse to stop developing other titles and I'm sure you will soon be seeing more from them. Of course, I don't know if it will be the titles you want but that's a different matter altogether. I'm just certain that their various studios aren't sitting on their butts while one particular team works on WoW and expansions. They're bound to have more projects under development, perhaps as grand in scope as WoW and that's why we haven't seen them just yet.

GPotato is an all different company and I'm sure their income needs are much smaller than Blizzard's, and I'm also sure that they don't have the resources to develop something of the scope of WoW. What they do is bring over random Korean MMOs, no? And again, the cost of running those is probably much smaller as well, perhaps that's why they can just make enough to support them by advertisements. Also, while you can play for free, don't customers who pay get additional benefits in game? That means people who get into it most likely end up paying while the casual players who don't feel the need to pay are acting as live advertisement more than anything...

I will never justify belonging to anything that makes me pay twice to play it... Maybe if WOW was a free game to download and then pay monthly I'd give it a try, but I am not spending 50 bucks to own a game, that is useless unless you spend 14.99 a month to be allowed to play it...

Thxs for ur input guys. Just as a clarification, there's no monthly free what so ever for GPotato's games, it's just a few items (only around 5-10 items) on sale for real money, but those are just accessories.

Also UBI Soft develops so muchs games each year that kinda makes up for it.

I have one thing to say.
Blizard should get off its arse and start working on other games.

I'm sure they are working on other games. Blizzard like most large/popular companies are put under great, sometimes unfair expectations, and any small mistake or grievance is greatly magnified. They have to spend more to concept, polish, and develop games over a longer period of time to at least roughly meet the expectations of it's fans, and it is no easy task.

I can only imagine the pressure on their teams if they are actually working on Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, or remaking Starcraft: Ghost.

Also, some of the MMOGs mentioned aren't even entirely F2P, and are still P2P/B2P games beyond the F2P content and limitations. In addition, little prizes that barely total up to a few hundred dollars every few few months from a game probably bringing in thousands periodically isn't really amazing. I would rather have better in-game and out-of-game support, more frequent meaningful-content additions, improving on server/client capacity and stability, more security, maintaining fair-play, and so on in a MMOG.

You misunderstood me. I'm not saying that WoW should be 100% free, but atleast make it free with the option for more ingame access (like anarchy online). (or in your words: P2P/B2P games with F2P content and limitations.) That's what I want with WoW.

I dont think u tried the MMORPGs i mentioned. Silkroad and the Gpotato MMORPG's difference in quality is not very great compared to WoW. And i'd gladly take them free than having to pay $15 a month for WoW.

It IS amazing to think of Gpotato....5 MMORPG not one FIVE ALL FREE. The prizes (the ipod prize comes with a custom ingraving too) add on to that. Most companies barely get by with one P2P MMORPG. Sure korean mmos are cheaper to maintain, but just look at the gameplay/graphics.

Fine, but I have yet to see them release anything that isnt WoW related. Sure they still make patches, but I thought that with all the money they have they would at least continue to build on Starcraft, or Warcraft 3. I mean both of those story lines are left uncompleted.

Especially starcraft and Diablo. People defending WoW may see me as a evil unappreciative monster, but honestly, look what happened with Starcraft: Ghost. Blizzard cant be SO busy that they cant even develop a FPS. No scratch that, develop SOMETHING THAT'S NOT WOW RELATED.

I don't understand your argument, Blizzard is made up of different teams, and each team is working on their own game projects presently. The last time I checked, they now have over three-hundred employees at Blizzard, and that now includes the entire previously-independent second studio that was making Starcraft: Ghost.

They wanted to shift focus from the sixth (PS2, XBOX, Gamecube) console generation to the seventh console generation (PS3, XBOX360, Wii), and didn't feel continuing it's development was warranted on the now past generation. I don't see how this became a "Blame WOW!" problem, Blizzard has canceled or remade projects in the past for various reasons, even before WOW existed, and it doesn't surprise me now. There is a chance that Ghost is now being remade as a 7CG game, heck, they even have an entire team called Blizzard Console made up of the Ghost team (gosh, wonder what they are making).

Also, about uncompleted/unfinished story lines, well, that is what they do. They leave you grasping for more, waiting, building up anticipation, and when it does arrive you want it. It obviously works, because you guys want the next-games and-or to hear anything about them at this point.

Lizard, about playing these other free-ish MMOG, well, I stopped bothering to try every MMOG under the sky. There are so many that are just pure garbage, unstable, ill-supported, poor game play, lack luster, grind-fest oriented, very niche, lack of content, bot ridden, and so on you start to loose interest in trying to find one gem of a MMOG in a growing mountain of coal.

On F2P World of Warcraft, well, they could, but where would they stick this sudden new-surge of freebie players? They already have over-population problems on so many servers, and they have been introducing new servers and improving server capacity regularly.

Usually F2P in AAA MMOGs, is to advertise the game, make the game feel more alive to and retain the actual subscribers (due to decreasing or thinning population), and potentially grab new subscribers due to past methods being to inefficient. Maybe, several years down the road, but doing so now wouldn't really benefit Blizzard at this point in time.

There is over 7 million people playing WoW..how many play Silk Highway and Gpotatoe? I dont think if those two had 7 million people playing it, that it would be free.

Silkroad has major overpopulation problems so bad that sometimes you'll have to wait for 3 hours just for ONE server to free up. I'd say around 9 mil players registered but only 1 mil are on at once because of the limitaion.

I'm a MMORPG historian. I partly wrote the Wikipedia article on MMORPG, so naturally i would have tried or seen every MMORPG that came out (i have a list).

So far from what I've seen, Shadowbane's PVP content is better made than WoW's, Silkroad/Rappelz/Flyff's quest/area map and gameplay come the closest in quality to Wow. I play all so I still would not pay $15 for WoW. Even though i'd admit that WoW is the best MMO yet. Still I dont like how they treated Starcraft and Diablo. Compared to WoW they are considered dead by many Blizzard fans.

The only MMO i'd consider paying is EVE Online, because the other space MMOs are usually p2p and the free ones doesn't even come remotely close in quality. (Although I'm hoping Infinity would because there's plans on it being partly free.)

I can see how you feel that way about their other franchises, but, only time will tell when they will formerly come out with information on them.

About Shadowbane, I did beta-test or at the least participated in the pre-release event, where they let players get access to the few unique races, i.e. the bird-men. I just remember having a bad taste in my mouth playing that game for some reason, and never really bothered looking back into it, again. On the other hand, I might give it another whirl, if it is now free.

I think it's because the game has no quest or dungeons, which would annoy a great amout of people. But for me i dont really care, because I never do half the quest anyway .

I think a major plus is the unconventional races

Well, that was probably the reasons and-or lack-of-direction (uncertain memory) in the game at the time, and the subscription rates throw-in probably made me go. "No, way!"

hey hey hey wanna know what a real scam is.... www.hornymatches.com $30 a month to talk to a "horny" girl that 9/10 times the profile is just made up by the admin of hte website.

anyways, wow is a gold mine to not charge a month would be a very very dumb mistake by any buisnessman what was it 14.95 a month? 8 million * 14.95 * 12 months hmmm thats like 1.5 billion dollars a year!!!

I think its probaly the size of their servers and the fact that it takes dozens of mods to keep all the anti-social teens in check.

Ya I agree. Shadowbane is a good MMORPG but not good enough for $15s a month.

I am hoping some of the new RPGs titles like Warhammer Online, Vanguard, and GW will take a big enough chunk of their players to make them actually remember the RTS community.

Fact : Ubisoft closed down Wolfpack Studios/Shadowbane and made the game free to play for the time it had left. It was being canceled.

Some of the devs of Shadowbane/Wolfpack ran for the hills and created Stray Bullet Games and took over Shadowbane. (It was already free at this point - g'luck reversing that decision)

Stray Bullet Games is also currently working on another (mmo)RPG and like its previous owner, UbiSoft/Wolfpack - they already knew where it(SB) was going. (Do I really need to link de zapper from gucomics?)

Anarchy Online has an free account type too, one with ingame ads and a maximum play of 1 year(or till Funcom decides its been enough) without any of the expansions. (last time I checked). Funcom is also currently developing Age of Conan and I doubt they are putting alot of resources into Anarchy Online at this time.

Planetside also created a similar account after the game went face down in the mud as subscriptions decreased over time.

A free trial is one thing, but when a pay2play mmorpg all of a sudden starts giving away free accounts (and the like, read the fineprint), its mostly not a show of its success. Its hoping people will miss some of the features paying customers miss and spend some cash for the full product.

I honestly dont know if SB free play includes all expansions, only see one of em included.

Bandwidth costs money, you don't want free players around for to long --- freebies are mostly a desperate move in the hope of snaring a few paying customers. I just noticed SB now also is planning on in game ads ... make that full fledged in game video ads, while logging in .. PEPSI .. when respawning.. NIKE!... and when ya log out... COCA COLA!

I dont think its really justified of acting like these games are "all that" - they once where "the newest thing" but their glory days are over. Dont get me wrong, I played all of the above mentioned, from (closed)beta till after they launched.

gPotato makes its money by people spending $ to buy ingame money/items - but yeah its free to play.

I enjoyed it when I did play them and if ya never tried these titles I would encourage taking a look at them. Note: Risk being that if ya played nothing but WOW the game mechanics/gameplay/graphics might turn you off the moment ya try em. But they are all Classics in my eyes... I still miss playing Planetside but BFRs/vehicle patch killed it for me.

As for Blizzard needing to get of their arses - Yeah it would be nice I agree - but they got 8 million players worldwide. Im guessing they are content for now As long as WOW is spitting out money they will prob milk it. Sooner or later they will announce WoW2 or another expansion - hype it beyond believe and rake in some more cash.

When WOW goes sour... they got some backup titles they can use World of Starcraft *gasp*

I think we have a different source LOL. Well I guess your right. I read recently that SB's popularity rose only because it went F2P, and the recent patch has a Dell advertisement. As for the expansions I think SB's free offer will consists of all the expansion, however I'm not entirely sure. From what I've seen SB will not go offline anytime soon or will it go back to being P2P (taken from the main site), however this may change considering Stray Bullet's new MMORPG project. Many of the GPotato items are useless in my opinion. The dont really add much besides nice effects and armor (SCO cards are an exception). So i highly doubt they are relying on that to make money.

As for WoW going sour that might happen considering that many gamers are calling WoW a "fad". However, I dont really see that happening anytime soon.

GPotato is making money somewhere, that is all that matters, and if they aren't making money or leeching it from another profitable venture. They are relying on a source of banked money that will eventually dry up, which will either force them to change their payment models or terminating the game service all-together when the time comes.

About a possible World of Starcraft, well, seems Warhammer 40,000 Online is going to beat them to it. Unless they totally screw that game up.