WoW sales

No. I'm guessing WoW does it this way right now to control the amount of bandwidth they have to expend. They have enough problems as it stands from their paying subscribers.

 

The 10 day trial for a friend that's included with the game is probably the only "demo" there will be. I don't recall EverQuest having a demo, or Asheron's Call. Or Anarchy Online. In fact, the only free demos I remember were Neocron and Saga of Ryzom, neither of which I would have paid money for.

 

There was/is a demo for star wars galaxies, which is why I assumed there was one for pretty much every game. After all, if you want people to fork out money for your product they have to have a chance to test it and like it first. Ensnaring them first before they can play at all in a subscription they then have to tangle their way out of if they hate the game seems to me like a crooked way of doing business that would hurt the company in the long run...

 

Everquest has always allowed for one month of play before any subscription charges applied. Cancelling has also always been trivial. You cancel your subscription, and you get to play up until the last day you paid for (though you can't get your money back). City of Heroes worked in the same way.

Back in the days of the original EQ, I would typically order a few months and cancel the subscription immediately, because I didn't know whether or not I'd want to continue playing.

 

That's not what's meant by "free demo" Chalnoth; it's something you don't pay for at ALL.

But despite Crusher's assumptions, most games have moved to offering a free demo of some sort not too long after the initial crush has worn down, as it's a good way to draw in new players. (At least until the box price of their game becomes trivial, but that usually doesn't happen for a WHILE.) It does not mean "LOL failing game" at this point. As much as some games might lose out on selling a box to ANY curious minds, they quite likely more than make up for it by adding active purchasers and subscribers who wouldn't be a part of the game without being able to give it a fair shake first.

Devs could do more with it, though... In some ways it would be a good way to assist server balance (by forcing free demo players onto the server of their choice--unless they had a "permission key" granted them by a friend to play on THEIR server [so as to not be a mean bastard and split up friends] where they would be more likely to continue). And EQ2 does it a more random way than others, as their demo allows a LONG access time, it just restricts them to the "newbie island."

I still think, though, that they'd be better off tapping these folk for their test servers, which are usually pretty dry and uninteresting. Instead, they should turn their test servers into a way to "demo" the game as well; people could continue playing on them for as long as they like. Now that could be bad as it would let some people play perpetually, but what if they made their continual playing contingent on active, rated feedback? (And perhaps limited a few annoying things that didn't really need testing, but instead gave them incentives to move to a pay server.) The people who just want to demo and don't care for the game would take off, and those who wanted to keep playing but didn't want to PAY for the game would have to be actual, functioning members of the testing community, which helps the dev (and through them everyone else) anyway. ^_^ And if it looks like it'll get out of hand, they can add more testing servers as they feel like, or just hard-cap the populace. (Probably be beneficial to test load from time to time as well, if they get much interest.)

At any rate, that's my 2 bits.

 

Right, but the poster I was replying to was worried about getting embroiled in a subscription before getting to try playing the game.

 

He's worried about paying for the game before being able to try it, and regardless of if you pay the first month or not, you'll still have to lay out cash (and a lot more at that) to pick up the unreturnable retail box. Heck, I'd rather pay a month's subscription price and NOT pick up the box to test out a game, but that offer isn't available from anyone either. It's the box outlay that's the real bear--at least until a game is years old (or unpopular, which is really when you want to pick a game up. Heh.)

The worry is not really "subscription" but "up front cost," and that's something no MMORPG has gotten around yet. Hence why it's good to get free demos of SOME sort out on the field reasonably quick. You can cash in on the first few months of people really wanting to play the game, but after that I think it's better to entice and lower the barrier of entry in hopes that they keep paying you a subscription.

 

Well, once again I was talking about Guden Oden's comment:

Which I refuted with the simple fact that there is no entanglement in a subscription, as you can cancel any time with no penalty (other than using up the remaining time you have paid for already), at least not with the MMORPG's I've played.

Regardless, it has always been relatively easy to simply try any MMORPG for a little bit on a friend's account anyway.

 

The examples I cited are not "assumptions", they are observations of real MMORPGs I have played. I have not played SWG, but after hearing how many people hated it, I'm not suprised they would have a free demo. It seems all of the "B" MMORPGs are doing that (see the two examples I cited). Anarchy Online did offer the game for free (not just a demo, the full version), but only years after it was released and only after World of Warcraft took away all of their subscribers.

So find someone who already owns the game and use their 100% COMPLETELY FREE, NO OBLIGATION, NO PURCHASE NECESSARY 10 day free trial key for World of Warcraft, and stop complaining. You aren't getting a demo until a better game comes out and they need to lure more customers.

 

Seems Blizzard launched a big-ass patch today. Well, patch notes say march seventh, but yesterday there was nothing, so it's probably US time. It should download next time I log in, which'll happen some time after I've finished my laundry...

Hope they've fixed the bugged Tower of Althalaxx quest, which has been bugged for absolutely ages now. Since the beta in fact, people tell me. I am surprised how they could manage to make just ONE quest NPC like that become unresponsive just SOMETIMES but not always. Must be some mighty impressive programming there...

On the other hand, blizzard is famous for making special-case bugs appear in their games; Diablo 2 was full of them initially. Bows not registring certain damage attributes for example, but ONLY bows... Someone needs to learn some object-oriented programming over there it seems.

 

only came with the collectors edition in Europe.

 

Ah, but in Europe they just had a 100% COMPLETELY FREE, NO OBLIGATION, NO PURCHASE NECESSARY open beta period. In fact, I was able to sign up for it, and I'm in the United States, so people here didn't even need to try and find someone with a free trial key to test the game out, they just had to join the EU beta

 

Perhaps in the past, but now both EQ2 and WoW have their own demos, of a sort.

 

You do realize that's exactly what I was asking people for, that prompted the demo talk to begin with, don't you?

And your previous posts are indeed "assumptions," considering the list of MMO's that have some form of downloadable free demo are extensive (including games that brought them in quickly), rather than the two you mention. I don't recall EverQuest having a demo, you can try out EQ and the first two expansions in demo form for the past year or so or Asheron's Call. It seems they still do not, even though AC2 does. Don't know why, but EQ came late to the party, too.[/i] Or Anarchy Online. Hell, AO let people open accounts to play their game for free for a YEAR just recently. And they've had a 7-day free trial available since early on, as well as letting people try out their expansions right around release.

DAoC has a 14-day trial, all SOE games are covered (including Infantry and Tanarus if you want to count those ), City of Heroes as of last month, Earth and Beyond had one, Eve Online has one, Shadowbane, WWII Online, Ragnarok Online, and all of the aforementioned games... They don't all offer them the same way, but most are pretty constant (as opposed to special offers, which are also done), and as you can see it pretty much has the spectrum covered. (FFXI is one notable exclusion which I expected to see excluded.)

So yes. Assumptions, without really paying attention to the environment. And you know what happens when we assume...

Well, I was reading more into his comments, I guess. No MMORPG screws you on the subscription, but they do "ensnare" you in some ways because of the box price. You end up paying a lot and feeling you HAVE to play your money's worth anyway. MMO's have much more reason to demo than any other game does, really... their proving point is in the long-term game people will keep paying for anyway, so lowering the barrier of entry for players seems to be a good idea. And most MMO's seem to agree at this point, judging by the proliferation of free trial offers of SOME sort. Waiting until the box price goes down a lot (to, say, $10-20) makes your game feel "old and dated" as well most of the time; optimally you want to catch people in the beginning to keep yourself at the forefront. Though you don't want to scare them off with bugs and server outages, so waiting until you're stable is a good idea...

 

One major thing that they should do, though, is lower the barrier of entry for people when said MMORPG is old. Right now it costs quite a lot to buy Everquest brand-new, and then buy all of the expansions.

 

The EQ Platinum pack, which includes the first 7 expansions, is $19.99.

Plus, there have been various "download and play EQ Classic for free" offers in the past.

 

Available from where? Haven't seen that box in any software store around here. It's teh invisible EQ-8-in-1...

 

As a recently revived EQ-gamer, I'm getting more and more interrested in trying EQ2. It seems you have to be paying Gamespy subscriber to try the Isle demo. Or is there any other way around it?

 

Yeah, I first got sucked in when EQ1 was included entirely for free (for 14 days) on a magazine cover in early 2002.

That was just before the Shadows of Luclin expansion was released (the first graphical overhaul - the only two expansions so far were Velious and Kunark). Long story short, I lost a fair bit of weight over the next couple of weeks (and I was a long way from overweight to being with ).