Nerd Rage! Charging for Online Play is Ridiculous!
There’s a new idea in the gaming industry…well, not exactly new but it’s been circulating around the console campfire for some time and now it seems gamers are going to be paying the price. Literally. With the recent reveal that XBox LIVE will be upping their subscription price and some console games like Agency and DC Universe Online will be charging for their online play, nerds are furious! But why? Online PC games have been doing it for years. Is it because we’ve gotten so used to playing for “free” on our consoles that the thought of paying a monthly charge for online play is really so outrageous? Let’s look into this…
Online gaming has been around since the true dawn of internet use in gaming back in the 90’s. Games like Doom and Wolfenstein could and would be played online for free by thousands of people with standard dial-up connections. It wasn’t until the advent on massive multiplayer online (MMO) gaming that companies decided to charge a monthly fee for dedicated servers. It’s really the price we pay now for XBox LIVE if you think about it. But why is it that the Playstation 3 console has never charged then? True, they charge for so called “premium services” but not to actually play online. Admittedly there are far fewer people on the Playstation Network who play online and perhaps this was PS3’s idea all along. It was a way to draw in the crowds. But now that it’s an established console with online play are they going to start charging too or just take all those people who are not willing to pay the increased price on XBox LIVE? PS3 could easily draw them in with their free network.
But let’s get back to online PC gaming for now. It should be considered that PC games have better graphics and can contain a much larger online community like in World of Warcraft or any other MMO. But anyone can have their own server. This kind of negates the whole idea of having a dedicated server provided by gaming companies that players have to pay for. So there’s a way to get around paying to play PC games online. But now there are MMOs being made specifically to play online for free. Recent examples are Nexon’s Vindictus and Red 5’s FireFall that will not only be free to play online but also free to download. Even Lord of the Rings Online has recently abolished it’s monthly dues for free online play. What is this going to do for current MMOs that charge monthly dues? WoW has such a huge following that it probably won’t even take a ding to it’s massive armor, but what about games like City of Heroes? Or upcoming games like DC Universe Online and Star Wars: the Old Republic? If the games turn out to be as epic as everyone hopes then people will pay. Because it’s worth it. But if the game sucks, just like always people will throw it down in disgust and curse themselves for paying $60 plus $15/month for a piece of crap.
The thing about “Free to Play” is that it really isn’t free at all. A lot of games are adapting this format lately but it seems that “F2P” isn’t really what it tries to sell itself as. For example, let’s go about Turbine’s uses of the F2P system in Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings Online. It’s a system that’s structured to make you pay more than if you were to actually buy a subscription. There are three distinct packages for the game, one being the VIP which consists of a paid membership of $15 a month. With this you have the ultimate Lord of the Rings experience with almost no hiccups except for the occasional purchase of an expansion pack. Then you have the Premium service which only unlocks after you’ve purchased something from the store or if you’re a former player. Basically you get high priority in the queues, one more character per server, and 5 gold capacity.
Now for the standard free player and what most people will encounter as a new user in LOTRO. Unlike your more lucrative brothers you only have two characters to choose from. You’re the last to be picked when the choice comes for entering the server and the amount of cash you can carry is only 2 gold. Here is where things get really juicy though. It may not seem like it but the Premium players and the free players are pretty much in the same boat. The people paying $15 a month don’t worry about any of these problems, they have all quests unlocked and they’re happily running about. Premium and Free however have to try to earn a series of turbine points to try and unlock quests after level 20. More than likely this will consist of you buying points at their store. From here you’ll have to choose what land you wish to purchase quests for so that you can continue playing. You’re probably thinking “Ah well, this is just so I can keep playing a bit more,” so you’ll more than likely splurge to get the content. Suddenly your bags are full and you notice that the next one is locked with an icon. You click on it and it takes you to the store so you can purchase another bag slot. You may have a little bit of points left over from your last purchase, and maybe some quests gave you a tiny bit of points to get that bag unlocked. You think “Well… I do need the space and I have the points already. I’ll go ahead and make that purchase right now!” As you continue on your adventure to Middle Earth and notice that people are riding mounts and you think you’re the proper level, so you head to the place where you can get one for yourself. To your chagrin the quest giver shows you horses, but won’t offer a way for you to actually ride them. You say “Hmm… I wonder where you learn to ride a horse?” Just out of curiosity you head to the LOTRO store and look through the items for purchase. Low and behold there is an option to buy basic riding training through a slight purchase of Turbine Points.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? Eventually you’ll spend more than $15 on the bare essentials of an MMO just so you can continue playing. The game will suddenly grind to a halt and make you shell out real cash to get something else out of it. I don’t really consider that to be “free” at all in reality. Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t spend some cash, but unfortunately, in this instance you’re pretty much being nickle and dimed for playing. Why should you have to pay for extra bag slots, use of the auction house, a mount, swift travel, storage in your vault, the use of guilds… I mean need I go on? It’s almost an injustice to pay for something like this, you’re even limited to how much you can use the swift traveling methods. I can understand paying for the quest content at a certain level, and I’d even give way to the extra character slots, but paying for all this stuff is utterly ridiculous and over till will cost you an arm and a leg. The fact that more games are adopting this service just means it will continue to fool players into getting an account. Since Everquest II Extended is adapting nearly the exact same model, and I’m sure most F2P games have an online store associated with it.
Now let’s look at console games. There had NEVER been a charge for online console play until XBox LIVE on the 360 decided to charge a subscription fee. People were willing to dish out the money because it was the only place to play XBox games online; there was no other server to hop to. But now that the yearly fee is going up by $10 I’ve heard many a gamer say that it’s just not worth it. Those people who have both XBox and PS3 consoles swear they’ll play online games exclusively on their free Playstation Network. Which has always been free, by the way. Sony got this one right for sure. By not charging people to go online and play with their friends they gained a whole other audience that they would have not been able to tap otherwise. But everyone knows that 360 online play is the way to go. Every time I ask friends what console they’re buying the next online shooter for the answer is definitively “XBox”. And why not? Everyone has an XBox! By the time the PS3 came out the 360 was
already $100 cheaper and Call of Duty was a massive online hit. It’s only been Playstation exclusive games and the Blu-ray player that’s made people buy a PS3, and even then not until the price dropped with the original release of the PS3 Slim (myself included). Plus I wanted Uncharted 2, which was 150% worth it.
But recently there was a rumor about Call of Duty: Black Ops being pay to play and the gamer world immediately went rabid at the mention of this. Finally, Treyarch spoke out against the rumor and said the game would remain free. They even hyped up the PC gamers by saying that dedicated servers would be available to the public, something that gamers were very outspoken about when it came to Modern Warfare 2 completely negating them. Sadly all hopes were dashed when they stated that only one company could be used to host them, and that’s GameServers.com. Which admittedly didn’t sound so bad at first, but then you realize you’re limited by choice and price. They can charge anything they want for these servers because they are the only ones with the contract. Seriously… and how exactly do you think most people outside of Australia, where the servers are based, are going to play without lag? This might be one of the most half-assed decisions I’ve seen in a very long time. Sorry Activision, but you can all so suck a dick because there are only a certain number of people who are going to be willing to pay for that. And don’t think that this will be a gradual entry into everyone paying to play your game online, because you’ve got another thing coming if you think it’s gonna be that easy.
And how many of the parents of those gamers do you think are going to want to dish out an extra $10 or $15 a month for their child to sit at home blowing people up and cursing at people they’ve never met? The same thing goes for the upcoming DC Universe Online. I was crazy stoked when I first heard about this game and have been keeping close tabs on it ever since, but when I heard Warner Bros. was going to charge for online play on the PS3 I decided right away that I wasn’t going to buy it. Yet I find myself considering buying it for the PC. The price difference is a whopping $10 less, but I’d still have to pay an online fee. What’s wrong with this picture!??
The fact is that people are so used to playing their console games online for free that it’s almost a sin to consider paying a monthly due for online play. But that’s exactly what XBox 360 console owners have been doing ever since they signed up for LIVE, except instead of paying a fee for just one game they’re paying to play any and all games online. PLUS there’s a wealth of other assets like Netflix, Last.fm, and the online store that you also get. People will still pay for all the things that are included on XBox LIVE, but companies are really pushing their luck if they think players will just roll over and take one up the ass to play online. Some will, don’t get me wrong, but the majority will not. Not when there are so many other online games they can shuffle to that will be more than willing to pick up the slack. But being charged for PC games is a 
horse of a different color. People are used to it. They’re willing to pay for the experience because it’s so much more vast and expandable. WoW gives its players new online content for free! I don’t see you offering me a free map-pack, CoD. Or what about you Uncharted? Gears? Battlefield!? Halo!?? No, I didn’t think so. Perhaps if that were to change then players would be more willing to dish out the extra dough for the multiplayer experience. PC games have earned the right to charge their community because of what they offer. Console games have not and it’s very thin ice game companies are treading on. Only time will tell what really happens, but things don’t look so good for those console games who think they can get away with murder.
[Article co-written by Kevin “Games” Jones & Christina “RogueNurse” Weber]
