Quote:
Originally Posted by latinus
its a tricky question as you are no longer on equal footing regardless of time spent...you can pave your road with money and that doesn't sound like a game anymore does it?
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Sounds like you are assuming MT = buying gear again. I know I am talking abstracts (the concept of a game) and existential qualities (the essence of a game that does not exist yet), but I truly believe MT does not have to mean scams and poor quality. It's just a matter of breaking through Western thinking.
In late 80s to early 90s in the USA, phone companies warred with each other to provide long distance service to consumers. They tried to top each other with flat rates. $20/month or $15/month. While those deals were great for someone who used the service frequently, they made no sense to me since I rarely called long distance numbers. Plans like that favor people who lack the discipline to plan or who are high end users.
I was better served by choosing to pay with each transaction, so I chose some no-name company out in CA (I lived in TN at the time). I paid $.08/minute for my long distance for the next 4 years and only once spent more than $15 in a single month. My quality of service was outstanding. If I wanted to make a call, it worked every time.
I was in the minority with my telephone needs. Flat rates pretty well won out in the telephone industry, and the trend is already carrying over to cellular phones. After years of rates that charge users as they go, now Sprint is touting one flat rate for all of their services.
It sounds like a great deal--if you're going to use all of those services. Eventually we'll see bundles of services (text/data/messaging) that you can't buy individually. Consumers will be forced to pay a flat rate that exceeds their needs all in the name of saving a few pennies for the one time they need the other services.
So, I appreciate your position but respectfully disagree. Paying $15/month for EQ2 does me no good when I could only play 2 hours/week. The game is great fun, and it certainly is of higher quality that the free-to-play games I spend my scarce free time with. I'll stick to a great F2P game like
Atlantica and continue hoping that a big-name company will finally take the plunge and break the ice for Western markets with a business model that works for most consumers and the industry.