MMO questions for magazine feature

[ViolentLee]

Hey, guys. I'm writing a story on MMORPGs for a men's magazine, and I have a few questions.

1) What is the typical subscription price range? I know $15 is the norm, but what about the low end? What are games like EverQuest 1 or Lineage 1 charging per month?

2) Do you have any funny stories to share about MMO gaming? Maybe somebody went apeshit for no reason, or you witnessed an online marriage proposal? The story is going to be light-hearted, so I need things to spice it up.

3) Finally, a general question: Why do you play MMOs? What makes you spend the time and money every month to stay plugged in?

Thanks very much for your help.

[neocisco]

Hey, guys. I'm writing a story on MMORPGs for a men's magazine, and I have a few questions.

1) What is the typical subscription price range? I know $15 is the norm, but what about the low end? What are games like EverQuest 1 or Lineage 1 charging per month?

2) Do you have any funny stories to share about MMO gaming? Maybe somebody went apeshit for no reason, or you witnessed an online marriage proposal? The story is going to be light-hearted, so I need things to spice it up.

3) Finally, a general question: Why do you play MMOs? What makes you spend the time and money every month to stay plugged in?

Thanks very much for your help.

I don't play MMO's but let me know which magazine this will be in.

[BLarR]

I've played MMO's for years because A) It's an entire world created just for the player, it's like living a second life where you just hang out with friends and kill things and go on amazing adventures.
B) As long as you're willing to pay the monthly fee and the price for a new expansion every now and then, it has infinite replay value, and a cheap alternative to buying a bunch of new games every month.
C) It's the most addicting experience I've ever had. I actually skipped days of school to play these things, because I just never wanted to log off. The fact that there's always something new to due, or someone new to meet is just incredible.

Some crazy things I've seen in MMO's-
I've had women 3 times my age hit on me, not an exaggeration. Not one of them knew what the hell I looked like in real life.
Guilds building a never ending guild hall.
People that just got married on it, never saw any proposal itself though.
Family members, like father and son, in my team at the same time.
Lots of strange happenings, way too many for me to list.

I would write more, but I have people IM'ing me, pm me if you want anything else.

[radjago]

I don't play MMORPGs, but I have brothers and friends that do. Perhaps I'll milk them for a comment or two.

The only thing I have to add is that there are dozens of free MMORPGs out there, both 2D and 3D. Most of them offer "Premium" services for additional fees, like better servers and guaranteed logins.

[PsyClerk]

1) What is the typical subscription price range? I know $15 is the norm, but what about the low end? What are games like EverQuest 1 or Lineage 1 charging per month?

The low end would be $10/month. That actually used to be the standard until a couple of years ago, then most companies hiked it to $12.95 (which I believe is the standard now, not $15). Some companies have a plan where you can get the per month cost cheaper by paying several months in advance. For example, Anarchy Online is only $8 a month if you pay a year at a time.

2) Do you have any funny stories to share about MMO gaming? Maybe somebody went apeshit for no reason, or you witnessed an online marriage proposal? The story is going to be light-hearted, so I need things to spice it up.

Only three come to mind right now, though I'm sure I could think of plenty more.
-When I first started playing Anarchy Online, I was using a fairly old computer. AO has relatively beefy requirements though, and the machine could not handle it well. To compensate, AO changed the draw distance to about 5 feet. I remember watching my brother run around what should have been a massive city, but due to the limited draw distance, it looked like an endless green plain. People would blink in and out of existence as they ran in and out of the draw distance. He finally stopped one and asked "Where's the town?" Later, on a better machine, we realized he was in the middle of a metropolis when he asked that question.

-In Asheron's Call, death has very little penalty. You lose 5% of your skills (comes back as you gain experience) and drop a few items. As such, people who got bored would find creative ways to die. One of the most popular ways involved going to one coastal town, which was home to one of the tallest structures in the game, the Tou Tou lighthouse. At any given time, you can see people jumping from the very top of the lighthouse to their death in the water below.

-On a similar note in the same game, at one point one of the legendary bad guys returned to the realm. He was actually playable and controlled by an admin. The game developers gave him all sorts of cool powers, from useful to just goofy. One spell he cast caused cows to rain down from the sky. Another was called "Portal to Teth." This was an in-joke directed at 'n00bs'. Fort Tethana, or 'Teth' for short, was a popular town because it's vendors gave the best prices when selling loot. It was also difficult to get to, being situated in the middle of the area with the hardest monsters roaming free. Most people, rather than make the run, would spam in-game gathering spots for someone to summon a magic portal to Teth. If no one could/would do it, it would get annoying seeing the portal request spammed. As such, the devs gave their big bad monster the ability to teleport anyone to Teth. The catch? They appeared approximately a mile ABOVE the town. So technically, you would be at Teth...you just couldn't do anything there after dropping to your death.

3) Finally, a general question: Why do you play MMOs? What makes you spend the time and money every month to stay plugged in?

For me, it's several things. Playing with friends in a persistent world is one reason. I'm also a sucker for the level and loot treadmills. I like to see how quickly I can improve my character's stats as well as finding the best/rare/useful items. That facet lends an air of competition to MMOs. I will say that if an MMO does not add content from time to time (for free, I'm not talking about expansion packs), I tend to get bored.

[danh920]

1) What is the typical subscription price range? I know $15 is the norm, but what about the low end? What are games like EverQuest 1 or Lineage 1 charging per month?

i know ragnarok online can be had for under $10 a month if you buy enought months at a time, I'm currently paying $15 for eq2



2) Do you have any funny stories to share about MMO gaming? Maybe somebody went apeshit for no reason, or you witnessed an online marriage proposal? The story is going to be light-hearted, so I need things to spice it up.

The funniest thing I ever saw was in ffxi, while doing the chocobo quest, there was a guy trying to learn his emotes. Part of this quest involved having to wait and feed the stupid chocobo every 3 hours or something stupid like that. In the end, this guy was kicking the chocobo in the nuts, so it would say the following:

Violentlee kicks the chocobo in the nuts


3) Finally, a general question: Why do you play MMOs? What makes you spend the time and money every month to stay plugged in?

I play them because it's a change from the norm. I'm pretty bored with most of the crap out there. I have taken a vow to never buy another game from EA again so all I'm really looking forward to (for now) is zelda and ffxii for this year. For some reason, I'm just not bored when I play these games, I can go nonstop for 8-10 hours on a day off.

[Kaijufan]

The low end would be free because you don't have to pay anything for Guild Wars.

[ViolentLee]

Great stuff, guys. I especially like the image of people leaping from this tall building.

I'm writing it for Mean magazine, which is a music/men's mag.