If you got to stare at a wall for three months for $80, would you call it great value?

C’mon, it’s three months of staring for a mere $80 - that’s not much at all! That must be great value!

Of course it isn’t! Not all play is equal - you can’t just say $80 for three months of ‘play’. If you honestly rate your per hour fun from 1 to 100 in a single player game and a mmorpg, you’ll see that play in each case is quite different.

WoW is huge, for example, and rakes in millions upon millions of dollars monthly. As such, they have money to hire more mappers, modelers, coders, and the like, to make the game grow fast. There will be a point at which there’ll be a weekly add-on to WoW, I assure you.

However, games like Huxley will be massive, but entirely free, because of funding from other locations. It’s using a nice engine that puts WoW to shame, and it’ll have no monthly fee or cost to play on PC nor the 360. This might result in a monthly or bi-monthly addon, perhaps even a weekly quest addition or such, but the point being that it will never have a map or fanbase like WoW’s, who fund the game entirely.

If we expect a miracle-game from heaven, we’ll go out for the subscription, and it’ll thrive for it.

If we expect an average game, we might play the trial to see if we like it, and then we’ll pay a fee, or not. It might thrive, it might fail.

Free games are the middle-land in that, amazingly. While they offer so much to so many, the production and upkeep costs that are normally maintained by fees and the like don’t happen as fast, or at all.

These games rely on microtransactions like XP Bonuses, Game Add-Ons, Expansion Packs, and ‘ Gold Membership Only ‘ access to a larger chunk of land to kill stuff on.

However, nowadays, larger companies have found what I believe the best thing to happen to gamers. It’s also a lot more time-consuming, and large, but either way our expectations are raised, and no matter what happens, we always enjoy a larger game for little to no cost.

At one point, MMO’s will reach their point of Solace. They’ll be the most popular thing out. Which ones make it through are the deciding factors, but will we like them?

Will the good ones die because of financial problems? Or will the bad ones live because people shelled out monthly to keep it afloat, only to not like what they saw?

That’s what we need to decide on.

Is scale equal to deciding if it’s good? I say no.

I’d pay for a game with tiny map area if it meant that it was amazingly detailed, keeping me interested, and if it meant that the developers could simply make that map more interesting over time.

We can never expect too much, as long as we like what we see.

Makes me think that we’re just so demanding with MMOs now that are expectations are so high that we will never be satisfied. I don’t buy a PS3 game thinking it will something I play every day for 3 years, yet I easily consider that when I purchase a MMO. Is that a reasonable thought to have?

I would still say that we don’t necessarily need to consider a MMO as a longterm investment though. A player could reach a reasonable level in WoW, for instance, in only a month and then stop playing and paying. The gaming pleasure would be no less than a single player game (unless you want to “complete” the game that is.

When it comes to MMOs I really do hope that each time I purchase one that it is my next “everquest.” I played EQ1 for over four years and EQ2 for just over two. I’d love for that to happen again but in this industry it just isn’t likely these days.

I’ve reclassified MMOs as computer games when it comes to my time vs money reward. Generally speaking if I play a solid month after I hit max level I consider it a decent title. I probably got my money’s worth. I can accept that. I even view some MMOs as this.

To me Champion’s Online was fun. It isn’t “play for six months” fun but it is most certainly a “play for two or three months” game. $80 for three months entertainment seems alright to me.

The real problem for me is when the first few months of the game are just an extended beta. If the game is basically “defective” in some way I do get upset. In my eyes I should be paid to play then. I do a pretty decent job of QA and those skills aren’t free!

MMO’s are a different animal because the price model is different. I pay the initial money for the box and CD’s (usually a free month as well) and at the end of every month they come with their hand’s out asking for more money.

Content also changes with MMO’s. Maybe to your liking and maybe not. You never know what you will get down the road.

For the continuous cash infusion they require I definitely expect more from them. Especially as most are based on a longer time scale. Do I care if the “early” part of Bioshock isn’t great? Not really. I won’t be spending much time there. Do I care if the first 20 levels of an MMO are great? Yes, I will be spending a considerable amount of time on that.

Not to mention the first few months of an MMO can essentially be “busy work” before you have a character powerful enough to enjoy. There are some exceptions obviously but for the most part this is standard.

The want me to commit to an ongoing purchase plan then they better be a step above whatever new game is on the market that I could instead put that $15 towards.

You have used Grand Theft Auto as the console control in your comments. This actually helps make another of my points. I know exactly what I am getting for what I am paying. Your initial purchase makes you the “owner” of the game.

I may only get 80 hours out of the game right now. I may beat it in a week but I own the game. If a few weeks later I decide to play again then I am not out anything. The initial purchase has given me unfettered access to that game.

If I decide I want to poke my head back into a particular MMO world I must once again fork over some money. As far as I know there is no real offline mode for any MMO. The only real exception I can think of is Guild Wars but I don’t hold that to a higher standard.

I own the console game. I rent the MMO.

Right now, We might expect a few too many things to start out with, but eventually sticking with a game gives what you’d expect from a it, considering that also needs to meet the needs of 100,000+ Players. Some expect more, and some expect less, And those that expect more are far more in number.

I myself don’t mind if a game can’t offer me all the things I want, but it can normally make up for it by providing more features, or even social interaction. If it offers WAY too little, I pass on it until it’s patched, updated or something new comes along.