Age of Conan Launches with 700K Copies Shipped

[Noxvayl]

The games £24.99.

As for no game is worth a sub, I think you will find there are millions that will disagree with that.

Well they are little silly with there money... You could potentially buy 5 new release games for the equivalent of that game and its subscription for 6 months.

The subscription is a step too far in my opinion. Just leaching more money out of us gamers... games developers get enough money as it is why do they need to add subscriptions to that as well? I mean heck Valve released The Orange Box for £25 which included 6 games(3 of which were new releases and 1 of which is now hailed as the best game ever buy most reviewers).

How can anyone else justify the crazy prices they demand for one game when Valve are capable of releasing 3 for less as well as those three all being extremely highly rated. Valve develop games for the benefit of gamers and for there own enjoyment... they unlike nearly everyone else aren't driven by greed and the results are conclusive. Valve are FAR better without a doubt!

[Splash]

MMO servers cost money to run. New content (the lifeblood that must keep flowing in order for an MMO to be succesful in my opinion) costs money to develop.

Yes, there are free to play MMOs, but... in general they're not as succesful in Europe as the pay to play ones.

Also - the game list price is £34.99, but it's available for £24.99 if you shop around (ie Play)

[j.o.s.h.1408]

it doesnt cost thatmuch to maintain and run teh servers. i bet nto even a quarter of that £10 a month is used for maintaining the servers. these mmo games make HUGGGE profits.

i dont agree with the price and how they use most of it for server maintenance however i liek the idea of playing in a world filled with 1000's of real players and now that i got a nice job that pays well. £10 a month is nothing for me.

im hoping that one day rockstar can make a mmo gta game. now that would seriously rock! i also believe that these types of games are whats keeping pc gaming alive and kicking has i cannot see mmo's being succesfuly in consoles especily the majroity being kids and people like the above moaning about online fee's

[kalniel]

it doesnt cost thatmuch to maintain and run teh servers.

Source?

i bet nto even a quarter of that £10 a month is used for maintaining the servers. these mmo games make HUGGGE profits.

Source? If you're going to throw WoW at me I'll instead point out the 10m subscribers and the fact that most games that sell 10m copies tend to make a profit.

and how they use most of it for server maintenance

Source?

i cannot see mmo's being succesfuly in consoles especily the majroity being kids

Source?

[Aez]

heres your sauce

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Source?

Source? If you're going to throw WoW at me I'll instead point out the 10m subscribers and the fact that most games that sell 10m copies tend to make a profit.

Source?

Source?

where is your source that makes my statement false is it from your bbq source?

10million wow users each paying £10 a month. work out the math. does running a server cost THAT much? thats almost teh same amount of profit BT gets for there broadband and they are runnina proper dedicated internet network, whlists wow is just running a server.

give me a source that proves me wrong

[TiG]

Its not just servers, but internet connectivity, resiliency, staff to support them. And of course as with any business the investment in development.

Even if AoC has a small staff of 100 that have been working on this for the last 2 years. Thats still going to be well into the millions of investment to be regained.

TiG

[beanbandit]

10million wow users each paying £10 a month. work out the math. does running a server cost THAT much? thats almost teh same amount of profit BT gets for there broadband and they are runnina proper dedicated internet network, whlists wow is just running a server.

WoW is no more than £8.99 month, buy in 3 or 6 month subs and its even cheaper.

All that money doesn't just go for upkeep of servers. When you have 1000+ servers running worldwide it needs quite a large staff to keep them running. Add in the hardware upgrades that happens. The biggest cost is the ongoing development in the game itself. If you was to look at how much new content has been added since the initial release & the 1st expansion you would get more than your money's worth, 1000's of new quests, new instances, new areas opened etc.

This is the lifeblood of any MMORPG, without the constant development the player base would drop, its what has kept WoW at the top for so long.

If people object to paying a monthly fee, don't play then, your not being forced into it. But consider the amount of people who pay MS £40 a year for LIVE sub's, what do you exactly get for your money?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

WoW is no more than £8.99 month, buy in 3 or 6 month subs and its even cheaper.

All that money doesn't just go for upkeep of servers. When you have 1000+ servers running worldwide it needs quite a large staff to keep them running. Add in the hardware upgrades that happens. The biggest cost is the ongoing development in the game itself. If you was to look at how much new content has been added since the initial release & the 1st expansion you would get more than your money's worth, 1000's of new quests, new instances, new areas opened etc.

This is the lifeblood of any MMORPG, without the constant development the player base would drop, its what has kept WoW at the top for so long.

If people object to paying a monthly fee, don't play then, your not being forced into it. But consider the amount of people who pay MS £40 a year for LIVE sub's, what do you exactly get for your money?

well said and thanks for clarifying it. when people ask what they pay for, usualy people say its for server costs and this is tehf irst time in this thread that someone mentiones internte costs, actual new in game content, etc.

i for one much rather pay to play mm's then xbox live which is a total rip off

[Trash Man]

is tehf irst time in this thread that someone mentiones internte costs, actual new in game content, etc.

I take it you missed TiG's post?

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I take it you missed TiG's post?

nope. i thanked both members

[Splash]

I take it you missed TiG's post?

*cough*

I mentioned new content in mine. I guess I *should* have used the term "infrastructure" rather than just saying that servers cost money to run, but to me it's rather implicit that an online gaming server without serious connectivity is pretty useless, it's also fairly useless without the staff to support it.

[Deadlight]

Another thing, talking about MMO subs - we know that in *this* country we pay 8.99 GBP a month for WoW. What is it in the USA, in current rates it would be about 18 USD. Is that what they pay over there? What about other countries where the local currency is even weaker, the cost of life, etc.

I haven't got any sources to quote, but I think you'll find that Blizzard aren't qute raking in £8.99 x 10 million subscriptions a month.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

i think aoc costs more then wow's subs. maybe its because aoc is a newer game

[TiG]

Its not that it would cost more particularly, but they will want to try and regain the development costs, think they are like millions of pounds/dollars/euro's whatever currency exposed, if they are funded with Venture capital they will have repayment schedules, and unit sales to hit. If they don't then their jobs/game could all be gone as quickly as anything.

It would be interesting to know how many accounts they need for how long to break even, I would imagine it would be around the 400000 mark for a year. Probably to the tune of 4million worth of investment minimum to launch a game of this scale and keep it running over the course of a year.

I'm suprised people refer to the WoW subs at ~9 a month, i was paying 46 quid for 6 months which was just over £7. Hardly breaking the bank.....

Plus i consider the difference between this and other games i Play, complete and disguard too easy. MMOrpg's are a much bigger and succesful time sink. Those who play all mmorpg's have the idea in there head about the investment in the character development side of things, whether they are casual or hardcore. Some people focus on the look of their character, some play for the role playing and escapism, some play to master the game, beat every boss etc etc.

But the fact doesn't change an MMO needs to keep entertaining gamers, month after month otherwise people leave. WoW is losing members to AOC for the time being, The new content has been ripped through fast and there is a situation where people really are waiting for WotLK, you think that WoW is losing people now, you watch the affect on AoC etc when WotLK comes out.

Floods of people will go back and then we'll see how well AoC etc etc does. Thats when we will see whether AoC has really built a fan base or, just built a set of wow players who just need something to play till WotLK.

TiG

[j.o.s.h.1408]

what if aoc releases a expansion pack. would that take away some of the wow players again?

what about when WAR comes out too?