Hi,
We are talking about World of Warcraft, right? The MMORPG? I mean, "but you have to play it online", is pretty much a given. But I agree with you about the unfairness of having to pay a premium for the box *and* having to pay a monthly fee. A fair way of packaging would be something like a three month pre-paid subscription plus a nominal sum (say, $10US) for the media and manual. An option for free download of the media and manual with a pre-paid subscription would also be attractive.
However "Blizzard could have increased the original price in order to make it free online once for all." is foolish. A number of people have mentioned that they were disappointed in the amount of material added to D2 over its lifespan. What they are overlooking is tha Blizzard did not *owe* them any additional material (except, possibly, bug fixes). WoW (and any MMOG) is based on a different model. The underlying idea is that there will be a constant influx of new material. It is this new material (and, of course, the expense of maintaining the servers and bandwidth) that the monthly fee pays for.
One can argue (and many have) about what a 'fair' monthly fee is. I doubt that there is any one good answer -- some things, like new content, have an expense independent of number of users. Others, like servers and bandwidth, scale with users, but not necessarrily linearly.
Ultimately, each person has to decide for him/herself what the game is worth. If it is worth less than Blizzard ask, then one is under no compulsion to buy.
--Pete
EDIT: Actually, after thinking it over, I think a premium for the box plus the subscription may be justified. I gave my reasons above for why I think some monthly fee is justified. Largely it was to buy new content. However, if the monthly fee covers operations and new content, that leaves all the pre-release development unpaid for. And it is this development that one is paying for when one buys the box, just as one does when buying any game box. So, while the amounts charged for the box and for the subscription are open to debate, the need for both those charges is, I think, self evident to any rational person. The choice of whether to buy or not is still a personal decision.
We are talking about World of Warcraft, right? The MMORPG? I mean, "but you have to play it online", is pretty much a given. But I agree with you about the unfairness of having to pay a premium for the box *and* having to pay a monthly fee. A fair way of packaging would be something like a three month pre-paid subscription plus a nominal sum (say, $10US) for the media and manual. An option for free download of the media and manual with a pre-paid subscription would also be attractive.
However "Blizzard could have increased the original price in order to make it free online once for all." is foolish. A number of people have mentioned that they were disappointed in the amount of material added to D2 over its lifespan. What they are overlooking is tha Blizzard did not *owe* them any additional material (except, possibly, bug fixes). WoW (and any MMOG) is based on a different model. The underlying idea is that there will be a constant influx of new material. It is this new material (and, of course, the expense of maintaining the servers and bandwidth) that the monthly fee pays for.
One can argue (and many have) about what a 'fair' monthly fee is. I doubt that there is any one good answer -- some things, like new content, have an expense independent of number of users. Others, like servers and bandwidth, scale with users, but not necessarrily linearly.
Ultimately, each person has to decide for him/herself what the game is worth. If it is worth less than Blizzard ask, then one is under no compulsion to buy.
--Pete
EDIT: Actually, after thinking it over, I think a premium for the box plus the subscription may be justified. I gave my reasons above for why I think some monthly fee is justified. Largely it was to buy new content. However, if the monthly fee covers operations and new content, that leaves all the pre-release development unpaid for. And it is this development that one is paying for when one buys the box, just as one does when buying any game box. So, while the amounts charged for the box and for the subscription are open to debate, the need for both those charges is, I think, self evident to any rational person. The choice of whether to buy or not is still a personal decision.
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?