you don't think they pay their employees?

I'm gonna take the liberty of adding the line /sarcasm to this comment.



Do you have a cellphone? That is more than 15 a month. If you don't like grinding, don't play MMORPGs, nothing can be done about it, its the nature of the beast.



No they don't. There a few jewels among the shit.



Yes, money well earned I say.



Yes they do need the money for servers, they also need to pay customer support people, developers, and any other personel of the company, also some of that money is going to develop Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (what other company can boast on working on two of the most anticipated games to date both at the same time?). Better graphics means nothing in the MMO genre, well pershaps if it forces you to upgrade your computer to play the game. And style? thats purely personal.



You only taking into account the graphics? Silly you. You will be surprised...



Gotta love freedom.

i like the little known free one ROHAN-got mounts for us freeplayers-finally

Blizzard is a business. You do realize the purpose of a business is to make money, don't you? If you're so dead set against it, then vote with your wallet. No one's forcing you to play. I don't like the monthly fees either. But guess what? I don't play MMOs. It really is that simple.

I'm curious how you had a cell phone but didn't pay anything as well.

you know how much game development COSTS? WoW is how they make the massive amount of money required to maintain/upgrade their computers, pay all their bills, employees, cleaners, buy new software, advertise WoW to make more money etc.

and Blizzard is a business - IT EXISTS TO MAKE MONEY, not to give all their money away. of course they are going to give it to themselves!!!

My big problem with fee based games isn't the fees themselves, but the design decisions that invariably accompany them. A fee based game isn't about giving the user the most enjoyable and entertaining experience, it's about finding a way to keep them playing for as long as possible. Fee based games, consequently, are more about wasting your time than filling it. WoW's a perfect example, really.

And I adored Guild Wars, but it's really an action RPG that you happen to have to play online more than an MMO. It does one thing, and does it well. In comparison to WoW the control is better, the art direction is vastly superior, the graphics in general are better, and the skill system is much more interesting. The removal of all those fee based time wasters in "real" MMO's is a nice plus as well (map travel, free respecs etc). That said, it's more linear, smaller, and far less diverse than WoW, so I can understand why it wouldn't appeal to some tastes. Personally I found WoW unplayably slow, awkward, and dull, but to each his own.

"You don't think they pay their employees?"



No they pay them in WoW gold instead.

Well really graphics is one thing, but gameplay is another. Guild Wars actually requires skill to play. Anet planned to create stand-alone campaigns to keep the players entertained. Yes if all previous players bought the expansions (which were anually released back to back) it would be like paying an annual monthly fee, but if you play WoW and decide not to get expansions, you are still paying 15 dollars a month no matter what. What sad people there are today who play a noob game that only takes your life to beat (socially and physically). Yes I am biased towards Guild Wars and other free MMOs that are far and few.

Noone is forcing anyone to pay. You don't have to like it. Don't like it? Don't pay. It's as simple as.


But please, have some respect for what other people like and don't like, and recognize that their priorities may be very different from yours.

Yup, and they're working on Guild Wars 2 and you can bet they'll have several expansions for that as well. Guild Wars makes its money by regularly releasing new expansions.

In addition, Guild Wars was created by former Blizzard employees, and they license their technology to NCSoft, so they're probably making a lot of money there as well.

Every MMORPG I know of has some way of have having continuous or semi-continuous income. WoW just makes it more obvious than others.



WoW is about middle of the pack as far as grinding goes. It's not as easy as Guild Wars, but it's not as hard as Silkroad. It's a pretty flat curve if you do the quests - I'm in the mid 50s, and I can still do a level or two in a single day if I have enough free time.



Actually, they do. Server maintenance can be quite expensive, especially for something as large scale as a MMORPG. The ones that don't have explicit payments support it by some other means, such as premium items.



I'd say just about every game on the market has better graphics than WoW. WoW capitalizes on gameplay for appeal, not graphics.



Considering the GeForce 5 is five generations old by now (6, 7, 8, 9, and the new 200 series), I'd say half of the games I own would drop the framerate on a GeForce 5 to below 5 fps, easily.

You're probably getting bad graphics in Guild Wars because you're using such an old card and can't crank the graphics up. Its graphics are far better than WoW's graphics on cards that support shader model 3.



This is so true. Guild Wars is an easy game to put down, especially after you've completed the primary plot quests. Perhaps a bit too easy to put down: I haven't played in months, and the guild I'm in is down to only a few players. It's practically a single player game in many respects.

WoW, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to put down, and the guilds seem to be stronger and last longer. It seems to be a tradeoff.



Create an alt, and have it pick up the mining skill. I can make 100g easily. But yes, playing WoW can be a major time commitment if you're not careful. I'll probably be cutting back majorly (maybe completely) when the next semester at college starts.

Agreed. You don't have to play MMORPGs if you don't like them.

Yeah cause pushing buttons in so very skillful. LMAO. Go out side Nancy I think you need some sun.

Honestly I don't see why Blizzard can't just offer WoW for free. I mean their staff ought to be working as volunteers, they should have loads of free servers handed to them from companies because companies exist to lose money, and of course graphics should be amazing and updated every few years that the bar is raised for free, because it's really as simple as just changing a setting on your game to improve them, and so can be done for free by those volunteers.