Everquest, UO and Monthly Fees

Lately, quite a few people seem to be excited about Everquest. Certainly the idea behind a massively multiplayer RPG game is quite compelling. However, I think Ultima Online should have taught us by now that things don't necessarily work out exactly how you would like them to. You can't avoid all the lamers that will pollute the EQ servers, and that will definitely drag the game down. But what's worse than that is that you will have to pay a monthly fee to play the game. If you ask me, monthly fees are just another way that game companies like to squeeze every penny they can from gamers.

What exactly is the logic behind paying full price for an online game at a retailer, and then on top of that having to pay a monthly fee? Well, the game publisher will tell you that it needs the initial store sale to cover the game's development and production costs. The monthly fee is to pay for the staff that will supposedly administer and run the game's online servers. Sounds reasonable, right? WRONG!

If the publishers only thought in assessing a monthly fee was to recover the game's server staff costs, then they could easily give gamers a choice on paying monthly fees by releasing player run server software similar to the way deathmatch games like Quake allow. That way, game fans could run their own servers and allow players to participate free of charge. If gamers wanted to play on commercially run game servers, then and only then would they be subject to the monthly fee. Unfortunately game companies are terrible hypocrites. For example, when players challenged Origin's reasons for a monthly fee by writing their own server software and running their own free servers, Origin responded with threats of legal action. The reason they did this is because they want to make the most money possible, and the best way to do that is to charge a monthly playing fee.

Looking at it, it's easy to see the difference behind companies like iD and Blizzard, and companies like Origin and Sony. ID is a company that treats the gamer fairly. Once you purchase their game, you are allowed to play online and experiement with user based modifications to your heart's content. They encourage this through the release of server software and game source code. Likewise, once you buy a Blizzard multiplayer game you are allowed to play free of charge on Battle.net. On the other hand, Origin and Sony are two companies driven purely by thoughts of greed and profit. They have no qualms whatsoever about treating their customers unfairly, thus you have monthly server fees for their games. I really hope that gamers out there will say NO to being ripped off. I say, let's boycott all monthly fee games. We have to show these people that free multiplayer gaming is the only way to go. Let's support the game companies like iD and Blizzard that do it right!

-- fewlio
From his web site game of the moment