[citation][nom]IMGooch[/nom]I don't understand the fee structure of mmo's. First you pay $50/$60 for a game, then you pay $15/month on top....then they have the balls to charge for new content? So first, if it's a free weekend, why would I pay the initial $50 when I already have the game? I know other mmo's don't do that and it makes sense. $15/month is wayyyy more than enough. And what is that even for? What makes it worth a monthly fee? I don't pay a monthly fee to play MW online. So the only reason would be new content right? Well then why do they charge for new content packs! Like Cataclysm and whatever else WoW screwed people for... I'm really not understanding what is being paid for by the monthly fee.If I pay for the game initially and each additional pack then ok. If I pay a monthly fee only and get the game and updates ok. But not both.[/citation]
I actually agree with you to a certain extent... I always argued that "if a subscription based game was good they'd give it away and make their money on subscriptions", and I still believe this. When you look at what the $50 up front cost really accomplishes... what it amounts to is a transfer of cost from long term users to short term users. MMO makers know that a large percentage of users will get the game and play it for a month or two then stop - they want to make enough money on those folks that they don't have to charge the long term users more for their monthly subscription.
These are expensive games to produce, and there's really no comparison between a persistant MMO and an online FPS... the MMO requires substantial infrastructure and developer financed network connectivity to maintain. We can gripe about having to pay $50 up front... but if we weren't paying it there we'd be paying $20 a month to play.
Major upgrades are sold instead of provided to users as part of the subscription, and the logic is the same... the development costs for the new content need to be covered somewhere, either with a purchase price or in the subscription. The SWTOR folks have been providing incremental content upgrades, and that is free... so it seems like they're doing a bit of both approaches.