Selling lemonade? 
Ohh sweet America…
if I would start selling lemonade in Hungary, the police would take me away.
The debate is not about how hard it is for someone to gain money, it is about the absurd price for an old MMO.
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wrap your small mind around this:
its not about “affording $15”
Imagine every game you have every played charged you $15 a month. AO does not have any special operating costs associated with it. Greed is standing in the way of an actual playerbase. Funcom cares more about milking their customers than actually creating a fun game for everyone.
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The companies that offer goods for money are greedy? I think the people that expect everything for free are greedy.
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Who said we want it for free? Did you actually read the posts? We are talking about how expensive the sub cost is for this old game, compared to other MMOs
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false equivalency. this game does have ongoing operating cost, servers cost money to run and the gm staff cost money to work and while the game hasnt seen much content lately, we still get holiday events that have new items(have to pay graphic designer to make em and programmer to add them) and all the new features on rk2019(the daily rewards, new quests, etc) all require programmers and artists. even andyb’s streaming cost money.
I bet you walk into hospital and demand specialized doctors and nurses take care of you for free. lol. entitled much?
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I actually do pay more than $15/month for most games, either in subscription fees/expansion costs or paying $60-80 for a single player game which I rarely play more than 3 months or so. Some big exceptions, though, for old games when new games pall, like Alpha Centauri, Tropico 4, and Minecraft.
I have to wonder why if AO isn’t fun for you, that you continue to play it. And since AO was the first of the old school MMO’s to allow FTP (as opposed to new games designed to milk cash) and still does, why that isn’t enough free content for you?
As I said before, the fact that those of us playing on RK2019 are paying for what is free content on the other server is ironic.
15€ a month… man… thats nothing compared to other expanses you have in real life… if you play 100 hours a month (what many people do), thats 15cent per hour played. dont think there are much cheaper freetime activities than that. when i go drive go kart it costs me 15 bucks… for 10 minutes^^ if you are poor, go work at mc donalds for 1-2 hours. that should do it for a full month AO xD
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Plus with inflation considered it is cheaper now as $15 would have bought you a lot more back in 2001. I’d actually pay $20 if it was just a Vanilla AO server. For unlimited access a month it’s still a great price.
Like which ones? WoW and EQ2 charge the same. Although EQ2 has a free option, as does AO.
If you think another MMO should be included in that list, you need to justify it.
Four man squads do not count as an MMO, nor do stripped down content offered for free players, and discounts for contracts beyond month to month, although comparing apples to apples is ok.
And of course, the same content offered on RK 2019 is free on the old server.
It’s just that some of us are willing to pay for a new server. If you aren’t, you can still play on the old server for free.
Wrong about WoW (have no clue about EQ).
Blizzard have regional price policy, so it varies in different countries.
So this isn’t about the price being unreasonable for an old game, but rather because AO doesn’t provide a subsidy for some countries?
The price for an old game was the context of my response.
Changing the goal posts for a discussion majorly sucks, ya know?
No. I’ve just corrected your statement that WOW charges the same (Not any more).
The question about substantiation of AO price is still disputable.
Does Anarchy Online provide enough effort for 15 busks/month? That is the question.
BTW i don’t think that comparison between AO and WOW is correst. WOW still expands and Blizzard are actually working on it.
No, WoW charges me the same. The fact that it gives other people a break is irrelevant.
Does Anarchy Online provide enough effort… changing the goal posts again.
Bleh.
Pretty much impossible to discuss things logically with people who do that.
U dont? 
And stop comparing AO and WOW already!)) There are whole different leagues)
You are free to provide your own examples where the contention is true.
Just be sure to state your contention, since it changes much.
Well, If you intend to compare AO with other games, why not to use such “old school” games like Ultima Online, EQ2, Lineage 2 (but it still popular in some regions)? But they are very very dead too. Exept L2.
By the way! Runescape! I haven’t played it but some time ago this game was on top of Twitch. Did developers actually worked something around it?
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While I think that the price should be lowered to at least $10/month… I need to ask you, have you ever taken any economics classes or anything of that nature?
Companies who offer services have to pay their employees, and any maintenance fees to keep their company and/or service operational, such as: electricity, internet, IP hosting, etc…
in simpler terms: if you have a drink stand that sells fruit punch, and lemonade, and the fruit punch is the prefered drink of your customers, you will eventually not have enough to make more fruit punch and lemonade at the same ratio as before. So, you have to cut costs by making less lemonade, or increase costs of the punch to cover the same amount of lemonade that you normally make. But in the end, the income from the punch is covering the cost of the lemonade, which not many people enjoy as much. Funcom has money from other Intellectual Properties, sure, but they shouldn’t have those IPs cover the cost of AO.
OK, that turned out to be much longer than I had intended lol!
I kind of have mixed feelings on this subject…
FC DOES NOT offer great support for AO, they cannot (lack of an employee intelligent enough), or choose not to fix bugs that have been around for years and years. they do not create new expansions… they tell people a new Gfx engine is coming for 8+ years, and give us a “beta” of the engine that crashes often. Since the beginning, if they cannot make something work, they remove it instead of putting in the effort to make it work: case in point: There used to be a weight system, and that is why we have all the different backpacks… they never implemented it so they scrapped it. There used to be falling damage, but people in yalms were flying along and if they flew over a large hill or cliff, the game thought their character was on the ground, and emulate them falling to their death… instead of fixing that, they scrapped it. there has been so many things like this, that just shows me how lazy FC is and they do not care about the quality of their game; and yet, I still love the game, and that is why i still play every so often.
TLDR:
The game is basically in maintenance mode… with a few things added over the years, reduce to at least $10/mo for the lack of effort put into the game today.
/rant
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Most people complaining about the subscription fee forget one fundamental thing: Nobody is forcing you to subscribe.
So? We are talking about the reason why this old game costs so much. We have the right to say our thoughts. We are paying customers who are curious why a game in maintenance mode is so expensive.
I’ve played EQ and WoW at release. EQ since it’s beta. SWG at release.
Asheron’s Call before AO. I started playing AO in Aug 2001, when my EQ guild mates reported it might be stable enough to play. Which they formed in July 2001, patterned after our EQ guild, and which I have two toons in, although I no longer play them. But probably makes that guild one of the oldest in AO.
Since my EQ2 subscription is still active, although cancelled in favor of AO, and have played WoW in the past year or so, I don’t understand your point.
I suspect you’re trying to make some value argument, and are assuming since you value it, it must be more important than what I value.
But I would be delighted if you told me that was not true, and could state your reasons for it.
Plus the most over riding argument of all - the OP’s argument isn’t true at all.
He/she can play for free unless he/she wants to play on RK2019. Those of us playing it, are basically paying for froob content.
Which makes any arguments related to subscription costs absurd, since they can play the same content for free.